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Jonathan couldn’t sleep.
It was two in the morning, he was probably the only one awake, he had almost died mere hours ago, and he was in Steve fucking Harringtons house. He had let everyone stay with him since the Wheelers home had been destroyed—it wasn’t like his parents were home anyway. Even in the middle of a government ordered shut down, they still managed to find a way to leave their only son alone. It shouldn’t have made him as mad as it did, but he knew first hand what it felt like to feel unloved and sidelined by your own parent.
Great, he thought, now I’m tired and pissed off.
Jonathan sighed, throwing the blanket to the floor. It wasn’t like he was getting much use out of it anyway.
He trekked quietly into the hallway, slipping out onto the back porch. It was cold outside, and the sharp bite of the air made him shiver as he stood out on the porch, back to the house, facing the forest that separated Steve's house from his own. He longed to run out into those woods, fall into his childhood bed for the first time in almost three years, and have something return to normal.
But he couldn’t, and he knew he couldn’t. But that didn’t make the longing any less painful.
He wanted to punch something, kick something, take one of Nancy's guns into the Upside Down and shoot some demogorgons until he felt like he was actually doing something helpful for once.
God, he hated this. It's been years since all of this started. How many times could they fight the same battle before someone finally settled the score?
The door opened and shut behind him, and Jonathan relaxed his shoulders, sighing.
“Can’t sleep?”
The voice didn’t startle him, not like it should have. He would've been more surprised if it had.
“No,” Jonathan said. “You?”
Steve chuckled, sitting down on the steps in front of them.
“No,” he said, resting his head against the railing, “I suppose not.”
Jonathan joined him, sitting on the opposite side of him, putting as much distance between the two of them as possible.
Jonathan hummed, picking at his nails. It was odd, sitting here with the guy he was supposed to hate—supposed to be competing with—and acting civilized for once. Something about Steve made him feel the need to show off, and, if he was being honest with himself, he didn’t think it was about Nancy. Not anymore, not for a long time. He knew she felt the same way, but he had no idea how Steve felt about any of it besides the fact that he could never walk away from a challenge even if it meant his life.
“You okay?” Steve asked, like he could read his thoughts. “I heard you and Nance got stuck in a pretty, uh, interesting situation.”
Jonathan groaned. “God, don’t talk about it. It was embarrassing.”
Steve laughed, scooting just a little closer. “And scary, I imagine.”
“Scarily embarrassing,” Jonathan muttered, which made Steve laugh again. Jonathan's heart soared at the sound.
“Could’ve been worse.”
“Could it have been?” he complained.
“You could’ve died,” Steve said, and the seriousness in his voice made Jonathan pause.
“Steve…”
“Yea?”
Jonathan hesitated, not sure how to approach the topic. He knew that, either way, whatever he decided to say was going to change things for the both of them, and he wasn’t sure if he wanted that.
“I just… wanted you to know that, well, me and Nancy are over,” Jonathan said eventually, scratching the back of his neck nervously.
“Oh,” Steve said. He sounded almost... disappointed, like he had been hoping for something else.
“Yeah. Oh,” Jonathan echoed. “Anyway, uh, if she wants you, and you want her, I’m not in the picture anymore, so…” he trailed off, meeting Steve's eyes. Steve looked away from him, looked down to what surely couldn’t have been his lips. Did he have a bug on his shirt?
“Okay,” Steve said. “Thanks for telling me.”
“Yeah,” Jonathan said weakly, looking back out to the woods.
“I guess that means I should let you know that me and her would never work out,” Steve said, far too casually for his brain to process.
“No?” Jonathan asked, turning back to the other man.
“No,” Steve said, moving in closer. Jonathan matched his movement, a sharp thrill of longing shooting down his spine as Steve met him half way on the steps. “I’ve known that for a long time.”
“Then why…?”
“Compete with you?” Jonathan nodded and the corner of Steve's lip twitched up. “Maybe I just enjoyed pissing you off,” he teased.
“You're such a dick,” Jonathan laughed, shaking his head.
They both stayed silent for a moment. It was a quiet night, and nothing else could be heard over the sound of their breathing and the rustling of the leaves of the forest. Steve sighed.
“The competition wasn't about Nancy,” he said quietly, looking Jonathan in the eye. “It was about you.”
Jonathan didn’t know what to say to that. He stared at Steve, opening and closing his mouth a few times, gaping like a fish out of water at the confession. What did he mean, it was about him? Did he…?
“Jonathan,” Steve asked nervously, “you’re kinda freaking me out here.”
“Sorry, I just…” he shook his head, breathing out sharply. “These last few months have been so weird and the only normal thing around here has been you and your stupid fucking pride and competitiveness that somehow you egging me on to act like a kid every single day has been the most normal I’ve felt in months,” he confessed.
Steve looked down at their hands, just a hair apart from each other, and took Jonathan's hand in his. “You're the most normal I’ve felt in months, too,” he admitted quietly. “You treat me like you did before.”
“Like you're an asshole?”
Steve laughed, squeezing his hand, “Exactly. Dustin treats me like I’m stupid, but he's so scared to lose me that he keeps pushing me away, and Nancy thinks we're idiots, the kids look up to me—as much as they’ll never admit it—Robin thinks I’ll break if she pushes me too hard, and my parents…” he trails off, and Jonathan's heart breaks for him. Jonathan leaned his head on Steve's shoulder and Steve pressed his forehead into the top of Jonathan's head. “My parents are so uninvested in me that I’m not even sure they know I’m still in Hawkins.”
“I’m sorry,” Jonathan whispered, not sure what to say, because, yeah, he got it. Lonnie was a piece of shit and probably didn’t even know Will was still alive, and his mom loved him but she was so worried about his little brother that it was like she didn’t even see Jonathan some days. “If you ever want to talk…”
“I know,” he whispered. “I will.”
Jonathan nodded, and they sat like that for a while, letting another lapse of silence fall over them. It was soothing, and it felt like coming home.
“I love you,” Steve breathed into his hair.
Jonathan froze a moment too long, and Steve lifted his head from his, pulling his hand away, folding into himself. The contrast of this to how they were mere moments ago was so striking that his brain struggled to keep up with all the sudden changes happening to them.
“I love you too,” Jonathan admitted, not wanting to scare him off before he could speak.
“You do?” Steve asked, voice a mix of disbelief and hope.
“Yeah,” Jonathan said, “I think I do—I know I do. And I know that this isn’t really anything… yet… but, uh, if you wanted it to be—”
Steve leaned in, cutting the other boy off with his lips.
The kiss wasn’t anything like he expected it to be. He expected heat and lust and yearning and fireworks to overwhelm him to the point of dizziness. He expected Steve to drag him into his lap by the waist until there wasn’t a single centimeter of skin that wasn’t on the other man's. He expected Steve to haul him into the nearest unoccupied room and do something they would both probably regret in the morning. He expected something lustful and borderline sinful, so he was more than mildly surprised when it wasn’t anything like that. Sure, there were still fireworks, still yearning, still a deep heat of lust and desire in the pit of his stomach, but it was also gentle. Steve kissed him slowly, holding him carefully with one hand cupping his cheek and the other catching his waist, slowly tracing lazy circles with his thumb. They kissed like they had all the time in the world, like it may not be one of their last nights alive—one of their last nights together.
The thought of their first kiss being their last would have sent Jonathan to his knees if he wasn’t already sitting.
Steve pulled away first, only pulling back far enough to rest their foreheads together.
“Can I tell you a secret?” Jonathan asked after a moment. Steve nodded, and it knocked Jonathan's head a little, and they laughed about it, kissed about it, and Jonathan's heart was so full of joy that he wanted to sob. “I still think you're an asshole,” he murmured against his lips.
Steve let out a surprised bark of laughter, diving back in for another kiss. He peppered kissing along his face, his head, his neck, until he had Jonathan giggling and squirming under him, not actually trying to get away. Steve pulled him in for one last kiss. It was slow and gentle, like the first one, and both of them thought that if they never had each other any other way than this, then this would be enough for them. Kissing under the stars, just the two of them—open and honest and raw.