Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

They drop Steve off outside the police station.

Jonathan and Nancy were both pushing for the hospital instead. But Steve insists. After what he’s heard, tonight, he doesn’t want to give his dad the chance to say that Steve went after him, that the knife was self-defense. That a combination of the concussion and some local history project just deluded Steve into thinking his dad was a killer. He wants his version of the story on the record first.

Also, Hopper knows about Nancy and Jonathan. He should know about it beforehand, that they were involved. Just in case.

It turns out that limping into a police station covered in your own blood is a great way to get a lot of attention very quickly. Apparently, the only way to top it is to gasp out, “My dad tried to kill me,” and then have your bad leg collapse dramatically under you. The entire station is there to help Steve up almost before he actually reaches the floor.

The receptionist – Flo, a motherly woman who reminds Steve vaguely of a great-aunt he met once – is just getting Steve settled in a chair with another chair to prop his bad leg on when one of the officers comes back with Hopper in tow. For once, the scowl Hopper’s wearing doesn’t seem to be aimed at Steve. “Hell happened here?”

“My dad. Went after me. With a knife,” Steve sighs out. The adrenaline’s starting to drain out of his system, leaving him feeling wrung-out and exhausted. He could sleep, if it weren’t for everything that hurts.

“Where?”

Steve takes a deep breath in and sighs it out. “My left shoulder, and my face, and my leg is -”

“No, no. Where did this happen? Your house, the school…?”

Steve blinks. Apparently he’s more tired than he’d thought. “My house. His office. I think he’ll still be there.”

“Good. Anybody else home?”

“Just my mom, but she’s out for the count. She didn’t hear anything.”

Hopper’s scowling harder. Steve mimes shaking out a handful of pills and popping them into his mouth, and that scowl clears away instantly, replaced by a queasy combination of pity and guilt.

“Got it.” Hopper turns away to bark out orders to his officers. “You four. Harringtons’ place. No lights, no sirens, I don’t wanna scare Brad off if he’s still there.”

The cops don’t immediately move. Steve shuts his eyes. “It’s number five-fifteen. Loch Nora.”

“You heard the man. Go!”

Steve opens his eyes again just in time to see the stampede for the door. Hopper doesn’t go with them, though. Instead, he crouches down beside the chair Steve’s bleeding all over. His voice is weirdly gentle when he says, “And I’ll take your statement. At the hospital. Stay right here, I’m just gonna bring the truck around the front.”

He’s grumbling something, softly, without any real anger, as he straightens up and starts toward the door. All Steve catches is, “Jesus, Harrington, they’re gonna have to start giving you frequent flyer miles.”

The trip to the hospital is mostly a blur. Hopper keeps trying to get Steve to talk, to keep him awake. He’s got most of the story before he even hauls Steve through the ER doors.

Somebody, thankfully, finds Steve a wheelchair. Somebody else finds a doctor. There’s a lot of frantic rushing around before the verdict comes down – Steve needs blood, a cast for his leg, stitches for his face, and surgery for his shoulder. But in the next five minutes, he is probably not going to die.

“You’re lucky,” the doctor says, as he forces the needle through Steve’s numbed cheek. It’s the strangest sensation, feeling the thread pulling through his skin without any pain. In a weird way, it reminds him, just a little, of what it had felt like when Jonathan was drinking his blood. “Another fraction of an inch higher, and you could’ve lost this eye.”

“Yeah,” Steve agrees hollowly. “I sure feel lucky.”

He’s surprised, when the doctor wheels his tray of stitching supplies back out of the room and Hopper comes in. Steve had just assumed Hopper would’ve left, once Steve was safely admitted. Would’ve gone to help with his dad’s arrest. He’s not sure why Hopper would still be hanging around.

That uncertainty doesn’t get cleared up when Hopper shoots an awkward, try-hard grin in Steve’s direction and drops into the chair beside his hospital bed. “Heyyyy, kid. How you feeling.”

“Like shit,” Steve says, honestly. He’s not sure, but he thinks that twitch of moustache is a genuine smile. “Did they get my dad?”

Hopper nods, once, before looking down at the hat he’s turning over in his hands. “Got ‘im in custody right now.”

He doesn’t look up, doesn’t meet Steve’s eyes, as he asks, “They tell you they wanna keep you -”

“To keep an eye on my shoulder? Yeah.” They’d done the surgery first, wanting to stem the worst of the bleeding. It doesn’t hurt like a white-hot wire pressed against Steve’s back, anymore, but Steve’s arm still isn’t quite right. The painkillers make it hard to concentrate, to think straight, but Steve’s pretty sure the doctor said something about tendons. About possible nerve damage.

He hadn’t come right out and said it. But Steve’s pretty good at drawing connections. At paying attention, not just to what people say, but how they say it.

He knows he can forget about ever getting a basketball scholarship, now.

For a second, like every other time he’s thought about it, Steve’s almost overwhelmed by a monstrous black pit of rage. He’d just tried to do the right thing, the good thing, and now? Now, his one shot at life is ruined, forever, just because of his dad’s selfish, stupid greed.

Just because neither Jonathan or Nancy cared enough to –

Steve sucks a deep breath in through his nose, and lets it out his mouth, slowly. Just like every other time, the rage passes, leaving him feeling hollowed out and threadbare and, embarrassingly, a little like crying.

“Good. Yeah. So. You’re here for tonight,” Hopper says, like he hasn’t noticed Steve’s eyes start to water. Maybe he really hasn’t. Steve’s grateful either way. “But I gotta warn you. Brad needed a bit of bandaging up, too. Nothing like the state you’re in, but…”

Oh. That’s why Hopper’s still here. Steve’s mood, already in the toilet, plummets even further.

“I’ve got my best men on his door,” Hopper says, with a flicker in his face when he says ‘best men’ that Steve thinks is an aborted eyeroll. “And I’ll be here all night. He’s not getting anywhere near you. I just gotta know. Your house is still gonna be a crime scene for a while. You got anywhere safe to go after they kick you out of this place?”

Steve fakes a big, confident smile. “You don’t have to worry about me. The Hagans won’t even notice me crashing on their couch for the millionth time -”

“Kid.” Hopper’s hand is unexpectedly warm when he rests it over Steve’s, chasing away the chill from the IV. Steve’s embarrassed by how badly he suddenly doesn’t want Hopper to take his hand away again. “I said somewhere safe.”

He takes in the look Steve’s giving him, and lets out a defeated sigh. “Look. I probably shouldn’t be telling you this. But if I know Brad at all, and I do, he’s never gonna see the inside of a holding cell. That man’s lawyers -” He stops, shaking his head. “Somewhere he wouldn’t think to look for you would be better. I can’t really spare anybody to sit on you, although I can get a squad car to spin by every hour or so, just to check in. It’d be better if you had somebody close who could watch your back.”

“Okay,” Steve says. “Thanks. I’ll think of something.”

“ ‘Think of something’, my ass,” Hopper growls, and Steve blinks. “Kid, you’re my one witness here. Help me keep you alive, or I’m gonna slap you into protective custody so fast your head’ll spin. Where can you go that would be safe?”

Steve doesn’t know. The first place his dad would look for him would be at Tommy’s. Then Carol’s. His mom’s family are all out in California where she grew up, and his dad’s family – yeah, he can’t trust any of his dad’s family. And there’s nobody else he’s really close enough with to ask if he can just move in with –

“Wait,” Steve says. “Wait, wait. I might have an idea.”

…

“Of course,” Joyce Byers says, without even a waver of hesitation. “Come on in.”

“There’s not a lot of room,” she apologises, holding the door so Steve can hobble awkwardly through on his crutches. He half-wishes they’d just let him keep the wheelchair. These things make his busted shoulder hurt like a bitch. “You might have some trouble getting around, I’m sorry -”

“You sure you’re sure about this, Joyce?” Hopper asks, as he lugs Steve’s suitcase in behind Steve. “It could get dangerous -”

“You’re going to be checking in on us, right?” Ms. Byers says distractedly. “Oh – Steve, sit down -”

“Yeah, but only about every hour -”

“And I know you’ll be sitting beside the phone if we need to call you,” Ms. Byers interrupts him, smoothly, taking Steve’s crutches as he folds himself gratefully down onto her couch.

“For anything,” Hopper says firmly, dropping Steve’s suitcase on the floor of Ms. Byers’ living room so he can turn back and push the door shut behind him. “You need groceries, need any trash hauled, hell, need your gutters cleaned out…whatever. You let me know.”

The smile Ms. Byers gives him makes Steve feel a little like he’s intruding on something.

“I’ll have to – have to put you out here on the couch, sorry,” Ms. Byers says, turning to Steve, as she scoops up his suitcase and brings it over to the couch. “It might be better for you not to have so many doors to fight with? And I’ve already got a full house here. If you’d rather have the spare room, you can duke it out with Jonathan.”

“So he is staying here,” Steve says. He’d kind of been counting on it, when he’d first suggested this, but…he hadn’t been sure.

Ms. Byers nods. “Just down the hall. If the last door to the left is shut, they’re sleeping.”

Hopper’s giving Steve a look that’s far too knowing. Steve returns it. “You said it was better if I had somebody close who could watch my back.”

“Did say that, didn’t I.” Hopper gives one long, assessing look over the living room. “Okay. Unless there’s something else you need me for here, I’d better get back. I’ll keep you posted -”

“One more thing,” Steve interrupts. “Does my mom know? That I’m okay? That I’m here?”

Hopper pauses a moment, before he says, “She knows you’re okay. Do you want her to know you’re here?”

“No. No, just – if she asks, would you let her know I’m safe? And I’m staying with -” He glances up at Ms. Byers, unsure of how she’ll feel about what he has to say next. “Some friends?”

Ms. Byers doesn’t say anything, just flashes Steve a warm flicker of a smile.

Hopper gives a thoughtful nod, before ducking his head to put on his hat. “Can do.” He pulls open the door, but pauses on the threshold, looking back over his shoulder. “Joyce, you need anything, you call me. I mean it. Harrington…”

That’s definitely a smile hiding under the moustache when he says, “Try not to break the other leg, too.”

He’s out the door before Steve can think of a good comeback.

“We were just going to have leftovers for supper. I – I hope you like tuna casserole?” Ms. Byers is starting to say, when Will comes around the corner from what Steve assumes is the hall.

“Mom, have you seen my -”

He stops. Stares.

Steve gives him a little wave.

At least Will sounds slightly less accusing than Mike Wheeler had when he says, “What’re you doing here?”

…

They’ve finished dinner before Jonathan shows his face.

He must’ve known Steve was here already, must’ve heard him, or – smelled him, or something. Because he doesn’t look surprised at all when he steps into the kitchen and sees Steve sitting at the table with his broken leg propped up on one of the other chairs.

“Evening,” Jonathan says, to the room in general. To Joyce, he says, “Nancy wanted to jump in the shower. She’ll be out in a few minutes.”

“Hi, Steve,” Steve says. “How’re you feeling, Steve. Good to see you’re not dead, Steve.”

Jonathan lets out a long huff of breath, pushing his fingers into his floppy bangs and leaving his palm pressed against his forehead so the hair sticks out in all directions. Steve’s mad about how endearing it is. “You’re upset.”

“Yeah, no shit I’m upset. What was that? Just drop me and run like an unwanted baby at a firehouse?”

Jonathan finishes pushing his bangs out of his face before he answers. He doesn’t meet Steve’s eyes. “You know it’s better if Nancy and I don’t attract too much attention -”

“Would it have attracted too much attention for you to visit me in the hospital even once? Instead of just disappearing? Again?”

Ms. Byers’ eyebrows shoot up, and she holds up both hands like she’s being held at gunpoint before edging out into the living room.

Jonathan sighs, again, hugely, before pulling out the kitchen chair across the table from Steve and dropping heavily into it. “Disappearing.”

“What else would you call it? I know you just got Will back and everything, but – I haven’t seen or heard from either of you once since the lab. At least not until you showed up at my house and saved my ass.” Steve’s embarrassed of how his voice starts to shake, how his eyes sting, as he spits, “And then you couldn’t even finish the job, could you? You know the docs say I’ve got nerve damage in my shoulder? Might be permanent. That’s basketball right off the table. Without that, I’ve got nothing, man! No future! And you didn’t even offer to help heal it.”

Jonathan’s staring at his hands, clasped on the table in front of him. Not meeting Steve’s eyes.

“Why not?” Steve demands. He couldn’t say if it’s hate or heartbreak that puts the venom in it when he snaps, “Too scared of getting saddled with me for the rest of my sorry life?”

The glare Jonathan pins him with, flicking up from under furrowed brows, is one Steve’s only seen on him before when his whole face was dead.

“Yes,” he says, flatly, and for some reason that hurts almost as much as being stabbed. “Is that what you want me to say? You’re right. I didn’t try to heal you, didn’t give you my blood, because I didn’t want to enthrall you. Nancy felt the same way.”

Steve sucks his bottom lip between his teeth as he nods. It’s no surprise.

There’s no reason for it to feel like his chest is caving in.

“Okay,” he manages, finally. “Okay. Whatever. Just – you know, if you don’t want me around, you could just say so.”

“What’s going on?”

Steve looks up to see Nancy, standing in the entryway to the kitchen, wrapped in a worn, too-big terrycloth robe, her hair twisted up in a towel. It’s not fair how beautiful she is, even like this. Her skin is still just a little damp, a little dewy, from the shower, and in the warm yellow light of the kitchen, it haloes her with a gentle glow. “Steve? What -”

“Witless protection program,” Jonathan says.

“Hilarious,” Steve deadpans. “Don’t worry, Nance. Jonathan here’s already broken the bad news. I’m sure I can find some other place to hide out.”

“Bad news?” Nancy asks, looking over to Jonathan, who shrugs.

“Apparently we don’t want him around.”

“I must have missed something,” Nancy says, pulling out the last remaining chair that isn’t occupied by someone or Steve’s foot. “Why don’t we want Steve around?”

“Don’t,” Steve says, jabbing a pointed finger at first Nancy, then Jonathan. “You were the ones who dropped me off at the hospital unconscious, without a word or any kind of clue about how to get in touch with you. And then didn’t talk to me! I had to hear it from Hopper that both of you assholes made it back in one piece with Will!”

Nancy adjusts her robe a little closer around herself. Jonathan drags his thumb over the knuckle of his other thumb, clasping and unclasping his fingers. Now neither of them will look Steve in the eye.

“Well?” Steve demands, even though even he isn’t sure what he expects from the other two. But even as he talks, it’s taking shape in his mind. “Why even bother coming back for me, the other night, if you were just going to disappear again?”

For a second, he thinks he’s still not going to get an answer. Nancy doesn’t look up from the linoleum. Jonathan keeps his eyes on his hands.

But he also opens his mouth. “Joyce said you were looking for me. For us. I figured, after I tried to kill you, it had to be because of something serious.”

“You tried to -” Steve’s words get stuck in his throat, and he has to force them out with a laugh. “I asked you to bite me, man!”

Jonathan looks up, staring directly into Steve’s eyes, and the laughter dies in Steve’s throat. “You didn’t know what you were asking for.”

That stare, thankfully, gets slightly less intense as he goes on, leaving Steve feeling less like he’s being carefully dissected and every single one of his internal organs judged. “And you don’t know what you’re asking for, coming here wanting blood to heal you -”

“Is that what this is about?” Nancy interrupts. There’s a quiver of anger under the sudden understanding in her voice. “Steve. I thought you understood. If either of us give you blood, now, it’s almost certain you’ll end up enthralled -”

“Yeah, well,” Steve interrupts back, before he can think better of it. “Maybe I don’t think that’d be so bad.”

He doesn’t like how close the look Nancy’s giving him now is to pity.

“You didn’t want that,” Jonathan says, like an accusation. “You said it yourself. The first thing you asked after we told you we thought Nancy’d already done it was how to undo it.”

“You’d lose your mind,” Nancy agrees, almost pleading, but Steve stops her before she can go on.

“If I’m not around you. Right? If, say, you decide to fuck off while I’m passed out and leave no forwarding address. I’d be fine so long as you let me third-wheel, right?” Steve looks from Nancy to Jonathan and back again. “But hey, if the prospect of being stuck with me for eternity is really so unbearable -”

“No,” Nancy says, her eyes flashing fire as she fixes them on Steve’s face. “No. Steve, I don’t care how much you like me, or Jonathan, or both of us. You barely know us. And even if it was with somebody you – you loved -”

Her voice turns uncharacteristically soft, her eyes turning down toward the scratched lacquer surface of the table, as she says, “You don’t ever, ever want to be trapped like that. By anyone.”

There’s so much grave certainty in her voice that it sucks some of the outrage out of Steve’s sails. For the first time, he finds himself wondering what it must have been like, dating someone who got jealous enough to kill.

“Not to mention,” Jonathan adds. He almost sounds angry, but for whatever reason, Steve’s not sure if it’s Steve who Jonathan’s angry with, or himself. “Spending time around Nancy and me seems to be hazardous to your health.”

It takes Steve a second. “Wh- I just told you I asked you to bite me. And you wouldn’t have had to if I hadn’t ignored Nancy and followed you where I wasn’t supposed to go in the first place -”

“You were trying to help,” Nancy interrupts. “Steve, I know you were trying to help, all of those times. But you wouldn’t have been in any of those situations if you hadn’t been.”

“Yeah,” Steve mutters. “Road to hell. Good intentions. Got it. Look, I know I messed up, following you to the lab, I know I got us caught, I know if Will hadn’t made it out it would’ve been on me -”

“What?” Nancy sounds legitimately shocked, like the thought hadn’t even crossed her mind. For the first time since he got the bandage on his right wrist, a little spark of hope flickers in Steve’s chest. “No, I meant – Jonathan and me. We keep getting you hurt!”

“And after what happened at the lab…” Jonathan’s eyes are resting on Steve’s bandaged wrist. Steve’s not sure if he’s imagining something that looks a little like hunger buried in the guilt in his stare. For some reason, it’s suddenly weirdly hard for Steve to swallow. His throat is so dry. “Nancy and I had already agreed that it’d be best, safest, for you to take a step back. And you obviously weren’t going to do that on your own. So…”

“So…what? So you just stood me up like – like a backup date on prom night?” Steve shakes his head, running a hand through his bangs as he brushes them out of his eyes. “What did you think, that I’d just be fine with that? That I’d just shrug and go on with my boring, worthless, normal life?”

“ ‘Hoped’ might be a better word,” Jonathan says.

“Yeah, well, sorry to disappoint.”

There’s a note of exasperation in Nancy’s voice. Steve hopes it’s fond. “And neither of us anticipated you just trying to get yourself killed again anyway. Without even needing our help.”

“What, you didn’t want to know who stabbed you in the back?”

“I didn’t want you to get stabbed in the back, too, no.” Nancy sits back in her chair, folding her arms in a flop of threadbare terrycloth.

“Wow,” Steve says. “You know, I risked my life to find and expose your killer, and this is the thanks I get? I thought this was the part of the movie where the girl’s supposed to kiss the hero and they ride off into the sunset together.”

It’s mean. He knows it’s mean even before Nancy turns big, wounded, outraged eyes on him, even before Jonathan’s jaw clenches, a muscle working in his cheek. Steve’s not sure exactly how to fix it, but he tries anyway. “No. No, Jesus, I didn’t mean it like that. I know – you and Jonathan, I’d never -”

He stops. Takes a deep breath. Tries to gather his scattered thoughts. “I know you two’ve got your own thing going on. Your own -” There isn’t a better word. “Lives. And I’m not part of that. I get that you think I’d be safer if I kept my nose out of it. If you really think I shouldn’t see you again, shouldn’t be around you, then, fine. I’ll go.”

“Steve,” Nancy sighs, rolling her eyes toward the ceiling, but Steve isn’t finished.

“But, y’know, it really pisses me off that you just made that decision for me. Did neither of you ever even think about maybe asking me what I want?”

Jonathan’s gaze, when he fixes it on Steve, is right back to flaying Steve open and leaving all his insides on full display. His voice is low, and Steve can’t read the emotion in it at all. It sends a prickling shiver through him that’s only partly nervousness. “What do you want, Steve?”

For an endless, speechless moment, Steve can’t do anything but stare back.

He’s been dancing around it in his head, he knows. Playing with the idea like it’s weightless. Like it’s harmless. And it is.

While it stays inside his head.

But. But the last couple of weeks have turned Steve’s entire life upside down. But now he’s living in an alternate universe where monsters and psychics and vampires exist, where his dad tried to kill him but Hopper is on Steve’s side, where his mom hasn’t even tried to find him but he’s living on Crazy Ms. Byers’ couch and eating her tuna casserole like they’re old friends, where he might never play basketball again. An alternate universe where he and Tommy and Carol don’t share every secret.

Enough other impossible things have happened to Steve, now. It doesn’t feel so totally crazy anymore to think that this one might turn out to be not so impossible, too.

“You said I didn’t know what I was asking for,” he starts, slowly, trying to force himself to meet Jonathan’s challenging stare. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe I didn’t. But I do now. And – I don’t want you to just vanish again.”

He pauses. But neither Jonathan or Nancy says anything. They both just keep watching him, thoughtfully, Jonathan with that exposing, inscrutable gaze, Nancy with a piercing sort of attentiveness. Listening.

Steve licks his lips.

“I didn’t come here to ask for your blood,” he tries. “I don’t – care about the goddamn blood, okay? I just want – I mean, I know you guys are practically married and everything, you’re so disgustingly in love, and I love that about you both, and I don’t want to split you up or get in between you and honestly I don’t even know what I’m asking for or how it would work but I just know I -”

His voice cracks. Shatters and dies in his throat under the force of both Nancy’s and Jonathan’s attention. For a second, Steve considers just swallowing the broken pieces of whatever he was going to try to say. Before it’s too late. Before he says something he really can’t take back.

Considers running away.

He has to remind himself that he threw himself in front of a giant monster for these two. That he stared down a murderer. He can do this.

Still, Steve has to clear his throat twice before he manages to say, “I – wouldn’t want to ride off into any sunsets without both of you.”

For a second, he thinks Nancy’s going to give him a big, exasperated sigh, say his name with that awful combination of pity and embarrassment, like how could Steve have been so stupid. That Jonathan’s going to come back with something quick and cutting and wryly hilarious at Steve’s expense. Make a big joke out of it.

But Nancy doesn’t say anything. And neither does Jonathan. He just gets up from his chair and steps around the table, gently nudging aside the chair Steve’s foot is propped up on, leans down to cup Steve’s face in one hand and –

Kisses him.

It’s so – direct. No hesitation. None of Jonathan’s usual holding back. Just confidence, certainty. Just like when he finally snapped and pinned Steve to the wall, or when he gave in and bit Steve in the woods. Except this is a million times better, because instead of being pissed at Steve or half out of his mind with desperation, instead of trying to resist, it’s just – Jonathan’s just – he just wants this. It’s clear from the way he leans in to press Steve back into his seat, the firm grip holding Steve’s head in place as Jonathan devours his mouth like – like he’s starving to death and Steve’s an open wound.

Jesus. Steve probably owes that jerk from the weirdo roleplaying club an apology, or something. Kissing boys is amazing.

There’s a faint bitterness in the taste of Jonathan’s mouth, something thin and sharp and borderline unpleasant that Steve can’t quite put his finger on. And a lingering tang of copper. It’s strange, and a little heady, and Steve tries to push up into the kiss to get more of it, forgetting for a second the precarious situation his right leg’s in. The chair goes slithering out from under his heel as he tries to lean forward, and his cast bounces painfully off the garishly-patterned linoleum.

Jonathan pulls away when Steve yelps into his mouth.

But the wounded, worried look on his face quickly clears when Steve grabs at his leg, hissing through his teeth as he tries to breathe the pain away.

“Shit. I’m sorry -”

“No, no, it was my fault,” Steve reassures him. And then has a wicked idea. He turns his face up to where Jonathan’s standing, and turns on the smile that’s made half the female population of Hawkins High turn cherry-red and suddenly become very amused by the floor. “Kiss me better?”

“You’re incorrigible,” Jonathan says, but he sounds a little strangled.

“No?” Steve twists in his seat, beaming at Nancy, who’s gotten up to fetch the chair he unintentionally kicked out from under his busted leg. “Nance?” He ducks his head so he can look up at her through his eyelashes, pouting a little for good measure.

Nancy shakes her head, but she’s smiling. “You’re an idiot, Steve Harrington.”

But she leaves the chair alone.

Steve’s not sure if the way she kisses him is gentler just because that’s how she kisses, or if she’s being careful of how she handles him after that painful reminder to all of them that Steve’s fragile. Like with Jonathan, though, there’s no hesitation in her movements. No uncertainty. Nancy kisses like someone who knows exactly what she wants and what she needs to do to get it. Especially when she curls her fingers around the back of Steve’s head, a faint scratch of slightly-too-sharp nails against his scalp and a tug against his hair as she gently but irresistibly tilts his head back to give her a better angle to map out his back teeth with her tongue, and, uh, Steve doesn’t remember these pants feeling this tight before.

When Nancy finally steps back, her lips lingering against Steve’s for a long moment even as she starts to pull away, Jonathan’s got an arm around her waist and his face pressed into the crook of her neck, pressing kisses to the pale skin exposed by the slip of her robe. She raises an arm to cradle his head, a helpless smile sneaking across her face as she turns her head to meet his next kiss with her lips, and. Jesus. Steve’s joked about threesomes before, with Tommy and the rest of the guys from the team, of course he has, what guy hasn’t. Locker-room talk. You and Kathy Ireland and Cheryl Tiegs are alone in a hot tub kind of shit.

But this? This is something else entirely.

This is something that feels suspiciously like – love.

Steve’s barely even known these two for a couple of weeks, though, so of course he doesn’t say that. What he does say is, “Seriously? And nobody’s kissing me?”

Nancy hums into Jonathan’s mouth. “Wait your turn.”

…

Steve doesn’t end up spending a single night on the couch.

…

The ‘bed’ in the spare room turns out to be an antique pullout couch, apparently modified from a giant mousetrap, based on how it keeps threatening to spring shut on them if they move an inch too fast or in the wrong direction. But it has room for three. If they don’t mind getting cozy.

And boy, does Steve not mind getting cozy.

There’s one slightly awkward moment, when he’s trying to help wrestle Jonathan out of his clothes and Jonathan puts a hand over Steve’s when Steve reaches for his fly. “I have to remind you,” Jonathan says, and if Steve hadn’t just been shamelessly making out with him, he’d almost think Jonathan was embarrassed. “Dead guy.”

Steve cocks an eyebrow at him. Jonathan’s shoulders hunch forward a little.

“I don’t have any blood flow,” he says, sounding defensive. “It’s got to be within a couple hours after I’ve eaten if you want me to, uh.”

Steve…had not considered that.

“You can still feel stuff, though, right?” he asks, after a moment’s thinking harder than he’s maybe ever thought before.

Jonathan looks like he’d like the bed to snap shut on him and never let him out again. But, at last, he nods.

Steve can’t stop the wolfish grin that spills across his face. “I can work with that.”

He doesn’t, actually, end up doing much work, though. Between his leg and his shoulder and his wrist and his head, it’s just easiest for Steve to prop himself up comfortably in a pile of pillows and let Nancy and Jonathan have their wicked way with him. There are a few mishaps – Nancy accidentally kneeling on his cast, Jonathan pushing him back a little too roughly into the back of the couch that’s become the headboard, one leg at the end of the bed abruptly folding up in a screech of metal and dropping them all with a jarring thump – but even the pain can’t bring Steve down. This is everything he hadn’t even been able to admit to wanting.

Unfortunately, he’s still too wiped from all the near-death experiences to enjoy it for very long. He does his best to hold out, but in the end, the absolute, bone-deep exhaustion of a slowly-healing body is more powerful even than a seventeen-year-old’s libido. Sleep drags Steve under like a soft, dark tidal wave.

And for once, he doesn’t dream.

He knows he’s the only one of the three people in this bed who isn’t functionally nocturnal. And he’s got the weight of experience that tells him better than to expect Jonathan and Nancy to still be there when he wakes up. So Steve’s not sure what’s going on, at first, when he wakes up and there are arms wrapped around him.

Jonathan’s still there, letting Steve curl into his front. So is Nancy, with her arm flung over Steve from behind and her face pressed into the back of his neck. Being the big spoon even though she’s the smallest of all three of them.

It’s not the most comfortable arrangement. The other two definitely don’t produce body heat anymore. And Steve’s arm is kind of falling asleep where it’s pinned under Jonathan.

But they’re still there. They haven’t vanished while Steve was sleeping, again. They’re even still in bed with Steve, bracketing him in, like he’s something precious to protect. Like this meant something to each of them, too. Something more than Cheryl Tiegs and Kathy Ireland in a hot tub, anyway.

And for maybe the first time since all of this started, Steve feels – relaxed. Unworried.

Safe.

…

When Steve finally hobbles out the door of the spare room on his crutches, in search of the bathroom, he nearly collides with Will coming out of his own room, across the hall. There’s something uncomfortable about being so obviously, shamelessly judged by a middle schooler. Steve has to fight down both the impulse to apologise and the impulse to say something mean. “Uh. Morning?”

Will just rolls his eyes, and heads for the kitchen.

The door on the left at the end of the hall is shut, when Steve finishes his toast and hobbles back down the hall. He debates with himself for a moment, before pushing it open.

The reaction is instant. An eerie, inhuman hissing rises from the pullout, and Nancy’s arm flashes up to yank the covers over her head. A stray sliver of sunlight, slanting sharp and concentrated and golden from behind Will’s open door and across the hall, catches the pale underside of her arm as she moves, and the hiss becomes a bitten-off cry of pain as an angry, veiny patch of red blooms where the sun’s hitting. In the seconds before Steve slams the door shut behind him, he could almost swear he sees a fine tendril of thin grey smoke starting to rise from it. Well, that’s probably why all the blinds in here are taped down around the edges with duct tape.

Steve manoeuvres himself over to the bed and tucks himself back in, pressing his front against Nancy’s back. She’s not warm, not like a living person, but she’s not exactly cold, either. Honestly, Steve’s reminded of nothing so much as that one time Tommy’s cousin came to visit for a couple of weeks and let both of them hold his pet snake, its sleek, jewel-like scales faintly cool and dry and satiny against Steve’s skin. He remembers thinking the snake was beautiful, even as he was nearly pissing his pants in terror that it’d bite him. And now that he’s thinking about it, that comparison feels a little on the nose.

But there’s a little of Steve’s own warmth still lingering under the covers. And Nancy’s such a perfect combination of softness and solidity in his arms, the gentle curves of her, the way her head tucks so easily under his chin.

Steve reaches out under the covers, searching fingers trailing over Nancy’s side until he finds Jonathan’s arm. Tangles his fingers with Jonathan’s long, strong ones. Jonathan shifts a little in the bed, turning in closer toward Nancy and Steve, and he gives Steve’s hand a gentle squeeze. When Steve looks over Nancy’s head, though, Jonathan’s eyes are still shut, lashes dark against his cheeks, no sign that he’s breathing. He hasn’t even woken up.

Steve had thought he’d be awake and bored, all day. But with all his injuries, he’s exhausted enough that he ends up sleeping most of the day with them.

…

A month drifts past. And then another.

Steve’s mom does finally start trying to track him down, a couple days after his dad’s arrest. It’s not so bad. Steve’s pretty sure he was starting to wear out his welcome at the Byers’, anyway. Ms. Byers hasn’t said anything, other than that she’s happy to have him, that it’s the least she can do after he reunited her with Jonathan. And she seems overjoyed for Jonathan – and, by extension, Nancy – that they’ve figured out whatever – this – is, with Steve. But Steve’s less than useless around the house, as beat up as he is. All he really does is sleep and eat. And he’s seen the inside of the Byers’ fridge. There’s not a whole lot in there except the two clearly-frequently-reused milk jugs full of suspicious dark liquid, pushed to the very back.

So when Hopper comes around to let Steve know his mom’s looking for him, Steve’s only got one question. “If I go home, is my dad gonna be there?”

Hopper gives his head a little shake, like he’s frustrated about something. But he’s not looking at Steve, and Steve gets the feeling that, for once, it’s not Steve he’s frustrated with. “He made bail before he even left the hospital, like I expected. Marianne says he stopped back for some stuff, but she doesn’t know where he is now. Probably holed up somewhere with some hotshot lawyer, trying to cook up an insanity defense. He was real adamant about the ghost of Nancy Wheeler turning up and forcing him to confess.”

There’s a soft step from the hallway behind Steve, and Hopper’s eyes flick to something past Steve’s shoulder. Steve doesn’t have to turn and look to know Nancy’s probably standing in the entryway to the living room, watching their conversation.

There’s a glitter of amusement in Hopper’s eye, but he manages to keep an impressively straight face as he looks Steve dead-on and asks, “You see any ghosts that night, kid?”

Steve puts on his best wide-eyed innocent look, the one Hopper’s seen on him a million times before, the one he knows Hopper can see right through by now. “No, sir.”

…

Steve’s not sure whether he wants his dad to make a successful insanity plea. It’d mean he wouldn’t have to face his dad in court, which is pretty far down the list of things Steve wants to do. And at least his dad isn’t trying to deny what he did, anymore. Now he’s just trying to dodge the consequences.

There’s something kind of poetic, though, to think that the only way out for him now is straight into the same kind of life his actions sentenced Fred to. Maybe it’s that ‘natural justice’ he’d been beaking about.

And at least maybe it’d be easier to visit him at Pennhurst than in the pen. Not that Steve’s sure he even wants to visit.

It’s weird, being home after – after. One of the windows overlooking the patio has a sheet of plywood filling its empty frame, and there’s a crime scene seal on the door of his dad’s office, but otherwise – things really aren’t all that different. Steve’s dad was barely ever home, anyway. And Steve’s never been allowed in the office when his dad’s not around. About the biggest impact he notices is when the tropical fish in the tank behind the basement bar start to die. Neither he or his mom have any idea about when or how to feed them.

Steve gets the stitches taken out of his wrist. The swelling in his cheek slowly starts to go down. He’s going to have a couple of scars, it looks like. He knew his wrist was gonna be mangled, but it looks like now he’s gonna have a nice, big, nasty matching slash right across his face for everybody to see.

“You can tell everybody you got it in a knife fight,” Jonathan says, after pressing a kiss to the knotty purple mess just under Steve’s eye, a kiss that’s so gentle and reverent Steve almost breaks down crying right then and there. “I hear chicks dig that kind of stuff.”

Nancy swats him on the arm, before jabbing a pointed finger at Steve. “No. Do not say it. I know you’re dying to. Don’t.” She sounds like she’s trying not to giggle.

“Aw, come on, Nance. You don’t dig my badass knife fight scar?”

Nancy finally surrenders to the giggles. But she also leans forward and up, bracing her hands against Steve’s chest, to brush her lips against Steve’s scarring cheek.

“I will admit,” she says, sternly, fighting hard not to crack, “it does look sort of…roguishly handsome on you. But. This does not mean I think you should get into any more knife fights.”

“Well,” Steve sighs, before dropping his crutches to grab Nancy around the waist, ignoring her surprised yelp, “there go my plans for winter break.”

He keeps hoping. But his left arm doesn’t seem to get much better.

…

If it’s weird how little’s changed for Steve at home, school more than makes up for it. It’s not just the fact that he’s done with basketball – no way he’ll be healed up enough to finish out the season, even if by some miracle his left arm isn’t completely, permanently trashed – or how hopelessly behind all the days he’s missed because of various injuries has left him. There’s also the way his dad’s breakdown and arrest seems to be all anybody can talk about.

Maybe Steve-before-Jonathan-and-Nancy would have eaten it up. Would’ve just basked in the attention and curiosity, and translated the sympathy into, as Tommy so delicately puts it, oceans of pussy. But somehow Steve doesn’t think so. Not after this.

Not to mention that there’s no way Steve-before-Jonathan-and-Nancy ever would’ve ended up in this situation in the first place.

That’s only made glaringly obvious by Tommy and Carol. They’re there at Steve’s house as soon as they find out he’s back from witness protection, and at first, Steve’s grateful. Even if they do get annoyed when Steve – pretty reasonably, he thinks – refuses to break the crime scene seal on the office door and let them see inside.

He has to be a little careful about what he tells them. But it doesn’t take much prompting for everything to come pouring out, even if it is thinly veiled under a cover story: researching an incident in local history to try to bring his grade up, realising something didn’t add up about the official story, the growing dread and disbelief as he realised where all the evidence was pointing. Having to sit across the dinner table from his dad, enduring the guy’s lame jokes, and wonder if he’d tried to kill three people and covered it up. How terrifying it had been to confront him. How sickening the shock of betrayal had been when Steve had understood he was right. And that his dad would gladly sacrifice his own son to save his skin.

Steve’s face is all wet, by the time he finishes, his vision blurred, his hands shaking in the fists he’s clenched them into on his thighs. There’s snot everywhere.

For once, thankfully, neither Carol or Tommy even mentions it. Tommy just gets up to go get Steve some tissues, and Carol puts an arm around Steve’s shoulders, squeezing him against her side for a long moment before she lets go. It pulls painfully at the stitches in his left shoulder, but Steve doesn’t complain. He wouldn’t trade what he’s got now with Nancy and Jonathan for anything, but also – he hadn’t realised how much he’s been missing the warmth of human touch.

Tommy comes back with the tissues, and Steve cleans up his face. And then, citing her future at beauty school, Carol insists on giving Steve’s hair a wash in the sink. He’s grateful for that. Between all the bandages and stitches and the fact that he still can’t raise his left arm above his shoulder, and even that much hurts, all he’s managed so far is quick scrubs with a washcloth.

Carol even styles Steve’s hair how he likes it, when she’s done. And there’s no way she could’ve known how looking in the mirror and seeing the hair that earned him his nickname perched on top of the haunted, battered face of a boy Steve barely recognises would make him suddenly and unexpectedly feel like throwing up.

So he does have to give Carol credit for trying.

Just like he has to give her credit for waiting a whole day after he gets back to school before spilling the juicy inside scoop on Steve and his dad into the ear of every voyeur and vulture in Hawkins High.

Tommy’s just as bad. He’s nowhere near as much of a gossip as Carol is, and never has been. But he more than makes up for it about two weeks after Steve gets back to school, when he tries to invite Steve to help him and some of the guys from basketball pull some violent nasty prank on some poor freshman.

It’s nobody Steve knows. Not even anybody he’s ever heard of. Just, according to Tommy, some four-eyed fairy who took Nicole out to the movies last weekend in this classic car he’d restored. For this cardinal sin, one of Tommy’s buddies tracked down the auto wrecker’s where the kid’s been keeping the car while he works on it, so tonight –

Steve has to stop Tommy there. Ask why the hell they’ve got it out for this nobody.

Tommy just looks at him like he’s lost his mind.

“Nicole, man,” he says, like the leap of logic should be obvious.

When Steve shrugs, Tommy gives his head a disbelieving shake. “Maybe you can just let some dickless little runt move in on a girl your best friend had his eye on while your best friend’s lying helpless in a hospital bed, and not do anything about it.”

“I don’t care about Nicole,” Steve sighs. “She can date whoever she wants. She asked me out, I don’t even know why I said yes -”

“Who cares whose idea it was? She had a date, Stevie. With you. We can’t just let any little weasel go around taking what’s not his. Somebody’s gotta put the prick back in his place.”

He really means it, too, Steve realises, watching Tommy’s eyes as the venom spills out of his mouth. Tommy genuinely believes the world is better when everybody plays their assigned roles, and anybody who tries to step out of theirs gets beaten back in.

For a second, all Steve can feel is pity.

Somehow, it makes it all worse, hearing the sincerity in Tommy’s voice as he says, almost pleads, “Steve. Come on. I miss you. Just – just come along with us. Maybe it’ll help you feel a little more like your old self.”

Steve has to give Tommy credit. He’s trying to help, the best way he knows how. The only way he knows how.

It’s just…

“Sorry,” Steve says. “But I don’t miss the old me.” He’s talking more to himself than to Tommy when he adds, “That guy was kind of an asshole anyway.”

When he meets Tommy’s eyes again, Tommy’s scowling.

“So it’s like that, huh?” he says, quiet and kind of dangerous. This is a side of Tommy Steve’s only been on the receiving end of once or twice. And even after surviving an honest-to-god murder attempt, there’s something about the way he steps forward into Steve’s space that still makes Steve’s fight-or-flight reflex tense up like it’s just waiting for the starter pistol.

Tommy must notice, because he backs off, a little. But he doesn’t back down. “Well, of course if we’d known, we never would’ve dreamed of laying a finger on your new boyfriend. Will you be having a summer wedding?”

There was a time when that would’ve broken the tension. When Steve would’ve laughed, maybe pitched his voice up and put on a lisp, flopped his hand over at the wrist and played right along.

But for whatever reason, this time, he looks Tommy in the eye and just –

He just can’t.

“Sure,” Steve says, instead. “Whatever, man.”

And walks away.

…

Carol corners him in the east wing boys’ bathroom about a week and a half later, righteous fury burning under her veneer of disaffected sarcasm. “Okay, whatever stupid thing you’re mad at Tommy about, it’s way past time you got over it.”

“Whatever stupid thing I’m -” Steve echoes, but can’t finish the sentence. “Did he seriously send you instead of just talking to me?”

“Nobody sends me anywhere,” Carol says, with a pop of her gum, like the self-evident truth that it is. “And you’ve been avoiding us. You wanna talk to Tommy, go and talk to Tommy. Nobody’s stopping you.”

She says talk like it means apologise. Maybe that’s what pisses Steve off.

“I’ll talk to Tommy when he’s ready to talk to me,” Steve says, shouldering past Carol into the hallway. “And when he’s ready to admit that maybe beating up on everybody weaker than him doesn’t make him look so strong.”

“Seriously? That’s what you’re mad about?” Steve’s walking fast, but Carol’s having no apparent trouble keeping up. “You know he doesn’t give a shit about that guy or Nicole, right? That was for you!”

Steve’s sneakers squeak to a halt in the middle of the hall, spinning him around to face Carol as she nearly collides with him. “Yeah, well, I never asked him to do that, did I?”

Carol’s giving him the same look Tommy did, the look that says she doesn’t understand how or why this is going so wrong. Something crumbles into a sick kind of sorrow in the pit of Steve’s chest at the sight of it. Something he doesn’t think he can repair.

But Carol bounces back quick, the way she almost always does. “What is your damage?” she demands, jabbing one manicured nail into Steve’s chest. “Tommy’s your friend. He’s just trying to help -”

The words are out before Steve can stop them. “Yeah, like spilling the details to the whole damn school was just trying to help?”

In the split second before Carol rearranges her face into furious, wounded innocence, Steve can see pure shock in her eyes. But what did she think? That he didn’t know who runs the rumour mill at this school? That he wouldn’t guess who’d shared the details he’d only shared with her and Tommy?

Or that Steve’s just too much of a pathetic loser now to ever even hear about it?

“Keep your help to yourselves,” Steve snaps, before Carol can start in on him again. “And leave me alone. You two assholes deserve each other.”

He leaves Carol standing, looking lost and hurt and very small, alone in the middle of the hallway.

…

It hardly takes any time at all, after that, before a vicious rumour goes around the school that the real reason Steve’s dad tried to kill him was because he caught Steve on his knees for another boy, which. Yeah, that’s got both Tommy’s and Carol’s fingerprints all over it.

It aches, thinking about the two of them putting their heads together and coming up with something brilliant and cruel to skewer him with, the way they do. The way all three of them used to do, together. But it aches the same way Steve’s leg does, under the cast.

Like something that’s healing.

…

It doesn’t matter, anyway. Steve doesn’t need Carol and Tommy. And he’s as surprised as anyone to discover he’s not just saying that. He really means it. Sure, school is miserable and hellish, but what else is new. And outside of school, it’s not like Steve’s just moping around his house alone, struggling to fill the empty hours.

After everything that’s happened, his mom seems to be taking an interest again. Steve knows from experience, by now, that it won’t last, that she’ll eventually drift back to her friends and her clubs and her sleeping pills. But at least that means he’s prepared, that he knows to appreciate her full attention while he’s got it.

And – something feels different, this time. Even if it’s just the fact that his mom seems to be shedding ritzy friends and connections like rats fleeing a sinking ship. She almost seems like she actually cares about the answers to the questions she asks Steve. It’s a strange combination of nice and smothering. He’ll almost be relieved when she gets bored of him again.

Maybe this is just the honeymoon phase with Nancy and Jonathan, too, and it’ll burn itself out like Steve’s relationships tend to do once the sex starts getting to be routine. But that hasn’t happened yet. And, like with his mom’s attention, Steve’s going to appreciate the honeymoon while it lasts.

Besides. Almost nothing about dating Jonathan and Nancy has followed the pattern Steve’s come to expect from dating, so far. And it’s not just the whole gay-for-Jonathan-Byers thing, or even that Steve’s dating two people at once. (He tried that, once before, with Laurie and Becky. It did not end well. With the benefit of hindsight, knowing what he knows now, maybe he should’ve just asked them both if they’d be cool with it. Although he thinks the answer probably still would’ve been no.)

The honeymoon phase has always been Steve’s favourite part of any relationship. Sure, the flirting and bantering and showing off when he’s trying to get a girl’s attention are fun. And so is the part where they finally stop dancing around each other in the socially-mandated steps, and start just taking his car out to park in shadowy corners by the quarry or the lake, or sneaking in each other’s bedroom windows after dark.

But there’s something really special about that time in between. The hallowed rituals of dating. Sharing a milkshake with two straws or a sundae with two spoons. Wrapping an arm around her shoulders while watching a scary movie. Catching her eye in the bleachers before throwing the winning basket. Swaying together to an insipid cover band in the high school gym, trying to sneak his hand down gradually lower and lower on her waist so nosy, prudish Ms. Draper won’t notice. Practically tearing each other’s stiff formalwear off in the back of the bimmer afterwards. Writhing against each other with a solo cup in hand in the living room of whoever’s parents aren’t home, while the stereo speakers try to shatter their eardrums.

That’s the part where just holding her hand or brushing her ankle with his foot under the table, if Steve times it right, is still somehow electric. The part where she still wants to know everything about him, and him about her. The part where everything is still new and exciting and delightfully surprising, and the cracks haven’t yet started to show.

But. Like he said. Nothing about dating Jonathan and Nancy has followed the pattern Steve’s used to. Steve’s got dating down almost to a science, by now. But he’s broken every rule he has for them. Normally, he wouldn’t even go in for a kiss until the second date. Wouldn’t even bring sex up until the third. Normally he would have, y’know, actually taken whoever it was out on a date, instead of just moving into her house for almost a week. Normally he wouldn’t even let himself get caught within meeting distance of her family until they’d been out together at least five times and she’d put out at least once.

Normally, Steve wouldn’t have given either the girl or himself the chance to get too attached too fast.

But it’s way beyond too late for that, with Nancy, with Jonathan. Steve’s already attached. Latched right on the first night he met them and so fucking clingy it’s embarrassing.

Except – except that neither of them seem all that embarrassed.

Nothing about dating Jonathan and Nancy has followed the pattern Steve’s used to. Nothing with them is what he expects. And Steve’s realising – he likes that. He hadn’t realised how monotonous, how routine, how – how boring dating had been starting to get. There’s no playbook for this thing he and Jonathan and Nancy have now. Or, if there is one, Steve doesn’t know it. They’re all just fumbling through figuring this out for themselves, and it’s unpredictable and scary and – and Steve is loving every minute of it.

The complete lack of a playbook does mean sometimes they have to get creative, though. Especially when it comes to what to do for dates.

Nancy and Jonathan don’t eat. They can’t stay out in the sun. And they don’t want to be recognised, which, in Hawkins, with Steve’s dad’s confession hitting the town like a bombshell and dredging up memories of their deaths, is now more likely than ever. Every foolproof date idea Steve’s ever used – dinner, dancing, carnivals, picnics, hell, even a walk in the park – are off the table.

Steve would suggest taking all three of them out to Huntington, or even down to Indianapolis, to go out to the movies. Somewhere where there’s a crowd to blend into, and nobody will look twice at a group of three friends, or a third-wheel tagging along on a couple’s date. Somewhere where it’s almost guaranteed nobody will recognise Nancy or Jonathan. Somewhere where nobody ever has to see them again.

But Steve still doesn’t have a car, and the bus drivers’ strike is still going on, so they end up renting a lot of movies and watching them either in his basement or the Byers’ living room instead. Nancy, it turns out, likes gritty courtroom dramas. Jonathan likes low-budget horror, the gorier the better. Steve likes anything upbeat with a good soundtrack. Jonathan is consistently horrified by Steve’s idea of ‘a good soundtrack’.

Steve can’t exactly throw a party in their honour, even if he had still been in with the high school party crowd. But he does make them all ridiculously fancy, ridiculously strong drinks from the basement bar one night, even though Nancy insists she and Jonathan can’t even get drunk.

“Come on,” Steve coaxes, slapping a tall and very alcoholic glass of something that somehow turned out a faint, almost pretty blue in front of Jonathan, who looks at it like Steve just plopped a live bomb down on the bar’s dark-stained wood. Steve’s not sure where the blue is from. Maybe the gin. “Help me drink my way through my dad’s top-shelf liquor. It’s the least he owes me.”

Nancy raises her glass, which turned out a much more unfortunate watery yellow, like she’s saluting and conceding in one motion. And then she downs half the glass without so much as blinking. There’s a little soda in there, but it was mostly straight liquor. That is way more impressive than Steve’s kegstand record.

Jonathan doesn’t move, glaring at the glass.

Nancy’s eyes flick over in his direction, and she carefully sets hers back on the bar. Steve almost reminds her to use one of the wickerwork coasters, so her glass doesn’t leave a ring, but then he remembers who taught him about condensation rings and who had this bar put in in the first place and the giant, empty fishtank behind him, and figures he doesn’t really give a shit if Nancy leaves rings on the bar.

“See?” Nancy says, slipping down from her barstool and solemnly, flawlessly walking, heel directly in front of toe, in a straight line over to the leather couch and back. “No effect. You might as well just pour it all down the drain.”

She keeps looking over at Jonathan as she says it. Steve thinks she almost looks anxious. And Jonathan’s shoulders are starting to hunch forward, turtling in on himself. He still hasn’t even moved to touch the glass Steve put in front of him.

Steve leans over and takes the glass back without asking. Jonathan doesn’t relax immediately. Steve tries not to look like he’s watching for it. “Well, then there’s no point to this, huh? You wanna pick out a record or something instead?”

Jonathan flicks a wary gaze up to Steve’s face. Steve thinks about the few things he knows about Jonathan’s life before he, well, died, about the few things Jonathan’s said about his parents, and tries to keep his smile open and innocent.

At last, Jonathan gives a little puff of something that might be a laugh or an exasperated sigh. But his shoulders start to untense. “Depends. Do you have any records worth listening to?”

Steve claps a hand to his chest in mock offense. “Byers, you wound me.”

Jonathan doesn’t seem to mind him and Nancy drinking, not in quite the same way. Which is how Steve ends up finishing both of the drinks he made. They do not taste good. He doesn’t have a future in bartending.

And it’s also how they find out that, while the booze doesn’t seem to have any direct effect on her, Nancy can definitely get buzzed off of Steve’s blood if it has a high enough alcohol content.

Jonathan ends up having to put them both to bed. And then stay in bed with them. Apparently, Nancy’s just as much of a sentimental – and horny – drunk as Steve is.

…

Steve’s still feeling kind of guilty about his misstep with the mixed drinks when he cuts out of class the next day to stop by the RadioShack downtown. It’s not entirely that, though. He’s had this idea in the back of his mind for a while, since the start of December. Since the conversation he’d had with Nancy and Jonathan about whether they show up on film.

The guy who helps Steve find what he’s looking for really knows his stuff, even if he can’t seem to resist a cheesy pun. Even lets Steve know they gift-wrap, for a small extra fee.

Jonathan looks at the box like it might be full of venomous snakes, when Steve hands it over. “I thought we weren’t doing Christmas presents.”

“It’s not -” Steve gestures at the box. “Just open it, man.”

It’s not a nice camera, with fancy interchangeable lenses and a removable flash and all the bells and whistles. Just a little Polaroid instant and some film. Nothing special.

Jonathan still looks at it like he’s just been handed the Holy Grail. And a little like maybe it’s about to melt him like in Indiana Jones.

“I know, it’s not, like, a serious camera,” Steve babbles, unable to make his mouth shut up. “But you said you hadn’t really touched one since the two of you turned, and I didn’t really know if you’d want to, so I thought this’d be a good way to kind of dip your toes back in and if you hated it then even I could use it and if you don’t hate it then maybe we could look at getting you a better one -”

Jonathan cuts him off without taking his eyes off the camera. “Steve. It’s perfect.”

It still takes some coaxing to get him to take it out of the box, though. And even more to get him to actually use it. But in the end, it turns out he and Nancy do show up on film.

Even if they do look very, very creepy when their eyes catch the flash.

Nancy drags Steve into the kitchen to push him up against the fridge and kiss him ferociously, for that one.

“You have no idea how long I’ve been trying to get him to pick a camera back up,” she breathes, in between sloppy, half-frantic, open-mouthed kisses. “After he took that picture of Barbara and the monster, and everything that happened -”

“You know,” Steve’s compelled to add, in between chasing down Nancy’s mouth with his own, “None of it – was either – of your fault, right? It’s all on the lab – and my asshole dad.”

Nancy gives his shoulder a squeeze, before running both her hands up his neck to tangle her fingers in his hair, guiding his head down so she can kiss him totally breathless.

She only pulls back when Steve actually has to gasp for air. “If I’d known all it’d take was just to give Jonathan a stupid camera -”

“Hey,” Steve protests, even as he snakes a hand up under her blouse. “And an irresistible subject.”

“Oh, right. I forgot that you posing like Marilyn Monroe was the secret ingredient -”

They’re interrupted by a flash and a whirr. Steve forces himself to break away from Nancy to look over and see Jonathan, smirking and waving the black square of a Polaroid photo between two fingers. Steve can already see the shadows of his own shape and Nancy’s, pressed so close they’re almost flowing together, starting to emerge from out of the dark. “What was that about an irresistible subject?”

…

That’s the night Steve finally gets Jonathan’s teeth in his throat. Well, okay, it’s a shallow cut across his neck that only actually bleeds for like five minutes. And even though the whole business ends up being not much more than a particularly impressive hickey, Jonathan still apologises like he tore Steve’s head half off, but. Baby steps.

…

Every time Steve goes by the Byers’, after that, there are more Polaroids on the fridge or pinned to the corkboard by the phone. Will pulling faces at the camera; Joyce, distracted, smiling at something with her eyes half-closed; Nancy, deep in concentration leaning over a book. There are even one or two of Steve, mugging shamelessly or pouting in his best impression of a magazine model.

His favourite, though, is one he doesn’t even remember Jonathan taking. He and Nancy are caught laughing at something, maybe even something Jonathan said, with her head on Steve’s shoulder and his eyes squeezed shut so tight that tears are starting at their corners.

The still-livid scar under his right eye is almost swallowed up in his smile.

…

They have. Like. A lot of sex.

And it never gets to be routine.

…

It’s not like Steve’s life just entirely revolves around Nancy and Jonathan now, though. Ms. Byers has made it clear that Steve’s welcome at her house anytime. And even Will’s pipsqueak friends seem to have finally deemed Steve acceptable.

One night, they’ve already overtaken the Byers’ living room during what was going to be movie night, so he and Nancy and Jonathan all end up getting dragged into acting as non-player characters. Whatever that means.

The game it’s for seems to be part board game, part improv theatre, and it is…more fun than Steve had expected, for something so dorky. He and Jonathan are just the village blacksmith and innkeeper, but Nancy gets to lend her voice to the ‘captive’ princess the four boys try to rescue. ‘Captive’ in quotes because, as it turns out, the princess is actually the lich-necromancer villain of the evening’s campaign in disguise. Dustin Henderson nearly loses his entire shit right there at the table when he figures it out. The wicked, sidelong smiles Nancy and Mike Wheeler swap over Will and Lucas Sinclair’s confusion and Dustin’s increasingly frantic babble of “No way, no fucking way -” and “Mike, you fucking didn’t -” are nearly identical.

Nancy gets really into the act. The way her voice drops into that inhuman growl when she sneers, “How clever, adventurers. Perhaps too clever for your own good,” is bone-chilling. Steve is so fucking into it that it almost becomes very embarrassing, especially in front of a pack of twelve-year-olds.

Nancy reprises the role just for him and Jonathan later, though, after all the twelve-year-olds who don’t live at the Byers’ have gone home. And honestly, it’s more than worth the embarrassment.

…

It’s just – good.

It’s just really, really good.

…

Other than Nancy and Jonathan and sometimes the rest of the Byers family, though, there’s not a lot going right in Steve’s life. Maybe it’s the accusations of murder hanging over his family like a thundercloud. Maybe it’s not. Maybe it’s something more. Maybe it’s just everything.

But Steve’s dad was right. The Harringtons are finished in Hawkins, and in most of the circles they’d moved in before. Steve’s hopelessly behind in school. He just…doesn’t go, most of the time. He never did get caught up from the time he missed in hospital and recovery. And at this point there’s no real point in trying, since his grades have tanked so hard he’ll be stuck repeating the year now no matter what he does. He hasn’t got the team or any real friends left, Tommy and Carol are making his life hell in some new and creative way every time he turns around, and he’s still in enough pain that he’d rather just sleep. At least if he catnaps all day, he can stay up later with Jonathan and Nancy.

And then his mom drops the bomb. She’s not going to wait around for Steve to flunk the eleventh grade. She’s withdrawing him from Hawkins High and dragging him back to her hometown to start over.

Steve’s never heard of the place before in his life. Some dinky little bedroom community out in California.

California. Land of surf, sand…and sun.

Neither Nancy or Jonathan seem to understand how big of a deal this is, when Steve breaks it to them, though.

“What part of this aren’t you getting?” Steve demands, when Nancy actually comes right out and asks what he’s so upset about. “Constant sun. Constant heat. She’s only dragging my ass to the least vampire-friendly place in the world except for maybe Death Valley. Or the Sahara.” He stops his nervous pacing to drop heavily onto Ms. Byers’ couch. The cast came off a few days ago, but Steve’s right leg is still pretty weak, and the pacing definitely didn’t help. “Even if everybody you guys care about wasn’t here in Hawkins, there’s no way you could follow me. So I guess you were right, it’s a damn good thing I’m not a thrall.”

“Steve,” Jonathan starts to say, sitting on the couch beside him, but Steve cuts him off.

“Thanks.” He presses his thumb against the ropy scar on the inside of his right wrist, the twin jagged crescents raised against his skin. “It was fun while it lasted.”

“Steve,” Nancy sighs in exasperation, dropping onto the couch on Steve’s other side with a fond roll of her eyes. “What, do you think the sun never sets in California?”

“We might have to wait until the nights get a little longer. And a little cooler,” Jonathan says, with a glance across Steve at Nancy like he’s checking with her. “Maybe not until after Thanksgiving?”

Nancy nods. “But that’s not going to keep us from visiting.”

“You’re not getting rid of us that easily,” Jonathan agrees, with a wry twist of a smile.

Steve’s not sure where the lump swelling in his throat came from.

“Besides,” Nancy adds, matter-of-fact, “you’re almost eighteen, right? Going into your senior year?”

“…actually,” Steve starts, but Nancy cuts him off before he has to speak the humiliating truth that he’s repeating a year.

“Or you will be, soon enough. High school ends, Steve. It’s not going to be like this forever.”

Steve reaches over, searching out Nancy’s hand and twining his fingers with hers. He’s aiming for a joke, but it comes out sounding uncomfortably close to sincere. “Promise?”

Nancy looks him in the eye with one of those sweet, knowing smiles, and gives his hand a firm but gentle squeeze. “Promise.”

Maybe it makes Steve look pathetic. Clingy. Desperate. But neither Nancy or Jonathan complains when he reaches out with his free hand for one of Jonathan’s. When he asks, “And you’ll be waiting for me?”

This time, it’s Jonathan who gives Steve’s hand a reassuring squeeze. Who shoots him a small, warm smile. Steve almost expects him to say something sarcastic, and he thinks Jonathan’s thinking about it for a moment, too.

But in the end, all he says is, “Of course.”

Nancy nods, meeting Jonathan’s eyes around Steve for a second before she leans into Steve’s shoulder. Steve can feel her reaching around behind him, scrabbling for Jonathan’s arm between Steve’s back and the back of the couch. Jonathan reaches back, the two of them sandwiching Steve between them. It’s a slightly awkward position, a tiny bit uncomfortable. Steve never wants to move again.

He can feel the words vibrating through Jonathan’s chest even as he hears them, muffled slightly against the shoulder of his sweatshirt.

“We’ve got nothing but time.”

…

Lenora, California

September 3, 1984

Steve’s already having a bad first day.

Everyone at this stupid school is staring like they’ve never seen anybody with a messed-up face before. Some mulleted blond psycho with what looked like pubic hair stuck to his upper lip slammed Steve into a locker for no reason. And this school is a fucking maze. Steve’s gotten lost already at least ten times.

So when, the last time he gets lost, a teacher grabs him and hauls him into what must be the art room and up to some girl with bad hair and an army surplus jacket who looks at Steve like he’s some gross, potentially venomous undiscovered species of slug, he is not in any kind of mood.

“Robin,” the teacher – Steve’s already forgotten his name – says, and the girl raises both eyebrows at him. “Do me a favour. Give Mr. Harrington here the grand tour. Get him acquainted with the layout of our hallowed halls, so he can stop bumbling into my classroom every five minutes.”

“Don’t call me that,” Steve mumbles, even though he doesn’t expect that this teacher will listen to him any more than anyone else here has. “Steve’s fine.”

“Harrington?”

Fuck. Too late. Steve shuts his eyes and bites off a swear word as the guy who’d spoken ambles up to sit perched on the front edge of the table that the girl – Robin – has her Chuck Taylors propped up against. There doesn’t seem to be any malice in the slowly-spreading grin of recognition that crosses his round face, or the bobblehead nod he gives Steve. But that doesn’t actually take the bite out of his words. “Yeah, you’re the guy whose dad’s a murderer, right? Sick facial scar, dude.”

The teacher gives Steve’s shoulder a slap – his good shoulder, thankfully. “I’ll leave you three to get to know each other.”

Steve would literally rather die, thanks.

“Great,” he says, in the general direction of the guy, who’s still giving Steve the dopiest grin Steve’s ever seen on anyone who isn’t one of the seven dwarves. “What, did they put it on the morning announcements, or…?”

The guy frowns at Steve, leaning forward with nothing but earnest concern in his face, like that was an actual question Steve actually wanted a serious answer to. “Nah, no way, bro. That’d be a gross violation of your privacy.”

It’s not often that Steve finds himself speechless.

He flicks his eyes up, shoots a look past the guy’s shoulder at Robin, a silent what-the-hell-is-this-guy’s-problem.

Robin doesn’t answer. And her flat, judgy look doesn’t so much as flicker. But she does lean back in her chair, pinch her thumb and forefinger together, and mime taking two puffs on a roach, which, yeah, okay. Explains a lot.

“So,” she says, kind of drawing the word out as she looks Steve up and down. Sooooo. “Is that what passes for cool in Indiana?”

Maybe it’s waspish. Maybe it’s too Steve-before-Jonathan-and-Nancy. But it’s been a long day, and Steve doesn’t even think before looking Robin over and snapping back, “I don’t know, is that what passes for cool in California?”

Robin’s eyes narrow. But Steve thinks it almost looks like she’s starting to smile.

And then she swings her feet down from the table and pushes herself up from her seat, grabbing a satchel covered in pins and badges from the floor beside her and slinging it over one shoulder. “You want the tour, Indiana? Then keep up.”

She doesn’t even look at Steve as she breezes past him, heading for the art room door.

Steve, still feeling a little like he’s just gone through the looking glass, turns back to the one person he knows will at least answer his questions. Even when he doesn’t actually want them answered. “What’s her deal?”

The guy just bobs his head in the direction Robin went, his curtain of hair swaying with the motion. If Steve had ever let his hair get that long, his dad would have actually killed him for real. “She will leave you behind, dude.”

Steve twists around, to see Robin stepping through the door. She hasn’t even looked back to see if he’s following. And, shit. He really does need a tour. “Robin?”

Robin pauses for just a second, in the doorway, glancing back over her shoulder with the first real smile Steve’s seen her wear. It’s small and sarcastic as hell. “Keep up!”

Then the door is hissing shut behind her as she vanishes into the hall.

Steve swears under his breath, and follows her.