Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

This is the way the world ends

    This is the way the world ends

    This is the way the world ends

    Not with a bang but a whimper.

-T.S. Eliot, “The Hollow Men”

 ― 

The good thing about Vecna is that he’s become predictable.  He isn’t driven by the animalistic desire of the Demogorgon, rushing out at the first smell of blood; he doesn’t seem concerned enough with them to spy like the Mindflayer; and he already has his four kills, his gates.  He can make ash rain down and columns of fire shoot out of cracks in the earth; surely in the face of ushering in the apocalypse, he’s done picking off teenagers.  

The bad thing, of course, is almost everything else.  Mainly that they’re all fucked if he changes his mind.

Jonathan had realized that as Robin Buckley―who’s apparently in on it now, brought into the fold by Steve―filled him in on the situation.  She was going roughly 100 miles per hour, but what it came down to was trauma.  Vecna could prey on trauma and twist it and rub your nose in it, then levitate you and kill you in the most horrible way imaginable. 

There had been a compulsion to huddle around the obvious ones at first: Will and El, Lucas who was spending every day at Max’s bedside in the hospital.  But then they remembered that Dustin had watched Eddie Munson choke on his own blood, and all of Nancy’s oldest friends were dead.  Even Argyle had been pursued cross-country by the United States government in the Surfer Boy Pizza van and buried a dead body.

So no one did anything alone anymore, after that.  They sleep in shifts and carry backpacks full of walkmans and cassettes.  Someone always has to be sitting at the hospital with Lucas; a lot of the time, Jonathan keeps close to the bathroom as Will showers, like maybe levitation is something you can hear.  

Of course, they know the warning signs: Nightmares, headaches, nosebleeds.  But it got harder and harder to keep straight once they realized they’d had over a dozen concussions between them and plenty to have nightmares about.  

That’s how they end up missing it with Steve until he’s frozen on the couch with his eyes rolled back into his head. 

 ― 

It's been three eerily quiet months since the explosion rocked Hawkins.  

Jonathan finds it sort of amazing the way people have scrambled to make it seem normal, calling it aftershocks.  The highschool still held a graduation ceremony in the gym, since the football field was split right down the middle.  (Jonathan got his diploma from Lenora Highschool in the mail, and tried not to think about what government strings had been pulled for him to pass all of his classes from three thousand miles away.)  People go to work and church and shop for groceries.  A few of them start wearing masks or bandanas around their mouth and nose once it becomes clear that the particles aren’t going away, but it’s regarded as pretty hysterical by the general public.

Hawkins had emptied out drastically in the days just after; but some of those people came back after a few weeks with their out of state relatives, ready to get back to normal.  

Soon, there’ll be an uptick in animal attacks―maybe they’ll blame a bear like back in 1983―or the people who stayed will start getting skin lesions and cancer from the particles.  Vecna doesn’t seem to be in a hurry, now that he’s brought the Upside Down out.  

As they huddled in Hoppers’ dilapidated cabin last month for what the younger kids were calling the war room, it was Robin who’d said what they were all thinking: “If he’s immortal, taking a few months to lull us into a false sense of security doesn’t seem totally out of the question.  I mean, he’s going to rule the earth forever and ever amen, and all that, but maybe first he has to lick his wounds?  So he wants us to pretend everything’s hunky dory so that when he makes his real, final move we’re not prepared.”  

Two nights later, they kill the first demodog in the Harringtons’ backyard.      

The Harrington house and Hopper’s cabin have become their two gathering places.  Hopper’s cabin makes sense because of the seclusion, necessitated by Eleven being on the run from the government and Hopper meant to be dead; Steve’s house because it’s huge and mostly parent-free.  

The day it happens, Jonathan, Dustin, Robin, and Steve are all gathered in the Harringtons’ living room, waiting for Nancy to show for what’s become their biweekly shooting lesson.  Jonathan has handled a gun before, had even been there the first time Nancy shot one; but she surpassed him a long time ago.  His hands still shake when he goes to pull the trigger.  The anticipation of kickback makes him flinch.  

So Nancy is teaching all of them to shoot and reload and clean a gun “without blowing your fingers off,” Jonathan included.  

Robin and Dustin are scolding Steve for smoking in the house, to which he shrugs dismissively and says, “I’ll either get cancer from these or from whatever the hell’s going on out there.  And it’s my house.”

Then, just as he goes to take a puff, the cigarette drops out of his hand, rolls to the floor, and starts burning a little hole in the rug.

“ Steve, ” Robin scolds.  

When Steve doesn’t respond, even Jonathan―who’s been keeping his head buried in a magazine, trying to ignore how awkward it feels to have arrived before Nancy and even his brother―looks up.  

Steve is just as he had been seconds before, tucked into the corner of the couch with his right hand curled like it should still be holding a cigarette.  But his eyes are wrong, rolled into the back of his head or covered with a film.  

Jonathan hasn’t seen anyone “get vecna’d,” as the others put it; but he knows from Robin’s frantic screams as she shakes Steve by the shoulders, followed shortly by Dustin diving for the backpack full of cassettes that’s never far out of reach.  He watches, frozen, as Dustin plucks out the tape labeled STEVE and shoves it into the walkman, pressing play before the headphones are even over Steve’s ears.  

“Age of Consent” by New Order blares out, loud enough for Jonathan to hear across the room.  He had been there when Steve chose it a few months ago during another war room: “‘Age of Consent’ is good, I guess.” 

“It can’t be I guess , dingus!  It has to be enough to save you from a brutal interdimensional death!” Robin snapped.  

Steve had rolled his eyes.  “What’s Vecna gonna want with me anyways, Rob?  I’ll do ‘Age of Consent.’” 

Jonathan had known, that night, that it might be the wrong choice.  But he didn’t say anything because it had been years and he could be wrong and maybe some selfish, petty part of him didn’t want to give Steve the satisfaction of Jonathan still knowing.

Something lifts Steve off of the couch.

“It’s not working!” Robin screams.  

And Jonathan knows why it isn’t working.  He remembers.  Whatever high school bullshit Steve has put him through doesn’t particularly matter in the face of watching him be destroyed and turned inside out.  So Jonathan, calmer than he feels, says, “It’s Hank Williams.  Do you have Hank Williams?” 

“What? No,” Robin says miserably.  “He’s never mentioned that.  Shit, shit, shit!  Steve! ”

Steve’s legs have fully unfolded, hanging limp and straight.  Soon, his head is going to touch the ceiling.  Dustin takes a desperate swipe at his ankles.

“Does he still keep his tapes in his nightstand?” Jonathan asks.  Dustin and Robin just stare at him, both of them crying.  

They don’t know.  Nobody else knows.

Jonathan is on his feet, already heading for the stairs.  It occurs to him that they may think he’s just running away, not wanting to see what’s about to happen, so he throws back over his shoulder, “Just hang on.” 

Steve’s room hasn’t changed much, if at all.  Jonathan yanks out the top drawer of the nightstand and finds Hank William’s Moanin’ the Blues with its sun-faded cover art at the top of the pile like it’s been listened to recently, thank God.  

There’s a fresh swell of screams from Dustin and Robin, a clattering sound.  He turns and sprints down the stairs.

 ― 

Jonathan has spent years deftly avoiding Steve in one way or another.  He’s gotten so good at it that most people, even Nancy, don’t really question it beyond thinking he’s jealous, still pissed about the camera or the fight behind the movie theater.  

But there was a time when Jonathan knew that Steve’s favorite song was by Hank Williams, he wore size 10 shoes, and the only thing he could cook worth a damn was scrambled eggs.  He knew how Steve kangaroo-kicked and stole the blankets in his sleep; how he did his hair; how he kissed.

 ―   

They met in the woods between their houses when Jonathan was six and Steve was seven.  

The woods were supposed to be off-limits, especially the parts deep enough in that he could make out the backs of the big, looming houses in Loch Nora.  But his parents were distracted, screaming so loudly that even going out to play in the backyard wasn’t enough to drown them out. 

So he grabbed Will with one hand and Chester’s collar with the other, and they were off.

“Chester is gonna protect us,” he assured Will, who looked doubtful.  

Going into the woods felt rebellious―borderline illegal.  He knew his parents, especially his mom, were going to freak out if they weren’t home before dark.  

Jonathan never really did anything to worry his parents; but he had been angry at them already because his dad had left for the last two days and it was the best two days of his life, and Jonathan didn’t understand why he had to come back.  While he was gone, they got to order pizza and watch movies and drag a mattress into the living room floor, where they all slept together in what his mom called “the nest.”  

“He’s your dad,” his mom had whispered that morning, when they walked into the living room to see his parents sitting together on the couch.  Jonathan hadn’t asked out loud, but she must have noticed his sour expression.  “You boys need your dad around.” 

Even as young as he was, Jonathan didn’t know if this was true.  How could he need someone to scream at him and hit his mom?  His dad couldn’t even keep a job, which Jonathan had started to gather was a very important thing to do.  It was part of the reason why eating pizza had felt so exotic and exciting and rare; usually, there wasn’t enough money for that.  

A few times his dad had even hit him, for miscellaneous offenses like having a funny look on his face or dropping a glass.  That was why he’d gotten kicked out for two days; but now he was sorry , so Jonathan was supposed to hug him and act like he didn’t even remember what he needed to be sorry for.

He hated it.  Secretly, he was starting to think he might just hate his dad, but the thought always made him feel so guilty that he wanted to puke.

The woods could get them far enough away that they wouldn’t hear screaming, and by the time they got back it would probably be over.  Maybe their dad would even be gone again―Jonathan hoped so.

Plus, it was sort of exciting to strike out and explore with his brother like they were Lewis and Clark and the woods were the New World.  Maybe there would even be something for them to discover, a hidden creek or a raccoon’s burrow.  

Eventually, Jonathan let go of Chester, explaining to Will that the dog was scouting ahead for them.  “I told you he’d protect us, right?”

He didn’t tell Will the other reason, which was that the rough material of Chester’s collar was starting to give Jonathan something like a rug burn on his palm.  Will might want to hold it, and Chester would get too excited and pull him down because he was still a puppy, and when they got home with Will all muddy and tear-streaked Jonathan would never hear the end of it.

Jonathan heard him before he saw him, a disembodied voice exclaiming, “Where’d you come from?” 

A few seconds later, Will and Jonathan emerged into a clearing to the sight of Chester rolled onto his back, immobilized, presenting his belly to this stranger for scratching.

So much for protection.

The stranger was someone Jonathan had seen before, at recess and in the hallway; but that wasn’t surprising since there was only one elementary school in Hawkins.  Jonathan thought he was in the grade above, and his name might be Steven.

Jonathan didn’t know if he was supposed to call Chester back.  Maybe he should say that’s my dog, sorry ; but what was he sorry about, exactly?  The kid who might be named Steven didn’t seem to mind petting him.

In the end, Jonathan just cleared his throat.  

The other kid looked up, puzzled.  He kept on petting Chester, but slower, like he was thinking, as he asked, “Who’re you?” 

Jonathan didn’t know what he should say to that.  He was rapidly realizing that they were farther into the woods than he’d thought, the whitewashed back of a big house just beyond the tree line soaring over their heads.  Were they trespassing?  

Probably-Steven stood up and Chester trotted after him, obedient as if this was his owner.  “Can you not talk?” 

Kids had asked Jonathan that before, usually in a mean, sneering way: He never talks.  Maybe someone cut his tongue off.  

But this one seemed genuinely curious, with his head cocked to the side as if observing an exotic animal.  He had longer hair than Jonathan was used to seeing on most boys, and a tan like he spent a lot of time outside.  When he moved closer, Jonathan caught a whiff of a sharp, chemical smell; Jonathan thought he could see a pool in the yard behind them, which would at least explain that.

Jonathan made a split-second decision: For some reason, this kid looked nice.  He probably wouldn’t think that Will and Jonathan were trespassing.  

So Jonathan said, “I’m Jonathan.  I live back there.”  He hooked a thumb over his shoulder, back toward his house.  “This is my little brother Will, and that’s our dog Chester.” 

At the sound of his name, Chester wagged his tail and finally trotted over to stand beside Will.  

“I’m Steve,” the other boy said, confirming Jonathan’s suspicions.  

Steve extended his hand.  When Jonathan just stared at him mutely, he huffed, blowing his too-long bangs out of his eyes.  “Handshake,” he said slowly.  For effect, he moved his arm up and down.  

Jonathan shook his hand; for whatever reason, this made Steve smile.  His shoulders relaxed.  

He pointed at Will, but addressed his next question to Jonathan: “Can he talk yet?” 

“Sort of,” Jonathan said.  Will was only two and a half, and talked when he wanted to talk.  Even then, it was a lot of strings of gibberish mixed in with recognizable words like “brother” and “dog.”  

Steve seemed to consider this for a moment before stooping down to Will’s eye-level.  “Hi.”

Will’s response was to duck behind Jonathan’s leg.  If I hide from him, he can’t see me.  

Jonathan had seen Will do that a lot more often than he wanted to.

“He’s shy,” Jonathan explained.  Steve didn’t seem bothered, springing easily back to his feet.

“Are you guys doing anything cool?” Steve asked.  Jonathan got the feeling he was getting antsy by the way he bounced in place and fiddled with his belt loops.  Trying to find a way out of the encounter, probably.   

Jonathan shrugged.  He considered lying, trying to be cool.  But he didn’t even know what this Steve would think of as cool, so he said, “Just exploring.”  

Steve’s eyes lit up.  “Did you see the old rusty car?” 

 ― 

They hiked to the rusty car with Steve in the lead.  At one point, Will started whining and Jonathan had to heft him up onto his back.  Steve stopped to wait for them without being asked, with that studying look on his face again.

The car was cool enough, Jonathan guessed.  If you poked it just right with a stick, you could make the really rusty parts explode in a cloud of dust.  

Steve mostly stood back and watched, occasionally interjecting with words of wisdom: “Don’t be too rough on it.  We wanna be able to do this again next time.”   

Next time?  Jonathan was pretty sure he was just being nice, at that point.  What use did a kid with a pool and a giant house have for trekking through the woods to this old car?  Especially with Jonathan, who still couldn’t really figure out what he was supposed to talk about or if he should even be talking.  

Even at six, Jonathan knew that it wasn’t normal to be friendless.  His mom always tried to be nice about it, especially once Will was born, saying how “brothers are built in friends.”  To be fair, Jonathan had taken that pretty seriously―he didn’t like to let Will out of his sight, if he could help it.  

But his dad would sometimes say something about how he just needed to be normal, talk more, find a hobby.  Hobby to his dad really meant sports or hunting; but Jonathan’s mom was afraid of sports because he might get a concussion and he wasn’t allowed to go hunting yet.  He didn’t know if he’d really want to.  The one thing he did like was taking pictures with his mom’s old Polaroid camera, mostly of Will and Chester, but no one else seemed to think that was a bonafide hobby.

From what Jonathan had seen of him at school, Steve seemed like a kid with a lot of friends.  He was always talking and laughing, always getting in trouble with his teacher.  Having a pool was another bonus.  Everyone wants to be your best friend when you’ve got a pool.  

His friends must have all been busy that day, Jonathan reasoned, which was why he was willing to go on this detour with the weird quiet kid and his baby brother.  

Steve guided them all the way home.  When Jonathan was turning to go, Steve grabbed his arm.

“Ever seen the creek?” he asked.

Jonathan shook his head.  

“We’ll go tomorrow,” Steve said, and he seemed so confident and sure that all Jonathan could do was shake his head in response.  

 ― 

For the rest of the summer, Steve would pop out of the woods almost every day with something that Jonathan just had to see: Creeks and swimming holes, fallen trees and circles of mushrooms.  One afternoon was devoted to following around a deer, watching transfixed as it stopped to eat and drink.  They got a little lost that day and Jonathan got home later than he was supposed to; but his dad was actually working, for once, and his mom didn’t seem capable of being mad at him where Steve was involved.

At first, rainy days meant Steve probably wouldn’t come over.  Then one day, there he was, knocking on the kitchen door with a raincoat and boots on.  When Jonathan asked why he did that―since it had always been drilled into his head that storms were dangerous and you should stay inside to keep from being struck by lightning―Steve just shrugged.  “I got bored.”  

Jonathan was nervous about having Steve in his house.  A big part of it was his dad, who was still working but only at night, so he slept all day.  When it was just him and Will, Jonathan could make being quiet into a game where they were trying not to wake up a sleeping ogre or break a magical spell; but Steve didn’t seem like he’d go for that, and Jonathan wasn’t sure if there was anything quiet they could do.  

“My dad’s asleep, so we have to be really quiet,” Jonathan whispered.  

He couldn’t bring himself to outright say go home , because he didn’t want Steve to go home.

“Okay,” Steve whispered back, quieter than Jonathan thought he was capable of.

They ended up shutting themselves and Will in Jonathan’s bedroom, where he gave Steve a silent tour.  He pointed towards his bookshelf, which at that point was just comics; his desk, which he mostly used for sitting and pretending he was working in an office somewhere; and his slowly-expanding box of polaroids.  

“Cool pictures,” Steve said.  He held up one in particular: Will and Chester walking into the woods with their backs to the camera.  

Jonathan had always liked that one too, thinking they looked like they were about to set off on a great adventure; but Steve calling it cool made it feel embarrassing, so he looked down to hide his face as he said, “Thanks.”  

Later, as they sat in the floor rolling around Hotwheels and thumbing through comics, Jonathan said, “I didn’t think you’d want to stay, since we have to be quiet.”  

Steve shrugged.  He did that a lot.  “I’m good at being quiet.  My mom sleeps all the time too.” 

“Does she work at night?” Jonathan asked.  Steve hadn’t really said much about his parents and Jonathan hadn’t asked.  He only knew that Steve didn’t have any brothers, which he thought sounded horrible.

Steve frowned.  “No.  But she likes sleeping.”  

 ― 

Eventually, Jonathan learned that Steve’s mom liked sleeping and his dad was gone a lot.  Between that and Jonathan’s own parents, they spent most of their time in the woods.  Once school started back Jonathan expected Steve to go back to whoever his school friends were since Jonathan was in the year below his; but Steve would wave at him in the hallway, even when it got him in trouble, and on the days Steve’s mom didn’t pick him up they’d bike home together.  

Jonathan didn’t want to be, but for the first few months that they were friends, he was always waiting for it to be over.  When school didn’t end it, he thought that winter would because it’d be too cold to play outside; but Steve seemed happy to spend the winter inside playing with action figures or looking at the pictures Jonathan had taken lately.  They started having sleepovers because Jonathan’s mom was working better hours and Steve asked for their phone number so he could call on the days he couldn’t come over.   

By the time the next summer rolled around, Jonathan felt more confident; by the time he was seven and Steve was eight, he had figured out that Steve had been friendless in his own way.  Unlike Jonathan, people wanted to talk to him and be around him, swim in his pool, but Steve didn’t seem to notice.  Tommy Hagan especially was always buzzing around in their periphery, sometimes riding his bike home alongside them until he had to split off towards his own neighborhood.  

When Jonathan asked if they were friends, Steve made a face and said, “Tommy gets on my nerves.” 

Jonathan just barely stopped himself from asking don’t I get on your nerves?  

He guessed he didn’t, at least not yet, since Steve was always around.  

 ― 

The next major obstacle to their friendship, in Jonathan’s eyes, was middle school―the obstacle being that Steve would get there a whole year before him.  

He had spent most of the winter getting taller and making Jonathan practice basketball with him because he was going to try out for the team.  To make matters worse, it had recently dawned on Jonathan that Steve was the kind of guy that girls thought was cute.  He’d probably have a girlfriend by the end of the school year; could already have one, if he wanted to, but he said all the girls in his class were boring.    

“My mom says sports give you concussions,” Jonathan warned.  They were playing HORSE in Steve’s driveway for the hundredth time since he got a basketball hoop that Christmas.  As usual, Steve was completely annihilating him.  

“You only get concussed if you suck,” Steve panted.  He was doing the showoff thing he sometimes did where he dribbled the ball around for a while before shooting from farther away than he needed to.  “I got S , by the way.”  

Jonathan rolled his eyes.  “Maybe you’ll suck.  You’ve only played against me.”  For emphasis, Jonathan took a shot he already knew he’d miss.  He didn’t even have H yet.  “Concussions make you lose your memory.  Turns your brain into scrambled eggs.” 

“I like scrambled eggs,” Steve said, shrugging.  He made another shot, got E.  “And you’ll help me with my memory.” 

“If we’re still friends,” Jonathan blurted.  He’d wanted to talk about this all year but couldn’t find the time, between HORSE with Steve and chasing after an increasingly-stubborn Will and being tested for gifted classes.  “You might get sort of…popular next year.”

Steve squinted at him like he was a raving lunatic, another thing Jonathan had gotten used to in the last three years.  He dropped the basketball and, before Jonathan could protest, put his hands on his shoulders.  “I’m not playing basketball to get popular; and if I got popular, it would just mean you’ll be popular too.  Who else would I hang out with?”

“Tommy Hagan,” Jonathan suggested sheepishly.  He knew how Steve felt about Tommy, had made it a sort of running joke to refer to Tommy as Steve’s best friend or ask if they were hanging out that weekend; but it was also a litmus test meaning your actual best friend is me , right? 

Steve stuck his tongue out and gagged a bit like the very thought disgusted him.  “I think you’re the one with a scrambled egg brain, Jonathan.” 

 ― 

Jonathan wasn’t exactly in the business of showing up at Steve’s house unannounced.  It was big and foreboding and a bit too clean, sterile like a hospital.  But the morning after his tenth birthday, he showed up as early in the morning as he dared.  He didn’t want to knock and wake Steve’s parents, so he tossed pebbles at the window and hoped that Steve was as light a sleeper at home as he seemed to be at Jonathan’s, where he’d thrash and kick through the night in his pallet on the floor.  

On the third pebble, Steve appeared at the window.  Jonathan gestured towards himself and then pointed down, hoping Steve could interpret― come down here.  A few minutes later, the backdoor swung open and Steve was there, wearing his pajamas with his feet shoved into untied tennis shoes.

“Jonathan?” he whispered.  

The whole walk over, Jonathan had been trying to stop crying.  He didn’t want to.  It was just a stupid rabbit; his dad had even said that it died quick.  

But then Steve was standing in front of him, saying, “Jonathan?” again, and he knew that Steve could already tell that he’d been crying, so he let himself lose it.  After a minute, Steve reached out, pulling him into a tentative hug.  

Eventually, Steve pulled back―still holding him by the shoulders―and asked, “Are you okay? Will? Chester?”  Jonathan nodded yes to all three, although it must have been pretty clear that he was less than okay.

“My dad made me shoot a rabbit,” he forced out.  Steve gaped at him.  “He took me hunting for my birthday.  I didn’t wanna go, but he keeps saying I need a hobby besides taking pictures…he said we couldn’t leave until I shot it.”  

He didn’t tell Steve that his dad had already shot the rabbit once, in the leg―not to kill but to slow it down―because Jonathan was taking too long.  He didn’t tell Steve that the rabbit managed to drag itself into a nearby creek, that it had been drowning when Jonathan shot it.  He didn’t tell Steve that the rabbit looked sort of like Thumper from that morbid Bambi movie Will used to be obsessed with.  

He just cried and kept crying as Steve stood there, holding him by the shoulders with his jaw set.  There was a brief moment of panic where Jonathan thought that Steve was disgusted with him for being a rabbit-killer; or worse, disgusted with him for being such a fucking nancy boy about it, as his dad had put it.  

But then Steve said, “I hate him” and pulled Jonathan back in, tighter this time.  

Eventually, they wandered into the woods.  They walked until they were close to Jonathan’s house, but Steve steered them west at the last minute instead, towards the old car and the big dead tree they sometimes used for a balance beam.  

Once they were settled on the dead tree, Steve looked at him.  Jonathan had never seen him like that―that angry.  Even when Steve was mad at his own parents, he mostly just looked dejected or deflated for a few minutes before perking up and suggesting something for the two of them to do.  

“I hate him,” Steve said again.  

“Me too,” Jonathan mumbled.  He had accepted that sometime last year, the first time his dad hit him hard enough that it knocked him over; but it still felt scary to say out loud, like it might summon him.  

There was a pause where they sat in silence, swinging their legs and idly toeing at the leaves and pine needles.  Then Steve turned to him and grabbed his arm, making Jonathan turn too.  He looked almost calm as he said, “If I could, I’d kill him.”  

The way he said it―the same way he sometimes said, if I could drive, we’d go to the movies ―made Jonathan’s breath catch.  It was something Jonathan had never even considered.  Sometimes he wanted to hit his dad back, really deck him; a few times he had eyed the skillet when his parents were going at it and thought about how easy it’d be to knock him out.  But kill him?  Jonathan could barely kill a rabbit.

“You’d go to jail,” Jonathan squeaked.  He wanted to say something else, but he didn’t know what.  Steve’s face had started to fall like he was afraid Jonathan was about to scold him, which was the last thing he wanted to do.  “My dad’s not worth that.” 

“You’re worth that,” Steve said.  He was still holding Jonathan’s arm.  “But jail would suck.” 

Jonathan thought about it for the rest of the week, every time he started to cry and feel sick over the rabbit.  Steve saying I’d kill him.  You’re worth that.  

Steve’s hand on his arm.  

Jonathan wished he hadn’t had such a lame response.  He didn’t realize until much later that what he’d wanted to say was thank you.  

 ― 

Jonathan made it into gifted classes.  Steve made the basketball team.  

A small part of Jonathan still waited for him to stop coming around.  Steve came loping out of the woods every day regardless with sweaty hair and bruises from getting knocked around by his teammates.  

Jonathan would wrinkle his nose at the sight of him, say something like, “Aren’t you supposed to shower after practice?” 

“Don’t you have a shower?” Steve would reply.  

So he’d shower and then they’d sit in the living room if Jonathan’s dad was gone and in his room if he wasn’t.  Every few minutes, Steve would shake his hair out like a wet dog and send droplets flying everywhere.  Jonathan got a picture of it, once, Steve at peak hair shake.  Steve insisted that he tack it up on his corkboard; but it felt sort of embarrassing, so Jonathan made sure it was obscured by other stuff like an old progress report and their ticket stubs from King Kong.  

Jonathan looked at it a lot, though, on nights when Steve’s practice ran too late or his parents “trapped” him―as Steve put it―for dinner.  

 ― 

Middle school didn’t change much, since Jonathan was in the advanced track and they had different lunch periods.  He joined the yearbook club, mostly so he could use a halfway decent camera for once, and there was the added bonus of needing to attend basketball games to photograph.  It was hard not to turn over a folder full of pictures of Steve after every game, since he was constantly running at him and thumbs-upping and generally paying more attention to Jonathan than the game.   

In spite of officially getting a hobby like his dad suggested, Jonathan didn’t really make any new friends.  Nancy Wheeler was in yearbook with him, and he knew her in a fringe sort of way because Will had gotten to be friends with her younger brother, Mike.  They got assigned to a lot of grunt work together, being sixth graders―like staying after school for all the basketball games―but she always left him in charge of what she called The Steve Pile.  

As she’d put it, “You take a hundred pictures of him at every game, you get to look through it for the three that are actually salvageable.”  

It wasn’t the worst job in the world.  

October brought homecoming, which Jonathan and Nancy got off the hook for because you guys would fuck it up.  People took homecoming a lot more seriously than Jonathan originally anticipated.  

Everyone except Steve, of course, who didn’t seem to take anything seriously.  

“I’m on the court, whatever the hell that means,” he said dismissively.  “I hope they know I’m not wearing a crown. ”  

“Only the king has to wear a crown,” Jonathan pointed out.  Steve was too young to be king, being in seventh grade; but everyone knew he would be next year unless he was horribly disfigured before then.  Even if he was, he might win on the sympathy vote.

“Good,” Steve huffed.  

He still didn’t have a girlfriend like Jonathan thought he would, but Steve was what people called hot .  He’d spent the past summer developing a hair routine, getting Jonathan’s opinion on how long he should let it get and the benefits of Farrah Fawcett versus AquaNet hairspray.  He managed to get even taller without looking lanky or sick, which was the way Jonathan’s growth spurt was leaning.    

Of course, none of these girls who thought he was so hot had seen Steve drenched in sweat after basketball practice or watched him sleep with his mouth wide open, snoring.  Maybe that would change their minds; Jonathan was still waiting for it to change his.

That was the major unexpected complication of that year, though the issue itself probably predated middle school: While all of his classmates were making googly eyes at each other, pairing off for a few weeks at a time only to dramatically break up, Jonathan just kept hanging out with Steve.  

He had never been much of a daydreamer, but sometimes it was required to pass the long hours of sorting pictures for the yearbook.  He found himself vacillating between getting accepted into NYU and becoming a photographer for Rolling Stone , and what he and Steve were going to do that weekend.  Both felt equally important.  

Whenever a girl transparently swooned at Steve, Jonathan would be compelled to ask about it later.  

When Steve, without fail, said “ew,” Jonathan always thought good .  

 ― 

When Steve called him after homecoming to say he’d tried beer for the first time and kissed Holly Thurman, Jonathan pretended to lose signal and hung up the phone.

When Steve and Holly were propped up by Steve’s locker that Monday, Jonathan thought he might actually pass out.  His vision tunneled and everything.  

During yearbook, Nancy kept waving her hand in front of his face e arth to Jonathan style until she finally hissed, “Are you sick or something?  This spread is really important.”  Then, gently like she was talking to a wounded animal or a small child, she added, “If you’re sick, it’s okay.  You should go home early.” 

He went home early.  

He ignored three calls from Steve.  

Will wandered into his room at one point and settled on the foot of the bed without talking; after a while, he patted Jonathan’s calf and shot him a tight smile.  Jonathan nodded in return and Will, apparently satisfied with this answer, scampered off.

He and Steve had never really fought before, mostly because Steve wouldn’t allow it.  

Jonathan had tried, on days when his dad was being particularly terroristic or his mom especially neurotic.  Sometimes he just felt snappy.  He’d rib Steve about small things first, like his newfound obsession with his hair; then he’d escalate, say something about how he didn’t understand why Steve didn’t just start hanging out with the other meatheads already.  It didn’t really feel like punching down.  More like throwing his hands out at random, and if he made contact with something he’d enjoy it.    

Afterwards, he’d spend a few days feeling like he was probably a psychopath.  Feeling just like his dad.

It wasn’t something that Jonathan was proud of; it just was .  

During one of their aimless walks in the woods, he’d asked Steve: “Do you think I’m like him?  That I could be?”

Steve had scoffed, of course.  “Jesus, no.  You’re not even the same species as that neanderthal.” 

Jonathan had called him that first, after he and Steve got more comfortable shit-talking their dads―it was hard not to be comfortable once Steve said he’d like to kill him.  He’s a bully because he’s really just a big fucking neanderthal.

Steve had loved it; wouldn’t call him anything else after that.  

Is the neanderthal home?  The neanderthal answered the phone, so I just hung up without saying anything.  One day that neanderthal is gonna drink himself to death, don’t worry.

But maybe there was a time when Jonathan’s dad had thought the same thing about his own father.  Sometimes when he got really wasted, he’d cry about how mean his dad was, how his mom would just stand back and watch.  Jonathan always had to bite back the urge to say and now it’s your turn, yeah?  Family tradition.

Instead of saying any of that, Jonathan would turn around and be mean to someone he loved, someone who loved him.

Family tradition.

Except Steve never took the bait.  He wouldn’t scream or throw plates or storm off.  During that same walk, Jonathan had actually asked him why.

“Because you don’t mean it, Jonathan,” Steve said, shrugging like it was the most obvious thing in the world.  “I don’t think you could ever really be mean to me.”   

This time was no exception: Jonathan knew that Steve wouldn’t let him sulk for long.

The rational part of him had been expecting this for a while; if anything, it surprised him that it took so long.  Steve had already brushed off more girls than anyone had expected him to.  

Holly Thurman was cute; she was always nice, not just to Steve but to the both of them, making sure to smile at Jonathan whenever she stopped by their table at lunch; and she was athletic like Steve, the youngest girl on the varsity softball team.  

It was perfect.  Jonathan could almost find it within himself to be happy for them.

Almost.

Around midnight, when a pebble hit his window with a sharp plink, Jonathan wasn’t exactly surprised to see Steve standing there with his nose pressed to the screen.  The first thing Steve said once the window opened was, “Have you seen Romeo and Juliet?  Griggs was sick today so we got to watch it in his class.  There’s a scene exactly like this.” 

“Who’s who in this scenario?” Jonathan asked.  He didn’t want to fight, didn’t want to say then shouldn’t you be at Holly Thurman’s?  

Steve scoffed.  “I’m Romeo, obviously.”  

It shouldn’t have hurt when he didn’t follow up with which makes you Juliet.

Since he wasn’t.  He was just Jonathan Byers, Steve’s best friend; practically his brother, Steve would say.  Jonathan pretended that it didn’t feel like he’d slapped him.

Jonathan stepped back from the window, let him in.  Steve didn’t usually wait for an invitation; but he must have known, underneath all his Romeo bravado, that Jonathan was pissed at him.  Even if he couldn’t understand it, not completely.

Steve flopped onto Jonathan’s bed with a sigh.  He was always doing shit like that, making Jonathan choose between sitting in the tiny space that was left and feeling like some kind of pervert the whole time, or sitting somewhere else entirely, which would earn him a wounded look from Steve.

That night, Jonathan chose the desk chair.  He didn’t want to worry about keeping their thighs from touching while he lied to Steve about what his problem was.

“You hung up on me,” Steve started.  

“I lost signal.” 

“You didn’t sit with me at lunch.  Tommy Hagan took your seat.”  Up to that point, Steve had been lying on his back, addressing the ceiling.  He sat up, looking at Jonathan straight on, before he continued.  “It sucked.” 

Jonathan almost lied again; but really, he’d spent his lunch in the library, not wanting to watch Steve and Holly Thurman make eyes at one another.  He had never had to see Steve doing it back before.  He was afraid someone would take one look at him and know, read his mind. 

Because he couldn’t help it, he asked, “Why didn’t you sit with Holly?” 

“Why would I?” Steve shot back.

Jonathan could feel the urge to snap at him, to try to fight, rising in his throat like bile.  

“You know why.” 

Steve blew his hair out of his eyes.  It was getting pretty fucking long, especially once he’d washed it or sweated all the product out at basketball practice.  

Jonathan loved it.  Lately, he’d found himself wanting to touch it, which in turn made him feel that he was seriously disturbed.  

“It isn’t like that.”  Steve lowered himself to the mattress again.  Talked to the ceiling. His voice was smaller, almost whispering, as he said, “I didn’t like it.” 

Suddenly, Jonathan was glad that Steve wasn’t looking at him anymore so he couldn’t see how wide his eyes had gotten.  “Why not?” 

“I would’ve rather been here.  With you.”  

That was another infuriating habit of Steve’s.  He could be almost flirtatious.  He would toss out something like that without even thinking and give Jonathan enough hope that he could chew on it for weeks.

 ― 

Sixth grade wound on.  Steve didn’t kiss any more girls or drink any more beer, and they spent the night of the Snow Ball in Jonathan’s bedroom messing around with his Polaroid camera.    

Jonathan chewed on hope.

Basketball season ended and gave Steve even more excuses to be around.  He must have really liked playing Romeo; he started coming to the window instead of the door almost every time he visited, even in broad daylight.  

Jonathan got his own tape deck set up for Christmas and fell in love with The Clash and Joy Division and David Bowie.  They spent a lot of time at the old record store by Melvald’s combing through the reduced price cassettes; depending on his mood, the owner might slide them a free magazine or a bottle of pop.

Steve was insistent that he had the best song to show him, but he kept forgetting to bring the tape over.  Finally, in late February, he popped up at the window with it in hand.  

Jonathan inspected the cover. He tried to keep his voice neutral.  

“Hank Williams?” 

Maybe he wrinkled his nose a bit.  Pursed his lips.

Steve pouted.  “Just trust me, alright?  It’s like nothing you’ve ever heard.”
If it was like nothing Jonathan had ever heard, that was probably intentional.  He’d gotten pretty into music in the last few months.

“This is the kind of shit my dad listens to when he’s drunk,” Jonathan said.  

Immediately, Steve looked apologetic, reaching to snatch the tape back.  “We don’t have to, then-”
Jonathan rolled his eyes.  He didn’t say it because he wanted the Poor Jonathan treatment, which he sort of hated.  Even when he showed up to Steve’s with his first black eye or crying over shooting a rabbit, he mostly wanted to pretend things were normal and no one else existed.

“That’s not what I mean.  Just.  It’s sort of…redneck, for you.” 

Steve shrugged at that.  “We live in Indiana.  We kind of are rednecks.” 

Jonathan relented.  If it was Steve’s favorite thing on the planet, he could listen at least once.  

“We’ll have to use headphones, though.  Neanderthal’s home.”  

He didn’t know how that would work, unless they sat ear-to-ear and stretched the headphones over both of them.  

“You can use ‘em.  I’ve got it memorized.” 

Jonathan knew that shouldn’t have been disappointing.  He popped the tape in.  

Steve really did seem to have it memorized.  He sat on Jonathan’s bed and watched him intently, his mouth moving the whole time like he was chanting the lyrics to himself.  On the sixth or seventh track, he sat up ramrod straight and said excitedly, “You’re on it.  You’re on ‘Lovesick Blues.’  This one’s my favorite.” 

For “Lovesick Blues,” Steve went from just chanting to himself to a sort of mime performance.  Whenever Hank Williams yodeled in Jonathan’s ear, Steve threw his head back like he was howling right along with him.  

Once it ended, Jonathan didn’t find himself converted to the cause of country music; but Steve was beaming at him, so he said, “Yodeling’s supposed to be pretty fucking hard.  He had pipes.” 

“God, he did.  He was so cool.”  Steve crossed the room in a few short strides.  Before Jonathan could process it, Steve was propped against his desk, standing right over him with his leg wedged between Jonathan’s knees.  

He wanted to jerk away.  But that would be more obvious, wouldn’t it?  

“My dad likes this shit too.  Or he used to, when he wasn’t a complete robot.”  Steve sounded almost sheepish.  “My parents, they used to like, dance around to it.  He’d spin my mom and dip her in the middle of the kitchen.  Sometimes I could get him to dip me too.” 

When they first became friends, it had come as a shock to Jonathan that you could simultaneously have a pool and a brand new bike and your own bathroom, and parents that didn’t love each other.  It seemed impossible that Steve, of all people, had a dad who shut himself away in his study or kept out of town on business; a mom with a perpetual migraine and her own, separate bedroom with blackout curtains.

So it shouldn’t have shocked him that, like Jonathan’s parents, they had probably loved each other once.  A long time ago.

Just then, Jonathan wasn’t particularly in the mood to talk about all of that.  He didn’t know if he could take Steve going all sappy and earnest while they were sitting this close.  

“Dip you?” he asked.  

For a second, Steve’s face fell; but then he grinned.  

“It’ll be easier if I just show you.  Stand up.” 

Jonathan didn’t account for that possibility.  

He stood, backing up a few steps to keep from pinning Steve against the desk.  Steve slid into position, grabbing Jonathan’s back with one hand and his free hand with the other, and started to sway them in place.

Jonathan was frozen to the spot, like his feet had sunk roots into the carpet; it was the only thing keeping him from yanking away.  

After a few seconds of stillness, Steve cleared his throat.  “It’s something you do when you’re already dancing.  So you’ve gotta dance a little, Jonathan.” 

“I don’t know how.” 

Steve rolled his eyes.  “Everyone knows how to slow dance, man.  Copy me.”  

It’s not like Steve was some dancing expert; but he had gone to homecoming and danced with Holly at least once, for long enough to kiss her.  Obediently, Jonathan mimicked the way Steve swayed from side-to-side.  

Without warning, Steve’s hand moved to his waist and Jonathan knew that he was going to die.  

Was dying.

Had died and was experiencing that last great release of DMT from the brain that he’d learned about in science class.  

Steve said, “I’m gonna dip you now.  Don’t fall” and bent him towards the floor.  

 ― 

Jonathan chewed on that night for the rest of the school year.  Steve had pulled him up and kept them swaying for a few more seconds before the roots holding Jonathan’s feet in place disappeared and he pulled back, stumbling onto the bed.  

He was afraid it would make things weird, but Steve never mentioned it.  He probably would’ve pulled away a few seconds later, anyways.  

Nothing really changed, except Jonathan had one more thing to replay in his brain every night and was a lot more familiar with Hank Williams.  Steve played it all the time now, especially in his house―it had become their preferred location, with his parents there less and less.  He didn’t even seem to mind when Will had to tag along, would just set him up with cartoons and a pile of toys so they could go listen to tapes or flip through Rolling Stone.  

“It’s because my dad can’t stop screwing around,” Steve blurted one day.  They were sitting by the pool, dangling their feet in.  Jonathan didn’t think it was a good idea for them to swim without an adult around, and Steve called him a killjoy and a narc but didn’t push it.

Steve continued, “I don’t even think my mom cares like that.  She’s just afraid we’re gonna get shaken down for my secret half-siblings’ child support.” 

“Half-siblings?” Jonathan asked, incredulous.  

He used to feel sorry for Steve, thinking how terrible it must be not to have a brother; but by then, he couldn’t picture Steve as anything other than he was when they’d met, a solitary creature.  Lonely, until Jonathan came along―a thought that would either make him swell with pride or turn his stomach, depending on the day.  

“I mean, not confirmed.  But it wouldn’t be surprising since he’s been screwing his way across the midwest.”  Steve kicked the surface of the water, sending droplets back on them.  He turned to Jonathan, smirking.  “At least I get the house to myself.” 

Jonathan had the decency to avert his eyes and pretend that he couldn’t tell that Steve was close to crying.  

In a lot of ways, it was nice.  They could blast music as loud as they wanted without worrying that someone had a migraine or a night shift.  Steve’s parents left him cash and an emergency credit card, so sometimes they’d order an ungodly amount of pizza or rent six movies at a time.  Once, Steve had proposed that they steal a few of his dad’s beers, but Jonathan shot it down.

“I don’t even wanna smell it,” he’d said.  

For once he was relieved when that look of understanding― Poor Jonathan ―dawned on Steve’s face.

“No beer,” Steve agreed.  “Who needs it, anyway?” 

Jonathan could tell that Steve was lonely, filling the space where parents―even parents like his―should be by spending money they left him and blasting music they wouldn’t want to hear.  With Jonathan, who they’d met only a handful of times in their years of friendship and always eyed suspiciously, like if they didn’t watch him he was going to start stealing silverware.  Steve wanted Jonathan to stay over on school nights; when Jonathan’s mom shot that down, Steve would follow him home and sleep on the bedroom floor.

He couldn’t fool himself into thinking he minded having Steve around all the time; if anything, it still didn’t feel like enough.  But it was a pain in the ass sneaking him back out again in the morning so that he could go home and do his hair before school.

On one such night when Steve wasn’t supposed to be there and Jonathan had let him in through the window anyways, Steve said, “I’m thinking about trying out for wrestling.” 

“Those guys are even worse than basketball players,” Jonathan said without looking up from The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn .  He’d gotten woefully behind on his reading for Honors English because he’d been spending even more time fucking around at Steve’s than usual.

Steve smacked his arm.  “Shut up.  I’ve gotta keep my muscles in good condition until next basketball season.”  From the corner of his eye, Jonathan saw Steve flex.  “I could totally take most of them already.” 

Jonathan rolled his eyes and dog-eared his book.  There was no point in trying to do homework with Steve like this, clearly vying for something.  “Totally,” he echoed.

 Now it was Steve who looked away.  

“Remember how you helped me practice for basketball and now I’m, like, the best there is?” 

Jonathan prayed that this wasn’t going where it seemed to be going; a few seconds later, he prayed that it was.  A positive feedback loop spun in his brain.

“You’re definitely stronger than me,” he said.  “It’d be too easy.” 

“I’m sure you could put up a good fight.”  Steve knocked their knees together, still not looking at him.  “Just let me see if I can pin you.” 

In the grand scheme of things, what was one more memory to torture himself with?  

Once they got going, Jonathan surprised himself by how much he actually wanted to fight back; he got the upper hand a few times, pinning Steve by the wrists or getting him into a headlock.  But Steve was older, taller, and he did have some muscle built up from basketball.  Eventually, he got Jonathan down and he was too exhausted to get back up.

Jonathan waited for Steve to declare victory and roll off him.  Waited and kept waiting, until finally he whispered, “That was stupid.” 

“Was it?” Steve asked.  He seemed embarrassed, going stiff and straightening his spine; but he didn’t move.

It was stupid for a lot of reasons, none of which Jonathan could really say.

“We could’ve woken my dad up.” 

Steve relaxed again.  “Jesus, Jonathan.  I’m not scared of your dad.”

He didn’t necessarily want Steve to get off of him; but it didn’t feel fair to keep him there when he didn’t know what Jonathan was really thinking, how fucked up he was.  If there was any topic that could kill the mood, it was his dad.

Jonathan said, “I am.” 

 ― 

A few weeks later the wrestling team posted their roster outside the gym and Steve’s name wasn’t there, not even as an alternate.  Jonathan offered him a conciliatory, “Sorry you didn’t make it.” 

Steve blinked at him like he’d sprouted a second head.  “Make what?” 

“The wrestling team.”  

Steve blinked again.  Shrugged.  “Oh.  Right.  It’s lame anyways.  I don’t wanna spend the last few weeks of school walloping Nathan Crisp and Tommy Hagan.”  

So instead, they spent the last few weeks of school stomping around the woods and perusing the New Arrivals aisle at the record store.  

Sometimes they’d wander into the used book store down the block, where Jonathan found a well-loved copy of The Hobbit for Will―whose friends were pestering him to read it so that he could understand their references―and The Catcher in the Rye for himself.  Mr. Griggs had recommended it to him, saying it was usually for older kids but seemed like something Jonathan would enjoy.  At the time, he’d shaken his head mutely and pretended that that wasn’t the nicest thing an adult had ever said to him.  He was determined to read it during summer break so that he could go back and talk to Mr. Griggs about it.

It was at the used book store that they found the Dungeons and Dragons boxed set under a pile of other old board games.  Steve had been the one to pick it up, find Jonathan, and present it to him.  “This sounds like something Will and his buddies would be into.” 

Jonathan inspected the box.  It was smeared with what looked like dirt and greasy fingerprints; but it boasted that it was a fantastical medieval wargame playable with paper and pencil and miniature figures , which did sound right up Will’s alley.  He leafed through the contents and was surprised to find that everything it advertised was still in there, neatly tucked into place.

“It looks really cool.”  He checked the price tag: Five dollars.  He had already blown through the Christmas money his grandmother had sent him too quickly, and he would need to pool the rest of it with his upcoming birthday money to replace his old sneakers.  “Too expensive, though.” 

The next day, Steve told him he had to stay after school to retake a history test.  It wasn’t exactly out of the ordinary; but Jonathan should have suspected him when he couldn’t stop smiling as he said history test.

Steve turned up at the window that evening with the boxed set.  

After they gave the game to Will and pored over the rule book, they decided to gather at Mike Wheeler’s house since they lived on the outskirts of town while Mike and Will’s other friend, Lucas Sinclair, were neighbors.  A lot of the time, it was Nancy who opened the door and pointed them to the basement.  Sometimes she’d hang around to talk to Jonathan about yearbook club.  

She didn’t really look at or speak to Steve, who Jonathan gathered she didn’t think very highly of.

The first few weeks were mostly hammering things out: Character sheets, who would be the dungeon master, whether they should play music in the background.  Jonathan and Steve took Will to the record shop one Saturday and let him pick out some Celtic stuff.  

It made sense for Jonathan to be the dungeon master since the kids were so young and Steve was eager to lead them into battle.  Will chose to play as a wizard pretty quickly; Lucas was a ranger; and Steve and Mike spent a solid ten minutes bickering over who would be a paladin before Jonathan snapped that both of them could be, a compromise that neither seemed thrilled with.

They ended the school year with a fight against the Balrog and spent the summer battling a tyrannical wizard-king.  Will and his friends surpassed Steve and Jonathan pretty quickly, showing up to their weekly games with new books and miniature figures to heighten their immersion.

Almost every morning that summer, Will biked off with Mike or Lucas or both, leaving Jonathan to poke around the woods with Steve.

“Do you think there’s anything we haven’t seen out here?” he asked.  It was the beginning of July and they were at the creek again, hoping to fish but finding it dry from lack of rain.  

Steve shrugged.  He was crouching on the bank, making squiggles in the mud with a stick.  “Probably not.  But there’s something we could do.  That I’ve wanted to do for a while.” 

Jonathan’s traitorous brain flickered through a rolodex of possibilities: Let’s go throw rocks at the back of Big Buy; let’s bike to the movies; let’s kiss.

“What is it?”

“I wanna be blood brothers.”  Steve looked up at him, made a slicing motion across his palm.  “Like ancient warriors or something.” 

Brother.  It still felt just as much like a slap as always; but Jonathan knew where he’d gotten the idea from.  Part of the backstory he’d invented as dungeon master was that Mike and Steve’s characters were an inseparable team bound by a blood oath.  At the time, it was mostly a means of pacifying them and stopping the ongoing argument over who was the more important paladin.  

“We’d have to cut ourselves on something,” Jonathan said, incapable of turning Steve down outright.

“I’ve got my pocket knife,” Steve said.  He rose to his feet.  

“We could get an infection.”  

Steve rolled his eyes.  “That’s just your mom talking.  We’ll go back to my house and wash our hands after; but we should do it somewhere important.” 

Jonathan followed Steve through the woods in silence, not sure which location he’d deemed important enough for a blood ritual until the dead tree came into view.  Steve pulled himself onto the trunk and offered Jonathan a hand he didn’t take, choosing instead to scrabble up on his own.

“Brothers,” Jonathan said stupidly.  Steve was already holding the pocket knife, his leg bouncing impatiently.  “You sure you want that?  My dad’s kind of an asshole.” 

“So’s mine,” Steve snorted.  He knocked their knees together.  Chipped away at Jonathan’s resolve.  Quieter, he said, “I don’t wanna be your brother the way Will is.”

“Then how?”

Their knees were still touching and Steve’s sneakers were muddy and his white socks stood out almost neon against his farmer’s-tanned legs, and Jonathan knew he was going to let him cut into his palm and mix their blood and whatever else he wanted no matter the response.  

But he hoped, too.  Hoped that there was another way of being brothers.

“Ancient warriors, like I said.  Fight and die together, yada yada.  Like me and that brat Mike Wheeler in DND.”  

That didn’t make Jonathan feel any better.

“What are we fighting?” Jonathan whispered.

“Everybody else,” Steve said, like it was obvious.  

Jonathan cleared his throat and shook his head.  Accepted his fate.  

“Okay.” 

Steve cut his own palm first, holding it out to Jonathan as if to say see? Not so scary, is it?  Jonathan took the knife and mimicked him.  It was sort of fascinating how fast the blood bubbled up.

“Ready?” Steve asked.  As soon as Jonathan nodded, Steve grabbed his hand and brought their cuts together.  

Jonathan didn’t feel any different.  The more childish parts of him had expected to: A magic thread unfurling from their hands and wrapping around them, maybe, or sparks.  He’d thought maybe it would burn the other feelings right out of him.

When he tore his eyes away from their joined hands, Steve was staring at him intently.  

Before Jonathan could pry their hands apart or voice his disappointment about not feeling anything, Steve was leaning towards him.  

Jonathan had never kissed anyone before.  He didn’t really put himself in those types of situations; so it took him a minute to realize that that was what Steve was leaning in to do.  

Not to shake hands.  Not to say, that was sick, man.  Not to hug him.

To kiss him. 

Steve’s lips were so close that Jonathan could feel his breathing before he finally got it.  The actual kiss came as such a shock that he stayed frozen through the entire thing, barely feeling it and expecting Steve to pull back any second, laughing― you should’ve seen your face, you were so scared.  Like I’d really kiss you, man.

But when Steve pulled back, what he said was, “Shit, Jonathan.  I’m sorry.” 

“Don’t be sorry,” he rushed out.  Then, “Why’d you do that?” 

They were still pressing their palms together; at that point, it was basically just holding hands with some blood in between.  

Steve said, “I wanted to.”   

Jonathan swallowed hard.  It was all he’d wanted since at least the beginning of the school year; probably a lot longer, probably since they first met.  It was a horrible idea.  It was dangerous.  People got killed for stuff like this, he knew.  His dad might kill him for stuff like this.

But his dad was at home sleeping off the booze and Steve was here, bloody hands and all, and he had kissed him.

So Jonathan said, “I want you to do it again.”  

 ― 

Nothing cataclysmic happened.  

Steve kissed him again and grabbed his face halfway through, smearing blood on his cheek, so Jonathan did it back. After that, it just became something else that they did together. 

He had sort of expected the world to end.  He had thought his dad would take one look at him when he got home and smell it on him, smell the kind of thing that makes you drag your son into the woods on his birthday to shoot a rabbit.

But no one seemed to notice, and Jonathan was almost able to relax.  

If Jonathan was relaxed, Steve was anything but.  

He swooned towards Jonathan across the table during DND.  He would grab him by the waist in the record store and try to play footsies when they stopped at Benny’s on the way home.  He wanted to kiss at ridiculous, risky times like when he first got to the window and Jonathan’s dad could walk out for a cigarette at any minute, or in the back row at the movies.  

Early on, Jonathan had snapped at him for it.  “Do you live in the same reality as everyone else?  Don’t you realize what people think?” 

Infuriatingly, Steve shrugged.  “I don’t care about that.”

“You need to care.  I care, Steve.  My dad cares.” 

Despite Steve’s claims that he wasn’t afraid of Jonathan’s dad, he did calm down a little after that, especially in the vicinity of the Byers’ house.

School started back and didn’t change much since all their classes were still separate; but Jonathan could rely on Steve to be leaning against his locker during every break or class change, if only to nudge the side of Jonathan’s foot with his own.  Of course, he’d done that the year before too, which hadn’t made sense to Jonathan at the time.  

His locker that year was beside Holly Thurman’s.  She came back from summer break with a short, angular haircut and three holes in each earlobe.  Jonathan was worried that it’d be awkward with Steve hanging around; but after the first day, when Steve said, “nice haircut, Holls,” all they ever did was talk sports.  

He ended up seeing a lot of Holly Thurman that semester because she was playing girl’s basketball, apparently not content to wait until softball started back up in spring.  She would breeze by the yearbook classroom once every few days and harp on Nancy about being sure to flatter her in the sports spread.

By October, it all clicked.  

Steve was loping down the hall, waving and grinning as usual.  Holly was zipping her bookbag.

Just as Steve came up and wrapped an arm around Jonathan’s shoulders―something Jonathan would’ve scolded him for if the halls weren’t relatively empty―Holly cooed, “You guys are too sweet.” 

The next day, she stopped by yearbook and asked if Nancy had gotten her good side during the last basketball game, to which long-suffering Nancy replied, “Holly, all your sides are good.” 

Jonathan happened to look up from his spread at that precise moment Holly’s face completely caught fire.  

For a while, it became a sort of soap opera for him: Holly finding any excuse to stop by, Nancy snappy and annoyed but never turning her away.  He wasn’t sure if Nancy ever realized what was going on.  

Right before Christmas break, a girl from the marching band started popping up at Holly’s locker almost as frequently as Steve did at Jonathan’s, and he didn’t see her in the yearbook classroom anymore.

 ― 

Jonathan got his first truly nice camera that Christmas.  His mom was crying before he even had it fully unwrapped.

“Pentax―holy shit, Mom.”  She didn’t even scold him for the language.  

His subject matter didn’t change too much; but they were the nicest pictures of Will and Chester that anyone had ever taken, he was sure of that.  Steve made sure that he featured prominently in as many photos as possible, which he’d been doing since the Polaroid days.  They were still as innocent as before, usually taken in the woods: Steve standing on a tree stump and surveying the landscape, Steve sloshing around in the creek.

But there were a few of Steve in his bed, having just woken up after clearly sleeping there.

Jonathan started keeping his pictures of Steve in a separate shoebox, shoved deep in the back of his closet just in case his dad drunkenly lost the car keys and decided to ransack his room while he was out.  It had happened before.  

He wasn’t sure what the etiquette was for Christmas gifts that year, since they’d never really done them before.  They’d never done a lot of the stuff that they were doing that year before. 

In the end, he gave Steve a mixtape.  

“Goddammit,” Steve hissed.  

“Um,” Jonathan said.  That wasn’t really the desired reaction.

Steve looked appropriately mortified.  “No, it’s not like that!  This is amazing.  But I wish I’d given you this first.”  He produced a cassette from his jacket pocket.  “Great minds think alike, or whatever.” 

Steve’s mixtape should’ve been obnoxious.  It was mostly comprised of old tapes Steve poached off his parents, heavy on the Hank Williams and Loretta Lynn; but he must have stopped by the record store without Jonathan one day, because there was some Bowie and Talking Heads on it, too.

Jonathan listened to it every day at least once.

A new kid started joining them for DND, with Will explaining, “His name’s Dustin.  He just moved here.” 

“We voted him into the party,” Mike added.  

The younger kids had started calling themselves that recently, and would chatter excitedly about their rule of law and the complicated democratic processes of becoming a member.  Jonathan and Steve were assured of their status as honorary members, but had no voting authority.  

“We’ll just be our own party,” Steve had declared.  He shot Jonathan a wolfish grin and hooked their ankles together under the table, which was at least an improvement from the outright swooning.  “And none of you are allowed to join.” 

Mike sniped, “Why would we wanna join your party when we have our own, Steve?” 

“Because it’s cooler, Michael.  Soon, I’m gonna have my driver’s license.  And only party members are allowed to ride in my car.” 

It wasn’t exactly soon; Steve was just over fourteen, but his dad had already promised him a BMW if he did well in driver’s ed.  He had roughly a hundred ideas a day about what they’d do once he could drive them places.

“We can go to that drive-in that only shows horror movies,” he proposed.  “The one in Wabash.”  

Jonathan found it hard to shoot him down at the best of times.  Just then, Steve was hovering over him, propped up on his elbows, having broken off from making out for the purpose of that declaration.  

“We have a theater here,” Jonathan protested.  “It’s four hours to Wabash.”

“We can get a hotel room.”  Steve waggled his eyebrows.  Tipped his forehead until it was resting on Jonathan’s.  Made it impossible to be realistic, or say no.

“Okay,” Jonathan conceded.  “But I get to pick when we go so it’s actually something decent.” 

They were spending so much time at the movies―where Steve always paid and always wanted to hold hands, tangle their legs, kiss once the lights went down―that Jonathan had gotten sort of into them.  He liked the way different directors shot and lit things, tried to challenge himself by applying it to his own photography.

“ Urban Cowboy was good, you snob,” Steve said. 

“I didn’t even mention it by name,” Jonathan shot back.  “Defensive, much?” 

He’d already talked ad nauseum about Urban Cowboy and how many of his brain cells it had destroyed, eventually coming to the conclusion that Steve remembered it as good because they started making out in the empty theater halfway through.  

Steve glared at him before declaring, “My arms are tired” and flopping onto his back.  

“What happened to your basketball player’s muscles?” 

Steve swore that before Jonathan, he’d only had his one unsatisfactory kiss with Holly Thurman; but he’d always taken charge in everything else, since that first day he took Jonathan hiking through the woods.  He seemed sure of everything they did that it seemed only natural for Jonathan to keep playing follow-the-leader.   

Steve tsked .  “I’ve been using them for basketball , Jonathan.  Switch with me.”

“I’m afraid I’ll squash you,” Jonathan mumbled.  He was almost certain that he would; he didn’t know how Steve had kept himself from doing it for all those months.  

“You weigh less than I do,” Steve said.  He sighed, loud and dramatic.  “I guess we could just go to sleep.” 

Sighing, Jonathan hoisted himself up.  He had pinned Steve earlier that year when they wrestled and chose a similar approach for this, minus the pinning.  

“Hi,” Steve said, smug as ever.  

“Hi.” 

 ― 

It wasn’t exactly a relief when Steve started high school the next year.  He missed seeing Steve at his locker every day, but didn’t long for the days of watching over his shoulder every time Steve tried to link their hands under a lunch table.  

“Who do you sit with at lunch?” Jonathan asked.  Sometimes, Nancy Wheeler waved him over; but mostly he ate in the library or Mr. Griggs room, which was fine with him.

“Holly and those other softball girls,” Steve answered, complete with a mimed bat swing.  “You don’t have to worry about any of them having the hots for me.” 

Steve had been slower than Jonathan to pick up on what Holly had going on; but he had gotten there eventually, after they ran into Holly and that girl from band at Benny’s, sitting shoulder-to-shoulder in a corner booth.

For the most part, eighth grade was peaceful.  

Jonathan got to photograph homecoming couples with Nancy and Barbara Holland, a girl she’d convinced to join journalism that year.  He went to the Hawkins High basketball games under the pretense of yearbook photos―there was usually at least one spread for Looking Ahead to High School ―and maintained his time-honored tradition of getting a dozen pictures of Steve for every one of somebody else.

Steve’s parents practically lived at conferences and hotels, so Jonathan found himself practically living at Steve’s. 

“You’d think sleeping with the dungeon master would give me an upper hand sometimes,” Steve groused.  They’d just finished biking home from the Wheelers, an adventure in and of itself.  Jonathan had kissed Will and his mom goodnight, shut and locked the door to his bedroom, and hopped right out the window where Steve was waiting for him.  

He tried hard not to feel guilty for spending so much time away.  It wasn’t like Will could need him in his sleep, especially with their dad working another third shift job.  

“Being the dungeon master doesn’t mean I control the dice with my mind, you know.”  

Steve frowned at him.  “You could lie about the numbers.  They’re little kids, they can’t add yet.” 

Jonathan elbowed him in the ribs.  He assumed his dungeon master voice, which was really just his own voice with a vaguely British accent: “When I’m the dungeon master, I’m not Jonathan.  I am an impartial, omniscient third party.” 

“Well, the dungeon master still blushed when I grabbed his leg tonight.” 

They’d reached a point in the campaign that involved cutting through a forest full of slithering, fleshy vines.  For effect, Jonathan would occasionally grab someone by the shoulder and jostle them around to indicate that they’d been caught up in one; but he’d grabbed Steve by the leg instead, not expecting him to follow through with the automatic impulse to grab back.

Steve had a lot of automatic impulses.  Jonathan was always curbing them.  

He didn’t mind being private about things.  There was no part of him that wished they could go to prom together or share a milkshake with two straws; he thought couples who made out in the hallway and held hands between classes were gross.  

Steve, meanwhile, would’ve made out in the middle of a church during Easter Mass if Jonathan would allow it.  He wanted to be touching all the time, to walk in sync like they were handcuffed to each other.  

“Between me and all the softball players we could probably make it seem cool,” he’d said once.

“Make what seem cool?” 

“Being gay, or whatever.  I don’t think anybody would give me shit about it.”

“Maybe to people at school,” Jonathan allowed, though he didn’t actually believe it.  “But they’re not the only people in the world.” 

It would’ve been redundant, at that point, to say who he meant.

 ―   

In the spring before ninth grade, during a rare sitdown dinner with his dad present, things started to fall apart.  

Jonathan would always be grateful that Steve wasn’t there for it; he wished that Will hadn’t been, either. 

He never thought to wish the same for himself.  It had felt almost deserved.

One minute they were eating meatloaf in silence, the only sound forks squeaking across plates.  His dad grabbed his beer and took a long, long swig.  

“I just think it’s disgraceful,” he slurred.

He was staring right at Jonathan, pointing with the fingers that weren’t wrapped around the neck of a bottle.  

“What?” Jonathan asked.  His first mistake.  

“What you’re doing to our family.” 

That was fucking rich, of course, coming from the sole Byers banned from Big Buy for writing too many bad checks.  

“Lonnie,” his mom warned.  

Will was looking between all of them with eyes like saucers.  Jonathan nudged his foot under the table, hoping to communicate either it’s alright or run depending what their dad said next.

The bottle slammed down onto the table, empty.  

“He needs to hear this.  And his little friend does, too, because his daddy―well, his daddy’s the type to kill the both of you.”

There was no mistaking what he was talking about, or with who.  Jonathan didn’t just nudge Will’s foot, this time; he kicked.  Will scampered off.  

His dad was drunk.  Jonathan could sometimes redirect him when he was like this, get him talking about how much he hated his fucking boss or his own mean father.

Careful to keep his voice even, Jonathan said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Dad.” 

Jonathan had been hit before―black eyes, bloody noses, bruised ribs.

At times, he’d hit back.  Even connected once or twice, knocked his dad flat on his ass long enough to get away.  

It was only recently that he’d developed a new strategy.  

Jonathan started floating up and out of his body, all the way to the ceiling, until he was watching it happen in the third person.

He watched himself get hit pretty good a few times, in the mouth and around the eyes.  He watched his mom step in between them, screaming and waving around the knife she’d been using to cut meatloaf.  He watched his dad snatch up the keys and walk out the door.

As he floated back into himself, his mom started wiping his face with a cold washrag.  In spite of the tears streaming down her face, she looked furious, like some kind of mother lioness.

It would have made him feel better if he hadn’t seen it a thousand times before.  If the next thing she’d done wasn’t whisper, “We just don’t want anything to make your life harder than it needs to be, baby.” 

This makes my life harder.  He makes my life harder.  You letting him stay here makes it harder.

Jonathan nodded.  “I know, Mom.” 

 ― 

Predictably, Steve went ballistic at the sight of his split lip and black eye.

He never did say that he wanted to kill Jonathan’s dad again, maybe because he didn’t have to.  It was just there now, in the way he ran his eyes over Jonathan’s ruined face and had to look away, hands balled into fists.

Sometimes, he almost seemed to take it harder than Jonathan.  More personally.

“I think he knows,” Jonathan rasped.  Talking with his mouth in its current state was fucking miserable.

“He’s just an old drunk,” Steve said.  He was holding a bag of frozen peas to Jonathan’s right eye, even though Jonathan insisted he could do it himself.  “It’s not like anybody’d believe him.”

Jonathan almost expected him to throw in neanderthal ; but Steve must have felt it was too cutesy, too tongue-in-cheek, for the present moment.

“He said your dad would kill us if he knew.” 

He caught the split-second where Steve’s face paled before smoothing back out.  

Steve scoffed, back to bravado.  “Fat chance, since my dad would have to actually be home to kill me.” 

 ― 

His dad knew.  His mom knew.  Will might have even known, though Jonathan wasn’t sure he understood the implications.  

The world still didn’t end.  

After a few days, his dad moved on to other things: Feuds with his new coworkers and accusing Jonathan’s mom of having an affair with some guy who smiled at her in the grocery store.  On special occasions Jonathan got an odd queer thrown his way with a little more conviction than before.

But Steve’s dad never did kill them, so they spent the next few months doing the same things they always had.

In the official capacity, basketball season was over until fall the next year.  The high school team, being more hardcore, had a week of mandatory conditioning at the beginning of summer break.  Steve bitched about it for months in advance, how it was going to ruin a whole week that’d be better spent at the record store or in the pool; but he always seemed exhilarated once it had actually started, showing up at Jonathan’s sweaty and buzzing with energy.

“Take a shower first,” Jonathan groaned, because Steve never had started using the ones in the locker room, but had developed a bad habit of making moves on him with sweat still drying in his hair.  

“In a minute,” Steve said―lied, really.  Jonathan allowed it.

On the last day of conditioning, he was late coming over.  Jonathan was getting antsy, afraid he’d get there just as his dad got up for work and be spotted.

The reality of it was worse: Steve dragged himself through the window an hour later than normal, and the first thing Jonathan saw was that his face was red and puffy and wrong.  His nose, especially.  It was crooked, like it’d been knocked out of place.

The first thing he said was, “The ball hit me in the face kind of hard.  I had to go home and clean up.” 

“Who threw it?” Jonathan asked, though he had a few guesses.  Steve shrugged.  “Tommy?  Nathan?” 

Steve’s voice was the flattest he’d ever heard it as he said, “I don’t remember, Jonathan.” 

Jonathan had never thought to ask how his dad found out.  He’d written it off as a lucky guess, a theory his alcohol-pickled brain concocted after seeing Steve sneak out one morning.  

But someone else could’ve told him.  Maybe someone else knew, too.

Maybe a lot of people did.

Jonathan didn’t expect an honest answer, so he watched Steve carefully as he asked, “Was it on purpose?”

Something flickered across Steve’s face before he said, “I don’t think so.” 

 ― 

By the time they were seven and three, Jonathan made sure that Will was really good at hiding. 

Like a lot of things, he turned it into a game.  The bedroom closet was where you hide from giants; the bathtub with the shower curtain pulled shut would protect you from dragons; the backyard and the woods behind it were an enchanted forest where evil creatures couldn’t go.

Jonathan was careful to ensure that it was a game he could start without even speaking; he could activate it by nudging Will with his elbow or knocking into the side of his foot.  

Will used to get teary at the thought of hiding on his own, but Jonathan was able to spin that too, to say that part of the game was when Jonathan came to get him at the end.  It was a game about being brave and courageous and, above all else, smart.  A game about keeping yourself safe.

Steve was different.  For one, they weren’t little kids anymore. And he seemed to lack all sense of self-preservation where Jonathan was concerned, or to think the world bent its rules for them simply because Steve wanted it to.  

Jonathan had known that wasn’t true since the first time Steve kissed him.  He had told Steve himself a hundred times by swatting his hands away and putting distance between them in restaurant booths.  

Even after other people had shown both of them, Steve was too stubborn to admit it.  He never said who hit him or why, maintaining that it was an accident even with bruises blooming green and purple across his face .  

The next day, he was back to his usual talk of going to the drive-in, how he was so close to getting his license he could almost taste it; back to trying to yodel along with Hank Williams and doing flips in the pool.

Jonathan never could get back from it.  If he had to pinpoint when the world ended, it was then.

 ― 

They spent the summer like they always did.  

Jonathan knew the whole time what he had to do before school started back.  

But he gave himself that summer to wrap things up.  They played a hell of a DND campaign―he gave the paladins a lot to work with and rewarded Steve accordingly for his victory once they got home.  The record store always seemed to be overflowing with new tapes, The Cure and Stevie Nicks and Siouxsie.  The creek didn’t dry up even once.  

The week before school started back, Jonathan resigned himself to either doing it then or losing his nerve.  He prepared a sort of script for himself, but even then, he wasn’t sure which way he was going to go once Steve started arguing with him or, God forbid, crying.

“I start high school next week,” he said.  

“Gonna be great,” Steve said.  He didn’t even look up from the movie they were watching, his head in Jonathan’s lap.

Jonathan desperately wanted him to sit up, to move, before he got to the worst part.

He cleared his throat.  “Do you think your friends on the basketball team are gonna be okay with us hanging out?” 

Steve did tear his eyes away from the TV, then, if only to give Jonathan an affronted look.

“They’re not really my friends.  Who gives a shit?” 

“I think more people do than you realize,” Jonathan said.  

That got Steve to sit up.  “Is your dad giving you shit again?” 

Jonathan bit back the urge to say when is he not.  It would just derail everything and then before he knew it they’d be kissing, going into high school just as they were and opening Steve up to worse than whatever had really happened at basketball practice.

“I just want to be realistic.”  He was dancing around the real closer, the one he knew was going to hurt.  Hoping he wouldn’t have to say it.  

Steve leaned forward, one hand going for his knee.  Jonathan pulled his legs away, tucked them up under him.

“What the hell, man?” 

Man , not Jonathan.  That was a good sign, since the way Steve said Jonathan always sounded like the way other guys called their girlfriend babe.  

Jonathan breathed in, steadied himself.  “I think we should try to be normal.” 

Steve’s response was automatic: “We are normal.  What about this isn’t normal to you?” 

“ We aren’t the only people in the world, Steve.”

Steve was reeling now, like Jonathan may as well have hit him; he recovered quickly enough, sputtering, “For all I care we are.  No one’s going to do anything.”

Jonathan felt himself getting a little angry, a deviation from his carefully laid script.  That old urge to snap and fight was there, coiled in his chest.  

“They already did something.  Someone broke your fucking nose.”

“I don’t care about that,” Steve said, but he didn’t deny it.  

“Jesus Christ, what about what I care about?”  Jonathan dug his heels in, borrowed a line he’d heard somewhere else.  “We’re just making our lives harder.”

He was floating somewhere above his body by then, watching himself rise from the couch and talk like a complete fucking android.  Watching Steve keep reaching for him even as he kept jerking away, getting farther.  They kept going, sparring back and forth: Jonathan resolute and Steve pitiful, almost begging.

“Jonathan, you’ve never made my life harder.” 

“You’ve made mine harder.  A hell of a lot harder.” 

“You don’t mean that.”

“Don’t tell me what I mean.” 

At that, Steve deflated.  “Jonathan, I don’t…I don’t want to.  I don’t want to-”

“It’s not just about you .” 

It was, of course.  Jonathan would have taken whatever his dad had to give and the people at school besides, for as long as he had to.  He wouldn’t have even thought about it.

Without Jonathan, Steve could still be normal.  Steve could kiss a girl who wasn’t Holly Thurman, a girl who could come to his games without saying it was for the yearbook.  Steve could go to basketball practice without getting his face beaten in.  

“Are you serious?” Steve croaked.  He was crying.  That in and of itself was almost enough to bring Jonathan back to himself, to make him sit down and say no, of course I’m not.  Stop crying, please.

Instead, he heard himself say, “Yes.” 

 ― 

Dustin and Robin tug Steve down by the ankles just far enough for Jonathan to rip New Order out of the Walkman and put in Hank Williams.  

For a minute, nothing happens.  The distant sound of “Lovesick Blues” rumbles out of the headphones.  None of them are breathing.

When Steve’s eyes fly open and he drops, hard, to the floor, Jonathan steps back so that Dustin and Robin can be the ones to rush in to hug him and kiss his cheeks.