Chapter Text
“Robin,” Steve says on Wednesday morning. “You’re a girl.”
Robin gives Steve an unimpressed look from behind the Circuit City check-out counter. “Very astute observation.”
“And you date girls.”
“Nothing gets past you, does it, Steve?”
“Would you stop? What I’m saying is that you, more than probably anyone, would know what to get another woman for Christmas.”
Robin’s eyebrows arch. “Another woman?”
“Yeah,” Steve says. He looks to the left. “Specifically, perhaps, one who is 5’4” and whose name you’ve drawn for a Secret Santa exchange, possibly.”
Robin rolls her eyes. “That’s what this is about? I thought you would’ve figured out what to get Nancy by now.”
“Robin, I literally have no idea,” Steve says.
“Well, you should probably figure it out soon. You only have 16 days left.”
“You do realize you’re not helping, right?”
Robin lets out a long sigh. “What do you want me to tell you, Steve?”
“I want you to use your superior knowledge of women and tell me what you think I should get Nancy!”
“How should I know? You’re the one who dated her,” Robin says, and when Steve shoots her a look, she sighs again. “Alright, alright. I don’t know, maybe you could get her…” She trails off, then finishes feebly, “…a new gun?”
“I’m pretty sure that costs more than thirty dollars, Rob,” Steve says flatly.
“Well, I’m out of ideas,” Robin says, and Steve groans, thunking his head on the counter, causing the customer walking by to shoot him a look of concern. “Oh, and by the way? I’m offended by your insistence that I help you, given you haven’t even attempted to help me with Argyle’s gift.”
Steve lifts his head. “I did try to help you, but you turned down the bong idea, and that’s all I got.” Robin rolls her eyes. “Look, if you help me figure out what to get Nance, then I’ll help you figure out what to get Argyle, I promise.”
“Actually, I'll have you know that I already know what I’m going to get Argyle,” Robin says, then adds, “I think.”
Steve’s mouth drops open. “What? What is it?”
“It’s a secret, remember?”
“Robin.”
Robin huffs out yet another sigh. “Look. You’re going to that Santa’s Workshop thing in Central Park tonight with Nancy and Jonathan, right?”
“Yeah, why?”
“Well, you said there’d be vendors and stuff, didn’t you? Maybe you can find something for Nancy while you’re there.”
“And how am I supposed to buy something without her noticing?”
“I don’t know, be creative,” she says, and Steve narrows his eyes at her. “Or, at the very least, if you don’t find anything, then maybe while you’re hanging out, you’ll come up with something. You know, ask her a few questions, see if she mentions anything that’ll give you a good idea of what to get her.”
“Yeah,” Steve sighs, too. “Maybe. You sure you don’t want to come with us?”
“And subject myself to a bunch of children screaming and crying as soon as they’re put on a random man dressed up as Santa’s lap?” Robin snorts. “No thanks. I’m here ‘til late, anyway. And besides…”
She trails off, a strange expression appearing suddenly on her face, and Steve frowns at her. “What?” He says.
“Well,” Robin says, suddenly turning her attention toward the register. “I was just going to say…I mean, would you really want me to come?”
Steve’s frown deepens. “Why wouldn’t I want you to come?”
“Well, you’re the one who keeps inventing new ways to spend one-on-one time with your ex and her ex, so…you tell me.”
Steve stares at her. Robin lifts her eyebrows back. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?” He says finally.
Robin shrugs, fiddling with random buttons on the register.
“Robin,” Steve says. “Come on. It’s…you know it’s not like that.”
Robin glances back at him. “Isn’t it? Because, I mean, it’s not like you’ve dated all that much since we moved to the city—”
“What? Yes, I have—”
“And you and Nancy have all that history—”
“Robin, that was years ago—”
“And, not to mention, I haven’t forgotten that you and J—”
“Steve! Robin!”
Steve jumps, whirling around to see their manager, Todd, striding toward them. He’s rapidly clicking the pen he, for some reason, carries around at all times, and there’s a deep furrow in his brow as his eyes narrow in on them, neither of which is a good sign.
“Uh…yes, sir?” Steve asks.
Todd comes to a stop before them, clicking his pen even more rapidly. “How many times do I have to tell the two of you,” he says, looking between Steve and Robin sternly, “That I’m not paying you to just sit here and shoot the shit?”
You’re not paying us at all, corporate is, Steve wants to say—probably will say to Robin, the next time they’re both home and rehashing this very conversation—but what Steve says instead is, “Yes, sir. Sorry.”
“Good. Now go do a lap and check in on the customers,” Todd says gruffly. “You’re supposed to be on the floor today.”
It isn’t until Todd’s back is turned that Steve finally turns back to Robin, but all Robin says is, “Well, you kids have fun and behave yourselves without me tonight, okay?”
Steve waits until he’s sure Todd and the customers aren’t looking before he flips her off. Robin just grins at him as he walks away.
Steve meets Jonathan and Nancy at 59th Street at 4:30. Nancy is in a pea coat, scarf, and a hat, her breath fogging the cold air as she buries her gloved hands in her pockets, but all Jonathan has is a coat and his camera, which swings at his side, attached to the strap around his shoulder.
“No hat again, huh?” Steve says, raising his eyebrows at Jonathan.
“I tried to tell him,” Nancy says with an eye roll.
“Do you even own a hat?” Steve asks him.
“It’s not even supposed to snow tonight,” Jonathan says. “I don’t need one.”
That doesn’t answer his question, but Steve doesn’t say so. Instead, he asks, “Argyle didn’t want to come?”
Jonathan shrugs. “He said he had work, or something like that. Honestly, I never know where he is half the time.”
“Robin had to work, too,” Steve says, and for a second, he thinks about telling them. He thinks about saying, Robin thinks it’s weird I’m hanging out with you guys, as if I haven’t moved on since high school, or something. Isn’t that crazy? He’d say it, and then he’d laugh, and then Nancy and Jonathan would laugh, too, and then they’d all move on.
Except, the thought of that—the thought of Nancy and Jonathan laughing, or worse, of them not laughing at all—makes Steve’s chest feel tight, so in the end, he doesn’t say anything at all.
The so-called Santa’s Workshop is only a few minute walk from the 59th Street entrance to Central Park, and turns out to be a few food trucks, a short line of tents where the vendors are set up, and a wooden, makeshift area designed to look like the North Pole, with fake hills of snow, plastic candy canes and reindeer, and a giant red throne, presumably for Santa to sit on.
They stand there for a moment, taking it in, before Nancy announces, “It looks like Christmas threw up everywhere.”
“Tell me about it,” Jonathan mutters.
Steve’s gaze travels over to Wollman Ice Skating Rink—a convenient distance to Santa’s Workshop, presumably so kids and families can knock out pictures with Santa and strapping sharp death traps to their feet from their Christmas to-dos in one fell swoop—and says to Jonathan, “Think you’re going to try for round two?”
Jonathan rolls his eyes at Steve, and Steve smirks back at him.
“C’mon,” Jonathan says, jerking his head toward the food trucks and vendors. “Let’s look around. Pictures with Santa don’t start ‘til 5.”
There aren’t more than ten vendors in the tents, and most of them are still setting up, but they let Steve, Nancy, and Jonathan peruse what they’ve got, anyway. Most of them are selling kitschy, Christmas things—ornaments, snowmen pottery, and other things that, unfortunately, would make terrible gifts for Nancy. But they stop at a few tents, if only to admire a beautifully crafted snowglobe, or for Nancy to point out that a grumpy snowman ornament looks like Jonathan, making Jonathan glare while Steve snorts under his breath.
Surprisingly, though, it’s actually a nice time. Sure, there are a couple of moments as they’re walking where Steve’s elbow accidentally brushes against Nancy’s, and he has to casually step away, but other than that, things are fine. Things are normal. Things are good. And, honestly, why wouldn’t they be? What the hell does Robin know, Steve thinks as he, Nancy, and Jonathan weave between tents, making idle chatter. Can’t a guy hang out with his friends who happen to be his ex-girlfriend and her ex-boyfriend without it being some secret ploy to spend…what, one-on-one time with them?
Besides, it wouldn’t even be one-on-one, now, would it? There are three of them. It’d be…three-on-three time, if anything. No, that doesn’t make any sense, either. Maybe one-on-two—
“Okay, it’s almost five,” Jonathan announces, looking down at his watch. “I should probably start heading over there. If you guys want to hang around here, I can meet you back here after.” Then he adds wryly, “Unless you feel like watching me force random children to smile into the camera for an hour or so.”
“Yeah, no thanks,” Nancy says flatly. “Steve and I will hang out here. I’m getting hungry, anyway.”
“I don’t know…” Steve smirks over at Jonathan. “I kinda wanted to see Byers in his element.”
“Yes, because taking pictures of Santa is me in my element,” Jonathan deadpans.
“Maybe you’re a man of many talents.”
Jonathan rolls his eyes, letting out an aggravated huff. “Whatever. I’ll see you guys later.”
“Sure,” Nancy says, lifting her gloved hand in a wave as Jonathan heads off. It isn’t until his back is turned that she elbows Steve and says, “Stop teasing him so much.”
“What? But it’s so much fun.”
Nancy glares at him, but it’s all for show—Steve can tell by the grin that’s threatening to spread across her face. It’s the same false-stern look she gave him every time he successfully convinced her to prolong studying so they could make out a little more, back when they were—
“Come on,” Nancy says, nudging him again and abruptly jolting Steve out of his thoughts. “Let’s find food.”
They grab a spot in line at one of the food trucks, where Steve gets two hot dogs, and Nancy gets a corndog and fries, which she lets Steve steal a few of as they wander back through the tents again.
“My mom would love something like this,” Nancy comments as she runs a hand over an array of linen Christmas napkins. “This whole ‘Santa’s Workshop’ thing, I mean.”
“Yeah?” Steve says. “How’s she doing?”
“She’s…” Nancy pauses, then lets the linen napkin fall back onto the table. “She’s good. I think.”
There’s something off in Nancy’s tone as she says it, and a part of Steve wants to ask, but Nancy avoids his gaze so carefully that Steve decides not to. What he says instead is, “Well, you’ll have to bring her with you next year, then.”
It isn’t until Nancy glances at him that he realizes what he implied—that Nancy would be here next year, visiting Steve or Jonathan or both in New York—but before he can try to take it back, she smiles and looks away and says, “Yeah. Maybe.”
Steve steals another fry and munches on it to hide the fact that he’s smiling, too.
The last tent in the line-up is a face-painting station, where a very pregnant and frazzled-looking young woman is painting animals on the cheeks of a long line of children. A little girl with a beautiful butterfly pattern framing her face stands to the side, waiting for her friend, who’s getting a remarkably detailed-looking bumblebee painted on their cheek, and when Steve stops to watch, Nancy says, “What, you want a bumblebee on your cheek, too?”
“You know,” Steve says. “You joke, Nance, but I think I’d look amazing with a bumblebee on my cheek.”
Nancy looks at him flatly and says, “You know you have ketchup on your nose, right?”
“Damn it,” Steve mutters, making Nancy laugh as he rubs at his nose—to no avail, evidently, because, if anything, her expression just grows even more amused.
Finally, she takes pity on him. “Here,” she says, stepping closer and wiping his nose with a spare napkin. Her breath fans against his chin, warm in contrast to the frigid air, and Steve’s breath stills as Nancy meets his eyes and blinks, her eyelashes briefly fanning across her cheeks—
“Hey!”
Steve jolts, stumbling away from Nancy as she does the same. The face-painting lady has magically materialized beside them, and Steve notes she somehow looks even more frazzled than she did a moment ago.
“Um…” Nancy says, clearing her throat. “…Yes?”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt,” the woman says. “It’s just—look, do either of you know how to hold a paintbrush?”
Nancy looks at Steve. Steve looks back at her. “Uh…” He says.
The woman huffs, pushing her frizzy hair back from her face. “Look, I’ve got a million kids in that line, my other volunteer is running late, and, well, to be frank, I have to piss like a racehorse, and when my little melon here—” She gestures to her very pregnant belly, as though Steve or Nancy could’ve possibly missed it, “Decides we have to go pee, well, then, we go pee. So do you think one of you could one of you please, please paint some butterflies on these kids’ faces for a few minutes while I run to the bathroom?”
It doesn’t escape Steve’s notice that the woman is mainly looking at Nancy. Steve isn’t sure if that’s because of this woman’s misconstrued internal gender bias, or if she took one look at Steve and, correctly, assumed he didn’t have a single artistic bone in his body.
“Um,” Nancy says again, glancing quickly at Steve. “I don’t think—”
“Nancy would love to help,” Steve announces.
Nancy looks at him in alarm. “Steve—”
“Oh, bless you,” the woman says, and before Nancy can make any further protest, she shoves a paintbrush in her hand and runs in the opposite direction, presumably toward the bathrooms.
Nancy stares at the vacant spot she’d occupied, then at the paintbrush in her hand, then at Steve. “I—what—”
“Well! Better get to cracking, Nance.” He jerks his head at the long line of children waiting. “I’ll go find Jonathan and bother him until you’re done, alright?”
“What?” Nancy whirls to face him. “You’re not going to help?”
“What am I gonna do? I don’t know how to paint a bumblebee.”
“And you think I do?!”
“Sure,” Steve says, and Nancy’s eye twitches. “Look, don’t sweat it, alright? Just think of it as writing an article. But, you know, with pictures.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me.”
“You’ve got this,” Steve says, shooting her a thumbs-up as he backs away. “I believe in you.”
“Steve!” Nancy hisses. “Don’t you dare leave me, I swear to—”
But Steve’s already gone, quickly dashing off in the direction Jonathan disappeared in earlier.
Steve finally finds him not taking photos of kids with Santa, but in a tent behind the manufactured North Pole area, fiddling with his camera. “Hey, man,” Steve says as she strolls toward him. “What are you doing?”
Jonathan looks up, startled, then blinks. “What are you doing back here? Where’s Nancy?”
“Painting five-year-olds’ faces, I think.”
Jonathan frowns. “What?”
“Don’t worry about it, long story.” This only makes Jonathan’s frown deepen, but Steve ignores him, nodding down at Jonathan’s camera and repeating, “What are you doing?”
“Oh.” Jonathan looks back down, fiddling with his camera again. “Just replacing the film.”
Steve opens his mouth, but before he can say anything, a girl wearing an elf costume steps into the tent with a styrofoam cup and says to Jonathan, “Would you like some water, sir?”
Steve nearly snorts—the girl looks like she’s about eighteen, so she’s probably only a couple of years younger than Jonathan—but Jonathan just smiles at her and says, “Sure, thanks,” before taking it.
The girl smiles back before exiting the tent, and as Steve watches Jonathan sip from his water before setting it down to fiddle with his camera again, he thinks, not for the first time, that this version of Jonathan—New York Jonathan—is a lot different than the Jonathan he knew back in high school.
Steve can’t put a finger on what the difference is, exactly. Maybe it’s that this Jonathan’s posture is straighter, or that this Jonathan is more likely to smile and talk to strangers instead of hunching his shoulders and acting like he doesn’t exist. Maybe it’s just that this Jonathan hooks up with random guys in dimly lit bar bathroom stalls. Whatever the reason, though, it’s inarguable that something is different.
Not a bad different, though, necessarily. Honestly…he doesn’t think it’s a bad different at all.
“You know, Jonathan,” Steve muses aloud. “I think New York has changed you.”
Jonathan looks up, frowning again. “What?”
“Not in a bad way,” Steve says, and when Jonathan’s eyebrows raise, Steve clarifies, “Just…you have, like, a whole different vibe, now.”
“A different vibe,” Jonathan repeats, unimpressed.
“Yeah. Sure.”
“What kind of vibe is that, exactly?”
“I don’t know. Like…a proper New Yorker kind of vibe.”
Jonathan looks skeptical. “And what, you don’t?”
“Honestly?” Steve shrugs. “Not really. Or, at least, I don’t feel like I do. I mean, I like living here, don’t get me wrong, but I think there’ll always be something about me that just screams midwest small town. You, though…I don’t know, it just kinda feels like you fit the mold, I guess.”
Steve’s pretty sure that if he’d made a comment like this back in Hawkins, Jonathan would’ve found some way to be offended by it. If Steve said something similar to Jonathan a couple of weeks ago, even, he probably would’ve gotten the same reaction. Now, though, Jonathan just huffs and rolls his eyes, but there’s little heat behind it. There’s been little heat behind any of Jonathan’s interactions with Steve tonight, Steve suddenly realizes. Just like, despite Nancy’s insistence that he knock it off, Steve’s teasing comments toward Jonathan lately have been more out of habit than animosity.
Steve isn’t sure when that changed. Maybe it has something to do with all the time they’ve been spending together lately, or with having Nancy around as a buffer.
Or maybe, all it took to thaw the ice between them was realizing they both had sub-par one-night-stands with the same loser guy.
They haven’t talked about it since, although it’s not like there’s really anything else to talk about. Steve wonders if Jonathan’s mentioned it to Nancy, though he knows the answer to that is probably no, even though Steve doesn’t think he’d mind if she knew. In retrospect, the situation is actually kind of funny. Weird, sure, but funny. Jonathan might not think so—he’d seemed more scandalized about the whole thing than Steve, had been the one to say, I didn’t even think you were… and then left Steve to fill in the blanks—but maybe Steve shouldn’t be surprised by that. He still remembers all the awful things he said in their fight in that alleyway all those years ago, and he has no right to feel hurt by the fact that Jonathan remembers them, too, that clearly he’s still held onto it, that it’s still on his mind even after he and Steve had—
“Mr. Byers?” The same elf from earlier pokes her head through the tent flap again. “You good to go?”
“Yeah, sorry,” Jonathan calls. “Just give me one minute.”
The elf disappears, and Jonathan returns his attention to winding his reel of film into the back of the camera.
Steve snorts. “Well, I guess you haven’t changed that much,” he says. “I can’t believe you still use the same camera.”
Jonathan grins slightly. “You know what? I’m actually impressed you know enough about cameras to recognize that it’s the same one.”
“Of course, I recognize it’s the same one, I—” Steve stops. Then he blinks. “Wait. Did Nance never tell you?”
Jonathan lifts his eyes. “Tell me what?”
“Dude,” Steve says. “You know I’m the one who bought you that camera, right?”
Jonathan blinks. Then he blinks again. Then he looks back down, turning the camera over his hands—as if he expects to find Steve’s name engraved on the bottom of it, or something ridiculous—before he finally looks back up at Steve and says, “You…did?”
“Well. Yeah,” Steve says. “Nancy seriously never told you?”
There’s a beat before Jonathan says, “Uh…no. No, I—I thought it was from her.”
“I mean…I guess it was, kind of,” Steve admits. “She’s the one who wrapped it. But I gave it to her to give to you because I figured you wouldn’t have taken it if you knew it came from me.” And when Jonathan still hasn’t said anything, Steve adds quickly, “I mean, I’m glad you kept it, though, don’t get me wrong. That thing was crazy expensive.”
Jonathan stares at him. It occurs to Steve, suddenly, that maybe he shouldn’t have said anything. It shouldn’t be this big of a deal—it’s been five years, at this point, and honestly, Steve really had thought Jonathan already knew—but he hadn’t considered that maybe part of the reason the camera is so special to Jonathan is because of its sentimentality. That maybe the reason Jonathan hasn’t traded it in for a newer model in the past five years isn’t just because it’s a nice, expensive camera, but because Nancy gave it to him. There’s even a possibility that the camera means more to Jonathan now that he and Nancy aren’t together anymore, that the camera is something to remember her and their relationship by.
And now, Steve has gone and dashed all of Jonathan’s nostalgia and sentimentality by revealing his treasured gift was actually from his former girlfriend’s shitty, douchebag boyfriend.
Except, when Jonathan finally tears his gaze away from Steve’s and looks down at the camera he’s kept in perfect, pristine condition for the past five years, he isn’t looking at it like it’s from his ex-girlfriend’s shitty, douchebag boyfriend. He’s looking at it like—
“Mr. Byers?”
Jonathan snaps the back of the camera shut with an audible click, and Steve unconsciously stumbles backward, even though he and Jonathan weren’t even standing that close together to begin with.
The elf from earlier clears her throat at the front of the tent. “Um. The line out there is getting kind of long…”
“Yeah,” Jonathan says, and Steve isn’t sure if Jonathan’s voice actually sounds hoarse or if it’s just Steve’s imagination. “Sorry. Uh, I’m good to go.”
He glances at Steve, and Steve looks back, and when Jonathan finally turns to leave the tent, Steve hesitates for just a moment before following after him. When Jonathan looks over his shoulder at Steve, eyebrows raised, Steve has to glance away before he says, “What? It’s not like I have anything better to do.”
Jonathan rolls his eyes and mutters, “Alright, fine, just…stay quiet and don’t distract me.”
“Aye aye, captain,” Steve says stupidly, and quickly looks away when Jonathan raises his eyebrows over his shoulder again.
True to his word, though, Steve hangs back, lingering a couple of feet behind Jonathan and the rest of the Santa’s Workshop set-up as he watches a line of kids take turns climbing onto the man in the red, plush throne’s lap. A couple of kids seem like real brats—Steve swears he overhears one boy asking Santa for a cruise trip for Christmas, which, what the hell kind of six-year-old actually wants something like that? But most of the kids appear astonishingly well-behaved. They politely waddle up to the man in the constricting-looking red suit, briefly describe the Hot Wheels or Barbies or Nintendo they want for Christmas, then aim their gap-toothed smiles into Jonathan’s camera. It’s actually kind of heartwarming, honestly.
And yet, as the line of kids moves at an impressively rapid speed, Steve finds himself paying more attention to the guy behind the camera than the kids smiling in front of it.
The thing is, all jokes aside, Jonathan kind of is in his element here. He’s the one wielding the camera, redirecting the kids’ attention when they get a little too distracted talking to Santa, and keeping the line moving. The other employees at the so-called Santa’s Workshop may be wearing the elf costumes, but it’s clear Jonathan is the one in charge, and honestly, it’s a little impressive how good he is at it.
And then, not even twenty minutes into the photographs, a little boy at the front of the line takes one look at Santa and promptly bursts into tears.
A few tears in front of a crowd would be bad enough, Steve thinks. But this is a full-on, wailing breakdown: loud sobs, big heaving breaths, snot pouring from the nose, the whole nine yards. The worst part is, no one even steps forward to help: the kid’s parents are clearly MIA (probably, if Steve had to guess, loading up on spiked eggnog at one of the food trucks), Santa looks sympathetic enough, but one wrong move will definitely burst open the buttons of that cheap red suit, and the elf employees look like they’ll do anything to avoid coming into contact with the frankly obsecene amount of snot coming from this kid’s nose.
But just as Steve is about to bite the bullet and intervene, Jonathan sets down his camera on a nearby table, steps forward, and says in a low, gentle voice, “Hey, hey…what’s wrong, buddy?”
“It’s scawy,” the little boy wails, fruitlessly rubbing his nose with a little mittened hand.
“I know, I know,” says Jonathan in the same gentle voice as he crouches down so he can talk to the kid at eye level, and—
Look. Logically, Steve knows Jonathan is good with kids. He practically raised Will, and for a while, he was the one primarily chauffering the Party around until Steve stepped in. But knowing something and seeing it in action are two very different things, and for some reason, watching Jonathan interact with this child is genuinely blowing Steve’s mind.
Jonathan’s voice is too low and he’s too far away for Steve to make out what he’s actually saying—though it’s probably some polite, kid-friendly variation of “I know the guy in the suit is kinda creepy-looking but if you can just suck it up for a few minutes it’ll all be over”—but whatever it is, it gets the boy’s loud wailing to peter off into much quieter sniffles. One of the elf employees eventually rushes over with a handful of tissues, and when Jonathan takes them to gently mop up the kid’s tear and snot-stained face, he actually giggles a little, making Jonathan smile before he stands, ruffles the boy’s hair, and gently pushes him back toward Santa. The kid even manages an actual smile for the picture—a wobbly one, but still—and when he climbs off Santa’s knee, Jonathan gives him a high five before he scurries off to—hopefully—find his parents.
It isn’t until the exchange is over that Jonathan glances back at Steve, then frowns and says, “What?” which is exactly when Steve realizes he’s been staring.
“Uh,” Steve says hoarsely. But his heart is doing a very strange thing in his chest, and it’s kind of making it hard for him to breathe, and his brain is still bizarrely stuck on the image of Jonathan gently and capably wiping off a kid’s snotty face, so all he ends up saying is, “Uh, nothing.”
Jonathan’s brow furrows, but Steve is saved from having to say anything else by the sight of Nancy suddenly marching toward them.
“Oh, hey, Nancy,” Jonathan says, surprised.
Nancy ignores him, beelining straight to Steve. “You owe me, Steve Harrington,” she says viciously, jabbing him in the chest for good measure.
Steve has to clear his throat to find his voice again. “Well…that took longer than I thought, huh?”
“She was in the bathroom for fifteen minutes,” Nancy says, “Fifteen minutes, Steve!”
“I think you were gone longer than that,” Jonathan says.
Nancy glances at Jonathan, then glances away sheepishly and mumbles, “I stayed a little longer after she got back.” And when Steve’s eyebrows arch, she says, “Well, I felt bad for her, alright?”
Steve can’t help it; he snorts.
“Um, Mr. Byers?” Steve looks up to find the elf woman who’d given Jonathan the tissues earlier glancing between the three of them, and Jonathan, who’d been watching Nancy and Steve with an amused expression, jolts in surprise. “Uh…the next customer is ready whenever you are.”
“Oh,” Jonathan says, face coloring as he quickly turns his back to Nancy and Steve and grabs his camera again. “Right. Sorry, thanks.”
Nancy watches Jonathan for a moment, her expression inscrutable, and Steve watches her watch him as he feels something twist in his gut.
“So…” Nancy says finally, glancing over at Steve. “How’s it been going over here?”
“Oh.” Steve clears his throat. “Yeah, it’s been fine.”
And yet, as he glances between Jonathan, capable and steady as he photographs the oncoming kids, and Nancy, her eyes bright and hair frizzy as her gaze flickers from him to Steve, there’s a part of him that can’t help but wonder if, despite his earlier insistence, Robin might’ve been onto something.
And if she was…well, then Steve is well and truly fucked.