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Every moment is a fresh beginning.
- T.S. Eliot
Steve is going to lose it if he has to deal with one more person asking about Back to the Future today. Somehow, after everything, Steve ends up at his dead-end job at Family Video again because after the earthquake that rocked their town and then was quickly reframed as a freak accident, what the community apparently needs is Marty McFly on VHS.
It’s a harsh reminder that the entire nightmare that started with the lab is their secret to take to the grave, and everything and everyone else just gets to move on. Steve has to give credit where it’s due, the assholes that started all this are extremely competent when it comes to the cover-up. The story they spin of a natural disaster caused by a gas explosion from an underground facility is palatable enough for a town where a shady laboratory shut down because of reports of toxic materials, and it’s what’s printed in the Hawkins Post mere days after the incident. The town rebuilds with suspiciously fast federal support, and two months later, all the murder cases from the spring are officially closed and only serve to add to the mystery and spookiness surrounding Hawkins. A big-time news channel even dedicates an entire program to the town, and Steve surprisingly was allowed to participate (lie) in an interview, seeing as he was close to all the incidents that have occurred here. Jason Carver gets a memorial in his honor, while Eddie Munson’s legacy is confined to his status as the prime suspect in multiple homicides. The moral panic hasn’t subsided entirely because why would it when it has been quietly raging on since Manson probably– Dustin tells him the school shut down the Hellfire Club– and some people continue to insist on something nefarious lurking behind all the tragedies in town. Still, the world continues spinning, and now, closer to summer, people have chosen to look forward and have fun again.
Even they have been slowly moving forward. Nancy and Robin graduate and Steve goes to the ceremony to holler when their names are called. Robin complains about the stupid gown and the cap the whole time, and when Nancy laughs along with her, it feels like the happiest ending Steve could have asked for when it comes to him and Nancy. There’s even a prom– which Steve was sure wasn’t happening– that gets put on because somebody made an impassionate speech about celebrating the little joys they had after all the tragic deaths of the students of Hawkins High. It’s what they would’ve wanted, they had said. Steve is pretty positive what Chrissy Cunningham would have wanted was to live, but he’s not the one in school so what does he know? Robin and Nancy skip out on it, the former skipping town with Vickie while Nancy holes up with the Byers in Hopper’s cabin.
Nancy and Steve have had sparse conversations after everything, and she tells him that she’s probably going to Emerson come fall if nothing else catastrophic happens. Then, a few days later, she reaches out to him to tell him it’s probably not happening because Jonathan hasn’t gotten his acceptance letter yet, and they have no way of knowing if it has arrived since their house in California was shot up. Then, finally, one afternoon, she tells him that yes, she is definitely going to Emerson, and nothing else. Robin is also planning to go to college, but she tells Steve she would probably have to wait for next year until she has saved up enough for the move, even after the scholarship she got from BU.
Steve tries not to think about his future. His mother seems to be doing that for him. She has become more attentive to his well-being than she has ever been since he started high school after the earthquake. They weren’t even in town when the ground shook and only returned to see if their house was still up. But it was the first time that she had ever expressed guilt that she wasn’t there for him– and Steve had no idea how to handle that, floundering at her tentative questions and furrowed brows. She never did find out about the scars and the multiple secret hospital visits. His father, on the other hand, remains unmoved, only chastising him for the lack of direction in his life day by day. And alas, his mother does nothing to intervene when the words get just a tad harsh, just like she always has before, so Steve is not waiting for some grand apology anytime soon.
In his most bizarre and darkest moments, he wonders if he was supposed to be dead when the bats got him. There really is no reason for him to dodge death as frequently as he has, but for all intents and purposes, he is still here, when many others have died. It’s a terrifying reality to reconcile with– the uncertainty now that the main thing that has terrorized his life for so long is now gone. Maybe that moment in the Upside Down was what his life had been leading to. Maybe Nancy jumping in behind him was an act of mercy from the universe; months removed from it, it’s looking more like an act of cruelty that he now has to live the rest of his life.
Steve doesn’t think he’s suicidal. Not in the way he assumes actual depressed suicidal people are. He doesn’t think of dying. He just doesn’t think about any of it– pushing any flicker of hard feelings away so he doesn’t buckle under the enormous weight of it all.
He spends most of his nights cooped up in his room. Sometimes Robin joins him, and on nights when his mother is home, they dodge her questions and steal whatever is at the back of his father’s liquor cabinet that he won’t remember having. The only time he feels some semblance of normalcy is when he’s at work and talking to the people who walk in, from the preppy girls with made-up faces to the middle-aged dads just looking for something to watch with the family. How embarrassing. To be in this perpetual state of arrested development, where he’s one foot into the real world and still stuck halfway in this bubble he’s constructed for himself.
All this is rattling around in his head when the bell rings at the door to signal another customer. He groans inwardly, not looking up from where he has his face buried into his arms at the counter.
“Yikes,” Robin says, looking at the entrance and wincing at whoever has just come in. “Looks like there’s someone having a worse day than us, dingus.”
Interest piqued, Steve looks and sees none other than Jonathan Byers standing there, looking ten times worse than Steve is feeling.
“Hey, Steve.”
With that simple greeting, Jonathan manages to flip the entire day on its head. A tornado of emotions rushes through Steve’s mind– none positive. It’s been almost two months after everything settled down, and in that period the only times he’s seen Jonathan were when he would show up to the hospital with Nancy to see Max. He’s steered clear of Steve otherwise, and he has made no effort to disabuse Steve of the notion that he didn’t want anything to do with him. It’s not even like Steve has been waiting for Jonathan to come to him like some soldier returning home from war to his wife– they’re not even close to friends– but the utter silence from him still managed to twist his guts into an uncomfortable knot. Steve has assumed that there was some kind of connection there, just on the basis of having been through the trenches together, but apparently not.
Now though, two months later, here is Jonathan in front of him, metaphorical tail between his legs like a kicked puppy. Steve plasters on an easy smile, one he has perfected over a decade of practice.
“Oh, hey, Jonathan. Here to rent a movie? And before you ask, no, we don’t have Back to the Future .”
“Um- no, … that’s not why I’m here.” He looks uncomfortable, even pained in a way that Steve hasn’t seen before. Steve has of course heard about the breakup– it’s impossible not to with the way Dustin practically tripped over himself to tell Steve the news– and he has been mustering up the courage to talk to Nancy about it. He can’t help but feel like he was part of the reason Nancy and Jonathan’s relationship fractured the way it did, all that stuff he said to Nancy in the Upside Down. What he said isn’t entirely untrue, but a good look in the mirror and a long talk with Nancy after everything made him realize it was time to move on. It’s what they both need. But it has been eating at him since he heard about the breakup and now that Jonathan is in front of him, he feels even worse. Terrible would be an understatement to describe how Jonathan Byers looks. His eyes have always carried a certain sadness in them, but that weariness seems even more pronounced now when they are sunken and puffy like he has been spending his days crying. That paired with his slouched shoulders and the tired expression sketched across his face, he looks like the personification of all the Smiths songs rolled into one.
“Listen, can we talk?” Jonathan runs his hand through his hair and throws a sidelong glance at Robin who is inconspicuously listening in from behind the counter. Robin also has her thoughts about the breakup, nothing too tasteful for Jonathan, a lot of sympathy for Nancy, and a dozen theories as to what happened between them. One of them even involves Jonathan being a clone and that the real Jonathan was taken by the government. Steve silently wills her to fuck off because he doesn’t know how to handle facing Jonathan on a good day, let alone on one where he is feeling particularly bogged down. “…Privately?”
“Yeah… of course,” Steve looks at Robin who communicates to him a thousand questions with her eyes, and he just stares back hard. “I’m taking my break now, Robin.”
“Hi, Robin,” Jonathan gives a mumbled greeting as he follows Steve and passes the counter.
Robin looks surprised that Jonathan is even acknowledging her presence, and gives a small awkward wave. “Hey.”
While Jonathan has his back turned to them, Robin looks at Steve with wide panicked eyes and gesticulates wildly to which Steve flaps his hand around asking her to stop.
They go out the back to the alley where Steve and Robin have spent countless times fucking around and not working. Once they get there, Jonathan pulls out a lighter and a pack of cigarettes from one of his pockets and takes one out. Steve watches.
“I didn’t know you smoke.”
“I don’t… usually,” is the only reply Steve gets before he’s offered one himself. Steve refuses it, just watches Jonathan take a drag and lean against the wall. Saying nothing, Jonathan stays like that for a while and Steve shifts on his feet uncomfortably.
“I– uh… I heard about you and Nancy,” He begins, deciding it’s as good a place as any to start the conversation. “Sorry, man.”
Jonathan doesn’t break his thousand-yard stare at who knows what in the opposing wall, only shrugs a little. A piss-poor attempt at nonchalance. “We were good… until we weren’t. It’s not a big deal.”
Right, and Steve is the Secretary of State. He’s never heard such a blatant lie out of someone’s mouth. Steve of all people knows what it is like to go through heartbreak– a crushing heartbreak that he initially thought there was no coming back from– and Jonathan is now displaying every sign of it like the poster child for heartbroken dudes who don't know better everywhere. He debates challenging the other man on it but ultimately decides on diplomacy. “Yeah, well… breakups suck. I’m sorry it didn’t work out, really.”
That makes Jonathan glance up at him, brows furrowed, assessing, analyzing, and Steve’s heart cannonballs into his stomach. Are you, really? He sees the burning question in Jonathan’s eyes. Steve instinctively knows what is being said there, and he immediately scrambles to explain himself.
“Look, I don’t know if Nancy told you, but I said some things to her in the Upside Down that might’ve complicated things with you two, but it was just in the heat of the moment, I wasn'y –”
Jonathan cuts him off with a flourish of his free hand before he can dig his hole any deeper, and shakes his head.
“How she was the one who thunked your head and made you a better person? She told me. No, man– you had nothing to do with it… it was all me.”
“Oh.”
Steve doesn’t know if it’s entirely relief that he’s feeling that he didn’t torpedo Nancy’s relationship. He’s more fixated on the part where Jonathan clearly doesn’t seem to care about the potential of Steve still having feelings for Nancy. When Steve first found out Nancy was dating Jonathan after breaking up with him, he had been hurt. Maybe a little too lovesick and self-absorbed to realize that it was for the better. After Barb, things between him and Nancy have never been quite the same and he doesn’t know if they ever will. Now, though, maybe this is Jonathan admitting to him that he had come to his own realization. If so, he's already ten times more self-aware than Steve was.
“Do you want to talk about it?” Steve tries to play it casual but the sharp way Jonathan’s eyes flick to his tells him he’s failed. It lands somewhere between exhausted and intimidating. Jonathan doesn’t have any actual grounds to act like Steve’s crossing some line, he wants to tell him, when he is the one who sought Steve out in the first place. And he hasn’t said anything about what he wanted to talk about in the first place either. So what is he even doing here, Steve wants to ask. But then, Jonathan sighs this long sigh. Buries his face in his hands. Guilt spilling everywhere.
“She wanted us to go to Emerson together… and I didn’t. I was too chickenshit to admit it so I lied to her… for a really long time. I think at the end of the day, it was the distance. We kept making excuses for each other but I think deep down we both knew that it’s not sustainable… the relationship.”
Inhale. Exhale. Wisps of smoke traveling through the air.
Jonathan shakes his head. “And when I finally had to stop being a coward and tell her, she was really angry…. we had a fight, a big one. She said I was scared of commitment… she’s not wrong. I told her she was being idealistic and I don’t think I was wrong either. Anyway, after our heads cooled and we started looking for a solution, she brought up the idea of going somewhere close so we could be together.”
“You know how she is,” Jonathan adds off-handedly, but Steve’s insides burn with the knowledge that he actually does. Nancy, forever headstrong and argumentative to a fault, but also incredibly loving and sacrificial. It doesn’t surprise Steve that she would let Emerson go just to be with Jonathan. A terrible part of him wonders if she would do the same for him if they were still together.
“I told her no, she can’t do that and then after a long talk, we realized that maybe the reason she was hellbent on this college thing was to prove to ourselves that we’re still in love… and I just don’t think it’s true anymore. And college isn’t going to fix that, much less her giving up her dreams to be with me.”
Then, Jonathan shrugs like it is a forgone conclusion even if he is suffering for it right now.
“We agreed that the long-distance thing was hell… and the natural conclusion– the best thing for both of us– is to let each other go.”
Well, it’s certainly a lot better than ‘bullshit’ . Nancy at her most honest is also capable of being ruthlessly brutal, a months-long dissatisfaction bubbling over with just one word. This is different. This actually feels like there was actually a conversation being made and an effort to understand each other.
“So it was a mutual thing?” Steve clarifies.
Jonathan nods a silent assent. “And we agreed to be friends.”
Steve frowns. That’s not that bad. When he voices it, he’s met with an eye-roll.
“You wouldn’t get it.”
“Why wouldn’t I get it?” Steve questions, all snark when he doesn’t mean to.
Jonathan shoots him an exasperated look. “Because you’re Steve Harrington.”
Well, that’s not entirely fair. He fixes Jonathan with his own frustrated stare.
“You don’t know me, like, at all, Byers. You don’t know what I’d get and wouldn’t get, so just tell me. I’m on your side here.”
Jonathan holds up his hands in surrender, the cigarette still burning away in between his fingers. Steve wants to snatch it away from him and take a drag himself, with the way the conversation is going.
“Look, Emerson is Nancy’s dream, not mine. These past few months in California, I’ve been the most miserable I have ever been in my life because I knew deep down that it’s not. I had a bad year at school, I’m lucky to graduate, I was accepted to Lenora Community but now it looks like I’m not going there either. Whatever it is, I’d only be holding her back… and she deserves so much more than… this,” Jonathan gestures vaguely around him and looks away again. “More than me. And we agreed to be friends, but the fight isn’t just going to magically disappear. It’s still gonna take a while to go back to the way we were before ’84 and it just sucks.”
Steve wants to say on pure instinct that it’s not true, Jonathan does deserve Nancy, but he stops short. What does he know about Jonathan and Nancy’s relationship anyway, from the small glimpses of it he has seen around town? A part of him had to admit a long time ago that they were made for each other, but he’s known better than to accept what he sees on the surface as gospel truth. It’s not his place to assume anything. So he settles on questioning an equally if not more devastating and hard-to-stomach truth that he has been suppressing ever since Jonathan and Nancy got together.
“Did you love her?”
The moment the question is out in the air, Steve regrets ever voicing it because Jonathan looks as if Steve has punched him, winded and beaten down. He glances down the alley in a way that compels Steve to move closer to him so that he doesn’t try to bolt just to avoid answering the question.
“Yeah, man. I really fucking did.”
Steve doesn’t ask him if he still does love her, doesn’t think he can handle the answer without going through some sort of crisis himself. But Jonathan tells him anyway. Jonathan has never struck him as a conversationalist– and this is less a conversation and more a long-overdue one-sided vent session– but Steve just stands there as he listens to Jonathan talk about love and how it just depreciates, and how it’s fragile and terrible, and it’s everything Steve knows and has been through already, and he wants to scream at the other man to shut up. But he doesn’t. His brain commands but his mouth won’t, can’t follow, and he lets Jonathan talk.
“I think I’ll always love her in some capacity– we have a bond forever whether we like it or not. But– it’s not the same as before… and maybe it was the distance, maybe we’ve just grown too far apart as people… I don’t know. We’re just not in love anymore. Not in the ‘we’re gonna be together forever’ way.”
That swimming now in Steve’s head, there to stay forever– that Jonathan has fallen out of love with Nancy– is something Steve might have wanted two years ago, but now it just passes through that hole in his heart like a gust of dry air. There’s no crisis that slaps him across the face, no grand epiphany, no sudden urge to throw himself into traffic. There is just a heaviness weighing on his chest that he can’t decipher. There have been instances where his mind wandered to Nancy during nights when he twisted and turned in bed, and by extension, he has been thinking about Jonathan too. But he never expected… college to be the main catalyst behind their breakup. Steve gets the impression that it’s probably not the entire truth, with the way Jonathan still looks incredibly guarded, face incomprehensible except for that fucking melancholy that seems to permeate in the air and infect Steve with it too, relentless and blue.
They lapse into silence, the sadness still hanging over them like raindrops off an umbrella, and it’s both unbearable and welcome. Jonathan takes a long drag of his forgotten cigarette and puts it out against the wall. Steve shifts closer until their shoulders are practically touching, but Jonathan doesn’t move away.
“I still think about that night from November, you know,” Jonathan's quiet voice breaks through the quiet.
Jonathan doesn’t have to specify which November; it’s part of Steve’s composition now, forever taking space in the biography of his life in big bold typeface. “Which night?”
“The night you came to apologize to me. The night we fought that Demogorgon together. And I couldn’t help but wonder if I would’ve apologized if I were in your place. Gotta be honest… I don’t think I would’ve done that. I would have been too far up my ass to see that I was in the wrong. You’re a good person, Steve.” Jonathan’s voice is steady but Steve hears the uncertainty– or is it insecurity– in it. Steve takes a good look at Jonathan’s profile and wonders if he’s high. He doesn’t seem to be. Steve honestly wishes he was; it’d make the conversation a lot less awkward.
“Nancy said you’ve really grown up… and I didn’t want to believe it at first, but it looks like you really have,” Jonathan says with just a slight twitch of his lips. Like it’s an inside joke or something that Steve isn’t privy to. Steve has no idea how to respond to that. This is already the longest he’s heard Jonathan talk at a time and the guy has already thrown him several curveballs that Steve would need days to process. And now he’s saying shit like this, just casually, that he and Nancy have talked about Steve. Extensively, from the looks of it. It’s too much to take in, but Jonathan’s lips are already moving again, and that is new too. How quickly his thoughts seem to be moving now that they’ve got the ball rolling.
“Have you talked to her at all… after our breakup?”
“No, not really. I figured I should give her some space.”
“Yeah, okay,” Jonathan nods in agreement. “You should talk to her though. I’m sure you guys have some stuff to clear up.”
Oh, good. Jonathan thinks he’s going to use this chance to get Nancy back. That’s just great.
“Uh… I’m not planning on getting back together with Nancy, if that’s what you’re asking, Byers. She already told me she’s not interested.”
“I know. It’s just… she really does care about you– and stuff between us shouldn’t get between your friendship.”
Steve decides it shows how much he has changed over the past few years that hearing this doesn’t make him want to scream into his pillow in frustration. All it does is provide some clarity, fill in a few blanks that he has been missing, and give him the chance to move on, finally. They can be friends, and it will have been worth all the trouble and the tears if it means Nancy will continue to be a part of his life, hopefully forever. Nevertheless, there is a glaring blank that still requires an answer so he leans against the wall again.
“Why did you come to me in the first place, man?”
“I wanted to see how you were doing.”
A burst of incredulous laughter bubbles out of Steve at the answer. That is rich, coming from someone who has done nothing but ignore his existence ever since he came back to Hawkins. Jonathan stares at him owlishly in return.
“What’s so funny?”
The sincerity in his question makes Steve laugh even harder, bordering on hysterical. That gets him a nudge from a frowning Jonathan and he slightly stumbles from the surprise of it. Still, he’s determined to make his point so he fixes his face into something less manic.
“Come on, Jonathan. Two months you’ve been back and this is the first time you’re seeking me out. You just broke up with Nancy days ago. And you’re suddenly interested in my well-being? I think some questions are warranted.” Steve addresses the elephant in the room, but it honestly feels like they are inside the elephant or the elephant has been inside of them all along, a manifestation of their awkwardness around each other. Out of everyone who has gone through the trenches together with Steve, Jonathan has always been the toughest nut to crack– his entire existence overshadowed by his connection to Nancy and the hurt that came along with it. But now that feeling has all but dissolved into nothingness in the ether, there is an opening where it used to be. “You look terrible, by the way. Are you getting any sleep?”
“I am, Mom, don’t worry about it.” Jonathan deadpans, but there is a flash of surprise in his eyes and a blush on his cheeks. Steve doesn’t know where the concern factors into all this either, yet he is filled with it when he looks at Jonathan, recognizing his own despair in the other man. Once when he was no more than ten, he came down with a flu so bad that he physically couldn’t get up from his bed without immediately dropping back down from the exertion. His mother had looked at him with concerned eyes, worried but not sure how to make him feel better beyond the medicines and the soups. It’s that same confused concern now when he wonders if Jonathan is eating well and taking good care of himself. He has no idea how to fix it, but just the fact that another person might be in distress doesn’t sit right with him either.
Steve just gives him a silent pressing look. Jonathan huffs but his expression warps into something softer, almost sheepish. His cheeks are still flushed.
“I didn’t know how to approach you, okay? I was just freaking out thinking about it and I feel like we haven’t had an actual conversation between us,” Jonathan gestures between them. He has always looked a bit antsy to Steve, but now he seems positively nervous. “I know we’ve already talked about stuff before but- you know, it wasn’t… real– or productive, and considering everything that’s happened and now that it’s all over– I just wanted a fresh start again.”
As if it’s planned, a cool breeze suddenly moves past them, and Jonathan moves away the stray strands of hair that fall into his eyes. Steve is still reeling with it though, and takes that split second when Jonathan is distracted to get all of his thoughts and emotions into order. A fresh start. That sounds simple enough. If he could forget the past four years, he would. Since he can’t, he’ll take the next best thing; complete with a bonus side of Jonathan Byers. What even is life anymore.
“Yeah, I want that too.”
Jonathan looks relieved– his body basically seems to deflate, letting go of all its tension– and he doesn’t look as constipated anymore. But there is still a layer of tension between them that he's not even attempting to break, so it falls on Steve again to pick up where they started again.
“Did you miss Hawkins?”
“You’re asking me if I missed the place where the single worst thing that could happen to my family happened,” Jonathan replies flatly.
“Yeah, bad question,” Steve concedes.
“And before you ask, no, I also don’t miss the place where my brother almost died once again in a shootout.”
“Right.”
“We buried a man, watched a helicopter explode in mid-air courtesy of Eleven, and almost ran over the dying body of her…” A pause. Then… “Brenner.” Jonathan says all this like he’s listing off his grocery list, but his eyes betray his emotions, shaken and slightly feverish.
Steve huffs out a disbelieving breath.
“Wow.”
Jonathan huffs like ‘yeah, wow.’ “That’s not counting the detour we did to Dustin’s girlfriend’s house where we met a weirder family than mine, so that was kind of fun. I saw one kid with a drawn-on John Waters mustache directing his sister getting killed. Definitely a high point of the road trip to hell.”
“Pretty eventful, huh?”
“What about you? Any fucked up thing you want to share that happened to you this time around?”
Steve considers the question. “I never knew bat bites could hurt that bad, or maybe they’re just demon bats. Vecna is the most disturbing thing I have ever seen in my life, and God, you don’t want to know what Max looked like when we found her with Lucas. Oh, and I bit the head off a fucking bat because that’s who I am now.”
Now it’s Jonathan’s turn to let out a ‘wow’ . “I didn’t know you went fully Ozzy, Harrington. That’s… wow, dude.”
“Yeah, I still don’t get it completely.”
That brings a hint of something akin to amusement to Jonathan's face.
There’s something else that’s been bothering Steve throughout the conversation. His earlier brushes with Jonathan keep surfacing on the front of his mind, the nasty words and the fight. Just like Jonathan said, they’ve talked about it, but if they are really looking for a new beginning, they can’t just sweep it under the rug again. They need to acknowledge it one last time, even if Steve has to fight Jonathan again to do it.
“So… I didn’t wanna rehash anything that’s been said, but I just want to say it again… so we can have the fresh start without any hang-ups.”
“Okay…” It sounds more like a question.
Steve decides to rip the bandage off. “So… I was an asshole to you in school.”
“You were.” It’s a casual agreement, and there’s no residual grudge or anger to be found in Jonathan’s voice. As if they are discussing the weather and not years of deep-seated conflict that was hastily buried for the greater good of natural order. Not the assumptions they both made and acted upon, only to find the extent of that damage years later in themselves. Not all the times Steve had to avert his eyes when he saw Nancy and Jonathan together because the combination of pain and shame was too much to bear. “You said some pretty awful stuff about my family. It’s nothing I haven’t heard before from people worse than you though. Shit, my father’s said and done worse.”
Steve is once again at a loss for the appropriate words. He opens his mouth then closes it shut, then opens it again but no words initially come out, leaving him gaping like a goddamn goldfish. He is vaguely aware of the kind of home life Jonathan grew up in, but it’s never been laid out in simple terms like this from the person himself. It makes him that much guiltier.
“Still, it was wrong.”
“I wasn’t angry at you for calling me a creep or a perv, you know that, right? I really didn’t give a fuck about that, but that stuff about Will and Mom–”
Jonathan pauses, searching for words to go on, but doesn’t say anything more.
“I know. I’m sorry, truly. It was all out of line.”
“I’m sorry too. For invading your privacy like that with the pictures. You were right to be angry about it… we both made mistakes.” Jonathan admits.
Steve nudges the man beside him. “Water under the bridge, man. Apology accepted.”
He then decides to say the words he’s been wanting to for two years now, but never had the chance because it’s never a good time. Steve has gone over his relationship with Nancy many times in his mind over the years, poring over every little mistake he made, lamenting over all the things he didn’t do. And he always seems to arrive at the conclusion that it just wasn’t meant to be. He knows it now. “And about the Nancy of it all… I was hurt by it then, but I understand her now. I wanted to move on from Barb, and she couldn’t. You were there.”
“And I was there,” Jonathan agrees sadly. “And now here we are.”
“Turns out I couldn’t really move on from it either, so there’s that.”
“We’re just a bunch of messed up people, huh?” Jonathan asks with a small approximation of a laugh that breaks into a yawn halfway through, so terrifyingly human that Steve needs a moment to fully take it in. It makes Jonathan so much more real than the idea of him that Steve had concocted in his mind over these past months– no, years.
“Yeah.”
“When I was back in Lenora, I could talk to Argyle about anything, but now he’s gone back home, and it’s still weird with Nancy– and Will is being distant, and Max is still in the hospital– and fuck… I just want someone to talk to that gets it.”
Jonathan’s voice cracks at the last word and he immediately shields his face from betraying any more emotion, looking embarrassed. The onslaught of words doesn’t phase Steve anymore but it still pulls at something inside him. And above all else, it finally clicks in his head. As much as he wants to believe Jonathan is this antisocial prickly dude, he clearly needs people, to lean on and make sense of all this madness they’re in. Steve himself can’t imagine how else he could have survived without people like Dustin and Robin around. Madness. That’s what would happen, Steve thinks, and he’ll be locked up in Pennhurst like old Victor Creel in no time.
“That’s– I get it, man.”
“Who else can I talk to, fucking Mike?” Jonathan says, grimacing. He looks believably disgusted by the idea that it gets an incredulous laugh from Steve. “That guy’s fucking annoying.”
“I know we’ve had our differences, but I’m here if you need someone to talk to, alright?” Steve casts their fate with a genuine smile and a good-natured clap on the shoulder, hoping it gives Jonathan some reassurance. The man looks like he’s in dire need of it.
“You think we can start again on a clean slate? Let bygones be bygones?” The honest-to-god sincerity and hope in Jonathan’s voice makes Steve’s stomach do somersaults. “A real connection… not just because we were in the same situation together or we used to date the same person. Without all the high school politics and posturing.”
There’s a beat. Steve processes the information, runs it through all the processors in his mind. Deep down inside him, something clicks, an empty piece of an old jigsaw puzzle the size of the entire town now found, and a sliver of the past fades into the background to make way for the future. Maybe this is how he moves on. A slow smile creeps upon his face. “That’s an elaborate way of asking me to be your friend.”
That makes Jonathan snort, less serious. “Yeah, well. Will’s always telling me I should get more of those.”
“What’s going on with Will anyway? Is he okay?”
“It’s… complicated.” Jonathan looks worried now, raises his gaze to the sky like he’s appealing to whatever’s up there, but Steve had abandoned the idea of a deity that looks upon them the moment he swung a bat at a monster from another dimension. “Nothing Upside Down related– he’s just been pretty closed off again. I think I know why, but I can’t help him if he won’t tell me anything.”
“And your mom?”
“In love.” Jonathan makes a face– a mixture of awe and confusion and just a dash of annoyance. The word ‘love’ seems to curl around his tongue in a foreign manner like he’s never said it out loud before. Like it’s something entirely different than what they were just talking about when it came to Nancy. Dripping with something twisted and bound tight that punches Steve in the gut because he knows exactly what that knot in the throat feels like. “Hopper’s still in witness protection but I’ve never seen her this… light.”
It’s a full five seconds before Steve can find the words to respond. It suddenly hits him like a truck that he’s never seen his own mom in love, or his dad for that matter, either. For the longest time that he can remember, all their familial interactions have felt slightly tilted, a little cold, and very much performative. His mom certainly has never been light, whatever definition of the word Jonathan is trying to express. It’s been days since he’s even thought about his parents at all.
“That’s a good thing, right?”
“Yeah,” Jonathan’s shoulders go up in a half-shrug. “I guess.”
Steve is not equipped for this conversation, and God knows what’s swarming around in Jonathan’s mind, but right now, the only thing in his is how stupid love actually is, the thought latching onto his frontal lobes like a parasite, because it always seems to end in hurt and heartbreak and disappointment, and there’s nothing you can do about it, because to love is to perceive and to be loved is to be seen and once you’re seen, it’s all game over. It’s stripping away every layer of your skin for someone who won’t even stick around, or in his parents’ case, be mindless zombies in a marriage that barely functions as one, this many years in. It’s all just so hopeless, and it makes Steve question whether it’s even worth it in the end.
“How are you doing?” Jonathan asks after a brief pause, like he just realized he’s been talking about himself the entire time. Guess story-time is over. “Really. I heard those bats– who knew the Upside Down has fucking bats– down there messed you up pretty bad.”
How is he doing? Robin has asked him that and many other permutations of the question several times over the past… year or so, but he’s always had some prepared, rehearsed answer that won’t make her too alarmed or stare at him with those wide concerned eyes that he doesn’t know how to deal with. Nancy has tried to coax some honesty out of him– she always seems to know when he is lying–but he’s spared her the truth because she doesn’t deserve to be burdened with his bullshit anymore. Something about how open Jonathan is being though, to someone like him when he has no reason to, makes him want to be honest for once too. And they have already agreed to start over as friends, and friends confide in one another, or that is how Steve is going to compartmentalize what comes out of his mouth next.
“If I’m being honest… not that great. I just keep thinking about Vecna. And I know the outlook on Max’s recovery is positive, but I just worry. Some nightmares here and there. Physically… I feel tired all the time. The scars are healing up nicely though– no infections too, thank God. I did not want to know what kind of stuff I could’ve gotten from those.”
“Nightmares… I get those too.”
“Yeah, they’re not good.”
Now that the floodgates have been opened, he can’t seem to stop either. He tells Jonathan about how he can’t stop thinking about how everything’s over but it doesn’t feel like it, how he keeps distracting himself with work and Robin just so he doesn’t have time to think about what comes next for him. How he misses the person he was from before like a phantom limb, his naivete and blissful ignorance. Jonathan listens intently and Steve watches his face shift with each sentence, He wonders if this is too much for Jonathan to take in, but he only regards Steve with a look of interest that he’s never seen on his face, like something is clicking for him too.
“Anyway, I’ve been worse but I could be better is what I’m trying to say… I guess,” Steve finishes lamely, scratching his head, awkward.
“Yeah, man. I understand. It’s a fucked up world we live in… at least we’re not alone.”
Jonathan looks at Steve when he says this, eyes wide and sincere, and it’s like his exhaustion disappears for a moment. He sounds like he genuinely cares. Steve can’t do anything but look back. The eye contact must make Jonathan uncomfortable because he quickly looks away. Steve keeps staring though.
“I’m sorry about Eddie, by the way. Nancy told me you became friends between the shitstorm.”
Steve blinks. He’s still grappling with his feelings when it comes to the ones they lost. “Yeah. It sucks.”
“At least he got to die a hero,” Jonathan mutters under his breath, quiet, but it knocks the wind out of Steve. It brings back all the bad memories, them finding Eddie’s body on their way back to the gate, having no power to do anything about it, and ultimately having to leave him behind. Steve still can’t forgive himself for it.
“I’m sure his uncle is comforted by that,” Steve snaps because people just don’t seem to understand sometimes. “He’s fucking dead when he shouldn’t have been. And nobody fucking cared. For his uncle, it was his nephew, not a hero. In the eyes of everyone else, he was nothing more than a satanic homicidal maniac, and we can’t do anything about it so please, spare me the martyr shit because it’s never done anyone any good.” His voice is sharper than he intends and it must hit Jonathan where it hurts because the reaction is visceral, he looks visibly chagrined when he turns to Steve.
“You’re right. That was dumb… sorry.”
Steve rubs the bridge of his nose and sighs. “It’s just– it’s dehumanizing to him that he’s known as just one thing or the other on each extreme side of a spectrum. He was just Eddie, you know? He had good intentions and he made bad choices sometimes but he was Eddie.”
“I understand, I just… I don’t know– I was just grasping at the straws that he didn’t die for nothing.”
Steve sighs again, deciding to let it go, because he knows Jonathan really doesn’t mean anything by it, but it still stings a little.
“Did you know him much?”
“Not really, but he was always friendly whenever we crossed paths at school. Maybe a little intense…?” Jonathan questions. “But friendly.”
Steve cracks a smile. That was Eddie, alright. “Yeah, he was a pretty cool dude. I think you would’ve gotten along, he also liked music that wasn’t music.”
“Woah, we’ve been friends for five minutes and you’re starting a fight already?”
They share a small laugh– their first, Steve would later note– and Family Video is still standing, and he hasn’t combusted yet. It’s all good.
“So, fresh start, huh?” Steve asks. “What’s that look like to you?”
Jonathan furrows his brows, contemplative, playing with the hem of his jacket. It’s not the first time he’s done it this afternoon, but it’s the first time Steve’s eyes focus on the action. He realizes again, a bit dumbly, that Jonathan is this entire person, not just fragments that he has preconstructed in his mind. “I don’t know… just trying to figure out who I am beyond all the chaos, I guess. Literally anything that doesn’t remind me of these past three or four years would be a fresh start.”
Steve nods in understanding, mumbling ‘same’. He is very much aware that he himself has no concrete answer for his own question, so he directs the conversation elsewhere before Jonathan can lob it back at him.
“Hey, I heard through the grapevine that you’re a major pothead now,” Steve says lightly, playful. Tries not to break the delicate balance they have made for themselves. He can freak out about all this later with Robin. “If you ever want anyone to smoke with some time, you know where to find me.”
“That’d be nice, man.” Jonathan breaks out into the first real face-splitting smile Steve’s seen from him the whole time they’ve been talking, the one he has caught sight of whenever Jonathan’s with Will or Mrs. Byers. It’s a nice change of scenery when Jonathan isn’t actively brooding and being despondent. Like this, Steve can see what Nancy saw in him in the first place– warm and grounding.
“So…friends?” Steve returns the smile and holds out his hand, even though it makes him feel like a little kid on the playground.
Jonathan is still beaming and Steve’s brain is still screaming at him, but it’s not as deafening and screeching as before.
“Friends.”
His hand is impossibly warm when Steve shakes it.