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Jonathan doesn’t necessarily hate parties. In theory, a party is just a gathering of people with food and music and a general collective mood of happiness. It’s impossible to say that he hates parties, period, because he definitely wouldn’t turn down a room full of photographers comparing lens settings while listening to The Smiths and eating his mom’s lasagna. That would count as a party and he’d fucking love it.
But it’s easier to just say he hates parties rather than the truth: the types of parties he’d enjoy don’t really exist. At least they don’t exist in Hawkins. These parties, he realizes now while he lingers alone halfway between the door and the kitchen, are constructed for a certain type of person. Someone who enjoys spiked punch, blaring rock and roll, and the constant paranoia that the cops could show up at any minute.
Someone like Steve Harrington, basically. And it’s not that Jonathan hates Steve (not anymore at least) but they’re wildly different people. Steve would walk in the door at Jonathan’s dream party and immediately walk back out. His scene is here with the keg in the backyard and the dancing and the frightening anonymity of Halloween costumes. This is where people like Steve thrive while people like Jonathan shrivel up and try their best to disappear.
At least that’s what Jonathan has always assumed. But now, oddly enough, Steve has just emerged from a dark hallway and is making a beeline for the front door. He doesn’t seem to see Jonathan at all, or anyone at all, but Jonathan sees him. He sees him reach a hand up to his face and brush under his nose like he’s either crying or suffering from a cold, both of which seem physically impossible for Steve Harrington to do, and while Jonathan is busy staring he doesn’t realize that he’s intersecting Steve’s apparently permanent route to the door until Steve’s shoulder brushes his. Jonathan glances in his wake. No signs of Nancy.
The front door slams between two songs and everyone looks towards it, startled, before seemingly realizing it was Steve Harrington who slammed it. Some people find this hilarious, apparently. That new douchebag with greasy hair is laughing like it’s the funniest thing he’s ever witnessed.
Jonathan makes his way toward the door. It’s colder outside now than it was ten minutes ago, somehow, and Jonathan sticks his hands in his coat pockets. He takes them back out. He sticks one in and lets the other dangle at his side. Why is he nervous?
It’s actually reasonable to be nervous, if he thinks about it. He’s never had a one-on-one conversation with Steve that didn’t end in personal belongings being broken or punches being thrown. They’re supposedly on the same side now, but going from such a passionate hatred to such a clumsy truce doesn’t seem like solid enough ground for Jonathan to go watch him cry. If he even was crying because, again, Steve Harrington probably can’t even cry. The situation is probably just that Steve has something stuck in his eye and he’s taking a quick trip to the car to get it out before he triumphantly returns to Nancy and kisses her in their matching costumes.
But then why the door slam? Maybe it really hurts.
Jonathan spots the BMW that might be Steve’s down a long line of cars poorly parallel parked on the street. He approaches cautiously, slowing down even more when he sees a shadowy figure that’s probably Steve leaning against the trunk of his car. This, he realizes when he sees a flare of light as Steve positions a cigarette between his lips, is a horrible idea. He keeps walking.
“Hey.” He says, making Steve jolt and look up with a fist raised reflexively. Not a good idea to startle the guy who fought a demogorgon last year, in hindsight, but also Steve doesn’t seem easily startled. Steve doesn’t seem like a lot of things that he currently is.
“Fuck, Byers.” Steve huffs, giving him a halfhearted glare. He sniffles and rubs the sleeve of his Risky Business jacket against his eyes. Fuck indeed. “What do you want?”
It sounds a lot like King Steve. Same bite, same annoyance, different look on his face. This look is a lot less smug and a lot more miserable. What does Jonathan want? He wants to know what happened, but that’s more of a selfish impulse rooted in his feelings for Nancy. He wants to stay out here in the street, where the party and its accompanying crowd are far away. He wants Steve to not cry.
“I just thought, y’know, you looked upset. When you left just now.”
Steve stares blankly. His cigarette is dangling over his bottom lip. “And?”
“And,” Jonathan shifts from one foot to the other and a bit of the old resentment he felt for Steve is dredged back up because he can’t believe this asshole is gonna make him say it, “I thought I should check.”
Steve continues to not comprehend at all, until finally a realization falls over his face. “I’m not drunk, man, I was the DD.”
“That’s not what I mean.”
Steve rolls his eyes, which is less effective when they’re puffy and red, and impatiently demands, “Then what do you mean?”
Steve had a concussion after last year. Courtesy of Jonathan punching him, realistically, but ultimately chalked up to fighting the Demogorgon and getting shoved a bit too roughly against the living room wall. And before that, Jonathan can remember at least two times he watched from the sidelines at basketball games with his newspaper pass around his neck and a bit of bitter triumph in his heart while Steve was helped off the court because he either smacked his head against the floor or took an aggressive elbow to the face. So, to be fair to Steve, it’s understandable if maybe he has some upstairs damage that’s hindering his thought processes and making him unable to grasp what Jonathan’s trying to communicate.
But even without the brain damage, it’s a potentially confusing situation. Jonathan and Steve don’t talk beyond awkward greetings when their paths cross with Nancy at the intersection. They both remember making each other bleed last year. Steve could just be so baffled by the idea of Jonathan checking on his emotional wellbeing that it’s literally the last explanation. Or maybe he’s baffled by the idea of anyone checking at all.
“I mean are you okay?”
Steve just stares. Smoke is curling up around his face, creating a thin mask that doesn’t at all hide the blatant surprise on his face. Finally he shrugs and easily hops up on the back of his car, ignoring the way it creaks under him while he reclines against the back windshield. He’s to one side, Jonathan notices. On purpose?
“Nancy is pissed at me, is all.” Steve laughs dryly. “That’s literally it. Just stupid high school drama.”
“Nancy isn’t really the type to get caught up in stupid high school drama.”
“Well it’s my own fault I guess. I kept telling her that we need to get back to being, like, normal teenagers who do normal shit. I guess she interpreted that as we need to get shitfaced and yell at each other in a bathroom at a party.”
“What did you yell about?”
There’s a pause and Jonathan thinks Steve isn’t going to tell him. There’s a million valid reasons why he shouldn’t, why he doesn’t have to. The most obvious reason is that Jonathan has been following Nancy around like a lost puppy for the last few months, and he knows how that looks. Steve probably thinks he’s here to take notes and then immediately run to Nancy, ready to be the hero and fix everything. But then Steve presses a hand to his eyes and keeps talking.
“Actually, I didn’t yell. She didn’t either, I guess, but when you’re all pissed off everything has that same effect as yelling.” He sighs and starts staring up at the sky. Jonathan glances up, too. They’re both looking at the first quarter moon when Steve asks, “Did you know Barbara Holland died in my pool?”
“Yes.” Jonathan says. He keeps looking at the moon.
“Oh, right. You were there.” Steve doesn’t seem in the mood to talk about that any further because he hastily continues. “I kept asking my parents to fill it in, but they wouldn’t budge. They like hosting parties where everyone compliments the pool. And they don’t know someone died in it, you know? To them it’s just…the pool. But anyways when I think about the pool I’m like, fuck, that’s where Barbara Holland died. That’s the word I use. Died. She died.”
“She did die.”
“If you ask Nancy, she was killed.”
Jonathan finally looks down from the sky. There’s a faint half-circle of white burned into his eyes and it makes half of Steve out of focus. “Killed by the Demogorgon, she means.”
“No. Killed by us. By her and I.”
Jonathan watches Steve bring his hand up to his face again and tries to comprehend what he’s hearing. As if he’s the one with a history of head trauma, Jonathan struggles to make sense of the information quickly enough.
He already knows that Nancy feels tremendous guilt for leaving Barb alone that night. It’s something she’s grappled with every single day since then, something that she still says to him through tears when they talk on the phone. But it’s always been communicated to Jonathan as survivor’s guilt, a phantom sense of regret for not predicting the future and knowing that leaving Barb that night would also mean her getting taken to the Upside Down. Never once has Nancy described it as her directly killing Barb.
Because she didn’t directly kill Barb. Neither did Steve. And if they did, then Jonathan almost killed Will by not making sure he’d come home from the Wheelers the night he disappeared. But that’s not how this stuff works, Jonathan knows for a fact. And he can’t begrudge Nancy of holding that belief, albeit irrational, because he has beliefs now too. If he drives Will everywhere, he can keep him safe--that’s a big one.
But would he ever say that out loud? Would he ever suggest it to anyone else? Would he ever stop Will on the way out the door and say, hey, bud, I actually think I should drive you because if not you’ll probably go missing again?
No, he wouldn’t. Because Will might believe it. And Steve might believe this.
“You didn’t kill Barb, Steve.”
Silence. Jonathan takes a sudden, impulsive risk and climbs onto the trunk beside him. The creaking grows even more adamant but Steve continues to not care at all. In fact he grins a little bit, and it’s gone in three seconds but it was there. “Getting comfortable there, Byers.”
It’s actually pretty uncomfortable. The car is cold under his jeans and there isn’t really enough space for both of them. Plus, Steve’s cigarette smoke is burning his eyes. But it feels slightly less like a therapist and patient, so he shrugs and sticks with it.
“Look, Nancy is just....”
“Drunk.”
“I’m sure that has something to do with it, yeah. And I mean she’s grieving, man. Barb was her best friend.”
“I know that.” Steve’s voice is softer when he says it, resigned. “I just don’t get it, though. I mean if I helped kill her best friend and I remind her of that and she doesn’t even love me then why are we still together? Why--”
“Wait,” Jonathan glances over at him, “she doesn’t love you? That’s not true, she’s--”
“She said it, Byers.” Steve meets his eyes and for once doesn’t avert them after two seconds. He just locks onto his gaze, red-rimmed and all, and shrugs helplessly. “She said it right to my face. I believe her word choice was that our whole relationship is, um, bullshit.”
It’s a far cry from what Jonathan imagined their conversations to be. Every night he’s spent on the phone with Nancy is always accompanied by his speculation on what she says to Steve. If she tells them the same details about her day, if she cries more when she’s talking to her boyfriend, if they comfort each other by kissing rather than by landline. And he’d always figured that she probably does tell Steve more. Steve only looks at her as if she’s the reason the tides go in and out. Jonathan figured it was mutual.
And even if he did imagine them fighting, it never would’ve included the word bullshit. Because Steve and Nancy’s relationship doesn’t seem like bullshit when he’s scooping her up in the hallway and laughing while she pretends to hate it until eventually they stop with the dramatics and just kiss, leaning and melting and becoming one person. But maybe that’s all just...like the moon right now. Only halfway there.
Jonathan opens his mouth to remind Steve that she’s drunk, but it’s not the right thing to say. Somehow they both know it isn’t true. Steve probably knows because he has experience being drunk. Jonathan knows because it’s the same routine that used to happen with his father.
“I’m sorry.” He finally says, poignantly aware of how lame it is. “You didn’t deserve that, Steve.”
Steve looks up at him. He’s still lying against the windshield, looking up at Jonathan’s upright position. His eyes aren’t glistening like they’re seconds from spilling over anymore, but they’re still red and his voice still sounds stuffy when he softly murmurs, “Didn’t I?”
“No. You didn’t. I know you were a high school bully last year, but that doesn’t mean you should have to live thinking you killed someone.”
“I think me being a high school bully is the reason I think it. I think if I had been nicer to Barb, or if I had checked to make sure she was inside, or if--”
“Steve, you’re not getting it. Even if you were still an asshole I’d be saying this, because none of those things could’ve changed what happened. And you aren’t anymore, by the way, you aren’t an asshole. I kind of like who you are now.”
“Well, respectfully, Byers, I think you should kind of be holding a grudge against me.”
“Well, I’m not, so. Take it or leave it.”
They look at each other with a resigned acceptance that neither will fully believe what the other is saying. Steve won’t believe that the ghost of King Steve doesn’t have to haunt him forever and Jonathan won’t believe that it does. He desperately wishes he could make Steve believe somehow, but he can’t because he’s just Jonathan Byers and they don’t even talk.
Until now, anyways.
Steve sniffs and sits upright, making them shoulder to shoulder. “Well if you like me so much, would you mind doing me a favor and taking her home? I can give you her address--”
“I know her address.”
Steve freezes the brief searching through his jacket pockets, tensing up like he’s just been sucker punched. Jonathan hastily explains,
“Because of Mike? I’ve dropped Will off there every weekend since I got my license.”
“Oh, yeah.” Steve’s shoulder relax. “Yeah, obviously. Well maybe don’t let the little brothers see her plastered. It’s probably too PG-13 for them and they’re, what, like seven?”
“Will is turning thirteen in March.”
“They’re seven.” Steve dismisses. He gracefully slides off the trunk of the car and lands easily, much more easily than Jonathan does, and heads to the driver’s side door. The cigarette is tossed on the ground and snubbed out with the toe of his right Nike. Jonathan is temporarily blinded by the tail lights flashing when Steve unlocks his car. It doesn’t seem natural to say goodbye, or say anything really, so Jonathan gets the hint and starts in the direction of the house. He’s already bracing himself for the stares he’ll receive for going after Steve, maybe muttered words that he’s heard a million times before, when Steve stops him in his tracks by calling, “Byers?”
Jonathan pivots to face him. He’s yet to enter the car, instead just kind of leaning against it and thinking. “Yeah?”
Steve pulls the door open. “I kind of like who you are now, too.”