I'm totally in love with these two and I love the shotgunning trope. Hence, this came about. Haha. Title of the song comes from Figure 8 by Ellie Goulding.
Disclaimer: I do not own the characters or the title.
Steve Harrington took in a deep breath as he glanced around the crowded kitchen. He had been drunk a few hours ago, after pre-gaming at one of the footballers places before they had come here. Nancy Wheeler had been their sober driver, picking them up to bring them to the party, but she wasn't planning on staying sober for the rest of the night, and at one point, Steve was pretty sure she had even managed to talk her best friend, Barbara Holland, into having a few shots with her, which was pretty much unheard of.
Steve was meant to be having a good time tonight, but the buzz had sort of worn off, and now he was just standing here, watching people that he had spent the last four years of his life with—a lot of them even longer with, given how small Hawkins, Indiana was—and it was about to all be over. He was leaving for New York in two weeks, and then all of this was going to be behind him. There weren't many others in his senior class going away to college, so many of them deciding they were just going to put college off a year and work, which was code for 'stay in Hawkins, get a dead end job, end up like their parents' and Steve refused to let that happen.
Well, maybe he would have let it happen, until Nancy came traipsing into his life and pushed him to make something better of it.
They may have only dated for a couple of months, but it had been enough for her to make a difference—a good difference—on his life, and they were still close friends now. His grades had gotten better, he had realized what assholes Tommy H and Carol were and stopped hanging around with them, and he had even gotten a job and started saving money for when he went off to graduation. Admittedly, the job was babysitting Nancy little brother and his friends when their parents had had enough of them and Nancy and Barb had other stuff on. A lot of the time, Steve had absolutely no control over them, but the boys were a funny bunch, and he liked them well enough.
Steve sipped from the beer in his hand before two girls with long hair and were ironically wearing their cheerleading outfits came stumbling into the kitchen. They were laughing and plastered and when they saw him standing there, they started looking him up and down like a piece of meat. Steve took that as his cue to leave, since he was less than interested in whatever it was they were thinking, and he left through the side door. He dodged around Billy Hargrove, who was making out with some poor girl who was in the year below them, and opened up the door to the back porch. Surprisingly, it was empty, and when he shut the door, the music from inside wasn't anywhere near as loud as it had seemed. He took in a deep breath and leaned against the door.
"Steve Harrington, running from a party?" Came a low voice from the end of the porch, and Steve jerked upward, into a standing position, and squinted to see the figure in the dark. Clearly he wasn't as alone as he thought.
Jonathan Byers.
Steve hesitated, glancing back over his shoulder toward the door, twisting his mouth, before making a decision to walk slowly down the porch where Jonathan was sitting on the top step. He was wearing a pair of jeans with the denim ripped over his right knee and a leather jacket. It wasn't the douchy type of leather jacket that Billy or Tommy wore, it was older, to the point where the material looked soft, and there were lines worn into the arms.
Nancy had told him that it had belonged to his father, and he wore it like something of a suit of armor, tugging it tighter around his torso when he was uncertain or nervous.
"I guess I'm just taking a breather," Steve said, leaning against the wooden railing next to where Jonathan was sitting, still a few steps of distance between them and also the whole height difference, given Jonathan was sitting and Steve was standing. "People say that they get even crazier when you go off to college..." he trailed off because Jonathan didn't look as though he was paying any attention to him. Plus, Jonathan hardly ever came to these parties, so Steve doubted that it was something that he was interested in talking about. "What are you doing here, anyway?" Steve prompted, taking in a deep breath as he sat down quickly, before he lost his nerve.
"Nancy picked me up after she brought you here, when she went back to get Barb," Jonathan told him quietly. "She wanted to drink but she needed a sober driver."
"And you volunteered?" Steve snorted. "I mean, I know you guys are friends, but I never see you at these things. I think the last time I saw you at a party was Nancy's birthday, and even then, weren't you in the den playing playstation with Mike Wheeler and Will Byers and the rest of them?"
"Those kids are funnier and smarter than most the ones back in there," Jonathan jerked his head over his shoulder toward the house before focusing back on rolling the joint in his fingers. Steve glanced down at the other boys nimble fingers, balancing a filter in the end and then lifting it up to his mouth to lick. He swallowed hard and moved to sit down, close to Jonathan.
Jonathan and Steve didn't run in the same circles, they never had.
Actually, Jonathan didn't really run in anyones circles, he was kind of a loner. He got on with a few people, and he was good friends with Nancy, but he preferred to keep to himself. Steve could understand that, but he also wasn't like that, because he liked being around people, and their noise and laughter.
They had been in high school with each for four years, but they had only hung out a handful of times, and most of those had been in the past couple of months. Nancy was always there, though, as a buffer, and so they really didn't talk to each other all that much.
That was probably a good thing, in all honesty, because Jonathan made Steve feel weird.
Sort of tight, like his skin was shrinking around him, and then his face would heat up and his nose would itch, and he didn't understand what was going on, and that just made things worse.
Or, he did understand what was going on, but he didn't know how to deal with it, so it was easier to ignore.
It wasn't the whole liking guys thing that he couldn't deal with, that wasn't a problem. Steve had accepted a while ago that he liked both girls and boys. It wasn't really something he explored, there really wasn't much opportunity in a town like Hawkins, but he and Nancy had gone to this party out of town a few months back, and there had been this cute guy with floppy sandy hair and stormy eyes that reminded him a lot of another boy, and they had ended up kissing messily in the bathroom. It seemed like there was a chance for it to go further, with the way the other guy had kept pawing at his jeans, but Steve had fumbled with an excuse about needing to check on Nancy, and they had left.
What Steve didn't get was what his fascination with Jonathan was, it wasn't as though they had similar personalities or that they had interesting conversations or even, if he was thinking in the shallow way, the best looking guy at their school.
But there was something.
Something.
"Uh, Steve?" Jonathan's voice was closer to his ear, and Steve blinked, realizing that Jonathan was now holding the smoking joint. He must have zoned out for a few minutes. "Do you want a puff?" He asked and Steve's eyes moved from where they had been following the curves and shapes of Jonathan's lips as he talked, down to the joint.
"Sure," he mumbled, taking it from Jonathan's hand and lifting it to his mouth. Usually he stuck with cigarettes, a nasty habit that Nancy and Dustin Henderson constantly complained about, but he had smoked joints before, just like every other high schooler in America. He sucked on the end of the joint, trying not to think about the fact that he was sharing saliva with Jonathan right now, and held the hazy smoke in his lungs. When he let it out and turned back to Jonathan, Jonathan was staring at him through his fringe with intense eyes and Steve's breath caught in his throat.
Jonathan didn't say anything as he reached out and took the joint from Steve, their fingers bumping and brushing together. He lifted the joint to his mouth, still not breaking eye contact with Steve as he perched it between his lips and then sucked.
There was that hot, itchy feeling again, crawling over Steve's skin, making his stomach curl and clench, and he wasn't able to look away as Jonathan's lips pursed together as he let out a stream of smoke, the tainted air swirling around both of them.
"So why'd you do it?" Steve managed to say.
"Do what?" Jonathan asked.
"Agree to drive Nancy tonight?" Steve's voice sounded a little more even as he looked away from Jonathan.
"She's my friend," Jonathan said bluntly. "Plus, I owe her."
"For what?" Steve was surprised by that as he looked back at Jonathan.
"She helped me with my application," Jonathan shrugged as he put the joint back in his mouth.
"What application?' Steve asked again, and he was pretty sure that he could spent all night doing this, because this was the most that he and Jonathan had ever talked, and they were sitting shoulder to shoulder, since Jonathan had shuffled closer when he had first passed over the joint.
"For NYU," Jonathan replied and Steve nearly choked on his next breath.
"NYU? You're going to NYU?" Steve asked and for the first time since Steve had sat down, Jonathan's lips quirked upward slightly, almost in a smile. "I'm going to NYU."
"I know," Jonathan murmured as he passed back the joint.
"You know?" Steve held the joint in his hand absent-mindedly, more interested in the fact that he and Jonathan were going to the same university next year. Yeah, sure, it was going to be in a massive city, and it was a huge campus, and he didn't doubt for a second that they were studying completely different subjects, but they were still going to be close enough to bump into each other, hopefully on purpose.
"Nancy told me," Jonathan stated.
"Why?" Now he felt like an idiot. Why hadn't Nancy told Steve that Jonathan was going?
"Coz I asked," Jonathan replied. Steve swallowed hard.
"Why?" He repeated.
"Coz I wanted to know where you were going," Jonathan answered off-handedly, as though it was as simple as that, and Steve didn't have an answer for that, so he settled for sucking on the joint. They were getting right near the end, his fingers were starting to heat up as they squeezed the end, and he handed it back to Jonathan, guessing that he was going to take the last drag. Jonathan began lifting it to his lips, but then hesitating. "You want to share the last puff?" He asked, and Steve's eyebrows pulled together in confusion. He didn't say 'no' though, so Jonathan must have taken that as a yes, because he inhaled deeply, dropped what was left of the joint on the step below and snubbed it out with the heel of his shoe and then leaned forward.
Steve wasn't too sure what was happening, but then Jonathan's hand came up and cupped Steve's neck, his fingers stretching toward the nape of his neck, brushing through the strands of hair there, and got closer and closer. Steve's chest was tightening, it felt as though his heart was beating at double time. Jonathan leaned in so close that Steve could make out the flecks of green in his brown eyes, and then his lips were bumping against his.
And then their mouths were coming together—only softly, so achingly softly—and Jonathan was exhaling. As the smoke warmed his lips, Steve parted his, breathing in, and not able to stop himself from closing his eyes. Jonathan's fingers felt so warm against his neck, and his upper lip caught against Steve's lip as he lifted his head and pulled away, but only a few centimeters, still so close that Steve could also smell the minty chewing gum that he must have had before starting to smoke.
When Steve let out the smoke from his lungs, Jonathan didn't waver, didn't move, and when the taller boy opened his eyes, Jonathan was staring at him, as though he was looking for something there.
Whatever it was, he found it, because he then leaned back in, this time with no smoke as an excuse.
Both of their lips were dry from the smoke, and the first few times that their mouths came together, it was just a chaste brush, but then Jonathan tugged slightly at Steve's hair—which drew a slight moan from his throat—and gently maneuvered Steve's head so that it was tilted at a better angle, and then his tongue tentatively touched against Steve's bottom lip. Steve opened his mouth willingly, and then Jonathan's tongue was in Steve's mouth and it was the best fucking feeling in the world.
Jonathan seemed to have heard Steve's moan when he had pulled at his hair, even though Steve had tried to smother it, and he did it again, and Steve jerked slightly, feeling himself twitching in his jeans. Jonathan seemed confident, and that was so strange, given how he acted in public, but Steve was more than happy to let him take the lead. The kiss got a little more sloppy as Steve kissed back, curling his tongue around Jonathan's and reaching out a hesitant hand to rest on Jonathan's thigh, and their teeth bumped together more than once. When Jonathan didn't push him away, Steve's hand slid up a little further on Jonathan's thigh, and he dug his fingers in, so he had a firm grip, and this time it was Jonathan's turn to making a whimpering noise that Steve was going to hear play over and over again, every time he closed his eyes.
When they broke apart, Jonathan kept his eyes closed for a little longer than Steve, and it was so fucking cute—the way his eyelashes were brushing against his cheeks and his lips were still pursed, pretty and red from Steve's kisses—that Steve leaned in a placed a soft, sweet kiss on Jonathan's nose.
"Um," Steve swallowed thickly, not moving his hand from Jonathan's thigh and hoping like hell that the other boy was going to leave his hand on his neck forever. "Do you maybe want to get out of here?" Jonathan's eyes opened and he looked as though he was going to agree before his eyes dimmed a little in disappointment.
"Nancy..." he began.
"Then after," Steve murmured, willing to wait as long as it took. "After you drop her and Barb off...You want to come back to my place? My parents are out of town, plus I make mean waffles for breakfast—I mean, i-if you stay over." Jonathan's lips twitched again, and this time Steve actually got a smile, a small one, but a smile all the same.
"Sounds like a plan."
Let me know what you think x