Stonathan ❤️

6

NOT MINE!

CREDIT GOES TO : thoroughbreds on ao3

Steve has three big reasons for wanting to go to the stupid ten year high school reunion.

The first one is the biggest reason, the most understandable one, the one that Steve uses when he explains to Jonathan why this is important to him, the one that gets Jonathan to agree, even if he makes the pointed remark of I’m not going to play nice with anyone who doesn’t deserve it. The reason is that Steve spent all of high school hiding himself away, becoming someone else so people would like him, haunted by the knowledge that they’d never idolise who he really was. And he’s past that now; he’s happy, he has Jonathan, he’s stable, and he’s proud of who he is. He wants to prove that to all the small-minded assholes he grew up around, because he knows they’re going to gossip about him anyway, and he doesn’t want them to have the privilege of thinking they won. Steve needs to do this for his sixteen year old self, who had been so terrified of himself and what the future held.

The second reason is purely superficial and perhaps a little naïve, but a part of Steve wants to see if he’ll still be adored. He knows, realistically, that he didn’t end up the way that everyone wanted and expected King Steve to end up, but they still loved him once and Steve is willing to give some of him the benefit of the doubt. High school is stupid, and in the past, but he’d be lying if he said he never got a rush from being the most popular guy in school.

And the third reason that Steve has for wanting to go is the one that makes him blush late at night, when Jonathan’s sleeping soundly beside him. He doesn’t want to say what it is out loud, because even if their sex life is far from vanilla and Jonathan would probably indulge his fantasies no matter what, it still feels embarrassing. He keeps picturing the facial expressions Robin would make if he admitted that I want to have sex with my husband in the bathroom of our old high school because I never got to make out with him in them like I did with all my exes, and even if Robin’s teasing and faux disgust is always in good fun, he doesn’t want to have to justify it.

He doesn’t even know if it will happen, really, because he never gets around to bringing it up to Jonathan, and the closer they get to the night of the reunion, the more Steve’s thoughts are dominated by just how people are going to react to see their former king in love with a man (Jonathan Byers, at that), and any fantasies about what they could get up to are pushed to the back of his mind.

That is, until they’re standing in the tackily decorated Hawkins High gym, and Steve suddenly can’t remember any of the snide remarks he’s received tonight or what Tina’s been up to in the past decade even as she explains it to them, because all he can think about is how good Jonathan looks in his suit, and Steve needs him, now.

Steve’s never been able to figure out what it is about Jonathan that makes Steve so drawn to him, this magnetic pull that existed long before Jonathan even knew about it, way back when Steve saw him for the first time at fifteen years old and instantly fell for him, hard and fast, developing a crush that he’d spend the next few years torturing himself over. Even now, when they’re married (not legally, but in every sense that matters to them), Steve sometimes looks at him and feels his heart beat faster and his face heat up, wanting him so badly that it just might kill him.

He manages to make it through the rest of the conversation with Tina without doing anything more than wrapping an arm around Jonathan’s waist to pull him in closer, but the moment she excuses herself to go say hi to Vicki, Steve’s resolve crumbles. He drops his hand and intertwines it with Jonathan’s instead, tugging him towards the doors.

“There’s something I want to do,” Steve whispers, and Jonathan raises an eyebrow with confusion, but allows Steve to lead him into the hallway without a word. It’s deserted, everyone back inside the gym reliving their glory days, and Steve can hear the music coming from the closed doors behind them, but all he can see is Jonathan’s sweet smile and slightly messy hair and his exposed collarbones because he’d adamantly refused to wear a tie to this thing. He’s the most beautiful man that Steve’s ever seen, and he no longer cares about possibly embarrassing himself, because Steve has dreamt about the third reason enough that denying himself the moment would be stupid.