Stonathan ❤️

22

NOT MINE!!!

all credits go to Lexatomic on ao3

a/n: I feel like I already did this story just comment if I didn't sorry!

Something was wrong. Jonathan knew it. He felt it. Ever since his little brother Will had come back from the upside down, everyone pretended that life had come back to normal. But it didn't. Something changed. How could he possibly be the only one to feel it ? Why would everyone act like everything was okay ? Everything wasn't okay. Actually, not a single thing felt okay to Jonathan Byers right now. Of course, Will was back. Of course, his mother stopped acting totally crazy. Of course she took off the christmas lights. Of course everyone came back to school. Of course Will kept playing Dungeons and Dragons at the Wheeler's with his friends. Of course Steve and Nancy started dating again.

But something was wrong. Starting with Jonathan's brother. Will has been eating less, sleeping less. He had nightmares, and it wasn't rare that he woke up in the middle of the night and couldn't go back to sleep. Jonathan heard him from his room, waking up screaming, getting to the bathroom, drinking a glass of water, coming back to his bed and fidgeting around until dawn. The thing was Jonathan slept even less than his brother. Since they fought the demogorgon, he hadn't slept more than four hours in a row. He was often exhausted, but he still took extra shifts because their family needed extra cash. They had to re-build the wall destroyed by the demogorgon. It costed money. So Jonathan took care of that.

He was doing okay during the days. He kept himself busy, he worked, he took Will to the Wheelers, he chatted with Nancy, he listened to music. Really, daytime was not that bad. But when the sun started to fade away, that was when Jonathan's hell began. He found himself alone in his room, alone with his thoughts, and this crippling feeling that something was wrong, that something bad was about to happen any second. His heart started to race, his palms to sweat, his head to spin, his stomach to hurt. He felt his lungs burning, he felt that something was crushing him. It could last hours, hours of this feeling torturing him. He tried to exercise, to punch something, to drink, to eat, but nothing worked. So he would just lay down on his bed, put his headphones on, listen to some loud music and try to sleep.

That night, he was feeling really overwhelmed by the feeling, that had became way too familiar, so he had put on his headphones and his favorite music at the loudest. It wasn't working though. Not tonight. Tears were rolling down his cheeks. His hands were shaking. And there was nothings he could do about it.

Jonathan heard a tiny noise besides his music. Like a little knock. He opened his eyes and took off his headphones. Nothing. Just the silence and his heartbeat pounding against his ear. He was about to put his headphones back on when he heard it again, louder this time. He shifted himself up on his elbows and turned on the lamp on his nightstand. The sound repeated a third time and Jonathan turned his head towards his window. His heart skipped a beat when he saw something moving. He jumped on his feet, grabbed the gun he kept under his bed and stepped to the window, breathing heavily. He tore the curtains up, pointing his gun at the potential enemy, ready to shoot another demogorgon.

"Woah, chill ! It's just me !" shouted a familiar voice through the glass. Jonathan lowered the gun when he recognized a brown-haired guy with scared eyes. Steve Harrington. He opened the window.

"Fucking asshole, what the hell are you doing here ? You scared the fuck out of me !" Jonathan stuttered as Steve clumsily entered his room.
"Shh calm down Byers, you're gonna wake up your family." Steve whispered while closing the window behind him. "You have a gun ?" he said with a surprised grin.
"None of your business." Jonathan replied, putting the gun back under his bed. He quickly wiped the tears off his cheeks before facing Steve and checking out his outfit. He was wearing jeans and a thin t-shirt, along with a pair a sneakers and a jacket. "Why are you here ?" he asked with anger in his voice.
"I- huh... I planned on going to Nancy's, but she wasn't home..."
"Yeah, the Wheelers left this morning for holidays."
"How come you know that and i don't ?"
"I don't know, maybe you're too busy trying to get in her pants to actually focus on what she tells you."
"Hey, shut up dude. You don't know me."
"Exactly." Jonathan snapped. "Then why are you in my room at ... He checked his alarm clock. One past twelve AM ?"
"Huh i'm gonna sound stupid, Steve said, scratching the back of his head, but i left my keys at my aunt's last week. I kinda did it on purpose, so that Nancy would have to let me sleep over at her place but now i have nowhere to sleep and..." Steve interrupted. "Hey, you okay Jonathan ?" he asked as he noticed his red eyes and the tears left on his face.
Jonathan used the back of his hand to wipe out his eyes and nodded. "Yeah, sure."
"Look, i'm really sorry that i scared you, I... I really didn't mean to, I'm sorry..." Steve stuttered as he stepped closer to Jonathan. The other boy kept his gaze down, ashamed oto be crying in front of Steve.
"It's fine, it's not about you, I'm just... Feeling a bit down at the moment."