Stonathan ❤️

81

NOT MINE!!

all credits go to ultraviolentluv on ao3

Realizing he likes guys is the easy part. That much, he can be certain of. For as far back as he can remember, for every crush he's had on a girl, he's had another on a boy. Sure, he can't say anything about it to anyone, but at least he knows. He lets himself indulge every now and then, to space out in math class staring at the back of Kyle Carson's head, or to imagine what it'd be like if he and Jacob Wallace made out after basketball practice. Unrequited fantasies, but they keep him happy.

When he starts dating Nancy Wheeler, he lets everything else fall away. The only thing that matters to him is her, her smile, her voice, her lips. Tommy and Carol make fun of them relentlessly, sure, but he doesn't care. It's puppy love. He has eyes only for her.

Which must be why, when he sees Jonathan Byers eyeing them in the hallway, he feels the pit of his stomach tighten up. He doesn't like the way Jonathan looks at him and Nancy, doesn't like the way Nancy's so sweet to him when he could never be. Not on Tommy and Carol's time, anyways. Jonathan the freak is not about to receive any amity from Steve. He probably killed his brother.

He doesn't understand why sometimes, when he's trying to fall asleep, he thinks about Jonathan's jawline or the ways his fingers look hooked around his camera. He's had a lot of crushes on a lot of people, and there is no way this is crush. That's not what this is. This is Jonathan Byers we're talking about , not one of his hot teammates. He ignores the aching in the bottom of his stomach and assumes he must just be sick. He must be seriously sick in the head if he falls asleep thinking about Jonathan. He never lets himself live it down.

Luckily, he has Nancy to keep his mind off of things. When he's kissing her, he's most definitely not thinking about Jonathan. He absolutely doesn't think about what Jonathan's lips might feel like, or how it'd feel to run his thumb around his jawline, or what it'd be like to have Jonathan's fingers in his hair. He kisses Nancy a little harder and does not think about tracing his fingers down Jonathan's neck. He doesn't try to imagine what Jonathan might sound like in bed. It'd be fucked up if he thought about that sort of stuff.

God, he is fucked.

He keeps it under control. He stuffs that shit down. He doesn't look at Jonathan when Nancy talks to him. He gets a little more satisfaction out of smashing Jonathan's camera than he should, but it makes him feel sick at the same time. Everything about it makes him feel ill. He locks it away in his head and swallows the key. The key aches his stomach, though, and it scratches him up from the inside out.

So the night he comes over to Nancy's expecting to crawl through her window and instead sees her with Jonathan's arm around her, his vision goes absolutely red. He drives home with a lead foot on the gas pedal and an iron grip on the wheel. He feels acid rise up in the back of his throat, and he has to smoke a cigarette (the ones he keeps in his car to pretend he likes smoking) to hold himself together on the drive. He walks straight to his backyard and throws the cigarette down into the swimming pool, hands shaking. How could she? How could Nancy do this?

He never tells anyone, but he jumps into the swimming pool with all his clothes on and sits at the bottom until he absolutely has to come up for air. He beats his palm against the edge of the pool and buries his face underwater to hide the fact that he's crying. Stupid. Stupid. All of this for fucking nothing.

Once he's calmed down enough to try and get some sleep, he puts on dry clothes and thinks just a little too hard about the blanket draped over Nancy's shoulders, the gentle hand Jonathan placed on her back. He buries himself underneath his blanket and clenches his jaw until the need to cry melts away. He sleeps on his side and tries to think about what the hell he can do. Tommy and Carol and Nicole will have to know, he supposes. Maybe they'll have a good idea. Maybe being with them will take his mind off of the fact that he's not sure who he's more jealous of: Jonathan or Nancy.