Stonathan ❤️

106

NOT MINE!!

all credits go to Anonymous on ao3

A/N: This story has two parts this is part 1

Okay, so.

The thing about romance was that it made people do stupid, embarrassing things.

Steve Harrington of all people would know, he himself was stupid and embarrassing (extra emphasis on the stupid part) when it came to his girl Nancy Wheeler. So incredibly stupid and embarrassing that even among the myriad of dates, trips to the movie theatre, diner bills, and picnics, he still wanted to find new ways to make his girl smile.

One night he decided the best way to do that was to make Nancy a mixtape. To give her something sweet to listen to while studying, while heading to school... to listen to whenever she wanted.

So after digging in the deep recesses of his closet for his tape collection (and, later, discreetly visiting the record store to pick up some new ones), he sprawled out on the dark carpeted floor in his room and dumped them all out in a pile next to his double cassette player deck.

He spent weeks slowly sifting through the options he had (The Closer I Get to You by Roberta Flack, Crazy Little Thing Called Love by Queen, Suddenly by Billy Ocean, Ain't No Mountain High Enough by Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell...) and chipping away at a new mix that showcased the sweetest, most romantic songs he could find.

At the end of it all, he had himself quite the helluva mixtape. He listened through it once or twice himself just to make sure it was good enough to give to Nancy, just to make sure it was up to snuff. All the songs sounded great and they were appropriately romantic, but the thing was... a part of Steve wasn't a hundred percent ready to give it to her just yet. So he held onto it for a while, and let it hide away in one of his desk drawers collecting a little bit of eraser shavings and dust.

Though it turns out that the tape didn't even matter, because Nancy broke up with him before he even was ready to give it to her and he learned the hard way that heartbreak also made people do stupid, embarrassing things.

Like crying yourself to sleep with that damned mixtape you made for your now-ex-girlfriend clutched in your hands like a fucked up teddy bear.

Like scribbling her name thoroughly off of the label and hiding the damned thing in the glove box of your car, because as much as the raw, empty chasm that split inside of you hurt, the idea of purposely throwing out that tape hurt even more.

Steve figured out that heartbreak made people start to do crazy things, too.

Crazy things like going out of your way to hang out with Jonathan. Freakin'. Byers.

Crazy things like enjoying going out of your way to hang out with the guy.

And somehow, a crazy, spurred-on-by-heartbreak decision like that eventually led to everything else settling down (at least outside of the "Upside Down" issue, anyway).

Nancy marched up to Steve (and Jonathan) one day and said– well, declared– that she didn't want to date anyone at the moment. The argument from the damned Halloween party finally got cleared off of everyone's plates like soggy leftovers and tossed into the trash where it belonged, and both Nancy and Steve dusted off their hands and left that conversation with matching grins.

Once all of that bullshit got cleared out of the way, Steve started to patch himself up.

He, Nancy and Jonathan started to get along pretty great (as friends). Every time Steve looked at Nancy, the pain of the breakup hurt less and less. Jonathan turned out to be quite the company; always making Steve laugh with some witty, under-the-breath quip. Making him smile so widely and sweetly that something warm would settle in his chest.