Stonathan ❤️

141

NOT MINE!!

all credits go to KidA_666 on ao3

Summary cuz: 

Jonathan doesn't know what counts as the first time he met Steve Harrington.

Was it when Tommy Hagan first zeroed in on him in the sixth grade and Steve was never far behind? Jonathan would make eye contact with Steve, sometimes, just before Tommy shoved him to the ground or against a locker; Steve always looked away first.

Or was it the gas station last year, when Steve called him Jason while Jonathan glared out from behind the counter the whole time? In the days after, he'd gone back to that moment more often than he'd like to admit; usually, it was to think some variation of that's probably the worst thing to ever happen to him, me not selling him beer so I don't lose my goddamn job. Meanwhile.

(Meanwhile: As in, while Jonathan wasted his time on Steve Harrington, Will almost died. That would turn out to be a recurring theme of their relationship: Moments of catastrophic distraction, always at his brother's expense.)

Eventually, after a few detours, Jonathan comes to the conclusion that the first time he really met Steve was in ninth grade, when he and Fred Benson got stuck taking the basketball team's yearbook photos.

I put on the deer suit. I turned my ears in all directions. I'll live alone or in between. This is the testimony of the deer: solitude, the long corridors, love from a distance.

-Richard Siken, "The Stag and the Quiver"

―

Jonathan doesn't know what counts as the first time he met Steve Harrington.

Was it when Tommy Hagan first zeroed in on him in the sixth grade and Steve was never far behind? Jonathan would make eye contact with Steve, sometimes, just before Tommy shoved him to the ground or against a locker; Steve always looked away first.

Or was it the gas station last year, when Steve called him Jason while Jonathan glared out from behind the counter the whole time? In the days after, he'd gone back to that moment more often than he'd like to admit; usually, it was to think some variation of that's probably the worst thing to ever happen to him, me not selling him beer so I don't lose my goddamn job. Meanwhile.

(Meanwhile: As in, while Jonathan wasted his time on Steve Harrington, Will almost died. That would turn out to be a recurring theme of their relationship: Moments of catastrophic distraction, always at his brother's expense.)

Eventually, after a few detours, Jonathan comes to the conclusion that the first time he really met Steve was in ninth grade, when he and Fred Benson got stuck taking the basketball team's yearbook photos.

Jonathan had spent the period before contemplating faking his own death―or at least pretending to throw up―to get out of it. He was stuck with the A through J group, meaning Tommy and Steve and probably some other assholes whose last names he couldn't place in alphabetical order just yet.

Tommy did his usual display of shoulder-checking and sneering and you can keep a copy of this one in your nightstand ; but Steve actually surprised Jonathan by thumping Tommy between the shoulder blades as they traded off, and doubly so when he followed up with a hiss of "cut it out, dickhead."

He even tacked on "Sorry about Tommy." It took Jonathan a few seconds to register that this part was directed at him.

Sorry about Tommy ―like it was a novel occurrence and not something Jonathan could set his watch by.