fireworks - steve harrington

2.02

BULLSHIT

"Chug! Chug! Chug! Chug! Yeah!" Steve heard half the people at the party yell as he walked in. He was shocked when he saw they were all cheering for Ren, his boyfriend. They had to take precautions so as not to raise suspicion, and that included going to parties separately even if they were to spend the entire night with each other.

He shook his head and laughed a bit when he got to Ren. "Babe, you good? You don't usually drink."

"Yeah. Tried to beat that new way-too-cocky kid, Billy Hargrove, but he's apparently the Keg King now. I'm sorry."

Steve laughed again. "It's fine. I'm not really about that life anymore, so I don't care." They linked arms, a pretty big risk of course, but they thought everyone was probably too drunk to care all that much, and headed toward the center of the big house.

"Uh oh." Steve stopped. Ren followed his gaze and saw Nancy at the end of it, downing cup after cup of what they figured was probably hard alcohol.

"Shit. I know she's not my friend anymore, but I feel awful about her just guzzling that shit. It's not healthy. And who knows how many drinks she had before you noticed her."

Steve nodded. "I'll go check on her. Why don't you go talk with your friends over there?" He gestured to a small group of teens who looked like they felt extremely out of place. And they definitely were.

Ren walked over to them and greeted everyone with hugs. He hadn't had many friends before, other than Nancy, Barb, and Tammy, and of course Steve, but after the events of the year before, he finally found a few people who just happened to be as lame as him, if not more so.

While he was preoccupied, Steve accidentally snuck up on Nancy, who was in the middle of yet another cup of booze.

"Hey, Nancy."

She turned around. "Steve!" Oh yeah, she was drunk. She wrapped her arms around his neck and almost spilled the last few drops of her drink on his shirt, but he carefully removed her arms. "What are you doing here?"

"I came to have fun at the party. And you seem to be having too much fun."

"Not true. I'm not having enough fun." She reached over to the punch bowl to get some more, but Steve stopped her.

"No, no more for you. You've still gotta go home at some point, and it'd be better if you weren't drunk off your ass."

"Get off!"

"You've had enough, Nancy."

"Screw you!" She wrenched her hand out of his grip and dipped her cup into the bowl, getting yet another drink.

"No, I'm serious. That's enough, put it down."

"No!" He tried to get it out of her grip, but as soon as he gave up and let go, she dumped the whole thing on the front of her top. "What the hell?"

She ran off to the nearest bathroom, and he followed her, feeling a bit bad for ruining her clothes even though it wasn't entirely his fault. When they got to the bathroom, Nancy immediately wet a washcloth and started rubbing her shirt while Steve apologised. "Nancy, I'm sorry." She didn't listen and continued to attempt to clean the alcohol off. "That's not coming off."

"It's coming."

"Lemme just take you home, Nancy. You're drunk."

"No!" she shouted. "This is all your fault. If you hadn't fallen for Ren, we would still be happy."

Steve was stunned. "Wh-what?"

"Yeah. I know. I've known for a long time. You left me for him, didn't you? You found someone better and you couldn't bother to tell me to my face."

"Nancy--"

"You have a stupid face. Stupid." She stared at him for a few seconds before roughly grabbing his face and leaning in to kiss him. Steve had surprisingly quick reflexes and dodged it. She leaned a little too far forward and fell into him, knocking him on the floor, and leaving him absolutely nowhere to go, as Nancy was laying on top of him. It was at this moment that Ren walked in.

He had gotten a bit worried for Steve since he couldn't see him anymore. And when he went looking, he definitely didn't like what he found. As soon as Steve saw Ren, he tried to push Nancy off and away to get to him, but Ren had already run out the door. He finally got her off and sprinted out of the bathroom to find him.

Shit, shit, shit, shit. Fuck. No, no, no, no, no. He ran through the house without seeing Ren anywhere, not until he went through the front door. "Ren? Ren, are you out here?"

"Only because you have the keys and I don't have another ride home," a voice muttered from a few feet away.

Steve jumped down the stairs on the porch of the house to find Ren sitting against the brick below. "Ren, I promise we didn't do anything. She's drunk and she spilled her drink, so I went to help her clean it, and she tried to kiss me, but I moved out of the way, and then we fell over." When Ren didn't respond, Steve crouched down to meet his eyes  and touched his hand to his boyfriend's shoulder. "Babe, I swear. I would never do that to you. I love you."

At that, Ren looked up at Steve and saw that he was serious. He nodded and let the other boy pull him up off of the ground.

"Now, let's go find somewhere private so I can kiss you." He decided he would tell Ren that Nancy knows about them some other time.