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His arms encircle her thin, thin waist and her spidery eyelashes skate across speckled cheeks. Her sweet pink lips are curled around startlingly white teeth, and her soft laughter fills the air around the two of them.
Steve smiles down at her, his hair swept back softly, brown eyes so warm as he watches Nancy snuggle her head into his chest. They're by his pool, and Jonathan feels a strange sense of déjà vu, except this time he's there with them. Right where Barbara had sat, feeling as alone as he does right now.
Jonathan pries his eyes away from the two of them, both wrapped up around each other and smiling as though there are no cares in the world.
It's the week before the New Year. Jonathan has his camera placed heavy and warm against his chest, the strap chafing his neck in the best possible way. He wonders why they invited him here. He wonders why he even came. And yet he's incapable of resisting Nancy's smile or Steve's warm eyes.
He wonders why they've had a change of heart about him. Does defeating a dimension-defying monster together make them friends now?
Nancy had gifted him the camera that rests against his heartbeat, and Jonathan relaxes against the calm thumping in his chest. Nancy had told him that while she had helped pick out the camera, she wasn't the one who had paid for it. Steve had insisted upon buying a replacement for Jonathan, after admitting that destroying the fellow teen’s camera over a few pictures was done in heat-of-the-moment anger. After a stuttered apology, Steve had simply laughed at Jonathan, even ruffling the other boy’s hair, and had forgiven him. Steve and Nancy were somehow able to tell that Jonathan wasn’t fully aware he’d crossed some sort of social boundary when he took those photos. Jonathan had never been great in the art of social skills and staying within insinuated boundaries.
"Dance with us!" Nancy smiled wider than Jonathan had seen from the stressed girl in the time he'd known her. They were slowly discovering that their friendship worked for some odd reason. Something about working together to discover a monster from an alternate dimension made two people begin to craft a relationship with one another. Jonathan watched the happiness the girl radiated. He was glad there was something to distract her from the overwhelming grief that'd been clouding her head since she'd lost Barbara.
"C'mon man." Steve unwrapped himself from Nancy, and held out a hand for Jonathan to take. Jonathan's heart thumped a little harder against his chest as he reluctantly removed his camera from around his neck. One nervous hand wrapped around Steve’s slightly larger one and the other seemingly enveloped Nancy’s small and delicate fingers within his own. Jonathan kept his hair in his eyes and his head down as Steve and Nancy began to slowly spin the three of them around in a poor imitation of dancing.
One of Jonathan’s hands was released so a warm presence could be found on his shoulder instead. Jonathan’s gaze skittered up to face Steve and those damningly brown eyes looking far too worried about someone like Jonathan. Then the trio stopped spinning. And Nancy’s hand was slipping out of his grip so she could caress his cheek gently, and Jonathan felt like his eyes were going to fall out of his head as he looked from Steve to Nancy and back to Steve.
Jonathan was nervous. He’d always been an incredibly nervous kid. He could never really connect with others and instead clutched onto things like his photography or his music. Music that he carefully curated only to share with his little brother, Will, who also had a hard time making friends outside of his quartet of nerds (as Jonathan liked to call them.) He liked working nights at the theater, where he was able to relax in the dark silence, only occasionally bothered by rowdy teens who snuck out late in the night through their windows and right under their parents noses. He found comfort in his constant routine. Work nights. Make breakfast for Will and Mom. Go to school. Sometimes ditch if he had an evening shift. And try to take some photos throughout the day.
When Will had been taken, Jonathan was devastated.
The disruption in the normalcy of his family’s life was difficult to deal with. Chester would trot into the woods every day to sleep in the abandoned Castle Byers. Joyce would rampage through the house, her lights the only thing that mattered if they somehow meant that Will was still with them. Jonathan had clung to the parts of his routine that hadn’t been completely destroyed as he watched his mother fall apart and felt his own heart breaking.
What was now dubbed the Upside Down Week had been pushed to the furthermost edges of Jonathan’s mind. But with that week came so many changes. Somehow Jonathan had something akin to friends now. Nancy would invite him to hang out with her and with Steve, and though Jonathan was always reluctant, he also always accepted her invitations. To spend time with and be around people that weren’t his apathetic coworkers or his family was completely new to Jonathan. And for some reason Nancy kept calling and Jonathan kept saying yes.
Nancy and himself had already realized that they made a pretty great team. Which is why it was Steve’s constant presence that surprised him. Away from his “asshole ex-friends” Steve was genuinely fun to be around. Jonathan recalled that day in the woods when Nancy had tried to convince him of exactly that. And while Jonathan had been adamant in his dislike of Steve back then, he now found himself unable to hang out as comfortably with Nancy alone compared to when Steve was there, too. The both of them were a package deal after repairing their relationship.
And they always asked him to join them.
Just a few days ago, Nancy, Steve and him had gone to Castleton Mall in Indianapolis. They spent the whole day shopping together. Jonathan thought the whole experience felt a bit surreal. They wanted to be his friend, and he found himself wanting to be their friend, too. So he ignored the part of his heart that swelled anytime Nancy held his hand too tightly or Steve smiled at him too long.
Right now, Steve was watching him with those eyes and Nancy's lovely fingers were wrapped around his cheek and Jonathan was so overwhelmed that he froze. He stood completely still, shivering at the winter chill in the air, and closed his eyes so he wouldn't have to look at either of them. Nancy's eyes were too wide and too blue and Steve's were too warm and accepting and both of them were far too concerned. He'd never felt like this before. He'd never had anyone outside of his family look at him like they wanted him there, like he belonged and he was essential and needed .
The three of them stood by the steaming pool. Nancy Wheeler's hand was wrapped in Steve Harrington's and her other hand was soft around Jonathan Byers' cheek. One of Steve Harrington's hands was enveloping Nancy Wheeler's and the other was around Jonathan Byers' and it felt right somehow. Nancy and Steve looked at each other, the two of them smiling softly, as they leaned in to wrap themselves around Jonathan.