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Hawkins High gymnasium. Saturday, April 15, 1989. Approximately 9:30 PM.
Some pop hit plays over the freshly-installed, state-of-the-art speakers, echoing across the emptied expanse of Hawkins High School’s usual gymnasium. All the bleachers retracted and basketball hoops removed just for tonight, for the shimmering disco ball someone somehow attached to the ceiling, for the sparkling tinsel and hand-painted backdrops adorning every visible wall. But most of all, for the Class of ‘89, their senior prom.
After everything those kids went through, whether believed to be earthquake or Vecna-related, the staff had decided it was finally time to go all out. To send them out into the real world with a bang, with a plethora of balloons and bombs made of glitter that would definitely be hell for the janitor to clean up Sunday afternoon. After all, what was high school without prom, without a little fun, especially after the end of the world had been avoided?
The gym is dark, lit by only the tiny broken reflections of the mirrorball above. The kids – God, could you even call them that anymore? They were turning into adults now – are scattered across the makeshift dancefloor, socializing and dancing and acting like they hadn’t all put their lives at risk months ago to try and fix everything. Still together, just into smaller sub-groups, they all had matching smiles, a mirrored ease that almost made you feel better about agreeing to chaperone them in the first place.
Almost.
It feels stupid, really, from where you’re sitting in the corner of the gym, darkness shrouding you like maybe you can hide, like maybe you don’t really exist tonight if you’re not out on the floor, under the sparkles and strobe lights, putting your perfectly-chosen dress and done-up hair to good use.
No. Instead, you’re sulking, the dark blue rhinestones of your dress invisible just like you want them to be, but not how you’d pictured them. It was foolish to try to take a moment not meant for you and twist and mold it until it could be yours, but you did. You had hoped – that disappointing thing you kept telling yourself you would stop doing – tonight would be fun.
That was before you’d settled into the corner, far enough away to watch but not participate. Close enough to the clock on the wall to keep glancing up at it like it could change things. Like it could manifest someone who you knew wouldn’t show up anyway.
Thirty-five minutes late. Not late, exactly, because late still implies caring enough to come, which he hadn’t. Thirty-five minutes of trying to distract yourself by watching everyone else; Lucas and Max stealing kisses when they thought no one was around, Dustin and Mike bursting into laughter after trying to teach El and Will some kind of line dance that they poorly imitate, and Steve… Well, Steve fit in like he always did at parties, all charming smiles with shiny teeth and suave words.
But it was different than before, than the Steve from before. You tried not to notice, in that same way that you tried not to notice lots of things about him, but those efforts always proved futile, and so did these.
The way he was always scanning the room, internally counting heads. Checking. Keeping track. Lucas, Max, El, Will, Mike, Dustin. Dustin, Lucas, Will, El, Mike, Max. You only recognized it because you felt it too, never quite sure when the curtain would fall and everything would go to shit again. Two young adults transformed into a different kind of chaperone for the night, one far less dangerous than the usual. Still, old habits die hard.
When his brown eyes find yours after moments of scanning the crowd every time, you pretend not to notice. You pretend he’s not including you in the count, in the group of people filed away under ‘Safe?’ in his head. With a question mark because he’s ever-present, always checking, always questioning. Not quite anxious, but not exactly at ease either. In that weird in-between space that you often felt trapped in after your group had stormed into the Upside Down and overtaken Vecna.
An emotional purgatory, sort of, because something seemed unsaid. A door left open just an inch, cracked enough to let something in – or out – but you could never grasp what exactly that something was.
Like everything else, you shove it down and pretend it’s not there.
When you hear the distant thud of footsteps against laminated hardwood, you swirl around the bright blue punch in your red solo cup and go back to picking at the silver nail polish on your fingers. Casual, like you couldn’t tell exactly who it was by footfall, by the slightly obnoxious clicking of his loafers – the ones his parents bought him for some social event he ditched last summer to be with you and the kids instead.
Steve Harrington, in all his painstakingly styled hair and glory, takes one look at you – easy smirk fading for something softer, worry creases lining themselves between his brows – and you hate how quickly he reads you to a T.
“Still no Ben?”
You shake your head, having to stiffen your shoulders to try to ease the dramatic slouch of them. No sulking.
“Nope.” Attempting nonchalance, popping the P with a little too much enthusiasm. Like you hadn’t invited a cute guy from work, who you’d been on a couple dates with, to chaperone your favorite teenagers’ senior prom together. Another date: a little more real, letting him in to show you these kids that meant so much to you, and a lot more pathetic, apparently, because your excitement had been enough of a sign for him to bail on you out of nowhere.
Quiet follows. Too much quiet, so you finally redirect your gaze to him. A dangerous mistake, though, because Steve Harrington cleans up almost too well. Nothing like when you both attended your own prom, when he was full of hairspray and attitude. He’s softer now, more relaxed, knowing who he is and what he stands for. You can still smell a little Farrah Fawcett in the air, but it’s faded beneath some cologne he wears that’s spicy and woodsy all at once. Something you smelled once and said you liked, and suddenly it was all he wore, and like always, you pretended not to notice.
His hair’s longer, not untamed but styled in a messy kind of way that makes him look both older and younger. Youthful, but mature. Out from underneath that nasty wing of his parents, escaping their pretty and polished worldview for something imperfect and genuine. His suit jacket is undone, his tie taken off and left on some table nearby. He’s loose, the days of caring about appearances long gone – stupidly handsome, something you could admit because it was an objective fact, right? – and he’s looking down at you like he has been lately, something you can’t quite make out. Like he’s searching for something he’s already found but isn’t sure whether he should dig up yet.
He slides a foot beneath the leg of a folding chair to your right, pulling it closer to your side with a screech that’s loud but masked by the music, by the socialization of teenagers having one last glorious memory being kids. He sits down, legs spread out like he owns the place. Against your will, it makes you smile.
Steve seems too busy thinking, debating, staring at his hands on his knees, to catch it. To savor it like that little part of your brain you shut out knows he does.
“He sucks, you know.” A beat of silence, just enough for him to get anxious and overthink it. To feel like he needs to add more words to smooth it over. “Like – if he doesn’t wanna be here. With the kids, with you.”
You take a long sip from the cup in your hand, acting like it has anything stronger than Hawaiian Punch in it. Acting like you’re thirsty and not just finding filler, something to keep you from having to say something more complicated.
“I know,” is what you settle for, because it’s true. You know he sucks, saw the way he looked at you like just any other girl, like you were replaceable as long as you gave him the time of day and stroked his ego far more than he deserved. But you allowed it, because he was just another for you, too. Another to add to the long list of bad decisions, of boys whose cruel behaviors should have broken your heart but never quite held it close enough to be able to shatter it.
Because there was something easier in pretending, in going on dates and entertaining guys you knew were bad news. At least then, you knew what to expect. Then, the betrayal wouldn’t burn. The disappointment wouldn’t sting because you’d see it coming. It was a backwards way of protecting yourself, of setting yourself up for the worst but finding relief in knowing you were right about it.
Still, even for you, it was getting old. Pretending to be really into these guys to begin with. Pretending it hurt when they did exactly what was expected of them, when they fit the roles you cast them into.
But the alternative? It was terrifying. Opening yourself up again, making yourself vulnerable by choice. It felt wrong. It felt like it had something to do with that door that was always left open just a crack, that unspoken something that was eternally lingering, a smoke that would suffocate you if you let it.
You don’t. You won’t. At least, that’s what repeats in your mind like a mantra until everything shifts.
The strobe lights soften, the music fades down into something softer, fonder. Delicate. The beginnings of one of the many slow songs you would have to endure tonight. One of the many that you hoped you’d at least have someone to dance to, even if it was pretend. But pretend was safe, and safe was a let-down, and now you were going to have to tune out that dull ache of loneliness in your heart for the rest of the night.
The starting synth of Time After Time plays, Cyndi Lauper seconds away from her cue. You roll your eyes to yourself. Of course. How endlessly cheesy. How endlessly high school of whoever made the song list. How stupidly did it make your chest feel tight, wrong, like you were back in school yourself, on the sidelines, watching. Waiting for someone to make a move that was never going to come, waiting for someone to choose you.
Waiting for something that never happened, so you stopped asking for it. Stopped yearning. Shut it all down and started pretending in the first place.
But then, before you can continue your internal bout of self-pity, Steve is standing in front of you, hand outstretched, palm up. An offering you recognize but try to shove away, too close to everything you’ve ever wanted.
“You can’t be serious.” You laugh, the sound coming out too tight, too forced to be natural. Too fake to steer off the knowing way he’s staring at you. A small betrayal, your eyes catch on the lines of his palm, the hill of it, your mind joining in on the torture and letting you imagine how soft his skin probably is. How his hands would feel in yours, on your face, tracing reverently along the breadth of your side, from ribs to hip.
You’re left no time to recover from whatever that thought was, because Steve’s as stubborn and handsome as ever, and you know you’re losing whatever mental battle you started with yourself.
“Yeah, I’m serious,” he says, unbelievably soft despite the blaring atmosphere. It was devastatingly magical, really, how he could manage to make something so large seem so small. So personal. Maybe that’s why you say yes, or maybe it’s the way he speaks your name like a prayer into existence. “Come on.”
His hand is warmer than you thought it would be, somehow, as he leads you out onto the dancefloor. He does a quick scan, counting heads until he finds six. And then back to you, like clockwork. Like this is a routine he’s practiced in places other than Hawkins High’s gymnasium. Like he’s added you to the box of keepsakes in his head, the precious, tiny things he has to look after.
For the first time tonight, you step onto the floor and the lights reflect every sequin, every rhinestone, of your dress across the large room. Little specks of white on clumsily slow-dancing bodies, on the dark corner of the gym Steve coaxed you from, in the adoringly dilated pupils of his eyes. He’s alive from the inside out, lit up like he’s never seen a spectacle more joyful.
“Look at you.” He sounds breathless, awestruck. For once, you don’t deny it. Don’t pretend you don’t see it, even if it makes you feel like you can’t inhale all the way. “You look like the night sky.”
He steadies you into position, one hand on your waist, the other still holding yours. At some point, he intertwined your fingers together without you noticing. You feel dizzy, noticing now. Realizing you had let your guard down that much. Still, he pulls you closer, fingers soft on the silk of your dress, on the small of your back. It’s not a traditional slow-dancing stance; it’s more gentle. Careful but thorough, like he’s making this something. Making a move.
Oh god, he’s making a move.
You’d expected the pretending to catch up somehow, to make another appearance and leave you alone again, forced to confront what you’d been trying to deny for too long. The longing, the wanting. The need that crawled beneath your ribs and found home there until it had something to manifest into, someone you actually genuinely wanted with every fiber of your being. Someone who looked at you like you were a star in the sky, even when you weren’t just wearing a dress and pretending someone else made you feel special enough to be one.
“That was the point,” you answer, all honestly for once. It’s like you can’t fight it anymore, like this is the final act. The conclusion on whatever has been brewing between you for far too long, left to simmer under the surface until the time was right.
The time is right.
The thought, the realization, is both soothing and horrifying. A chance at comfort at the risk of destruction, at the risk of being broken in a way you promised yourself you never would again, of being broken in a way you didn’t think you could recover from. Not if it was from him.
Steve was good. Really, truly, wholeheartedly good. The kind of thing that was rare for a town like Hawkins, full of small-minded busybodies. People who despised anything different, who would rather live the same exact day over and over again, who even deluded themselves into buying whatever half-baked lie the government sold them about Vecna and the almost end of the world. As long as they could wake up and read the morning paper, get their local gossip that they acted like they were too good to indulge in, and be back in bed by nine at night, they would graciously believe any bullshit.
No, Steve was real, and maybe that’s why he terrified you. Why looking at him for too long always felt like orbiting the sun, but from far too close. Why you were painfully aware of the obvious affection he held for you, and why you – like all the bad, two-faced people of Hawkins – promptly ignored it. Because he was perfect, he would do everything in his power to be perfect for you, and you had no idea what to do with that.
Love was something complicated for you. Arguably the one thing you craved more than anything, but also the first thing you would deprive yourself of. There was this argument some football player had in junior year biology: that oxygen was what humans needed to breathe, but was technically killing them in the process due to aging.
Love, to you, was that. Essential, but irreversibly damaging. Like being deep underwater and only being able to take in small amounts of oxygen so you won’t empty your air tank. But your tank always felt empty, and the minuscule amounts of misplaced attention you were filling it with were starting to wane.
It was becoming harder to fight it. To find the reasons you’d given for so long as soundproof as they once seemed.
He doesn’t see you like that. A lie, evident from the softness in his brown, honeyed eyes, how he touched you like he was trying to keep himself in check. Never too far, too fast for you.
It’s the end of the world. Not anymore. No more constant fighting of interdimensional, hellish monsters. No more constant fear of irreversible death or injury.
He’s always going on dates with other girls. Was he? Could you honestly remember the last time he even asked a girl out?
This line of thinking was dangerous. It gave you hope, reasons to proceed rather than run the other direction without looking back, and you were always running. One foot perpetually out the door, emotionally stunted, distanced from all the awful boys you let take you on dates. Because being loved meant being seen, and your parents’ messy divorce when you were ten taught you that being seen equated to the other person knowing every horrible, intimate way to break you into pieces.
As you follow Steve’s eyes around the room, counting six heads that had lately felt much taller than they should be, you can’t picture him willingly breaking anything into pieces. Not since Jonathan’s camera, which was so long ago that even they had moved past it.
No, you need to take a step back – maybe literally – from all of this. From convincing yourself you could make this work, from the crushing hope that was beginning to form between your ribs, from the mesmerizing way little flecks of colored light were dancing across Steve’s face, in his dark brown hair. You’re about to make that awful choice, that horribly selfish action of self-preservation, an excuse for air on the tip of your tongue, but of course he opens his mouth and beats you to it.
“Do you remember our senior prom?”
The question’s innocent enough. You were in the same year in school, entirely different social circles, naturally. Your group was small, close, while his was larger and louder. Still, you never crossed paths, never managed to drift into the same orbit. It was almost impressive, really, how unaware of one another two people in such a small town could be. So many places to overlap, especially in high school, yet you didn’t. It made sense that he was reminiscing, thinking back to his night in the limelight, wondering about how yours had been.
It wasn’t his fault that you hated to think about it.
“Oh, yikes,” he replies as soon as he clocks the discomforted grimace on your face, which is immediately. “That bad?”
His voice is lighter than before, but that hint of concern is still there, hidden in the slight twitch of his brows, like they want to knit together but he’s trying to fight it, trying to pretend like he’s not trying to read you. You wish you paid less attention to him, that you weren’t as in-tune to his face and his hands and his body as he was to you. Instead, you take that tiny bit of humor and run with it.
“Try being friends with a bunch of people who want to spend the whole night hiding in corners and talking about nothing instead of dancing like everyone else.”
You really tried hard not to sound too pissed about it, especially so many years later, but bitterness is a knife waiting to cut, lingering beneath the skin and waiting to be set free.
Steve pauses, considering that, his hand flexing against your waist.
“They sound like they suck too.” You wonder if he’s piecing it together yet, if he’s solving the puzzle of why you’ve been surrounded by selfish, no-good people for so long.
“They did.” You don’t bother to disagree, to defend ‘friends’ who were never really your friends at all, the people you knew were never good for you, who never bothered to see past themselves.
Just like Ben, like all the guys you’d date, all nobodies, just people known for cruelty and being hopelessly self-centered. People who would hurt you eventually, but at least you were used to it. At least you knew what to expect from boys who were known heartbreakers. They’d never get the upper hand on you, never really capable of hurting you if you could see it coming from a mile away.
Swaying in slow circles with one hand still entangled with yours, Steve shakes his head gently. Always gentle, always careful. Always watching, waiting.
“You deserve better,” he says, whispered like a secret, barely audible over Cyndi Lauper. Not because he thinks you don’t know that, but because he may be able to change how you operate, how you view kindness and genuine affection as guns that are waiting to be loaded. “Not some losers who don’t care about you. Not as friends, not as boyfriends.”
Your chest feels tight again, that nasty little pit of fear growing in your stomach. You feel like you’re going to puke and ruin the kids’ most important night since saving the world, selfish in every possible way. Because denial was easier to cope with than something real, because roping him along and pretending he didn’t look at you like that was easier than being the new reason he was broken, or vice versa for you.
The sudden urge to admit it, to explain, is too strong to ignore. It makes no sense, but maybe you’re desperate to be understood for once.
“I know Ben was terrible,” you start, barely able to get the words out around the lump in your throat. “I knew he was going to bail on me tonight.”
They land heavy somewhere deep inside him, you can tell from how his mouth moves, chewing on your confession so he can digest it and know what to say, how to make you feel better. A muscle in his jaw twitches, and he swallows down something he doesn’t say.
“And all the others,” you cut in before he can find words that are too kind for you, too understanding. Words that land between your ribs, so sweet they make you feel even more sick.
Worse than any other reaction, he’s not surprised. He’s debating, not shocked. No wide eyes, no jaws dropped. Maybe you were more obvious than you thought, and that causes shame to burn on your tongue.
“I just wanted to have a good night,” you admit, apparently feeling like now is an amazing time to spill your guts. Nobody had even spiked the punch yet. “Something to make up for the shitty one I had, but I think I sabotaged it myself.”
Steve nods then, somehow sympathetic towards your fucked-up decision-making skills, as if you deserve that for the disappointment you’ve continuously set yourself up for.
“Well,” he begins after a few more moments of silent contemplation, the words shaking on their way out. “It’s a good thing I’m here to fix it for you.” And then he smiles, all patience and affection and all the things you’re not sure you deserve but still crave anyway, and your heart opens just a little, cracked just enough to let something in. Hope, maybe him.
You can’t push away how badly you want it, can’t drown it in the lies, in the doubts like you’re used to. He’s breaking you down piece by piece, tearing down the walls to your heart like he’s got a master set of keys that open doors that you’ve hidden even from yourself, all during the Class of ‘89’s senior prom.
It’s then that you realize this – dancing with him, being more honest than you can with anyone else – is better than the night you had planned with Ben. Steve looks at you like your dress has transformed you into a galaxy itself, like you’re some kind of celestial being that he personally was the first to discover, to name. Dangerously, you want him to name you as his. So badly that the thought stings, salt in the wounds you’ve let others burrow under your skin for years.
You want the touches that don’t feel stolen or rushed, but reverent. You want his jacket over your shoulders when the wind runs chilly. You want dates, real ones where you aren’t bored out of your mind or pretending to be into some guy you couldn’t care less about. You want his hand on your skin when you have a bad day. You want late nights spent awake laughing about stupid things, not sleeping a wink but never being happier about it.
You want to be his permanent sidekick chaperone, counting six heads every thirty minutes like clockwork, just as you know he does. You want to stay the seventh, the only one he lets read into the nervousness, the way he’ll never quite be the same after almost losing people so many times, after fighting for moments like these for so long.
You want him, even now. Especially now, a little broken and anxious like you. If there’s anyone who can tolerate you, it’s someone the same. Someone who’s just as afraid of people leaving, just in a different way.
The music fades away entirely, a quiet intermission following. Stifling, unexpected. It feels like you don’t breathe, don’t think. You just hold his gaze, something raw and tender in your eyes, in your tone.
“I’m just scared.”
Steve doesn’t question it. Doesn’t ask what it is, why you’re afraid. He just knows, somehow, in that way that he always does. Emotionally intelligent beyond belief, knowing what to say and how to say it, no matter what the situation is.
“I’ll be here for you,” he starts, dropping your hand to bring it to your face, to cup your cheek. His hands are softer, warmer than any that you’ve ever been touched with. And then he says something you never expected from anyone, something so meaningful you always assumed it was out of reach for someone like you:
“I’ll wait for you.”
Like him, you don’t have to question it. You know, then, what he’s saying. What he’ll spend forever waiting for, if he has to. Even if it isn’t fair, even if it takes months or years. He’s not even upset about it, just genuine in that Steve way that he’s been for as long as you can remember.
For once, you don’t feel sick. You don’t feel scared. Certainty creeps in, hopeful like sunshine breaking through an eternal winter. You don’t push it away, you let it settle.
With a smile more easy than any other, you reply in a whisper. “Okay.”
When he leans in, breath tickling your skin, making it tingle and burn all at once, and presses soft lips to your temple, you don’t pull back.
You lean into it.