#its always been nancy and steve and johnathan Why would she be gay for a girl she just became friends with like a week ago

[7cat]

everyone is complaining about stranger things for the STRANGEST REASONS

[rosemarydisaster]

I'm a Bisexual a Steve, Nancy and Johnathan girlie first and foremost, but I've been thinking about the potential for Steve and/or Nancy not even knowing being homosexual was an option for them. The whole "yes, I've dated the opposite gender but never felt quite right about it". As an ace aro person that has "been there-done that", I'm really interested in the topic.

So, have a little gay Steve steddie ficlet with some bisexual Eddie, because why not (I usually headcanon him as gay but you know, thought it could be funny for this fic). Probably will do a Nancy one too.

Warnings for uses of queer as a slur, 80's general homophobia, and internalized homophobia. Also long post :

Steve has always been into girls. Obviously. He's Steve "The Hair" Harrington, king of Hawkins High. He's been suavely flirting his way through half the school's population since day one. The female half, obviously.

It was something that made his dad proud of him in ways only basketball and swimming had before. "That's my boy!" He'd said anytime Steve related his latest conquest. His son being a Lady's man was another badge of honor on the list. Sure, his Steve wasn't the brightest, but he was charismatic in that way only True Men of Business were. He did not need to know that Steve was simply copying those same men.

At first it came naturally. He wanted to emulate his heroes. His father, the movie characters the were "the only true Men left in this dammed country" according to his dad, the movie stars he laughed with, telling little Steve "now that's what I call charm!".

So Little Stevie got the message, just like he'd gotten the message that he had to be good at sport and all the other things his parent's love was condiotional upon. It was only natural, all parents wanted to be proud of their children. It was the child's job to make them proud, but instead of money they payed in love. So easy even little Stevie could understand it. He simply followed the instructions.

Girls came after that, and really, it was more of a side effect than anything else. The men he looked up to always knew how to sweep girls off their feet: just a little sweet talk and a shiny smile. He had not put a lot of thought into what happened afterwards though, he was just a kid after all.

Soon enough, he understood that his parents thought it was great that their little Romeo was the most popular boy in school. More so when the mothers started gossiping about "what a suave little cassanova the Harringtons have!". His mother fawned and chuckled with them, clearly loving the compliments her son received.

So Cassanova it was. He learned soon enough that dating had its own set of rules, just like friendships and sports and school and dressing. He needed to keep this perfect balance between easy to fall for and hard to obtain. When he became a teenager he understood his father found his salacious stories about making out with girls funny, but that he would not approve just any girl. If he was to bring anyone home for a proper dinner, she had to be pretty, rich, soft spoken, smart but not smarter than his dad, christian, dressed appropriately...the list went on and on.

He thought he figured it out with Nancy, because Nancy was great. She was his first big love, the girl she actually enjoyed spending time with. Most of the others had been an exhausting amount of acting the part, pretending to be interested in things that bored him off his mind, and actually getting some pretty decent validation from feeling desired.

But not Nancy. She was actually fun to be around! Nancy always had a dozen new topics she was passionate about and could spend hours on end rambling about them while Steve thought about how lucky he was to have found a girl that didn't felt like chore.

His father was not thrilled. Apparently she was "decent enough", but he assured Steve that her Know-it-all tendencies would end up driving him up the wall soon enough. Steve hoped it wouldn't. It had been hard enough to find a balance between who he was expected to date and who he enjoyed dating.

Intimacy with Nancy was something he simultaneously looked forward and was terrified of. Seducing girls was half the job of. He also had to learn how to "rock their world" or else his reign would be a short one. He knew girls gossiped, they made sure to lock eyes with him before whispering in their friends ears and coyly waving at him giggling. So he studied the subject with the same feverish intensity he'd studied how to get his hair right. And the feeling of accomplishement he got from it was almost reward enough.

Nancy was a different story, you see. She was the one. She was the future Steve was hoping for, the mother of his kids. And he was dreading getting to third base with her. What if it felt like a chore? Spending time with Nancy had never felt like that, but what if the sex part was awful? He always got the impression the girls were getting way more out of it than he was, and he just wanted to feel like them for once. So when it all came to shit, he blamed it on the Demogorgon.

It wasn't Nancy's fault, nor his. It was just so incredibly awkward to do the dirty when the last time you did, your girlfriend's bestie got murdered! So they decided to take it slow, and Steve couldn't be more grateful. Their first time hadn't been so bad, it's just he had trouble remembering with all the upside down bullshit and Johnathan Byers punching him.

Johnathan was a queer. That's what his father had called him, so Steve called Johnathan a queer. That's the way the world worked. Steve understood enough about them: They were weird, they didn't like girls, they tried to ruin the people that were actually normal, and they carried a really fucked up disease. He hoped Byers didn't have it. Look, the guy may had punched him, but he deserved a break. Byers had been so brave for his brother, like a hero from a movie. Maybe his father had been wrong about him being a queer.

He learned that his father had most definitely been wrong when his girlfriend cheated on him with said Byers after calling Steve "Bullshit". It wasn't a slap in the face, it was a sucker punch to the heart. But he'd manage, he always did. It would be easier without Billy though.

The thing about Billy was that Steve hated him. With fervor. He was a racist asshole that threatened one of his boys and constantly tried to antagonize him. He had something about him that unnerved Steve in the same way Johnathan had, but unlike Byers, he did it on purpose.

His father hated him too, but in that way that meant Steve was at fault somehow. "You can let that queer beat you!" He always shouted after Billy managed to be the center of attention at all their matches. He had decided that Billy was a queer too, you see. He cared too much about his looks and he was from California, which apparently was were they came from. Steve wasn't too sure about it, after all, he had been wrong about Byers.

When robin happened, he almost cried. It had been his second chance, another girl he actually liked spending time with. Robin was funny and smart and charming. His parents were going to hate her but it'd stopped being about them a long time ago. Steve needed to like a girl for himself, to prove wrong the intrusive thoughts about Johnathan, Tommy H, Billy and the rest. But Robin had not been the solution he'd hoped for. Instead, she had been the catalyst that absolutely wrecked his life. Sure, she also made it a hundred times better, but still.

He did not talk to her about it. Not at first. It was so much, and he was still reeling from the fact that he was friends with one of the queers his dad hated so much. It took him a while just to unlearn the stereotypes and fear mongering rumours he had been raised in. Robin helped, she had decided that not getting bashed after rejecting him probably meant Steve was safe. So she explained to him the lesbian thing.

Steve didn't want to stop her. Clearly, Robin had no one else to talk to about it, and the relieve on her face when she told him about the sub culture, about liking Vicky about her feelings in general...he could not bring himself to take that alway from her no matter how much he wanted to. And God he wanted to. He wanted to go back, back to a time were he didn't have all this thought and doubts and nonsense. Because the things that Robin said about men...no. Robin had known she was a lesbian. If Steve was q...gay, he would have known by now. Yup.

Eddie Munson was the most unexpected gear to finally click in Steve's head. Honestly, he would have been way less upset about it if it had been Tommy H or Billy. Sure, he hated them, but The Freak??? That was several levels more life ruining than it needed to be. But God was it unavoidable.

It started with the kids raving about the famed Eddie Munson. The greatest DM, the most talented musician, the coolest dude on planet earth, and sure enough Steve was jealous. Who was this Munson guy to take HIS kids? He'd fought monsters for them, and that's how they repaid him? Ungrateful little shits. He barely remembered the guy from school, but he knew he was supposed to be older than him, and he was still there? Loser! Even he had managed to graduate. And then he met him.

The Vecna thing was a harrowing affair all by itself. He almost lost a couple of his kids and his emotional support Robin. But it was just an almost. Eddie managed to rescue himself and Dustin from the demo bats by "doing what I'm best at Harrington!". They've managed to steal enough time by blocking the gate with his wardrobe to steal yet another car. He violated several traffic laws just to get to the creel's house before the demo bats did and, well, that got Carvers attention. And thank God, because Lucas needed to climb on top of Dustin to reach for Max ears, powering El in the process. Nancy took care of Carver fast enough when a sprinting Eddie greeted them at the gate.

Steve did not now if it was the theatrics with which he explained the situation, or the fact that he saved Dustin, Lucas and Max, but the denial was over. He tried to go back, to ignore the feeling in his chest (those famed butterflies, making a mess of his ribcage), but it was too little to late. The way he smiled at him from the hospital bed while they patched up the gunshot wounds from Carver. The way he reassured a guilty faced Lucas that he'd survive "isn't that right Harrington?". This wasn't Billy's attractive yet hateable face nor an inconvenient crush on Byers. He was in deep.

Robin was as helpful as Steve had been to her when she needed to vent about her own homosexuality. By the end, Steve was Hyperventilating and in tears because what the actual fuck. And then Robin just... awkwardly hugged him and whispered "it's okay if we can't talk about boobies anymore". He laughed. Of course he'd laugh. A bit hysterical at first, but by the end of it both of them were joking about being "too much of a perfect match". He thought Robin being a lesbian would be the thing that ruined everything, but it was just the perfect fit. Sure, everything else was still awful, but they could be miserable together.

It became a dangerous game, guessing what else exactly had been a mask he put on to keep his parents happy. Surely it couldn't be everything, right? He still had a personality. The thought of having lived a complete lie his entire existence was the most horrifying shit he could think of. Worse than Vecna and the Demogorgon combined. Robin was helpful though, she kept him from spiraling too much.

Eddie had turned into a recurring problem. Apparently goodie two shoes Nancy Wheeler and King Harrington claiming that Jason was the actual killer and that Eddie was just his cover up was all they needed to exonerate him. Eddie was an amazing liar too, so he sold the story in under a minute to the police. Carver was hurting Chrissy, Chrissy came to him, Carver caught them and killed her in retaliation. But Eddie scaped so he had to improvise.

Apparently half of that wasn't a lie. Munson had confessed to Steve and Johnathan, high as a kite, that him and Chrissy did have some feelings. They never acted on them, but they were planning to when she felt safe enough to leave Carver. That was painful on so many levels... He'd vaguely known Chrissy in school and she was sweet enough, seeing the way Eddie spoke about her made her murder feel so much more painful. What if Vecna had done that to Robin? Or what if he'd actually tried to kill Nancy? But also, hearing from the guy your pining after that he likes girls was just a whole different can of worms. It made him feel awful, being jealous of a dead girl.

Life went on for a while, in that sweet sweet agony. Sharing custody of the kids with Eddie, joking about who was the mum and who was the dad, trying to save up to move out with Robin, becoming actual friends with Byers, having a proper platonic friendship with Nancy...it wasn't so bad. Sure he could never have what he truly wanted, but he and Robin had already planned to be each other beards, their friend group expanded and he could be close to the guy he liked. It wasn't going to be the happy white picket fence he had desperately tried to sell to Nancy in a last ditch effort to remain heterosexual. Not that he was ever going to be truly happy there either.

Things took the most unexpected turn thanks to Byers junior. The five of them were hanging out in the Byers-Hopper residence, their hangout spot since the kids preferred the Wheeler's basement. When Will weakly knocked on his brother's door, Steve did not expect to see him teary eyed on the other side. Soon enough everyone in the room was trying to console poor Will. Steve and Robin were both completely dumbstruck when Will finally opened his mouth to confess. They shared a look of "oh no, what's going to happen?". Steve had already a reassurance in his lips, trying to prevent anyone else making a hurtful comment, when Johnathan hugged him and told him it was okay. Everyone else followed, and now the look he shared with Robin was one of immense relief. He was quick to add on to the support, feeling extremely guilty at the way Byers senior seemed to relax, clearly on the fence about his answer.

Turns out Will was heartbroken due to falling for a straight guy, something that Steve could very much relate to. He wanted to say so but it wasn't the right moment, this was about Will, and no matter how relieved he felt for the Kid and his and Robin's sake, he didn't want to derail the conversation. Nancy and him reassured him that Wheeler was an idiot, and that he wasn't missing much. "You can do better than my brother".

It was Eddie who actually got Will to stop sobbing with a simple question "How do you know he's straight?". Robin pointed out how he had dated El to which Eddie gave the baffling answer of "so what? he could like both!". Johnathan and Nancy were quick to jump on his theory, while Robin and Steve exchanged incredulous stares. Clearly Robin had not known about that, or else she would have told him.

"Is that a thing?" Steve dared to hope, hope that this was not some plot to make Will feel better. "Yeah Harrington" Eddie looked at him with all that intensity he conjured for DMing "I'm pretty fucking sure." They both stared at each other, trying to read the other's face. Looking for a sign, while aknowledging it wasn't the time or place to talk. In the end, Eddie gave Will a ride to the Wheeler's.

Once he and Robin were in the safety of his car it was absolute madness. Robin's final words were "I may not have know that was a thing, but know I know and he was flirting Dingus!". He tried to shut her down, not wanting to get his hopes up, but once he was alone in his hose...that was a different story.

He managed about seven whole minutes of repeating the mantra "just because he's into dudes doesn't mean he is into you" before deciding "fuck it" and gunning it for the door. He needed to know know. Steve opened the door at the same time Eddie closed his van's. After that it was only a couple of long strides, a locked door and Eddie slamming him against it.

"Sorry if I didn't read this correctly but-" Steve didn't let him finish. And sure enough, this time he actually felt it. The butterflies, the fireworks, his heart pumping away like it was about to explode. There would be time to talk things out, figure out what they wanted, but right then and there Steve finally felt alive. And he couldn't care less what his parents thought about it.

[strangerximagines]

The Girl

Chapter 2

Billy Hargrove snores lightly, tosses and turns before he settles and Heather has never been so annoyed in her life at a guy being in her bed. Its not the first time she’s asked a guy to stay over only to watch them slink away down the trellis at her window when the sun begins to rise, knowing that her neighbor across the street will see and gossip. It’ll get back to her mother who will then scold and ground her but thats just what Heather wants, for people to talk. Its bad enough that her mother questions and vets all of her friends, like she’s trying to find the lone lesbian that may corrupt her daughter hiding in the bunch but Heather’s smart enough to surround herself with girls who are nothing but boy crazy and a little loose. So her mother doesn’t approve of her friends but its better than her mother assuming that Heather is sneaking off with girls again.

She lightly shakes Billy’s shoulders and rolls her eyes as she kisses the shell of his ear as he wakes up. She smiles at him, mock sleepily as he sits up and looks at her, a little disoriented at first, a little confused and dustant before his eyes focus and he grins. Its fake, of course it is, he’s so used to sneaking in and out of various girls rooms that he knows how to fake it. Heather hadn’t been planning on sleeping with Billy again, she really wasn’t but her mother was starting to ask questions about Heather’s love life in a way that was anything but passing and Heather knew that she needed a cover.

“Morning already sweetheart?”

“Yeah,” She yawns. “My parents are gonna be up soon. You gotta go.”

She watches him dress, pretends that she likes what she sees and he watches her back and smiles with his mouth but not his eyes. He kisses her forhead and tells her that he’ll see her again soon and climbs out her window.

Heather throws herself back and uses a pillow to scream into she hates her life and the things that she does but she doesn’t exactly hate Billy Hargrove. Thats the werid thing. She’d mentioned it to Johnathan before, how whenever she was with Billy that the sex was of course lacking it wasn’t something that she was into but that somehow she didn’t think Billy liked it much either. It was perfunctory, the way he touched her and kissed her with minimal effort or care, like he wasn’t in the moment with her either and it made Heather wonder why he even bothered if he wasn’t into it.

“Maybe he’s gay.” She says to herself and shrugs. Anyone else might laugh it off but maybe? She’d seen him, the way he acted, the way he overcompensated. He wore his masculinity on his sleeve, his sleaziest half lidded leer on anyone with tits, the way he carried himself around other guys trying to be the biggest and toughest.

The way he teased the pretty boys, always only the pretty ones with aggressive shoving and snarling. That was the only time any emotion hit his eyes, lit them up like blue electric fire and he glared down at them, his tongue wagging, his sharp toothed grin. He never looked so entertained when he was flirting with girls but when he was bullying the pretty boys he looked like he was having the time of his life. Steve Harrington got the worst of it for no apparent reason at all and was the source of Billy’s bullying just because he breathed.

And Steve was the prettiest.

But maybe Heather was over thinking, maybe she was hoping that she wasn’t the only one over compensating for something determined to let the word get around that she liked guys while maybe Billy did the same so that work got around that he liked girls, often.

Heather rolls to her side and decides to stop thinking about Billy Hargrove and sleep. She could bother Johnathan with her inane thoughts on it later.

————————————————————————————————

Nancy Wheeler is pretty even when she’s angry, maybe more so if the glare she shoots at Johnathan and Heather is anything to go by. They hadn’t heard her pulling up in her mothers car and of course Johnathan hadn’t locked his front door so that Heather could have time to run and hide in Will’s room either until Nancy left or shut herself in Johnathan’s room so that she could escape. Here Heather was, laying belly first on Johnathan’s bed, legs crossed behind her as Johnathan sat on the floor in front of her organizing his cassettes. It looked innocent because it was though with any girl with two brain cells and a boyfriend would be angry too, if they saw the town slut laying, however innocently, in their boyfriend’s bed especially if they didn’t know said slut and boyfriend were just friends.

Tyler, the guy Johnathan had been running around with before he and Nancy took up had also been a little weary of Heather and her reputation until he’d caught her with a girl. The college freshman was less than understanding before he’d caught her and even after that he was still weary about her. Maybe had Johnathan been gay and not bisexual he might have been a little less stressed about it but he hadn’t been. Heather wasn’t sorry to see him go but she might be sorry to see Nancy go. Johnathan hadn’t ever been so happy as he was when he was talking about Nancy.

“What the hell?” Nancy starts, her mouth opening a few more times before it clamps shut. “Johnathan?”

“Nothing happened.” He stands, slowly, hands coming up to ward off whatever blow Nancy might throw at him. “Nancy I swear.”

“Are you kidding me right now?” She points at Heather and then back at Johnathan, her blue eyes bright with anger. “Heather Holloway? Really Johnathan? If you were going to mess around with someone behind my back then you could have picked someone, anyone else with a little bit of class!”

Ouch. Heather winces but can’t fault her on it, she’s been around, a lot and often and she was laying in Nancy’s boyfriend’s bed having no idea that Heather and Johnathan were just friends. No one knew.

“Okay,” Heather sits up, a head shake and just tired. “Okay I get it. I know, its me in a guys bed which is something I’m known to do like a lot but you’ve got the wrong idea.”

“I don’t want to hear it.”

“Nancy she’s right nothing happened!”

“And I’m supposed to believe you? I’ve never seen you have a conversation with her. You don’t share any classes? So, what am I supposed to believe?”

Johnathan talked about Nancy a lot, sometimes Heather had to tell him to can it about his perfect girlfriend but most times she let him gush about his happy relationship. He’d been in love with Nancy since their little brother’s had become friends back when they were five, so thirteen years of being in love with the perfect girl and finally starting something was worth Johnathan talking about how great she was.

And now his relationship was falling apart in front of her because the town slut was caught in Nancy’s boyfriend’s bedroom, a guy said slut was never known to talk to. So Heather takes a breath, deep and hard and lets it out slow, her heart pounding as Johnathan begs and Nancy yells.

“I’m a lesbian.” She says loud enough for the fight to stop, Johnathan looks back at her wide eyed and Nancy just stops everything, stops yelling and seems to stop breathing.

Before she laughs.

“Oh thats rich. Am I supposed to believe that?” She shakes her head, eyes watery. “You expect me to believe such a transparent lie?”

“Its the truth.” Heather says. “The only person who ever knew is Johnathan okay. We hang out, like, for a while and nothing happened I swear.”

Heather’s brave to stand directly in front of Nancy, hands out trying to sound as genuine as possible. “I swear Nancy, I swear okay. He did nothing wrong he would never do that with anybody.”

“Prove it.”

——————————————

O’Rileys isnt technically a gay bar, its more a dinky dive where people drink, a hole in the wall not a lot of people know of unless they’re looking pretty specifically for something different. Johnathan found it by accident with Tyler and Heather had found it with some older woman she’d met who dragged her inside for some fun. It was two towns over from Hawkins, safe.

Nancy didn’t know where to look, there were men dancing with men, women kissing in dark corners and swaying with the music and giggling as they made their ways to the bathrooms for some fun in the stalls that were hardly ever used for anything other than screwing around.

“You guys come here?” Nancy’s voice was pinched, her face flushed a bit as Heather set a beer in front of her with a lopsided grin. Poor Johnthan sat with his shoulders hunched up, nervous, embarrassed, terrified, Heather had no clue what he was feeling.

“Yeah.” Heather settles in the booth seat across from the couple with a shrug. “We try to get here every weekend, well we did every weekend. Now its whenever we can to blow off some steam. The musics good and they don’t card.”

Nancy looks between them both befor taking her beer and chugging more than half, the bottle slamming on the table when she sets it down, confused. She turns to Johnathan who shrinks back.

“So you come here for the music?”

“Well, I do.” He says pinched, he toys at the label of his beer, tearing the moistened paper, shredding it. “Now.”

“Now? Wait-so you came here to...meet people?”

She doesn’t say guys but its implied and poor Johnathan shrinks back just a bit more, avoiding her piercing gaze. Nancy turns to Heather who shakes her head.

“I can’t tell you. For me I come here to meet women.”

“But Johnthan,” Nancy turns back to him, questioning. “You like guys?”

“Yeah,” He says low.

“Just...guys?”

Nancy looks like she’ll be the one gutted by his answer, Johnthan sees it and his whole form loosens.

“No not just guys. Nancy-“

“So you like both?”

She doesn’t look disgusted, the way that Heather thought she might knowing about the Nancy that Johnathan talks about and the Nancy that she’s seen in school Heather would have bet her lift tit that she wouldn’t be okay with dating a guy who sometimes dates other guys. Nancy looks curious, like it never occurred to her that liking both was an option but now that she knew she wanted to know everything.

“So you’ve dated guys?”

“Yeah.”

“Have you ever...you know?” She asks with a shrug eyes her more than half empty bottle and thats when Heather takes the hint.

“Let me get you another or...something stronger?”

“Stronger. For the table?”

“You got it.”