If someone had told sixteen-year-old Steve that he’d be attending the wedding of Jonathan Byers’ younger brother and one of the freshman benchwarmers on the basketball team, Steve would have told them they were insane. If that person had gone on to say that he’d be attending said wedding with one of the best friends of Jonathan Byers’ younger brother as his boyfriend, he would have called the police to tell them a patient had escaped from Pennhurst.
And yet, that is exactly what Steve is doing. He’s currently squirming in a rickety chair on the sweeping lawn of a fancy summer villa for the wedding of Will Byers and Chance Lawson. Sweat trickles down his back under his suit from the hot afternoon sun watching the wedding party stand and melt as they wait for the grooms to come down the aisle. Mike and Lucas are standing opposite two basketball players Steve had never been that close with while Andy fucking Harper is currently either glaring or making eyes at Dustin.
Steve has never thought murder sounded as compelling as it did right now.
It’s his own fault too, Steve muses as he watches Dustin lean over and whisper something in Lucas’ ear, making him snicker behind his hand. Steve could have been up there, but he’d turned down Chance’s bizarre invitation to be one of his groomsmen despite barely having one conversation together off the court. He’d done so in a fit of loyalty to Dustin, refusing to be seen standing up with the basketball team that had made Dustin’s life a living hell in high school.
And now, that inspired bit of loyalty is coming back to bite him in his ass. His sweaty, sweaty ass that is slowly going numb on this shit chair. Steve tries to recall the happy memory of Dustin’s eyes widening and then growing dark, completely turned on at the idea that Steve felt so strongly about rejecting his high school basketball team. Dustin had spent all afternoon showing Steve just how grateful he was for that little display.
Steve suddenly catches an elbow in the ribs.
“Hey, lighten up would you? You look like you’re at a funeral right now.” Robin hisses at him.
“Oh, sorry I’m not looking delighted that Dustin’s high school bully is looking at him like a piece of meat, Robin! It’s not exactly my idea of a good time!” Steve hisses back.
“Oh please, Dustin can handle himself. Cool it on the macho cave-man protective bullshit.”
“I haven’t even done anything!” Steve insists in a hysterical whisper, ignoring the way he’d been fantasizing about knocking that expression off Andy’s stupid face a second earlier.
Robin snorts in disbelief, but doesn’t have a chance to retort because the quartet starts playing “Pomp and Circumstance” and everyone rises and turns to the back of the house where the grooms are going to emerge to walk down the aisle. Chance walks down first, hair coiffed even higher than Steve’s. Well…that made sense, Steve grumpily tries to reason to himself. He had been out sweating in the humidity for almost two hours at this point. Steve had taken some amusement in watching Dustin’s own hair fight the constraints of his shellacked styling, curls growing wilder and wilder with every passing minute.
It’s Will’s turn to walk down the aisle, arm in arm with Joyce and Jonathan. He’s already crying. Good grief, Steve thinks ungenerously. Crying over Chance? Really? The guy had been nice enough as a freshman, though he was as dull as dishwater. But Steve had long since abandoned any goodwill toward him after Dustin told him he’d been part of the group that had jumped him at Eddie’s grave right before their final crawl.
Steve looks back up to the front. He can just make out from this distance the ugly scars on Andy’s face, somewhat faded in the intervening years, but still visible. Evidence of Dustin’s prismatic spray attack. Steve smiles grimly to himself.
The smile slides off his face when Andy bite his lip as he rakes his eyes up and down Dustin’s form, lip curling lecherously. The hair on the back of Steve’s neck stands up. He remembers something similar in the way that Billy Hargrove used to look at Steve like that in the locker room showers.
This is going to be a long fucking night.