no upside down au where steve harrington and nancy wheeler have just broken up for the umpteenth time and nancy wheeler is annoyed.
how many times have they broken up again only to get back together two weeks later?
and so, nancy wheeler makes a plan. a plan to make steve jealous and to finally, finally, end this stupid routine.
not for real! before you go calling her insane and manipulative. just...enter a mutually beneficial agreement with him. they'll pretend to date, maybe make out a couple time in front of steve, and he'll be so overcome with jealously that he'll do everything he can to make sure they never break up again. it's foolproof!
she just didn't account for having actual feelings for jonathan.
jonathan byers is yearning.
not for a person no- but for an internship.
the new york times' paid photography internship. in new york. with housing and food provided.
everything. it could put his application to NYU over the edge. it could help out his mom with bills a hell of a lot better than his minimum wage job at the movie theater could. it could get him out.
there's just one problem. they want to see photojournalism and artistic photography. they want people who have experience in their school newspapers. and jonathan does yearbook, but yearbook photos don't tell stories. not the way newspaper ones do. so he needs to get published in the newspaper. like, now.
when nancy wheeler asks him for a favor, he is skeptical, to say the least.
when she asks him to pretend to date her? yeah, skeptical is not nearly enough to describe how he feels after that.
but nancy wheeler is editor in chief of the weekly streak. nancy wheeler has power when it comes to what gets published.
pretending to date nancy wheeler might just be his key to getting that internship.
plus, it doesn't hurt that nancy is smart and funny and cool and pretty and really easy to talk to and-
oh shit. he's in love with nancy wheeler.
steve harrington is down on his luck.
his on-again, off-again, girlfriend and him are off again, his dad is making him get a minimum wage job to learn the value of money and his co-worker? none other than jonathan byers. his ex's new boyfriend.
ugh. this should be miserable.
or...so steve thinks. because jonathan byers is not who he thought he'd be. jonathan is cool and quiet and shy but so very passionate, and he's so caring and suprisingly funny and the two of them have a tentative friendship. somehow.
they start hanging out, after school, and he makes steve's big empty house not feel so empty and he's sweet and he teases him about not knowing different movies and watches them with him anyways and explains them anyhow and steve thinks he's maybe the best friend he's every had, which is weird. he knows it. he's his ex's new boyfriend.
and then he sees nancy and jonathan together and they just- fit. perfectly. and he wants-
steve isn't just jealous of jonathan.
he's jealous of nancy, too.
