The babysitters club|| Steve Harrington

30

"You three, sit!" Dustin ordered.

"No, no, no!" Robin whined, "These seats are too close!"

She was right of course, who the hell even sat in the first row at a movie theater? Wait, when did they walk into a movie theater? This was so fucking trippy, Steve could barely remember how they had stumbled in, all giggling with their arms around each other.

He had plucked some popcorn from somewhere while they ran from the Russian guards and entered the theater.

Steve sat to one side of Matteo while Robin took the other. He was glad for it, because he liked having Matteo close. Though his vision was a little fuzzy, he focused on the movie.

"Hey! I wanted to see this one!" Matteo snorted, leaning his head on Robin's shoulder as he looked up at the two in front of him. Wait, why wasn't he leaning his head on Steve's shoulder? That made Steve sad. He'd seen the poster of the movie— Back to the future— in the mall and it looked pretty cool even though they had missed the first few scenes. "Yayyy thanks for taking us to the movies, Dusty and Erica"

"What are you talking about?" Steve mumbled, his mouth full of popcorn, "These seats blow"

"Then don't watch the movie" Dustin groaned.

"We wanna watch it" Robin patted Matteo's cheek like you would a sleepy child.

"Then watch it!" Dustin snapped.

A guy behind him leaned forward, shushing them. Steve frowned, no one shushed his child. The three drugged teenagers shushed him back.

"Whatever you do," Dustin told them, "Don't... go... anywhere"

"Fine, dad" Steve said, causing the other two to snicker as Robin reached into his trash popcorn, leaning across Matteo.

"The appropriate question is, when the hell are they?" Said the crazy scientist on the screen.

"Ooh time travel" Matteo mumbled, "Hey Steve, can your weird little friend time travel? El? Or whatever her name was"

"I wish" He snorted, "She can move things with her mind" He pressed two fingers to his temples, eyes widening in humor causing Matteo to snort.

There were only three seats free together that they could find, so Dustin and Erica had to go further down from the three to find a place to sit. Steve liked the space to breathe. Having Dustin and Erica constantly breathing down their necks and treating them like children got old really fast.

Matteo grabbed some popcorn from Steve and shoved it in his face. His fingers barely touched Steve's lap where he kept the paper bag of popcorn, but it still sent electricity shooting down his spine.

The movie theater was really cold, making Steve want to pull Matteo onto his lap again. His hoodie was so soft and his hair also. And even though he still looked beaten up and bruised, he looked beautiful.

Did Matteo know how beautiful he was? Probably not. A hundred people could tell him and it wouldn't be enough. Steve needed to tell him.

But a strange sense of shame and embarrassment curled up inside him. Friends didn't do that sort of stuff, right? Friends didn't tell each other they were beautiful. Friends didn't get hard because their friend fell on top of them. Friends didn't look at their friend's lips too long. Friends didn't want friends to whisper sweet nothings in their ears. Friends didn't shiver at the touch of their friend's fingertips. Friends didn't freeze at their friend's warm breath on their neck.

If his father was here, Steve wondered what he would think.

The thought was so ridiculous, he giggled.