#jonathanb

You could faintly hear the sound of his voice calling your name. That’s what you were holding onto in that moment. When everything around you was darkness, shadows overlapping shadows, the smell of rot and mold in the air, a strange wet feeling to it making you break out in cold sweats - Jonathan’s voice was like a guiding light to you. You wanted to call back. Wanted him to find you - but didn’t want to call the attention of anything else that was in here. You could see movements out of the corner of your eye but everytime you turned your head, there appeared to be nothing there. You knew better. This was a bad place. There were bad things hiding.

“Y/N,” You heard, but it sounded like it was quieter than before. He was getting further away from you. He’d never find you at this rate. So you had no choice but to buckle up and find him. Find the way that you had come in and try to escape that way. So you ran, your feet slipping against all of the slimy branches on the ground, beating out an uneven rhythm until you could hear his voice a little more clearly. The tree. The opening. It was closing. You dove, landing roughly on your stomach.

The change of air was the first thing that you felt. No longer as stale. It smelled of fresh foliage and dirt. The second thing was someone grabbing your arms. You tried to fight until Jonathan’s voice came through again, this time clear. You fell limp as he pulled you the rest of the way through and then held you, hand cradling your head. “I got you - I got you," he reassured you, out of breath.

“I know, I know,” You said into his shirt. You were covered in a stickiness. Sap of some kind, but it felt like blood. It felt like the tree had just given birth to you somehow. “But can we - maybe not stick around? Whatever was in there - it could follow.”

“Yeah,” Jonathan agreed, his dark eyes settling on what he had just pulled you out of. It looked like a regular tree again. Just a run of the mill, creepy Fangorn Forest tree in Hawkins. “Come on, my car’s not far.”

He kept holding onto you as he walked you towards his car. You thought for a second that he might have been stuck because of all of the sap but he wasn’t. He wanted to hold you. He needed to do it as much as he wanted to be held.

Once you got there, you took a rest, leaning against the door of his beat up junker. You didn’t get in right away. Just breathed in the fresh air. “It was horrible in there, Jonathan,” You admitted. “And - oh fuck, I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry that I got scared. I - I could have, I should have gone looking for Will when I was in there but I-”

“No, hey,” He said, wrapping his arms around you again, bringing you in for a hug. He kept doing so. It was the only way that he knew you were okay. “- don’t think like that. We’ll find another way in. The both of us. I wouldn’t want you to do it alone.”

You sighed in relief of that. You were scared he would get angry that you didn’t take the chance. But it made sense. He didn’t even have to see the Upside Down and yet he could see how much it affected you. “Thanks, Jonathan. But hopefully you never have to see that place. Hopefully no one has to ever again once Will gets out. It’s truly horrible.”

“I get it,” He said, nodding, and kissed your forehead. “Will’s strong. We’ll find him.”

The handwriting was really rough to get through, you had to admit. Chicken scratch. You could barely make out most of it, but what you could make out was enough to make your heart beat faster.

‘- the real world sucks but you make it not so bad sometimes --- I’m shit at saying what I’m thinking so I’m saying it now ------ I love you.’

There were plenty of things in between but those were the most clear. You had read it over a hundred times. Jonathan fucking Byers. You were friends, but you wouldn’t say that you were all that close. You had a part time job working with Joyce at the store so you were like a family friend, despite being around Jonathan’s age. Finding this letter in your mailbox before school had been a complete surprise. Even more so because somehow the mailman had been able to read the address.

On the way to school you debated what to do. Should you go up to him and ask about the letter or pretend that it had just never been delivered and it got lost in the post office somewhere - it was known to happen. You hadn’t fully made up your mind until the second that you saw him walking down the hallway, head down, bag slung over his shoulder, heading to the darkroom to process some pictures, probably. That’s all he ever seemed to do. “Jonathan, wait up,” You said, your sneakers squeaking against the floor as you struggled to catch up with his long legs. He paused to wait for you and then would resume walking again, looking at you from beneath those long bangs. “I got your letter this morning.”

“My letter?” He asked, eyebrows shooting up. Seemed as much a surprise to him as it had been to you. You brought it out of your bag and showed it to him, envelope and all. He snatched it out of your hands and read it, his face, his neck, all of it turning red as he went through it. “Oh. Shit. I - I wrote this when I was drunk.” He looked so horrified, it was almost a little insulting.

“So does that mean that you didn’t mean any of it?” You asked, staring up at him. “That I should just forget that this is the nicest, sweetest thing that anyone has ever done for me - because you were drunk?”

He looked at a loss for words, avoiding your eyes, just holding onto the letter, his lips pursed into a straight line. Finally he said, “Don’t forget it.”

That was the right answer. That’s the answer that you wanted to hear. “Good, I won’t then,” You said, taking the letter back from his hands. You leaned against his arm, propping yourself up to kiss the loner-boy on his very red cheek. “Do you want to talk about it over dinner at my place tonight? The ‘rents are working late.”

“Yeah, sure, okay,” He said quickly.

“Great, come over whenever,” You said, giving his arm a squeeze and then departed to go down a different hallway to your next class, leaving the Byers boy looking as red as a bottle of tomato juice. He noticed a couple of curious looks and then kept on walking, head low, hair in face, trying to hide the grin.