Chapter Text
Steve gripped the steering wheel of his bmw, the leather cracked and sticky under his palms as the engine idled in the blazing July heat. The sun was a relentless glare, baking the pavement and turning the inside of the car into a slow oven. Sweat beaded on his forehead, trickling down the sides of his face as the air conditioning sputtered weakly, barely cutting through the thick, humid air.
He pulled into the Maplewood Gardens Apartment complex, a cluster of weathered brick buildings squatting around a courtyard littered with cracked concrete and struggling patches of grass. The faded green sign creaked in the summer breeze, its letters peeling like dead skin. The whole place had that tired, neglected feeling — like it'd been holding its breath under the sun for decades.
Steve killed the engine and sat still for a moment, the heat pressing against the windows like a physical weight. He wiped his sweaty palms on his jeans and grabbed the battered suitcase from the passenger seat. The leather handle was worn smooth and slick with sweat.
He stepped out onto the asphalt, the soles of his shoes sticking slightly as they touched the hot surface. The air smelled thick and heavy, a mix of burnt asphalt, dry grass, and something faintly metallic that reminded him of summer storms back home.
This was it. His new home.. for now.
Steve took a deep breath, trying to steady the nervous flutter in his chest. He'd left Hawkins behind — the quiet town clinging to pine-scented air and memories he wasn't sure he wanted to keep. He'd left his parents' house, with its sharp rules and colder silences, where he never quite felt seen. He'd left the old college, where he'd felt boxed in, a label more than a person.
This summer was different.
Community college downtown, classes that actually felt like a chance. Alone, on his own terms.
For once, he could just be Steve. Even if he didn't know exactly who that was yet.
Inside, the stairwell smelled faintly of mildew and stale cigarette smoke as he climbed to the fifth floor, his suitcase scraping against the concrete steps.
His new apartment door was dented and scratched, but the lock clicked open without resistance. Steve stepped inside, the stale air swallowing him whole. The place was small and bare: faded beige walls, thin carpet worn threadbare in places, a ceiling fan that hung crookedly and made a mournful whirr when it spun.
No furniture, no decorations—just the empty space waiting for him.
He dropped his suitcase and sank onto the floor, feeling the heat radiate up through the thin carpet. The walls seemed to lean in, close and quiet.
He felt a sudden, strange thrill. This was his space. His life, finally. No one to tell him what to do. No expectations. No judgment.
The afternoon light streamed in through the window, throwing a wide rectangle of yellow and gold across the floor. Steve stood and walked over, wiping his damp hair back from his forehead.
The window faced a courtyard that was barely ten feet wide, across which another building sat, brick and weathered, its own windows staring right back at him.
Steve's gaze settled on the apartment directly opposite—on the fifth floor, directly in line with his own.
The curtains were pulled all the way back, hanging limply on either side of the window frame.
Inside, the room was dark but empty, or so it seemed. Not much l furniture was visible, just the bare outlines of a couch and a small table.
No sign of life.
Steve blinked, leaning closer to the glass.
He didn't expect anything else. People came and went in these places all the time.
Maybe the apartment was empty. Maybe the tenant was away for the summer.
Still, he felt the oddest flicker of curiosity.
The idea of looking out that window and seeing nothing but emptiness was... strange.
He turned to the door as a knock arose, the movers having arrived. He was relieved they were on time. He didn't have much besides a few boxes, his bed frame, bed, night stand and a dresser — what his parents allowed him to take. He'd have to shop for other things and thankfully his parents didn't cut him off completely, he still had his cards that he could use for rent, shopping, food and gas with the one rule being that he had to finish college and once he did - he was cut off and totally on his own. His dad called it real world experience, working his way up. If it meant he was out from his parents house, Steve didn't complain.
Unpacking was slow and sticky work. The tape on his boxes peeled away with effort, the cardboard softening under his sweaty hands. He stacked clothes in his dresser , hung the few posters he'd brought from home—a faded play boy one, a photo of him and Robin, some car posters.
Outside, the sun moved lower, softening the glare.
Steve dragged a folding chair to the window and sat, his arms resting on the sill.
The heat pressed against the glass, and the distant sounds of traffic hummed through the air.
For a moment, he just breathed it in.
Then, out of the corner of his eye, something moved. A flicker of motion from the building across the courtyard.
Steve turned quickly, his heart skipping. On the opposite side, behind the open window, something shifted. For a split second, a figure passed behind the glass. A flash of dark hair, a quick blur of movement. But just like that, it was gone.
Steve stared hard, squinting into the shadowed room. No one was there. Only empty space. He shook his head, feeling a flush rise in his cheeks. Probably just his imagination.
************
The next morning, Steve woke to the low hum of traffic outside his window, the sun already bright and unforgiving. The apartment was a small oven, the old air conditioner rattling in the window like it was struggling to stay alive. Steve sat up on the edge of the bed—wiped the sweat from his forehead, and tried to push away the heavy sleepiness clinging to him.
He had a schedule to keep.
Classes started in less than an hour, and the thought of walking the few blocks downtown to the community college both excited and overwhelmed him.
His parents never would have let him live like this, alone and untethered. No curfews, no constant checking in. They must have been as tired of him as he was of them. For the first time in years, he felt the sharp, dizzying edge of freedom.
The community college sat wedged between a laundromat and a coffee shop that smelled faintly like burnt espresso and powdered sugar.
Inside, the air carried that mix of old paper, floor cleaner, and worn-out sneakers, with laughter breaking through now and then from groups of students crowding the hallways..
Steve found his classroom tucked in a corner on the second floor—room 207, a cramped space with mismatched desks and a whiteboard stained with faint remnants of old notes.
He sat near the back, pulling out his notebook and pen, fingers fidgeting as he waited for the professor to start.
The class was a general education requirement—a mix of English and history that Steve had taken because it was easy enough to pass and he needed to finish what he had started by the end of summer.
But his mind wasn't really on the lecture.
Instead, his thoughts drifted back to the apartment.
He wondered about the person who might live across the courtyard. The empty window that had looked so still and lifeless the day before.
Who were they?
What were they like?
He shook his head, pushing the questions away. He had no business thinking about strangers.
*************
That evening, as the sun dipped low and painted the sky in streaks of orange and pink, Steve pulled his folding chair to the window once more.
He was half-expecting to see the empty apartment again, when suddenly— There the occupant was.
A guy.
Standing in the window across the courtyard, framed by the fading light.
Steve's heart hitched.
The figure was clearer now, tall and lean, with messy dark hair that caught the last rays of sunlight.
He was wearing a simple white t-shirt and faded jeans.
Steve's gaze locked on him, unable to look away.
The guy was moving, turning slowly as if unaware of the world outside the glass.
Steve caught the curve of his jaw, the way his shoulders tensed and relaxed as he stretched out his arms.
There was something magnetic about the way he moved.
Steve swallowed hard. He hadn't meant to stare.
The guy reached for something on a nearby table—Steve couldn't see what—and then turned his head slightly, catching a sliver of the room behind him.
Steve noticed the clutter: a worn-out guitar leaning in the corner, stacks of notebooks, a small lamp with a cracked shade.
The guy picked up the guitar and strummed a few soft chords.
Steve felt a strange pull in his chest. It was like hearing a song he didn't know he loved yet. Muted.
He blinked, suddenly self-conscious. Steve glanced quickly away.
************
Over the next few days, Steve found himself watching more often. Not deliberately. Not like some planned-out thing. It just kept happening.
He'd come home from class in the late afternoon, the sun still high and aggressive, sweat cooling on the back of his neck, his shirt sticking to the small of his back. The moment he walked into the apartment — the air thick and unmoving despite the clunky AC unit rumbling half-heartedly — he'd toss his keys onto the counter, kick off his shoes, and move instinctively toward the windows.
Sometimes it was the bedroom window. Sometimes the one by the couch in the living room. Either way, it had become a kind of unconscious ritual: open a cold soda or pull a Popsicle from the freezer, stand there for a second, and glance across the courtyard.
And more often than not — he was there.
The guy.
The neighbor.
The mystery with the wild curls and the beat-up band tees and the casual magnetism Steve couldn't explain if someone asked.
Sometimes he'd be lounging on his sofa, a guitar resting on his lap, strumming something soft and slow. His fingers moved like they belonged to someone else — easy, fluid, like the guitar wasn't an instrument but an extension of his body. Steve couldn't hear it, not through the thick, double-paned glass and the whir of his AC, but he could feel it in his chest anyway — like the rhythm was crawling through the heat between them.
Other times, the guy would be on the phone. A corded one — plastic white, coiled cord stretched across the room as he paced with a cigarette in hand. He'd laugh, loud and bright, head thrown back, curls bouncing. The kind of laugh that shook his whole frame. The kind that made Steve's stomach twist a little, unexpectedly.
He didn't stare. He told himself that.
He wasn't being intrusive.
He just... passed by the window and happened to see him. And every time, he felt like he was catching a scene from a movie playing silently across the way — private, unfiltered, beautifully human.
It drew him in. Not in a pervy way. Not in a way he could put words to, either.
It was just a pull. Magnetic. Quiet. Constant.
Like a moth to a flame he didn't fully understand.
And then one afternoon, it was different.
Steve came in from class late, sweaty and drained, salt crusted along his collarbone, backpack sliding down his arm. He went to the fridge, pulled out a half-melted ice pack, pressed it to the back of his neck, and walked into the bedroom to change.
And froze.
The guy — still nameless in Steve's head — was sitting directly in the window. Not near it. Not beside it. In it.
His legs were bent, bare feet pressed flat to the window sill and he had a spiral-bound notebook braced against one knee. A pen moved quickly in his hand, ink scrawling across the page with purpose. His brow was furrowed in concentration, eyes flicking back and forth as he wrote. Lips moving just slightly, like he was mouthing the words as he formed them.
Steve couldn't look away.
There was something so intimate about the moment — not sexual, not even particularly vulnerable, just... raw. Focused. Alive. Like the guy was pulling something out of himself and pouring it onto the page with zero awareness of being watched.
Steve leaned his shoulder lightly against the window frame, careful not to make a sound.
He found himself wondering what was on those pages. Lyrics, maybe. A diary. A half-finished letter. Poetry, even. The guy looked like someone who might write poetry — that kind of layered, half-lost intensity, like he had too many thoughts and nowhere to put them.
Steve blinked slowly, then looked down, feeling heat rush to his face — and not from the sun this time.
He didn't even know him. Not his name. Not his voice. Nothing.
But he was starting to feel like he knew something.
The shape of his silhouette in late afternoon light.
The little furrow between his brows when he was thinking hard.
The easy way he smiled when he laughed, like it wasn't a performance, just something that spilled out of him.
Steve didn't know why he was so lured in, but he was.
The way this guy existed inside his space — not performative, not self-conscious, just fully there — it made something ache low in Steve's chest. That kind of presence wasn't something he'd grown up around. Not in Hawkins. Not in his house. Not ever.
He stayed at the window for another long moment, barely breathing, then finally peeled himself away and tugged off his sweat-damp shirt. The afternoon sun had shifted across the courtyard, golden light slanting hard through the blinds.
Still restless, Steve wandered through the apartment, opened the sliding door to his little balcony, and stepped out barefoot. The metal railing burned against his palms when he leaned over it... un-heated and slightly rusted and he hissed out a breath, wiping his hands on his shorts.
It wasn't much of a view. Just the cracked pavement below, a dying potted plant left on the neighbor's railing, and the identical building across the courtyard — The guys building.
He dragged out the beat-up lounge chair he'd picked up at a yard sale the week before and collapsed into it, one arm flung over his eyes. The air shimmered with dust and the metallic tang of city heat. From below came the smell of charcoal and smoke, sharp and oddly comforting. He let himself fade into it—the haze, the heat, the stillness pressing in.
Then something tickled his ankle.
Steve cracked open one eye.
There, inching along the top of his foot, was a spider the size of a fucking quarter.
"Jesus—shit!" Steve yelped, flailing upright.
The chair bucked under him. He slapped his foot, hopped backward, stumbled over the sliding door track, and nearly fell into the living room.
A laugh cut through the courtyard — low, amused, and completely unrestrained.
Steve turned, panting, and saw him.
The guy.
The one across from him.
Leaning on the railing of his own balcony, grinning like he'd just been handed a front-row seat to the best comedy show of his life. His long hair was pulled into a frizzy bun, sweat slicking the sides of his neck. No shirt. Just cut-off jeans, a cigarette dangling from his lips, a tattoo curling over his bare shoulder.
"Spiders, man," The guy called across the gap, voice thick with summer and smoke. "They always know the ones to fuck with."
Steve blinked, heart still pounding.
"Uh—" he managed, "Yeah, well, tell him I don't consent."
It came out dumb. So dumb. But the guy laughed again — a real one this time, chest-deep and warm.
Steve, flustered and already sweating again for entirely different reasons, gave him a weak wave and all but ran back inside, pulling the sliding door shut behind him like that could do anything to hide how red his face had gotten.
He didn't come out again the rest of the day but that night, music bled through the courtyard.
Steve had just gotten out of the shower, towel around his hips, when he heard the pulse of bass vibrating faintly. He stepped into the bedroom and realized it wasn't coming from his building — it was coming from across the courtyard.
From the guys.
He wandered to the window, towel still tucked low on his hips, and peeked out. The apartment across from him was glowing in soft yellow light. The windows were open. People moved around inside... silhouettes framed by flickering lamps and posters taped to the walls. Someone held a red Solo cup. Someone else danced barefoot on the coffee table.
Steve watched, leaning on the sill, still damp from his shower, and felt something weird twist in his chest.
He didn't know these people. Didn't know the guy across from him. But he could feel it — that gravitational center of the room. It was him.
He could tell, even from here.
The way people angled their bodies toward him when he spoke. The way his hands moved when he told a story. The way his smile was just a little sharper, a little brighter than anyone else's in the room.
Steve stood there too long.
He thought about going over. Just walking in, pretending he'd gotten the wrong door, asking for a beer like he belonged.
But he didn't.
Instead, he closed the blinds and went to bed with the music still buzzing faintly behind his eyes.
*********************
A few days later, Robin showed up.
She had keys, obviously. She always had keys.
She kicked the door open with her foot, a bag of Thai food in one hand and two cans of Diet Coke in the other.
"You're wasting away without me," she declared, dropping the food on the counter. "And also, your AC sucks."
Steve grinned and hugged her with one arm. "You drove over here for this?"
"I did, and I also needed to escape my room mate - I swear if I hear one more jazz album or violin solo I'm going to scream.."
They ate on the couch Steve had bought from a thrift store, legs tangled, Steve trying not to glance too often toward the window.
But eventually, Robin noticed.
"You keep looking over there," she said, mouth full of noodles. "What, you think someone's watching you?"
Steve hesitated.
Then, after a beat, "Sort of the opposite."
Robin raised an eyebrow.
"There's this guy," Steve said, shifting. "Across the way. I dunno. He's just—he's always there. Playing guitar. Talking on the phone. Writing stuff. I'm not like, watching him-watchi—"
"You're creeping on him," Robin deadpanned.
"I'm not—!"
"Okay, okay. Soft-creeping. Casually observing. Like Jane Goodall with less monkeys and more yearning."
Steve groaned, pulling a throw pillow over his face.
Robin snorted. Then got quiet for a second.
"I think he's watching you too," she said softly.
Steve turned, squinting past the glass, and there he was — the guy. Just a sliver of him visible in the space between the curtain and the frame. A silhouette. Then gone.
It left a strange flutter in Steve's chest. Not fear. Not excitement. Just... something.
He dropped his head back with a soft groan. "Jesus."
Robin sat up straighter, eyebrows raised. "So. Are you gonna go over there? Borrow some sugar? Spill something on yourself and show up like, 'oops, I'm clumsy and shirtless'?"
He threw the pillow at her. She caught it and hugged it to her chest like a smug little gremlin.
"You know," she said, teasing now but with that quiet note of real curiosity underneath, "I'm honestly shocked. I figured you'd be scoping the complex for free boob shows. Cracked blinds. Steamy shower windows. Some one playing porn, at the very least."
Steve rolled his eyes, rubbing a hand over his face. "Thanks."
"I mean," she went on, ignoring him, "You've got prime perv real estate. Top floor, unobstructed view, a pair of eyes, and a soul hungry for debauchery—"
"Seriously," he said, a little more defensively than he meant. "It's not like I'm creeping. I'm not sitting there with binoculars jerking it in the dark."
Robin snorted. "No, no. You're sitting here like a damsel in distress, sighing at a boy with a guitar and a journal." She picked up the last dumpling with her fingers. "It's kind of romantic. In a weird, messed-up, you kind of way."
Steve leaned forward, elbows on his knees, fingers laced. His voice dropped a little. "It's not like that."
"Well, okay. Not my business, anyway." She wiped her hands on a napkin, then tossed it on the coffee table. "But if there does happen to be a free boob show over there sometime, you better fucking call me over."
Steve snorted so hard he nearly choked on his water. "Jesus Christ, Robin."
"What? Equal opportunity voyeurism!" she said, grinning. "You're over here getting your little poetic soft-boy crush on, meanwhile I'm just trying to see some tits."
Steve shrugged his lips, "Can't argue with that."
***************
Later that night, Steve couldn't sleep.
The air in his apartment felt like soup — thick and slow, refusing to move even with the fan sputtering on full blast in the corner. It was the kind of heat that clung to skin, soaked into the walls, made everything feel heavier. More intimate. More unbearable.
He'd given up on pajamas around midnight. Thrown the sheets to the floor around one. Now, sometime past two, he lay flat on his back in nothing but boxers, one arm flung over his eyes, the other stretched uselessly toward the fan that wasn't doing a damn thing. Sweat collected in the dip of his collarbone, behind his knees, at the small of his back where it stuck to the mattress in patches. His chest rose and fell in slow, shallow breaths, like even that was too much effort.
Everything was still. The kind of still that only came in the dead middle of the night when the world was pared down to shadows and the low hum of crickets outside. The occasional rattle of pipes. A car crawling down the street in the distance.
Steve rolled over eventually, restless, skin peeling away from the sheets with a quiet suck of moisture. He pushed at the pillow, flipped it, pressed his cheek to the slightly cooler side. And then — without really thinking — he turned toward the window.
Just a glance.
Just a habit now.
The curtain across the way was open.
And the guy — still nameless, still just him in Steve's head — was there.
Not in the window seat this time.
In bed.
The lamp beside him cast a soft gold glow over the room, spilling across white sheets in warm pools of light. The air inside looked hazy, humid — like Steve's. No AC. Just open windows, sticky summer, and skin too hot to touch.
The view wasn't perfect. The angle was a little off and Steve could only see a partial slice of the room from where he lay, head tipped toward the glass but the curtain was open just enough to frame him. A cinematic kind of coincidence.
The guy was lying on his back, sprawled out, one knee bent lazily to the side. His bare chest caught the light, all pale skin and faint lines of ink, the sharp angle of his collarbones. His hair was down now, not pulled back, frizzed wild from the heat and sweat, curling damp against his cheeks and neck.
Steve's eyes went wide.
One hand was under the sheet.
Moving.
Slow.
Not frantic or desperate. Not showy.
Just a steady, deliberate rhythm.
The guy's lips parted on a breath Steve couldn't hear.
His head tipped back into the pillow, curls spilling. His chest rose with a deeper inhale, then dropped again. There was a tension to the line of his jaw... not strained, exactly, but focused.
And the look on his face. Eyes half-lidded. Far away. Dreamy.
Steve didn't move.
Didn't breathe.
He knew he should look away. Knew it was private. Knew the respectful thing — the decent thing — would be to roll over and shut the curtain and pretend he hadn't seen a thing.
But he didn't.
Because it didn't feel dirty, watching him like that. It didn't feel like spying. It felt like stumbling into something unguarded like overhearing someone talking in their sleep. Or seeing a glimpse of a truth they hadn't meant to show.
He sat there frozen, heart pounding hard enough to rattle his ribs. A thousand thoughts slid through his head like sand... jumbled and fast and too slippery to catch. Things like he's beautiful. Things like I shouldn't. Things like I've never wanted anything like this before.
The guy's hips rolled once ... slow, instinctive. His head turned, just a fraction, toward the window.
Steve flinched.
Pulled back.
Not all the way. But enough to shift deeper into shadow, chest tight, neck hot, pulse roaring in his ears.
He didn't think he'd been seen. It wasn't that.
It was something else.
It was the realization that this wasn't just fascination anymore. It wasn't curiosity. It wasn't boredom or loneliness or summer heat playing tricks on him.
It was a pull.
It was that fluttery ache he hadn't felt since he was seventeen and stupid and letting a girl kiss him under the bleachers just to see if it would make him feel whole. It was that same ache, but sharper now.
It felt dangerous.
Not because it was wrong.
But because it wasn't.
Because it felt too real. Too immediate. Because it made Steve's skin prickle and his stomach flip and his mouth go dry.
He dragged in a breath and backed away from the window, moved to the far side of the bed where the view disappeared completely. Lay there, staring up at the ceiling, throat tight, fingers curling into the sheet.
He couldn't stop thinking about the slow curve of the guy's wrist. The softness of his mouth. The rise and fall of his chest in lamplight.
Steve exhaled through his nose, long and shaking.
Then reached down under the waistband of his briefs with a hand that was already trembling.
He didn't touch himself like he normally did. It wasn't fast, it wasn't mindless. It wasn't about getting off and getting to sleep.
It was slow. Curious. Quiet.
And it was him... the guy with the notebook, the guitar, the window seat and the wild hair and the crooked smile... who filled the space behind Steve's closed eyelids.
Who made Steve's back arch just a little.
Who made him gasp when he came, muffled into the crook of his arm.
Afterward, Steve lay there a long time, one hand still over his eyes, the other curled into a loose fist against his chest.
The fan whirred. A siren cried out far away. Sweat tickled his temple, sliding into his hair.
And somewhere, across the way, the window light went out.
Darkness settled over everything like a blanket.
Steve didn't sleep for a long, long time.