𝐅𝐋𝐎𝐖𝐄𝐑𝐒 • Steve Harrington

Chapter 24

TWO WEEKS LATER
( Friday, March 29th 1985 )

HE had been on her case for a while about this new episode. Dallas had been on its season hiatus for a while but it was finally back in business to wrap up the lives of these characters that Steve had to spend the majority of the episode colouring in for Julie. She was slowly picking up on the events in spite of its fast pacing and lack of context. She relied heavily on the recap, but it mainly covered the past several episodes. Otherwise, she had missed seven whole seasons.

"J.R. is everything I wanna be and more, I mean look at the guy," Steve commented over the phone.

They were watching the episode in their respective living rooms from their respective sofas: Steve holding his brick telephone pressed to his ear, whilst Julie had a rotary phone sitting in her criss-crossed lap, the corded phone pressed to her ear.

"He's a total crook blackmailing a random old guy," Julie counters.

"And that's totally badass. You're eight seasons behind, so you don't get it. You haven't grown up with him the way that I have."

"Well I'm sorry to be the one to break it to you but as far as I can tell, you're not J.R.. You're Bobby."

"That's insulting," Steve huffs offendedly.

"What's wrong with Bobby? He's a looker and he's a good egg."

"Bobby Ewing is boring. He hasn't got that flare, you know? He lives in the shadow of his brother. Are you saying I live in the shadow of the brother that I don't have?"

"I'm saying you're better than that cheating hick."

"J.R. isn't just any cheating hick, he's a legendary cheating hick."

Julie rolled her eyes. "I can't believe you're making me watch this. This is so ridiculous."

"It's magic."

"It's nonsense, Steve. It is not this easy to break out of jail."

"Yeah, Ted Bundy would beg to differ on that one."

"I would hardly call slipping through an open library window a jailbreak. And what is with half of the drama in this show being affairs?" Julie cringed. "It just makes the women seem so humiliating. I mean, do they have any other character traits that aren't dating horrible men?"

"Speaking of horrible men," Steve said suddenly, the light-bulb moment elevated in his tone, "Billy's found a new way to make my life a living hell."

Julie's face contorted, not liking where any of this was going already. "Oh gosh, what?"

"You."

"Don't start."

"No, he whispers all these charming random terms of endearment in my ears like bitch, pussy, and then my personal favourite, the guy with the girlfriend that would leave him in the blink of an eye for a jailbird with a rat tail." Steve feigned nonchalance, but the bitterness carried his sentences with minor inflections that Julie could hear clear as day. But it wasn't what she cared to notice.

"I'm your girlfriend now?" her lips curled with a slanted smile.

"I don't know," Steve shrugs. "It was his words not mine-besides the jailbird and the rat tail part, that was all me."

Julie rolled her eyes, her smile sticking just fine.

"But just out of interest," Steve continues casually, "what would you call you?"