“Please?” he says back, mirroring your soft tone. “You think you need to say please?” His pinky bumps under the waistband of your trousers. There isn’t much give. He traces the lining to your zipper, fiddling with the small piece of metal as your eyes darken. “I should be the one saying it.” His voice keeps dropping, an utterance in the shell of your ear, his words for you and you alone. “I’m at your mercy, dove. Don’t say please with me. Okay?”
you find remus’ number on an abandoned motorbike. things snowball from there. [10k words]
fem!reader, fluff, first date, smut mdni, implied inexperienced!reader, almost rockstar!remus, mentioned that remus takes painkillers, muggle!au, early 2000’s au
˚ʚ♡ɞ˚
There’s a motorbike outside of the cafe.
It’s huge. Too heavy for you to move. Technically, you hadn’t found it at all, it was left there in the dead of night a few days ago and hasn’t budged since. It’s illegally parked, a fact that your manager won't stop muttering about while she’s elbow deep in latte foam and coffee cakes.
“I’m getting the bastard thing towed,” she grumbles that morning. “Let the police deal with it.”
That seems rather harsh to you. It isn’t necessarily in the way, and it looks well loved. Perhaps whoever left it can’t remember where they left it, having stumbled home on inebriated footing after one too many at the pub across the street. You think about how much it must cost to get your stuff back after it’s been towed, and though you aren’t sure of the specifics, you know it can’t be cheap. So, when your manager falls into conversation with a regular and your break begins, you creep outside to do some investigating.
It’s a hulking thing made of more black than silver. There are stickers across the left side of the body, weathered and peeling, though one is newer than the others and immediately draws your eye.
A phone number.
If lost, please call.
You take your phone out of your pocket, a flip phone with one dangling charm in the shape of a star. You click each faded button slowly. You're scared to talk to someone you don’t know, but relieved to maybe save the day.
It goes for ages.
“Hello?”
“Hey,” you say, dropping your voice into its sweetest tones, though nerves make you too soft, and you worry you’re hard to hear. “Hey, um, sorry to bother you. I work at The Mill, it’s a– a cafe in the city centre… Are you missing a bike, by any chance? A motorbike?”
“Oh, thank you. Yeah, it’s my friend’s. He can be… forgetful.” The voice that speaks is both smooth and gritty, impossibly, like whoever it is that’s talking smoked half a pack of cigarettes before he answered the phone. He clears his throat. “I hope it hasn’t been an imposition for you.”
“Actually, uh, my manager wants to have it towed. Like, now. I can try to fend her off but honestly she’s like, that physics law, um, unstoppable force? Uh,” —you’re stuttering, making it worse, because his voice is surprisingly handsome and you’re an idiot through and through— “yeah, so could you come and get it?”
“Yes! Yeah, absolutely, we’re on our way. Thank you.”
“Sure. Of course.”
You hear something not meant for you, the tail end of, “Sirius, get up. You better call Marl and—”
Phone back in your pocket, you take a quick glance around the street before reaching out to run your finger over the cracked leather of the motorbike seat. You’ve never ridden one before. You’ve never wanted to. The level of fearlessness one needs for it isn’t one you possess.
You’re the opposite of fearless.
The sun hides behind a wave of clouds. Your skin chills near immediately, your prim slacks and apron a worthless defence against the cold. It’s an average day here, grey and quiet. Occasionally a couple will pass you, hand in hand as they traverse the worn pavement. You smile at an elderly man and his dog as they shuffle across the street and into the cafe. Your smile fades as you tune into the fierce tones of your manager, demanding to know where you’ve gone. If your absence is what distracts her from calling the police, so be it.
You’re considering getting your phone back out to play Snake when a passing car slows beside you. You straighten up and out, feeling your spine click in more places than it should as the passenger door opens and an insanely attractive man throws himself out of it.
“My angel!” he cries, heading straight for you.
You take a panicked step backward. The man dives for his motorbike. You flinch, mystified by his enthusiasm and his opposite appearance. Short sleeves reveal arms full of dark tattoos, with one side marred by a brutally long scar from his elbow to the back of a ring-laden hand. You tear your eyes from him as a second door closes across the street, and feel all the air rush from your chest as a second man approaches.
He’s very pretty. It might be redundant to say it to yourself, presented as you are with an undeniable truth, but you think it anyway. Sandy brown hair, pale skin, and in enough layers to make up for his friends lack thereof, the second man ignores any dramatics and meets you head on.
“Hi,” he says, holding out his hand, “you’re the one who called?”
Closer now, you can see the scars on his face. They stretch over the ridge of his nose and into his eyebrow. A smaller one tugs as he talks against his top lip.
You take his hand and shake it limply. “Yeah, that was me.”
If he’s concerned with your nervousness he doesn’t show it. His smile doesn’t move. “He wants to say thank you. He will, once he gets over himself.”
“Thank you!” the dark-haired man calls. “She’s my everything. I’ve been sick with worry.”
“Have you?” the man in front of you asks, his voice steady, almost intimidating in its impassiveness.
“Yes, Moons, I have been… not that you’d know.”
“Some of us have real problems,” Moons snips, though he quickly looks at you like he’s embarrassed. “Sorry. He brings out the worst in me.”
“You must be good friends.”
You don’t know why you say it. He only smiles.
“We must be.”
The first man stands up from checking over his motorbike and beams at you. You suspect it’s an expression that works in his favour more often than not. “What can I give you, doll?”
“No, nothing. Please. I’ll just be glad to hear the end of it.”
"Are you sure?"
"Yeah, really."
Your manager calls your name, clear as day despite the thick pane of glass and brick walls separating you.
"That's you?" Moons asks.
"That's me. Sorry."
"No, don't be. Thanks so much for calling."
You nod hurriedly, throwing them both a 'nice to meet you, I'm sorry for leaving so fast' kind of smile and head back inside.
You take a sneaky look back when you're behind the counter again. They’ve turned their backs to you, Moons' friend ruffling his hair roughly. After a minute or two, Moons gets back in his car, and the motorbike pulls away like it was never there to begin with.
What sort of name is Moons? you ask yourself. It's a question that stays with you for a few days. You find yourself hoping you'll see him again, or that his friend's motorbike will turn up outside of the cafe for a few long days and give you an excuse to call him. His number stays unsaved in your recent calls menu for a while. Eventually, you forget about him altogether; the motorbike, the call, the gentle wave of his hair.
You're hard-pressed to forget his voice, though. There'd been something familiar about it.
"Nice highscore."
You jump hard and wince as the metallic taste of blood hits your taste buds. To make it worse, you slam your phone up into the counter it was hiding under in shock. It makes a fatal crunching sound.
You shove it into your pocket and look up. Standing there, in all his handsome weariness, is Moons, sans friend. He's wearing nice clothes, clean and clearly ironed. You're immediately aware of your ratty uniform and your unkempt hair.
"Shit," you say, which is so fucking embarrassing, honestly, you could fall through the floor and stay there, "Sorry. What can I get you?"
His eyebrows inch up his forehead. "What's the easiest thing to make?"
That's not a question you get often. "Uh, regular black coffee, or tea, or, the uh– the hot chocolate's not that hard. But you should order whatever you like, of course."
Moons smiles at you. You're starting to understand the nickname (assuming it is a nickname). He has this odd but enticing presence about him, like that awestruck feeling of looking up at night and seeing all the teeny tiny stars and the moonlight that comes down with them, bright and somewhat daunting.
"Sure you don't mind?"
"I'm paid not to mind."
"Can I get the biggest cup of tea you can make? Milk and two sugars, please."
"Absolutely." You sidestep to the register and click a bunch of the wrong buttons. You're unprofessionally flustered. "Uh, three sixty five?"
He passes you a five pound note. Your tip cup is for the more generous type, and he has no trouble dropping his palmful of change into it. He barely looks. You're expecting him to take a seat but he stays standing, one arm pressed to the counter, the other held up. He scratches behind his ear absentmindedly, as though he has nowhere else to be.
"Are you in a hurry?" you ask, confused.
He stays quiet for enough time to shit you up. You're tipping milk over your hand and hoping he hasn't seen it when he says, "No rush. I'm here to see you."
You look over your shoulder at him. You can't help it. "To see me."
"Yeah."
You spin back to his tea. The counter is covered in spills and sugar, cup tops and wooden stirrers. You take them all in with wide eyes. Nobody ever comes to see you. Not your friends, not family (unless they want something). Especially not boys you met once for two minutes.
"Is there something wrong?" you ask.
You clip the lid onto his big tea and wrap it in napkins so it doesn't burn his hands.
"Nothing's wrong," he says kindly. "I wanted to apologise. Your boss was upset with you. It was Sirius' fault. We owe you for it."
"You really don't have to say sorry. She wasn’t that mad. No harm, no foul."
You put his cup of tea down in front of him and try to smile like girls do in the movies. Soft doe eyes, not too bright, not too awkward. You give up after a second and feel it twist into something regrettable.
His long silence makes you squirm.
"A thank you, then.”
He offers you an envelope. You take it.
The paper is crisp and thick. Your fingers are clumsy, and it takes you too many seconds to fold the envelope's lip and pull out the card stock inside.
You look up in shock. "I can't–"
He's not there. You look to the door, catching what might've been his hand as he walks out of view.
He's left you two concert tickets. You don't go to concerts. You might have, when you were younger, and had friends to follow. As it stands he's given you two seated tickets for a show in the Pointer Arena not far from where you work, for a band you've never heard of. The price on each is a solid £20, which is way too much repayment for ringing a number from a sticker. Worse, you're not sure you have somebody who can use the second one.
You hope he'll come back for clarification alone, and a little to see him, but he doesn't, and soon the date on the ticket matches the date on your calendar and you're standing outside of the venue with no clue how to hold yourself.
You stand in line for a while. It's a very long line made up of mostly younger women. You listen for the calling of a reseller and spot a group of young girls trying to haggle with them, reluctantly leaving your place in line.
"Hi," you say quietly to the one furthest from the epicentre. "I'm sorry if this is weird. I have an extra ticket tonight, and I was wondering if you'd like it? I know it's seated, but maybe you could use it to get in and then, uh, not sit? Or just sit." You could writhe around on the ground in shame. You hold out the spare ticket. "If you want it."
"Are you kidding?"
"No, seriously."
She takes the ticket and you walk away before she can try and give it back to you. Whether she uses it or not, it's no longer your problem to deal with. The lady who'd been standing behind you lets you back in line, for which you're extremely grateful, and you shiver your way to the front with nerves churning your stomach.
You've imagined being turned away twenty times by the time they usher you through the doors. The air is buzzing with excitement, enough of it to ramp up your nerves, and you smile weakly at the people who pass you on the way up to the seating area you've been designated. The Pointer Arena is a smaller venue with much more standing than seating capacity available. The seats are at the sides and back of the second floor, looking down at the pit with a safety barrier in front.
You slide into your seat and peer down at the crowd as it fills up one ant of a person at a time. You can't distinguish one person from another after a while. It’s a moving sea of dark clothes.
It takes a long time for the opening act to come on. You're not having much fun. You'd tried to use the computer in the cafe to research the bands playing tonight but the dial up hadn't been working and your manager hates when you take long breaks, so you aren't sure you'll even enjoy yourself. You're not sure why you came here — is it sad, to come here alone? It looks sad, you think, pathetic, but it doesn't feel sad. You're not very good at talking, anyways. It's so difficult. Or maybe you just make it that way.
This is why you regret coming. Any time spent by yourself is time to think. You hate thinking, but it's all you seem to be able to do. Think and think and think. Your mind runs in the same circles. Things you've done, things you wish you did, things you want to do so badly it makes you feel sick. You can't stand it.
The crowd begins to rise in volume. Cheers echo against the atrium ceiling, and you push yourself to the edge of your seat to see what's making them all so excited.
The opening band. They're too far away to see clearly. First on stage is a man with brown skin and a head of black curls, a guitar swinging from his neck, the body barely held as he waves to the masses. Next comes a paler man with hair tied up in a bun who sits down behind the drum kit and doesn't move much after that. A girl practically sprints to centre stage, scooping up a waiting guitar (or bass?) and strumming down the body appreciatively. She has purple hair, bright and choppy, particularly abrasive against the alabaster white of her skin.
And last on stage… last on stage is Moons.
You move forward suddenly, smacking your face against the plexiglass barrier and biting your cheek for the second time in a week. Used to your mistreatment, the poorly healed skin wastes no time splitting, and the metallic taste of blood makes you cringe.
That's Moons. There are two huge screens either side of the stage that magnify him. First his hand on the microphone, a scar coiling up from his wrist to his thumb purple against his skin. Then his face. You wouldn't forget what he looks like so soon, not when you've half obsessed over him for days with could-be's because he'd wanted to see you and you have a bad habit of inventing future's with people you don't know, but even if you did it wouldn't matter. You've never met anyone else with three scars as he has across his face, taking centre stage.
You hadn't realised the tickets were to see his band. It makes sense, now, why your seat is in such a quiet area, and why the people sitting close by aren't firecracker happy at the sight of them. They must've received their tickets in the same way, gifts or thank yous for small favours.
Your mouth dries as they begin to play. It's not what you're expecting. Of course, you haven't really had time to expect anything, and yet you're shocked when they start to play a slow song. He doesn't really look like a rockstar, but a heartthrob? You can see it easily. The long lengths of his lashes, and the dark honey of his eyes. His smile, so small but somehow piercing.
His voice is careful. He doesn't sing anything impressive —there's no belting or high notes— but you still find yourself wringing your hands together, entranced by his confidence. He dances around the melodies and fills up every space he can find between the beat of the drums and the searing guitar riffs that follow.
They only play five songs. By the time they've finished you're feeling sick to your stomach, and you can't get your heart to calm down. You hadn't known a word of the lyrics, but you'd felt them.
They're good.
Like, too good to be openers for long.
The crowd echoes your sentiment. They clap and scream and wolf whistle. The noise vibrates in the depth of your stomach. The cheering doubles when the headlining band’s techies emerge. The lights go down. Equipment begins to roll out.
You scrounge through your purse for a lip balm and think about heading downstairs to the concession stands for an overpriced bottle of water to wash away the unfortunate tang of blood. It aches to pay, but if you don't soon you might get nauseous, and that would be a real disaster, throwing up here of all places.
You hear his voice before you see him. He's laughing, talking to somebody about the set.
"It was great!" compliments a feminine voice. "I don't know what you were so worried about, Remus, you're really great. And if you weren't, Marl would've saved the day anyways with her gorgeous showmanship."
"Thanks, baby," says a second voice. Marl.
"Thanks, Mary," Moons says.
What had Mary called him? Remus? Odd, not quite as strange as Moons.
You try not to tense as footsteps approach.
"Can I sit?" he asks.
You look up too fast. He's a little damp, the hair closest to his face curled with it, but he smells good as he sits down. He must've washed up.
"I– I've been calling you Moons in my head," you admit, not sure what to say.
He's intimidating. You don't imagine he knows it. He sits in the chair without any fanfare, setting his forearm on the rest between your two seats and turning his face to you completely, a small smile playing at the corners of his mouth, almost like he doesn't want to smile but can't help himself. His eyes are the slightest bit lidded, emphasising the brilliance (and unfairness) of his lashes, so thick and dark you wonder if he's wearing makeup.
"You can call me whatever you want to, but my name's Remus. I should've told you that before. I was… distracted."
He isn't being coy, you realise. He easily could be if he wanted to, but he was genuinely lost for words for a second.
"I didn't really tell you mine," you say, hoping to ease his gentle confusion.
He says your name like it's easy. Like he enjoys the sound of it. "Y/N. Do you like music?"
Is that a trick question? His eyes trace up to your eyebrows as they pinch together, but he doesn't amend his question. Not a trick, then.
"I like music,” you say.
"I realise it's brave to ask someone to come and see you on stage. And that I look like a tosser sometimes with the stage lights and makeup."
"No," you say quickly, "you don't. You looked just fine. You looked good. I bet it's hard getting on stage like that, and in front of this many people. And singing. You have a really nice voice."
His eyes soften. "Thank you. Do you wanna go get a drink with me? There's a bar. It's quiet."
Your elbow brushes against his long sleeve. "Yeah." You're not breathless enough to embarrass yourself, but it's a close call.
Remus leads you up and out of the seats. The venue is large in that it has just as many hallways and back rooms as it has places to watch the show. Remus’ warm hand catches your elbow, a friendly touch that guides you around the barrier and through a dimly lit hallway that takes you to the bar.
The bar overlooks the stage, but the sound of the band and the crowd is dampened severely, making for a sorely needed respite. VIP's mill around the room on plush leather sofas and cushy bar stools sipping from sweating glass bottles. Remus' hand moves up to your shoulder, giving it a gentle squeeze as a familiar face waves you over.
"Hey, it's you!"
You smile at Remus' motorbike friend. You're a hundred percent sure his name is Sirius, but you won't say it aloud in case you're wrong. Beside him sits the other man you'd seen on stage with them, the guitarist with brown skin and a head full of thick hair. You look between the three of them in secret shock, wondering if handsome attracts handsome or if it's just dumb luck that they ended up together.
"James, this is the babe that found Stacia," Sirius says.
James wrinkles his nose. "Hi," he says, in a voice that sounds deeply apologetic, years of it like the rings of a tree. "How are you?"
"I'm good. Um, and you?"
"I'm good! Thanks, I'm good, it's nice of you to come see us. Did you like the show?"
"Yeah, I did. I had no idea you guys were musicians."
He splits his attention between you and his jacket. He pulls a glasses case out of his pocket, clicks it open, and straightens out a pair of wire frames.
"Couldn't tell from our baby boy's general demeanour?" he asks. "Hey, that's better, I can see you now."
"Sirius is the youngest," Remus says.
"And the handsomest."
"No, Marl's clearly the handsome one," James says lightly.
Sirius takes the rebuttal in good jest and brandishes his drink toward you like a toast. "Want a beer?"
"I'm getting her one," Remus says, "come on, give me a minute here."
Everybody laughs. You laugh too, turning your face into your shoulder to smother the sound.
"Well, come and sit with us, make yourself comfortable," James says, moving his jacket off of the chair in front of you.
Remus makes a small, apprehensive sound. "Drinks first." He looks to you for confirmation. "Yeah. We'll be back."
You follow him to the bar. Your shoes, a pair of dirty converse you wish you'd swapped for heels or something sophisticated, squeal against the hardwood floor. How were you supposed to know you'd see him again tonight? In what world does stuff like this happen to scruffy waitresses? You're starting to think he might be somebody.
Not that it matters if he is or isn't.
But if he is… This is embarrassing, right? Not knowing who he is.
There must be a couple thousand people here tonight. Then again, his band were the opening act, so it doesn't necessarily mean they're all famous or anything.
"Hey," Remus says softly, stopping your thoughts cold. "Are you okay?"
"I'm fine. Sorry. I've never been in here before, anywhere that's like it,” you say.
"Venues are all different but the bars don't change," he says. "What do you like?"
"I'm not a big drinker."
"That's okay. I just wanted an excuse to be alone with you." He doesn't even give you time to recover. "Truth is, I wanted to ask you out. But between shows I couldn't find time, and next week I'm in San Marino."
What you mean to say is, you wanted to ask me out? But instead, you choke, "You're going to Italy?"
Remus pushes a seat out for you, helping you up with a solid hand, and, while your fingers are still warm from his touch, he says, "San Marino isn't Italy. I didn't know that 'til a few months ago. But pretty much."
"What's in San Marino?"
"A wedding." He climbs into the seat next to you, smiling.
The tan colour of his long-sleeves contrasts his pale hands. Your eyes flash to his ring finger. Not his wedding.
Remus isn’t easy to talk to. It's not wholly his fault. He doesn't force conversation, leaving you awkwardly searching for something to say. You're not the best conversationalist either. He clearly doesn't mind it.
You're in the midst of a clumsy retelling of a shitty customer service moment when he tips his head to the left just a touch.
"Maybe we can go on an actual date when I'm home,” he says.
He says it like he's talking about the weather. You'd be worried he was messing with you, but then he smiles again, flicking his index finger against your wrist mildly. "You don't have to answer me now. Finish telling your story."
"It was pretty much finished. And– and I'd like to. Go on a real date. I've never been out of the country, so you'll have to forgive me if I want to know everything about San Marino."
He looks at your lips. Says, "Good," and doesn't give any indication that he's noticed how nervous you are. That is, until he covers your trembling hand with his and presses it flat to the bar.
"You're really pretty," he murmurs. He takes a moment, and he smiles. "Come with me? If I don't give Sirius some attention soon he'll start showing off."
—
James is starting to wonder if he should invite you to San Marino. He's not that stupid; it would be a huge pain if you were standing in the middle of all his wedding photos and you and Remus don't work out. But, while he's certainly and majorly jumping the gun, he has a suspicion he’ll be seeing you again.
James has never seen Remus like this before.
His friend is usually quiet, quipping every now and then perhaps at Sirius' insufferable antagonism but otherwise brooding. He hasn't seen him smile this much, ever.
James is under no illusions — he knows Remus loves him very much. He knows Remus is happy, and not always healthy but managing. He knows Remus is pleased with their lives and ecstatic to have their music take off. But he also knows Remus won't let himself have a good thing, not really. Maybe that's why he's asked you out now, when in a week they'll be in San Marino, and a week after that they'll be in Cardiff to officially start the new tour.
He knows Remus, sweetheart, kind hearted, miraculous Remus, tends to let people down. He's a stickler for asking people out and cancelling the day before. It's how it always goes. James will ask how the date went and Remus will shake his head and say, "it didn’t work out."
He knows Remus doesn't mean to hurt anybody. He just… can't get close.
But he's trying, with you. A glass of cordial in one hand, the other behind your chair, Remus tells you one of his more embarrassing stories about how he'd taken a bad fall and ended up in A&E with half of an eyebrow. He doesn't mention the painkillers that made him woozy.
You've relaxed considerably since sitting down. James would be happy to report that you're having a good time. You have your own drink in hand, and your eyes are bright, with a receding space between your face and Remus' as the story goes on. It's like watching two magnets fight to hold themselves apart.
Matter of time, James thinks to himself smugly.
—
Honesty is important. You admit to yourself that you and Remus aren't exactly a perfect match. Both quiet, both not quite social butterflies, your conversations had occasionally been stilted and slow, but you've only met twice. Things don't have to be perfect, and more than that — there's a spark there. A twinge of a possibility. He'd liked what little he knew about you enough to ask to see you again, and you'd like what little you knew about him in turn to say yes.
It doesn't have to be perfect, you insist to yourself, a bundle of nerves. Nothing does.
He looks pretty perfect. Base of his palm pressed to the brick wall of the cafe, hand angled down as his fingers grasp the neck of a bouquet whose flowers have been shedding petals onto the damp pavement below. He holds his other hand against his chest, clicking buttons on his phone.
You approach from the left and watch him play a game of Snake.
"You play Snake?" you ask.
"Doesn't everybody?" he asks back, his smile softening what might otherwise feel like a chastisement. He doesn't look up from his phone.
"Woah, how long have you been out here?" you ask, eyeing his weirdly long snake.
Remus guides the snake into a wall on purpose. It dies, his high score flashes across the screen, and he aims an apologetic look your way. "Sorry, that was rude." He doesn't try to hide that he's looking over your face. "Thanks for coming."
He leans in and kisses your cheek. Delighted warmth curls in your stomach, worse when he passes you the bouquet of flowers. They've mostly survived his poor treatment, and there's a lot of them. He's left the price tag on and you're not sure if he's noticed. You pretend not to see it.
"Thank you…” You look away from the flowers, all whites and reds and baby’s breath, to ogle him as subtly as you can manage. “Wow, you've caught the sun. Was it lovely in San Marino?"
"I'll tell you all about it over dinner,” he says. “I thought we'd walk, it's not far." He holds out his hand. You wipe your palm against your side before you take it, worried you'll have clammy hands. He must guess, because he says, "Don't be nervous."
"I am," you say hopelessly. "I've never been on a date before."
"This is your first date?"
You feel a hot flush coming on. "I– yeah. That's embarrassing, I shouldn't have told you that."
"No, it's a good thing. Now I know it has to be extra special."
"It doesn't," you say.
"I was hoping it would be." He pulls you down the pavement and further into the city centre toward the main high street. "San Marino. It was beautiful, and I took a couple of photos but I didn't have room on my phone. Well, I could've deleted Snake–"
"Why would you?" you joke, grinning.
He laughs, and squeezes your hand slightly. "Exactly. I have priorities. It's a long flight, and looking over the photos can only take up so much time. No, but it really was… it was beautiful. I'd never given much thought to a destination wedding. They make sense, right? It's the best day of your life, why would you have it here?"
He tilts his chin toward the grey sky. You look up with him, feeling the cold wind kiss the sides of your face and pull through your hair.
"Come on, Remus, it's not that bad. If it's sun you're after, you could just wait for British summer time. You know, the whole three days of it."
He laughs — you've made him laugh twice already. This is going okay. Laughing while looking at one another, a bouquet in one hand and his hand in the other, you feel that curl of delight begin to bloom. It fills your insides up, has you smiling until your eyelashes brush in the corners.
"It was James' wedding. Do you remember which one that was?"
He asks so kindly. You don't doubt for a second that he wouldn't care if you forgot. It's refreshing, even if it's something you'd expect.
"I remember. I didn't realise he was getting married."
"Don't ever say that in front of him, he'll put himself on the cross." He swings your hand as you turn a corner. The Italian restaurant you'd agreed on winks from a distance.
"He's devoted," you guess.
"He's insane. He was worse when we were younger. His girlfriend– his wife," he amends, "Lily, she's really something else. Warm and funny, but she's been keeping him on his toes for years. She has family in San Marino, hence the wedding."
You listen to him talk eagerly. His voice is as handsome as his face, and the more he says the less stilted he becomes. There had been a strained quality to it before (strained, or restrained? something he wasn't saying) that's all but disappeared.
"It was like a movie. White linen, sand, crying."
"Did you cry?" you ask, expecting a puffed up chest.
"So much. Too much, maybe. I was half of the best man."
"Half?"
"We had to share, me and Sirius. They've always been…" Remus slows his steps. "Am I being boring? I'm talking too much about me."
"We have time. I want to hear it. I'd like to hear it," you say.
James and Sirius are brothers. Remus sees your surprised look and doesn't condemn you for it. Sirius is unofficially adopted. The Potter's fostered him from ages thirteen until he aged out, and though they tried to adopt him, Sirius was reluctant. Remus doesn't get into the reasons beyond that, and you don't ask. You suspect he's only telling you about it to drive home how much the Potter's love Sirius. How much James does.
Remus had been Sirius' friend from their very first year of comprehensive school. Sirius moved in with the Potter's, and, adoring as they were, they let him have friends over whenever he liked. James, Sirius, and Remus spent the next decade together like that, hiding in Sirius' room. Best friends, entirely inseparable, and all fiercely protective of each other.
"They've always been like brothers."
"But not…"
He understands what you're worried to say. "I think it would've been weird… I had a candle burning for James. For a long time."
Your jaw drops a little. "And you just had to watch him have the most romantic wedding ever," you whisper sympathetically. You're joking: it's clear the candle isn't burning now.
"Told you I cried," he says. "No, but you've seen him. He's a supermodel. It's awful."
"Remus, I think you might be underestimating how handsome you are," you say. You bite your lip and look at his chin rather than his eyes.
He's generous. He gives your wrist a tug and chuckles warmly. "I'm glad you think so. Tonight might have been awkward, otherwise."
You duck together inside of the restaurant, hands falling apart as Remus gives his last name for the reservation. Lupin. Your face has a mind of its own.
"Charming, isn't it?"
"It is," you say emphatically, denying his sarcasm. "I've never heard anything like that. Lupine, like a fox?"
"Wolf."
A server shows you to your table and hands you two leather covered menus. Leather, not plastic, a sign that tonight is going to be classy. You've dressed for the occasion in a smart blouse and slacks, too terrified of wearing a dress. Remus seems to have done the same as you, reaching for smart but dodging the mark in a button down and a casual jacket. When he takes off his coat, he looks perfect. He fits right in.
"Could we get a glass?" he asks the server. "For the flowers? If it's not too much trouble."
"No trouble at all."
You run your hand across the silken tablecloth and the space between you both feels somehow smaller than when you'd been holding hands. Outside, you could let your gaze drift to the pavement, the fenced in trees, the couples that passed you by. Here, you're forced to watch one another.
It's not so bad. It's agonising.
"This is weird," you say. You flinch when you hear yourself. "Sorry, not that you're weird! I'm weird. I've never ever done this."
"No, I know," he says, almost murmuring, "it's okay."
"I just blurted out what I was thinking–"
"I know." He sits back in his chair. His head tilts down, his eyelashes kissing the skin above his brows as he fixes you with a look. It has the intended effect, tension easing from your rigid spine and tight shoulders. "This is weird. But it's still early. It could get weirder."
You like that he says it as if it's a good thing.
You order the same thing he does, and you don't turn down his offer to get a bottle of wine, though it feels too grown up. You keep forgetting you're an adult, and that your life isn't on hold. Things can happen to you at any time.
"I want to address the elephant in the room," he says.
Not promising. "Okay."
"Are we having dessert?" Remus leans forward on both forearms. Hair falls in his eyes. He's dressed nicely and he's handsome but there's something homespun about him, something golden. You can't help looking at him and thinking impossibly forward thoughts, cheesy waffle from the films. He's familiar. "Nobody ever wants to get dessert with me. It's actually a real issue for me."
"I'll get dessert with you." A smoother you with more confidence, who wore the dress and asked him to go to the Thai restaurant instead, would've said something more suave. We're having whatever you want, handsome.
Remus flips the menu to the very last page and reads the desserts aloud. For himself, it seems, half-muttered and apprehensive. "Chocolate cake from places like this will either be the nicest thing we've ever eaten or burnt in the microwave. And it's childish that I want chocolate cake. I should be spoon feeding you creme brulee. Or whipped cream and strawberries."
He tips his head back and rubs his eyes. It's a charade of feigned self loathing that makes you laugh.
"I'm a child," he laments, thumb and index finger pressed into his eyes. He checks to see if you're watching before doubling down.
"I like cake," you say, and you'd lie if you thought it was what he wanted to hear. Handsome, kind, and funny. Not to mention talented. He needs smart for the sweep.
Remus falls out of his dramatics. You mourn the loss, beggy a good look on him, but forget all about it when he slides his chair around the table to share the menu with you, your heads inclined as you read it together again. He smells woody. You hope he likes the jasmine of your perfume.
"It all sounds really nice," you confide, afraid to disturb the comfortable hush. "I haven't had gelato since I was a kid. Oh, did they have real gelato in San Marino?"
“They had a lot of stuff in San Marino… I want to hear about you.”
“What do you want to hear?”
The questions start and don’t stop. Where did you grow up? That’s the easy part. What did you study in school? Were you in sports? The art club? And what do you do now, when you aren’t working in the cafe? The more he asks, the easier it is to answer. He doesn’t slow when the waiter brings a glass for your bouquet, simply stands and places them inside with exceedingly gentle hands, smiling at you from between the stems. You eat slowly when the food arrives — you're busy talking.
It feels fucking amazing. To have someone want to know anything about you. And unless he’s an actor of the highest regard, he’s obviously enjoying your conversations, though they wilt and wane and wind around one another. You lose track of time and thread as the night goes on, distracted by the near unnoticeable asymmetry of his smile, and the way he laughs when you laugh, like an echo.
You get cake like he wanted. Triple fudge cake with buttercream thick but melting from the heat. It looks straight from the pages of a magazine, glossy and dusted with sugar powder, but he doesn’t seem to like it. He takes a couple of bites and leaves it alone. You don’t want to look greedy, so you do the same.
The date is suddenly over.
“Could I walk you home?” he asks, when you’ve both put your coats back on, and the damp roots of your flowers are leaving an imprint on your chest.
You nod rather than answer.
Things are good, not perfect. That’s what you keep thinking. There’s something he isn’t saying. Or, horrifyingly, something he doesn’t like about you. Still, the sky is velvet black and the air is crisp. Stars like needlepoints dot the air. Street lights work to hide them, casting a warm yellow glow over the pavements and your meandering shoes.
A brisk wind whips past you. You shiver and press your lips together hard, hands quick to rigidity. Remus looks at you sideways, and breaks the quiet. “Are you cold?”
“A little.” No point in lying when he can see you trembling.
“Do you want my coat?”
“No, no, it’s alright–“ You cut off as he steps in front of you, his hand vying for yours.
He tucks the flowers under his arm and sandwiches your fingers between his. He has short fingernails, and another scar down one pinky finger. How’d you get that one? you want to ask. How’d you get any of them?
His breath clouds the air. “I should’ve thought about the cold.”
“This is better,” you say. Than a warm taxi home. His thumbs brushing down the backs of your hands.
You walk to your flat building and hesitate at the foyer door. The potential for a kiss goodnight has flayed your thoughts. The image of his hands climbing your arms, holding you still, plays like a flickering film. You have no idea if he’s going to do it.
“How will you get home?” you ask quietly.
“I parked by the cafe, it isn’t far.”
“Oh…” The lights from your building paint him the faintest shade of pink. Your breath fogs out in front of you, as does his, and the warmth of walking will soon fade. “I–“
“Here,” he says, handing you the flowers again.
“Thank you. They’re beautiful.”
“Fits the recipient.”
It takes a second for you to get it. Oh, you think. You can hardly feel the cold now. Your heart hurts, and you’re begging him to want to take a step toward you. The silence goes for too long.
“I– I’d love to see you again,” you say. Love comes out funny. Maybe because you can feel his rejection coming.
“I won’t be here next week. Not for a long time. We’re touring properly, now.” He scratches the side of his face.
“Right. Right, of course you are. Um, good luck with that. And thank you for tonight, for dinner.” You wave your flowers weakly.
He looks at you. He takes a half step toward you. You can see his Adam’s apple bob as he swallows.
“You really are pretty,” he says finally. “Goodnight.”
He smiles quick and turns quicker. You watch him walk a few steps but ultimately can’t face it, pushing into the foyer of your building with a hardset frown. Your hands shake, minute abstractions of the sharp rejection panging in your chest. Your ears roar and then go quiet. What did I do wrong? you think, shocked and upset and trying to rationalise. He doesn’t have to kiss you. He asked you out on a maybe, and now whatever question he had is answered.
The door creaks open. You spin on your heel, too wrapped up to think about hiding your expression. Remus stands in the doorway of the porch, his arm pressed to the glass panel, the other held out to you.
"Come here," he says quietly. It isn't a question, but he's asking.
You step into his reach, letting him pull you by the waist against his chest. He leans down until his nose glances against ýours, and he starts to say something. You push your chin up in your eagerness and he doesn't try again. He kisses you, once, contrite, and he pulls back and his hand clasps your arm tight as he ducks in for another. His lips are fast to lose the cold of the weather, but his tongue is a hot shock at the seam of your own.
You go weak in his arms. The flowers between you crunch and smother themselves. You can’t think about it. Your hands are numb. He takes over every one of your senses until you’re more kiss than thought, reciprocating his slow, deep searching. You run out of breath.
He eases you backward, cupping the side of your head in his big palm.
“I want to see you again,” he says hoarsely. “But I– I don’t know when I’ll be back.” His hand adjusts against your cheek, like he’s worried you’re slipping out of his hold. “I don’t know what to do.”
“I can wait,” you say.
“I couldn’t ask you to.”
You rub your buzzing lips together, each heaven of your chest marked by the crinkling sound of cellophane.
“Do you want to come upstairs?” you ask.
He strokes the edge of your mouth with his thumb. “Are you sure?”
You kiss him. You don’t know if this will work, any of it, the broad stroke or this one night, but you want him.
—
Remus doesn’t know what he’s doing. He knows how to fuck somebody, that isn’t the problem. He doesn’t know what he’s doing with you. The same thing that made him walk away had pulled him right back in, had him skipping steps on the staircase up to your flat, drinking in the back of your head and roll of your shoulders as you’d made apologies for the mess inside.
He doesn’t feel like himself when he’s with you. He thinks of it like this — what he is, his pain, his wants, that’s all set in stone. Any change is an erosion, and little by little over the years he’s managed to whittle himself down into the smallest, cleanest version of himself. Then suddenly the band’s making money, people are listening to his voice on the radio in countries all over the world, and he can’t hide anymore. Maybe he hadn’t wanted to, after all. What else inspires a performer into the spotlight? The music, he thinks desperately, knowing it’s half a lie.
Isn’t it why he’d asked you to the show? Come and watch me sing. See me at my most impressive. My most curated.
And now he’s following you into your bedroom after one date, about to strip it all away.
“You didn’t have too much wine, did you?” he asks. You hadn’t really finished your first glass, but it won’t hurt to make sure.
You peel your jacket off and drop it over the back of a wide armchair. “I don’t think so. Did you?”
“No.” His head has never been this clear.
He thinks about what you said. This is your first date, and he’s not clueless enough to assume that never going on a date means never having sex, but he wants to be careful with you anyway. He wants this to last beyond a dinner date.
Which means he has to get out of his head.
Beyond all of his own mess, he really does think you're pretty. More than pretty. You’re beautiful, and your voice…
He wants to see what other sounds you make.
Remus gets his hands on you. Soft touches, his hands coasting from your elbows to your warming hands. He squeezes your fingers, leaning in for a quick kiss. He rests his nose against the skin beneath your eye. “Tell me if it’s too much?” he asks, a murmur of hot air.
“Yeah.”
“I’ll go slowly.”
“Okay.” Your voice is barely audible.
He pulls away to make sure you’re alright, and is surprised to see a glassy sheen in your eyes. He holds your face in both hands and works your lips open against his, guiding you backwards into the plush of your poorly made bed. He’s all sweet touches and eager kisses, cautious not to hurt you, or let too much of his weight press against your soft torso. His kisses follow to the corner of your mouth, the tip of his nose tender against your cheek. “You’re so quiet,” he says. He isn’t complaining, but he wants to hear your voice.
“I’m a bit preoccupied.”
He laughs into your skin, kissing down to your jaw. “You’re right,” he says, revelling in the goosebumps that rise under his hands.
Your shaking inhales cleave a pit in his stomach. He mouths at the side of your neck, half-kisses, tiny warning nips before he thumbs open the first button of your shirt. He meanders, dropping a path crescent moon kisses into your front until the fabric of your bra gets in the way. The soft hill of your breast staggers to a halt beneath him. He can tell that you’re holding deliberately still.
Kisses. You need more kisses, an absolution from any lingering nervousness. Your hands thread into his hair gently, your fingers raking wavy strands behind his ears as you give in. You melt into your sheets, your legs parting from the pressure of his hips.
Your hands fall from his hair to needle between your two bodies and undo the rest of your buttons. The fabric falls aside, your chest and tummy his to catalogue. He drops his hand against your stomach, smoothing a line down to your slacks. His lips ache against yours as he asks, “Can I?”
“Please.”
“Please?” he says back, mirroring your soft tone. “You think you need to say please?” His pinky bumps under the waistband of your trousers. There isn’t much give. He traces the lining to your zipper, fiddling with the small piece of metal as your eyes darken. “I should be the one saying it.” His voice keeps dropping, an utterance in the shell of your ear, his words for you and you alone. “I’m at your mercy, dove. Don’t say please with me. Okay?”
He smiles at your daunted expression. “Can I take these off?” he asks you, his fingertip running under the edge of your underwear. “Please?” he teases.
Your skin is a furnace, hot hot hot everywhere he touches as you nod your permission and Remus undresses you, one piece of clothing at a time. Your trousers, your shirt. Your bra, your underwear. His fingers slip in his ardency as he tears out of his own button down.
Your thumb traces a scar.
He looks up from your chest, startled, but you aren’t giving him anything he doesn’t want. There’s no pity in your gaze, no curiosity, no sadness. Just lust, your trembling hands pulling his slacks down the lengths of his thighs.
He pulls the condom from his wallet in his pocket and lets it fall to the floor.
Remus hooks his hands under your arms and urges you back against the headboard, a pillow behind your head, your thighs tipping open as his hand runs down between them. He grabs at them greedily, handfuls of fat that have his mouth dry as a bone.
“Has anyone ever done this to you before?” he asks. He needs to know.
You squeeze your eyes closed and shake your head.
Fuck. “Hey, look at me,” he says, waiting for your eyes to meet before continuing. “I just want to make you feel good. If I don’t, you let me know.”
He waits for you to answer aloud. “I will,” you say, your hand behind his back and urging him forward. “Please.”
“What did I say?” he jokes gently, letting his weight bear down on you again.
He closes his eyes, his lips in what feels like a new home at the juncture of your neck. His hands skirt dangerously close to your heat.
He’s gentle. He rubs a sweeping line against your cunt with the front of his fingers, heart hammering fast as a mouse’s when he finds the little button of your clit. You shiver and shudder and squirm as he toys with you, your fingers steadfast against the plane of his back while he opens you up. His lips part in tandem, not nearly as kind as his hands. His teeth scratch against your throat.
Your soft moans move through him as he hickeys over your pulse, chasing each capering thud of blood. He winds you up. You’re snug around his fingers, fluttering, and he knows he’s probed something sweet when your breath catches and you whine.
“Was that alright?” he asks.
You nod, heavy headed, and lick your lips as he tears open the condom and eases it onto his cock, one measured roll at a time.
“Can you– I want you to–” You turn your face from him, the line of your jaw kissed by the lamplight outside, and the rest hidden.
He drags you down to lay flat on your back and holds himself over you, nudging his nose against yours until you lift your head. Face to face, he gives himself time to adore the shape and colour of your eyes, the side of his hand brushing along your cheek. “Do you think you’re ready?” he asks sincerely. The slickness between your legs is obvious, but he doesn’t want to blindside you. “It will feel…”
You nod, saving him the explanation. It will feel weird. Good, but foreign. “Will you kiss me again?” you ask feebly.
He can’t stop himself. He kisses your lips sore, his hand behind the crook of your knee pushing your leg up toward your stomach as he slides into the space he’s made there. He breaks the kiss to listen to your breathing as he pushes forward.
Remus hadn’t been lying — he wants it to feel good. He takes it slow, his thrusting almost languid as you get to grips with the feeling. He pulls his bottom lip between his teeth and bites down hard, struggling to smother the moan that escapes him as he feels you clench around him. You gasp, your arms tightening around his waist, destroying any semblance of space between your sweat-damp bodies as you hold him tight. He murmurs praises in your ear, his forearms tucked beneath your shoulder blades, hands gripping your shoulders a touch too hard. He can’t remember the last time he was this close to somebody, can’t remember ever feeling so maddeningly lost, like he’s one good push from hurtling over the edge.
He kisses your cheek, calling you all the things he’d been too scared to say before. “Lovely girl,” he pants, “how’s that feel?” And, when you answer, “Yeah, you’re taking it so well, dove. Think you can take a little more?”
All that nervousness and desperation shrinks down to dust, and the smiling girl he’d been with at dinner comes to the forefront. There’s no mistaking it. You giggle something awful and turn your face into his, kissing him between sounds, dizzying him with the tender scratch of your nails down his back as he starts to move.
“There she is,” he says lightly, almost smirking. “Feel good?”
“Feels– oh,” —you shiver violently, filled all the way up— “feels good.”
Remus let’s his forehead fall to your chin, his eyes closed in pleasure, his cock to the hilt. Every move he makes evokes a near sinful sound from you, mewling, silvery whimpers and pleased little laughs when he angles his hips right. He’s a mess, desperate to cum from the second you touched him and running on stolen time as he presses you deep into your mattress. One of your hands flies backward into the pillows and scrunches up into a ball, the look on your face too tempting to ignore.
The first time you fuck someone — it’s never timed right. Remus knows he hasn’t quite figured you out, but he knows enough to get you where he wants you. He slides his hand between your bodies and your soft cunt to draw circles into your clit, entranced by your twitching lashes as the pleasure builds. You chase him with your hips, and he grabs your hand at the last second to stop you from covering your mouth, holding it above your head as you come apart.
He cooes at you. The sound you make — the breathless little cry that leaves you, your hips jutting up to meet him. He’s at your mercy, just like he said.
Remus fucks into the extra tightness, drawing your climax out for as long as he can. You’re smiling as you shove his arm away, a playful chastisement that wanes when you see the look on his face. “Are you close?” you ask, brushing a curled strand of hair from his eyes.
Close? Remus is fucked.
“You can go faster,” you say, “rougher, whatever you want.”
“Shit,” he hisses, leaning back.
His rutting hips slap the backs of your thighs. He squeezes your waist, his eyes fixed on your cunt as it pulls him in. One last wavering, “Oh, fuck,” from you is all it takes for Remus to lose it. White hot pleasure tightens his whole body, his abdomen aflame. You scramble to gather him back into your arms. You kiss him, swallowing his resulting string of moans.
He has to catch his breath afterward. You comb the hair back from his face, your eyes droopy with pleasure.
“Did I hurt you?” he asks, voice stringy.
“Of course not.” You’re quickly losing your confidence. Remus hates it, but he understands. This vulnerability can only stretch so far.
“Let me clean you up,” he says.
“You look like you’re gonna fall over if you stand.”
He strokes your face with the back of his ring finger, his nail ghosting along the highest point of your cheek. “Funny,” he says dryly.
He gets confused in your bathroom, and you won’t let him towel you off, but when he lies down beside you with his boxers back in place you don’t push him away. You drop your face into his chest and curl up.
He drags the quilt over your naked back.
Was that okay? he wants to ask. “Sore?” he worries instead.
“Don’t think so.”
He chews his cheek. “You’re alright?”
You stir, looking up at him through your lashes. He thinks you’re the kind of pretty people might not always see. You’re clearly beautiful, but there’s something else to it. The way you move, maybe. The way your eyes smile before your lips can catch up.
“I’m fine. I’m good… Can I…”
He hums. “What?”
“Could I kiss you again?”
You speak so quietly, he hears the vibration in your throat more than the sound of your voice. It’s endearingly timid. He feels his attraction for you flare violently.
He wants to ask you to come with him to Cardiff. He knows he can’t. It’s yards too soon, but for a second he entertains the thought.
“Wait for me to come home,” he says. He’s still asking for more than he should. “I want to see you again. You can kiss me as much as you want, if you say you’ll wait.”
You nod immediately. Not a flicker of reluctance to be seen.
You lift your chin and kiss him. He tries to make it the kind of kiss worth waiting for.
˚ʚ♡ɞ˚
thank you for reading! i hope you enjoyed! if you did, please consider reblogging cos it helps more than you might think <3
the best fanfiction you've ever read was written by a woman in her 40s before she made dinner for her kids. it was written by a teenager after school when they should've been studying for a history test. and a barista came up with the idea while they cleaned the espresso machine and busser fact-checked it on their break and the post-doc edited between writing grant proposals and the nurse apologized for typos in the notes after a long shift and behind every drabble and one-shot and multi-chapter fic there is a person with a wonderful and interesting and chaotic life and it is such a privilege that we get to be apart of it because they decided to do this thing we all share, for fun.
You want to see the floating lights. Steve wants his satchel back. You come to an arrangement that is mutually beneficial… sorta. tangled!au
10k words, reader insert, fem!reader, medieval times (ish!), begrudging allies, fake dating/marriage, lots of changes from tangled movie but it’s got the spirit, I tried to be inclusive of all hair types but it is magical and floor length nonetheless, magical realism, TW for abusive mother + narcissism, mother is awful, steve is gonna show her the world is a good place!! allies to friends to lovers, pining
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Steve's hands are bleeding by the time he works his way into the tower, raw from the rough grit of old hewn stone. He hisses with every handhold he finds, adrenaline staving off the worst of the pain as his eyes scrabble for the next ledge.
Five feet, three. His hand slaps into the dark wood of a window ledge and he heaves himself up, the joints of his arms screaming in protest. Were it not for the rumbling of horse hooves like an earthquake outside of the grotto he might've given up, hoped for a soft landing.
The threat of being caught propels him forward.
He lands on the tiled flooring of the main atrium of the tower with an audible plop of fabric, his satchel clunking hard by his hip.
"Stars," he says. He breathes hard, trying and failing to slow his heart now he's found sanctuary.
He lifts his cheek from the mosaic beneath and peers around the room. He gawps.
It's mostly dark, and still he can make out the intricate, masterful artwork decorating the curved wall. Flowers made up of a thousand colours, petals dripping with dew, their anthers heavy with pollen. A field of every flower he's ever seen and a hundred others he's not familiar with. He has really, truly, never seen anything like it. Not even the spectacle of the Palace could hold a candle to what he sees before him. No books he'd read growing up had ever conjured an image as sharply magical as this.
He pushes up onto his elbows. Sunlight drips into the room from the wooden shutters he’d crawled through, illuminating the feet of each cabinet, a washing basin, and the brick oven under a staircase that ascends into the tower. He sniffs and finds the stick of coal dust heavy in the air; somebody lives here.
Steve's quickly proven right when you swing from behind an alcove near the kitchenette.
He startles backward and away from you as you advance, a cast iron pan held aloft in delicate hands and wielded with an intimidating confidence.
"Holy- Wait! Wait, please," he cries, holding his hands palm out in surrender.
Steve doesn't suppose you'd been expecting such a feeble intruder. He'd feel a strike against his dignity if it hadn't worked — you slow in the centre of the room, your breath coming in quick pants as the iron pan in your grip shakes.
You're scared.
You're beautiful.
"What do you want?" you ask, a pleading sort of twist to your question. "I don't have anything. I don't have anything worth taking."
"Please," he says loudly. "I don't want anything. Sanctuary for the night, nothing else."
Your chest rises. Steve feels smarmy, but he finds his eyes drawn to the valley of your chest, the bodice of your dress. A soft and buttery orange sewn with the palest pink and lilac embroidery. It's a gorgeous piece of craftsmanship, lovely enough that he wonders briefly if you're of royal descent, but the dress itself is a peasant's gown.
His eyes rise back to your unhappy face. Your brows are pulled up at the starts, a delicate display that betrays your fear.
You glare at him.
"You can't stay here," you assert.
"One night." Steve pulls his satchel into his lap to procure a small coin purse. He'd love to say it was his coin purse. He cannot. "I have silvers. I can pay you."
He will not be paying you anything. He won't rob you, though. He's not a total miscreant.
"You can't stay," you say again, raising your iron pan higher above your shoulder. He sees a flash of something at your hip. "My mother–"
"Holy stars, is that your hair?"
You seize up, making an almost inaudible sound of dejection. "No."
"Are you sure? It looks very much like hair."
Steve anchors his hand to the floor and leans downward to get a better look. You turn with him, attempting to shield your long hair from view and only helping him along. It sways with your movements, the ends near long enough to dance over the floor.
"You have to leave. Leave!"
Steve bites the inside of his lip. A rainbow of light arcs through the air and caresses your cheek, and the wind chime hanging in the window tinkles softly with a warm summer breeze. The tower echoes with your huffing breath. The pan is too heavy for you to hold any longer and you let it drop with a wrist-tugging defeat.
"I'm not trying to scare you. But I really can't leave. I won't harm a hair on your head," he adds with a smile, eyebrows slightly raised in wait of your laughter.
You don't laugh, nor do you smile.
"My mother, she'll come home any minute now," you say unconvincingly.
He tips his head to one side. "Then I'll speak with your mother and get her permission to stay."
"She won't give it."
You're really too handsome to be frowning as you are. Steve wants to do as he does with all pretty people and make you smile, but the task feels insurmountable. You want him to leave. He can't.
"If I leave, I'll be killed," he says. While it's not a lie in its entirety, neither is it a truth.
Your grip tightens around the handle of your pan. "What?" you ask worriedly.
He feels guilty for garnering your concern though it's exactly what he'd been aiming for, nodding his head gravely.
"I'm being pursued by ruffians. For days now. I only need to hide here for the night while they clear the forest. They'll look for me elsewhere, after."
His storytelling voice is clear. Admittedly much too dramatic and yet you eat it up like a child devours spun sugar. Your hands press to your chest, frying pan held in your palm like the pommel of a sword.
"Ruffians?" you repeat.
He swoops in. "Not to worry. They didn't see me scale the tower, or even enter the valley." He gives you a commending smile. "You're very well hidden."
"Not well enough, clearly."
"I got lucky."
You back away from him. You don't turn your back to him, smart girl, only widen the gap between your two bodies with a fluttering unease.
"I wish I could help you," you whisper urgently, "I wish I could. But my mother, if she finds you here, I- I'm not sure what she'll do."
Steve blinks dazedly. "She would kill me?"
"No! Of course not."
"Then whatever it is will be a kinder fate."
That shatters the very last of your resolve. You visually err on what to do next, how to handle his being here. Steve’s head races with thoughts of the palace guards, of Thomas and Carol, and of you — your skin lit by the sun, and your long, long hair.
"Do you want some water?" you ask quietly.
The relief he conjures is as authentic as it comes. "Yes. More than anything."
—
Your mysterious stranger sits at one end of the table in Mother's seat while you sit across from him, a small clay drinking cup encapsulated by his large hand. You're making no effort to hide how closely you're watching him, though if he's under the impression it's for safety's sake then that's best.
He's very, very fine.
You haven't seen a man in person before, and if they all look like this you might wish you'd ventured out of the tower sooner. He wears a worn brown tunic that shows evidence of numerous careful darnings, its top button popped open to reveal a tiniest hint of curled hair disappearing downward.
The hair on his head and tucked behind his ears is comely as corn silk but much darker. It shines in the descending sunlight now flooding the room. There's a golden tinge to everything at this time that leaves no inch of his person unscathed; his eyes glow with it, his irises a melting brown that reminds you of rare, thick honey.
"The flowers," he says after an aching pause. "Are they painted? They must have been a huge expense."
You follow his gaze, surprised at his question in two ways. That he would ask, and that he would think somebody else did them.
"They're how I spend my summers."
"Looking at them?"
You laugh from the pure joy of the complement he's implying, unused to his awed reaction. Mother usually nods or hums at a new unveiling, and one time you'd earned a, "That's wonderful, darling."
You're not sure she'd actually been looking at the time.
"I painted them myself."
The stranger's jaw drops. "A little thing like you?" he asks.
"I'm hardly little," you deny, neither of stature nor burden.
"You're young, aren't you? You can't be more than twenty summers."
"What a funny way of speaking," you murmur, more to yourself than him. "I'm twenty. I'll be one and twenty, in a few days."
His eyes narrow. "Well, what's wrong with you?"
"What's wrong with me?"
"You aren't married?"
You try not to be offended and fail spectacularly. "Most don't get married until they're nearing five and twenty!"
"Most," he agrees. "But a girl as pretty as you? Who can paint like this? Don't tell me you've been hiding from every man in the kingdom."
You turn your face from him in case he can tell how flustered you are. Two complements in one day is unprecedented. Your heart bump-bump-bumps.
"Are you married?" you ask swiftly, hoping to redirect this line of conversation away from something as treacherous as your own isolation. Any answer would expose you.
"I am, actually. She has the most gorgeous shine to her face, and her laugh is melodic and sweet as anything, a tinkling sound. She's bronze-skinned, a slight thing, but she's worth her weight in gold."
He grins. You can't help but smile in response, infected by his endearing affection.
"What's her name?" you ask, voice near a coo.
"Argento."
You stare at him. His smile gets so big it looks like it could bruise his cheeks.
"You're talking about money."
"She's a brilliant bedfellow, isn't she? She keeps me warm and fed every night. She's a good girl." He sighs and crosses his arms behind his head. His attempt at nonchalance is ruined when he cringes in pain and drops them gracelessly back into his lap.
You cover your mouth and laugh. He's funny. Mother doesn't make half as many jokes.
Mother. As if the mere thought of her is enough to summon her presence, a shrill call echoes from the bottom of the tower.
"Y/N, darling, throw down the rope for your mother!"
You jump to your feet, slippers sliding against the mosaic floor in a hurried scratch. "You have to hide," you whisper harshly.
The stranger pouts at you. "Seriously, let me talk to her, I–"
You shake your head voraciously at his loud volume and press your finger to your lips, eyes begging with him to be quiet.
"Please," you whisper, "hide. I'll hide you 'til tomorrow, when she leaves in the morning."
He doesn't move.
"Y/N? I don't have all day!" The irritation in her voice is obvious.
"Please," you whisper again.
He gets up with a mild eye roll. You rush to the window and look down at your mother where she stands at the bottom, looking impossibly small.
"There you are! What are you waiting for? I'm not very happy with you, darling."
You lick your lips. "Sorry!" you call, turning to the rope spooled to the right of the window. You throw the rope over the hook at the top of the frame, pausing when you see the stranger lingering in your peripheral vision at the top of the stairs.
"What are you doing? Go!" you whisper.
He nods toward your hands. "Couldn't have thrown that down to me, could you?"
You shoo him away, his easy laughter doing nothing to assuage your racing heart as you drop the length of looped rope down to your mother. You wait until she's secured her foot in the loop before you start to walk backwards, lifting her weight.
It doesn't get any less laborious as you grow up. By the time she's reached the top of the tower you can hardly breathe. You cough so hard you feel nauseous.
"Holy stars, you sound ghastly. And it's completely unbecoming to cough like that without covering your mouth. You know that."
"Sorry, mother."
She hums. You can't decipher what it means, but it likely isn't something forgiving.
"I hope you had some time to think about our argument."
You hold your clasped hands behind your back, hair tickling your knuckles. "I did… I'm sorry, mother."
She stares at you for a moment from under dark eyebrows before her face lifts, the wrinkles in her soft forehead appearing more prominently as she says, "Darling, why do you do this? Why do you insist on making me angry?" She raises her hands to your neck, long fingernails weaving seamlessly into the mass of hair she finds there. "You know I'm only trying to protect you."
"I know," you say, tears burning hot behind your eyes. You will them away. Crying will make it worse, it always does.
She toys with your hair, eyes on your shoulder. You have the peculiar feeling that though she's looking at you she isn't truly looking at you, but through you. Her eyes are distant, unfocused.
Her finger wraps into your hair, twisting a strand behind your ear over, and over, and over. You shift uncomfortably at the tugging feeling at the back of your scalp but don't protest to her touches — any touch at all feels like a gift. Mother isn't generous with her affections.
"Maybe I've been too hard on you," she murmurs.
You loose a pained breath as she takes her hand from your hair and brings it to your face instead. She draws a line from the corner of your eye outwards, a kind, soft petting that gives you goosebumps.
"No, mother. I'm grateful for everything I have. I was being unreasonable, I don't need anything else. I… shouldn't have asked about the stars."
"No, you shouldn't have."
She moves from you to hang her robe up on the hanger. You tamp down your frowning because mother hates when you make her feel guilty and try to decide how it is you're going to escape to your bedroom for the night. You have lots of questions you want to ask the stranger.
You spot something out of the corner of your eye as your mother flits to the kitchen. There, on the table, sits two clay cups half empty and at opposite ends. You side eye your mother and find she's distracted herself with putting a wooden log into the oven's belly, grumbling about how you've neglected your afternoon chores.
You throw yourself in front of the table with a thud.
"What are you doing?" Mother asks, disgruntled.
"Nothing! I mean, I'm cleaning up. I forgot to empty these cups of paint after I finished."
"Why doesn't that surprise me?"
The thing about mother is that most of the things she says are neutral. Anybody else might think she was being light-hearted or blasé. She phrases everything so meticulously.
But she is not kind.
You laugh breathily and turn to the cups. Your heart leaps into your throat when you find the cup isn't the worst of what might give you away. Hooked over the back of the chair is the stranger's leather satchel, a ratty old thing sagging with the weight of its contents.
You take it. The zipper snags and the cause of the weight reveals itself in a clinking upheaval, a flash of light across the floor. You throw yourself over the chair to grab for it, a mindless scrambling, silver and gems cool and sharp under your hand. You shove it back in the satchel, no clue what it is. You've never seen anything like it.
"What are you doing?" Mother asks, her voice occluded by the soft bubbling of the cooking pot.
"It's dusty down here!" you call.
"Yes, well… it's to be expected when all you do is paint all day, darling."
"You're right," you say quietly. "Of course you are, mother."
-
Steve hadn't suspected your room would look as plain as it does. You've a simple bed with a modest quilt and one tired looking pillow, though it's been made with neat folded corners. A stuffed rabbit sits at the bottom, lavender velveteen with a pink button nose. He doesn't touch it, though he'd like to. He's not sure he's ever touched a stuffed animal before.
He can hear you talking to your mother, or rather your mother talking at you. He must say, she doesn't sound like the easiest woman to get along with. But Steve's never had a mother, so maybe that's just what they're like.
You have a small table to one corner covered in small trinkets. Shells, stones, papers loose and bound. He flips open the soft cover of a book and finds it filled with pencil sketches, corner to corner of every page.
You've drawn the most mundane things in remarkable colour and detail. The cooking pot over the stove top, the washing basin, the wooden table. Your slippers, your hair brush. Ordinary things in extraordinary detail, and extraordinary colour.
He pauses at a loose leaf of brown paper tucked toward the end of the book. It's a bird on the window ledge, a fruit dove. The face and beak are in great detail, white feathers made corporeal by the smudge of hard pastel. The wings are rough, white and pale pinks and greens unrendered.
Footsteps sound up the stairs.
Shit, Steve thinks. They're a hurried sound. He's been sussed. He turns on his heel to find a place to hide.
"Shit," he says, climbing the circular platform that holds your bed and collapsing to the floor, wriggling on his back until he's hidden underneath the bed and sheets completely.
He holds his breath as the door creaks open.
"Um… mister… uh, stranger man?"
He waves his hand from under the bed.
"Oh, right. Move over," you say, and then you're getting under the bed to join him.
Steve moves over and suddenly you're there beside him, the two of you pressed arm to arm under your bed. Your smell is impossible to ignore, the fruity fragrance of jasmine and milk-soap. He stares at your face as you settle, your eyelashes fluttering, your subtle smile.
You turn your head to his. The two of you flinch in tandem, eyes flying away from each other to the underside of the bed.
Oh, Steve thinks. Holy stars.
You've painted lanterns on every slat. Purple paper lanterns that glow orange and yellow in their centres, tens of them in different sizes. It's as breathtaking as your field of flowers downstairs despite the major decrease in scale.
"Wow," he says, on impulse, "these are amazing."
You inhale happily. "Thank you. The floating lights are my favourite thing. They always come out-" You cut yourself off with a cough. "Well. I love them."
"'Floating lights,'" he quotes. You're strange.
"I wanted to go see them, but…"
"But mother said no?"
"No," you murmur weakly. He takes it for yes. "She doesn't believe they're not stars."
He can hear each individual breath you take this close and suspects that you can hear his own. It's a funny thing to be this close to you when he doesn't know you beyond your painting and your too-long hair. He can see a lot more of your details, your tiny bumps and fine hairs.
"What's your name?" he asks quietly.
"I'm Y/N." You lay your ear against the wooden floor to look at him. "What's your name?"
"Steven. Steve will do just fine."
"Steve," you say, like you're testing it out. "Steve, you lied to me."
His eyes widen.
"Did I?" he asks, trying to disarm you with a smile and failing yet again.
"You lied," you whisper. "What's in the satchel, Steve?"
"It's not what you think."
"I think it's exactly what I think."
You're giving him a hard stare. He smiles and smiles and smiles, his facade cracking the longer you look at him. His breath all falls out in a rush, blowing the hair from his eyes as he sighs. "Alright, fine. I lied about the ruffians. In my defence, there isn't a big difference between those fools from the palace and true ruffians."
You sit up and wack your head on the bed slats above. Steve reaches out to help though there's nothing to do.
You push his hand away. "Palace guards?" you ask in an urgent whisper, hand held to the top of your head.
"Obviously. They don't just let you walk out of there without a fight… Wait, why are you surprised?" He measures your sheepish face. "You conniving, deceitful gir!"
"I might not know what it is, but I can tell it's not the kind of thing someone like you would have on his person," you say, grumbling at his insults.
His injustice at having been tricked drops away. "You don't know what it is? You've never seen a tiara?”
Your embarrassment is adorable. You change the subject deftly. “You lied to me, let’s not forget. You’re in danger because of the consequences of your own actions. Can’t believe I fell for your sob story. I should tell my mother exactly what kind of man I have hiding under my bed.”
“Who you’re hiding under your bed with.”
You climb out from under the bed with an irritated harrumph. Steve untangles a length of your hair that’s gotten wrapped around one of the beds feet before you can yank your own head back and follows you out.
“Don’t be mad,” he says.
“You’re a criminal,” you say angrily.
“Nobody’s perfect.”
Your furious whispers pause when your mother starts to sing downstairs. Steve can see the debate on your face. Yes, he’s a liar, yes, he’s a criminal, and yes, you should churn him back out into the valley. Send his untrustworthy self on his sorry way and wipe your hands of him entirely.
To do so would mean admitting to your mother that he’s here.
“Just… don’t talk to me. And don’t steal anything.”
He grins. “As you wish, my lady.”
—
“Y/N?” a voice asks in the dark.
It’s impossible to relax with him here. You’re worried he’s going to slit your throat while you sleep. You’re doubly worried he’ll see your unattractive resting face. Warped priorities aside, you can’t make yourself sleep.
“Yeah?” you whisper.
“The floating lights?”
Your eyes fly open. You get the disorienting feeling of blindness and blink in the dark until you can make out the faintest glow of moonlight under the door. “Yeah?”
“Those are called lanterns.”
You swallow a rough breath. “Lanterns.”
“Mm-hm. They’re made of paper. You light them and send them up with the breeze. The ones you’ve been seeing, they’re probably for the lost princess.”
“The lost princess?”
“Yeah. The entire kingdom floods into the town and each person lights a lantern for her. It’s more of a festival these days, but… They're supposed to help her find her way home. If she’s really lost, that is.”
You hum something, an attempt to reply, but you're too distracted to say anything else. Floating paper. A lost princess. You close your eyes and clouds of purple, pink and orange burn against your eyelids.
—
"You want me to what?"
"I want you to take me to see the lanterns."
Steve's back aches from sleeping flat on the floor all night long, and his shoulders scream every time he moves from climbing, and his hands are gross and sore with scabs, and he truthfully doesn't have the patience for this conversation.
"No."
"Fine. Don't take me, and I will keep the tiara as an innkeeper's fee."
"There's usually breakfast at an inn," he says.
You slap a steaming hot bowl of porridge in front of him. You've drizzled the surface with honey and placed red berries over the top to form a smiling face. The heat of the porridge has melted the berries into blobs that break from their skin when he pokes them with a spoon.
"Oh," he says. Nice.
He looks up to find you dressed in a different gown than yesterday, this one made up of a green bodice with white sleeves and a white skirt. The bottom hem is sewn with dainty yellow flowers, the bodice with vines in a darker shade of green. It's a very sweet dress on an otherwise sweet looking girl, if you ignore the formidable twist of your brow.
Fine, he'll bite. Your frown is sweet too.
"I'm not taking you anywhere," he says, about to scoop up a bite of porridge. He's starving.
You pull the bowl away from him, his spoon diving straight into the gnarled wooden table.
"You'll take me, or I'll tell the first palacemen that I find who you are and where you were."
"This isn't how you negotiate."
"Good thing I'm not negotiating."
He tries to intimidate you. Steve is not very intimidating. He frowns and he looks unhappy rather than angry, the worst he dips into is a pestered annoyance. His stomach gurgles in the ensuing silence.
"Why do you need someone to take you? Your mother left just this morning by herself."
You raise your eyebrows.
Steve sighs. "And if I did take you… then what? I suppose you'll want safe passage home, as well?"
You slide his porridge a little bit closer to his outstretched hand.
"You'll be coming back this way anyhow."
Well, yeah. He didn't know you knew that. Steve sighs, the most pained and inconvenienced groan he can muster because everything is awful and he's hurting in six different places. You don’t budge.
"Fine. Fine! I'll take you into the city to see the lanterns, and I'll bring you home. And you will give me back my satchel and my- uh, findings."
You push the porridge toward him. "That was easier than I expected."
Steve wishes he could pretend your smugness wasn't sweet, either. Because he isn't going to make this easy for you, not one bit.
He watches you pack your bag from the table and feels very, very sorry for you. For starters, you don't really have a bag, only a sack for potatoes now emptied. You take two clean dresses down from the clothesline they'd been hanging on and fold them before putting them at the bottom of the sack carefully, and then you're clueless.
"It'll be five or six days," he says, "now I've lost my horse."
Lost isn't the right word. His stolen horse had sprinted off into the forest and left him stranded. Another ailment to add to his list — thrown bodily off of a stallion.
"Do you have any better shoes?"
You look down at your pretty slippers and grimace. "No."
"You don't get out much, do you?"
You ignore him and pull a case of things out from under the small counter in the alcove of your kitchen. You drop a roll of linen bandages into the sack and shove the case back under the counter with your foot as you bring out a block of cheese and a box of matches.
Poor girl, he thinks.
"Don't worry too much about it."
"I'm not worried," you say, topping your provisions off with a punnet of fruit and the last of your fresh flatbread covered in a beeswax wrapping. "This will be fun."
—
You're scared enough to feel tears welling in your eyes.
Steve walks ahead of you, shoes hidden by lush green grass as he makes his way toward the valley's exit. You're not sure he's realised you're not behind him, or maybe he has and he refuses to wait. You've finished bricking the secondary entrance to the tower closed again, and while it seems obviously disturbed you have no choice but to hope mother doesn't steer around the back anytime soon.
Your adrenaline has been pumping ever since you jimmied the tile and unlocked the trap door. Your chest physically aches with anxiety, and your breath has begun to feel short and shallow.
"Are you coming?" Steve calls.
You heave the potato sack over your shoulder and take a step forward.
The earth is soft and hard underfoot, an impossible sensation. You rock your heel back and forth and test the uneven ground for purchase. The temptation to reach down and touch it for the first time is high but Steve's still watching you, so you hurry toward him and try not to fall over. You take a huge, calming breath.
It smells gorgeous out here. Despite keeping the window cracked and the tower clean, there's a lived-in smell that can't be escaped. Out here, you can practically taste the earth. The crisp air burns your nose.
Steve keeps a fast pace and neither of you talk. Your companion isn't happy about his predicament and you can't blame him, you've practically taken him hostage. He isn't a poor sport either, and he hasn't been cruel. Quiet, he parts the ivy covering the valley exit and lets you pass.
The world is even bigger from there.
"Stay close, okay? I don't know what kind of vagrants we'll come across this far from town."
You swallow a lump in your throat. "Uh-huh."
You stay likely too close, your arm gracing his own every now and then. Each time you pull away and each time you end up drifting back toward him. The quiet is impenetrable. You don't know what to say to a man. To anybody. Mother's usually the guiding force of every conversation, and her insistence has left you poorly equipped.
Steve seems content to languish in silence.
You walk. You watch the sun move, heat burning your skin by midday. You're not used to walking such long distances or being so exposed to the elements, and by evening you hurt everywhere. Your face shines with perspiration and your shoes chafe your ankles raw, each step a barb.
As if things couldn't get worse, guilt grabs and holds you. Guilt and fear. What will mother think if she finds out you've left? What would she say? How ridiculously naive, darling. I told you, you aren't to leave the tower. Do you seriously think you know better than I do? Do you think I'm stupid? I'm hurt. I'm hurting that you'd think so low of me.
You try to shake the thoughts away. A shiver rushes down your spine.
Steve holds a hand over his eyes, turning his head to the West where the sun approaches the horizon.
"It'll be dark in a few hours,” he says.
You nibble the inside of your cheek, voice hoarse and throat dry from your lack of conversation. "Will we camp for the night?"
He shakes his head, the sun climbing up his neck to paint his brown hair blonde. "If memory serves, there's an inn not far from here." He smiles. "You'll like it."
"Oh. That's good."
"Yeah."
You kick a small stone. "How do you know where we're going?" You'd been on a dirt path now for an hour or two, or rather two dirt paths, worn by carriage wheels. "Everything looks the same."
"I'm an excellent navigator."
Sure enough, he navigates the two of you toward a pretty little inn snugly hidden between a crop of towering, leafy trees, a shock of beige and brown in an overwhelmingly green landscape.
"Le Vilain Caneton," you read off of the sign, giving him a bright smile. "That sounds nice."
"What did I tell you? You're gonna love this."
—
Steve doesn't feel bad, at first.
He throws open the door. The handle slams hard enough into the wood behind it that he's surprised there isn't a cracking sound. He ushers you inside, finding that the handle hasn't broken a hole in the wall because there's already one there.
It's sleazy, all things considered. Steve has avoided this place pretty much his entire adult life after a trade gone wrong, and while he feels his appearance has changed enough to spare him a skirmish he affects the Steven Harrington manner. Two-timing baby Stevie is nowhere to be seen.
He's still a two-timer. Case in point.
"Isn't it charming?" he murmurs to you, hand held aloft behind your back. Not touching but ready to if you step back.
"Yeah," you say weakly. "Really cute."
Adorable.
Steve takes a step that encourages you forward into the main area of the room. The smell of cheap ale blooms and the floor is sticky with it. He regrets how it will likely ruin your pretty slippers but he isn't a coward, walking you right up to the bar where a scary looking guy stands wiping glasses with a dirty rag.
"Are you the innkeeper?" he asks jovially. "We'd like a room."
Scary guy squints, looks between you and Steve with apprehension.
Steve's trying to scare you, not get caught. He throws his arm over your shoulders. You shrink under his touch. It's too late for him to pull away, guilt softening the grasp he has on your shoulder as he lays down a thick facade.
"My wife's tired as a lamb from walking all day, could we get a hot bath drawn with that?"
Scary guy spits into the cup with a scoff. "Judy?" he calls out gruffly.
Steve beams. You curl into him slowly, a flower turning to the sun, hiding from the cold. You still smell of jasmine milk soap after all these hours of walking, but he doesn't miss how the lengths of your hair have grown dishevelled with sweat and wind. He wonders how long it might take you to brush free the knots and tangles. He wonders if you do it in the bath.
You turn to him with your face shining with a trust he doesn't deserve, like you're seeking his protection.
"Steve, I don't have any money," you whisper.
His hand rests in the nook of your neck. "That's alright. Consider it part of your innkeeper's fee."
"Does this come with breakfast, too?" you ask genuinely.
Judy, a tall, lithely woman who can't be more than thirty takes her station behind the bar and smiles at you before her eyes follow Steve's arm to his body. He freezes at the calculating tilt of her head, the subtle but not invisible squint.
"Breakfast is an additional two silvers."
"And for the room and bath?"
"Ten for the room, five for the bath, two for breakfast." Judy grins. Her hair is like copper, shifting around sharp cheekbones. "Seventeen silvers all together."
Steve frowns but hands over the money.
Judy takes you up the first flight of rickety stairs to your room, and nods toward the bathing room as you pass it. She shows you where you'll be spending the night, a ramshackle room with a bed made of what Steve suspects to be more straw than padding. He's relieved at the thick quilt set and folded at the bottom. It looks clean enough.
"I'll knock when the bath is drawn. Will that be for both of you?"
And so. Steve had feared this, feared the bath in general, and had forgotten to explain this fear to you.
"Both of us," he says, nodding.
You're thankfully smart enough to keep any grievances you have at that to yourself. At least, until the door closes, and you pin him with a look that's a mixture of betrayed and furious. Your eyebrows pinch together.
"Why did you say that?"
"It's what's expected of us."
"By who?" you ask, near belligerent.
He shushes you, a frown of his own taking form. "By everybody. It's what married couples do, they share the water when travelling. And it wouldn't be proper for you to be in the bathing room by yourself, how could your husband protect your honour?"
"You're not my husband."
He shushes you again, this time with a severe expression that finally has you giving pause. Your eyes flash with fear and quickly clear. You take a step back.
He holds a hand out toward you amicably. "Sorry. But it will be much safer for both of us if we can keep our ruse alive. Someone as handsome as you, it isn't right for your reputation to be travelling with me while you're still unmarried, you know? And for me…" He doesn't want to explain the horrible truth to you. If Steve refuses to leave you, to share you, to let men do what men would like to do to you, that might invite a riot.
"I don't have a reputation," you say.
He shrugs. "It is safer for us to be married." He hesitates, remembering why he'd brought you here in the first place. The horrible truth may be unseemly, but it could be enough to get you to bow out. "If we aren't married… Well, it doesn't bear saying."
"What?" you ask, a curious thing. He loves it, and not only because it works to his advantage.
"Men will take anything they find beautiful. And without care."
Your fingers tighten around the mouth of your potato sack bag.
"I see," you say. "Of course. I knew that, mother always says, but."
He winces at the reminder of your cruel mother. He feels cruel himself, suddenly, for scaring you on purpose as your mother likely does, for being another member of the opposition in your life. All you want is to see the Princess' lanterns, so much so you've hidden under your bed and painted their colours painstakingly onto each slat of supporting wood. A hidden wish, and one you'd deigned to share with him. He starts to think, Maybe I should just take her. How much could it possibly cost me?
But Steve's from nothing. He was born from nothing, he grew up with nothing. He is, in the grand scheme of the universe and its many, many stars, nothing. Another orphaned boy destined to waste his life stealing coppers from coin purses and sleeping in doorways.
The sooner he gets that tiara, the better. No more sleeping outside. No more staring up at the wine dark sky and wondering if any of those blistering stars can hear him.
If they can, they aren't listening.
You put your bag down on the floor. It thunks.
"What have you piled in there, sweetness? A mountain?" he asks, momentarily distracted.
"Nothing!" you rush to say, standing in front of your bag like it might hide it from his view.
The door knocks before he can question you further. "The bath!" comes Judy's solid tone.
"Thank you," Steve says, "we'll be right out." He nods at you. "Your change of clothes?"
You search through your bag with your shoulders to him, hunched to shield the mystery.
"You can keep your secrets," he teases lightly. The stars know he keeps his own.
Through the hallway to the bathing room, Judy kicks open the door, points to the bath as though he might not see it otherwise, and then the small weight by the doorway to keep the door closed. There's no steam to the water.
"How conning," Steve mutters, closing the door after Judy's departure.
"What?" you ask, your voice curiously strung.
"The water’s barely hot."
"I've never had a hot bath before."
He looks at you through the corner of his eye. "Never?"
"Sometimes mother would pour warm water through my hair, but no. Does it hurt, when it's too hot?"
He can't help grinning at you. "Some of the time," he concedes. "It's a nice kind of hurting, though, do you know what I mean? You'll feel much better after." He chuckles, sticking his finger into the water. It isn't not hot, but it could be better considering its cost. "Not that this could ever hurt you."
"A nice kind of hurting," you mumble.
"Mm. You should try to be quick, they might want the bath for someone else soon."
You nod, eyes darkening with your remembered predicament. You hug your clean dress to your chest. He thinks, suddenly, that your hair looks very heavy, and that it must hurt your neck.
"I won't look," he says, voice soft with sincerity.
Your shoulders relax.
He sits with his legs stretched out and shoes pressed to the door to stop a potential intruder, listening, trying not to listen, as you peel out of your clothes. Your bare feet sound strange over the wooden floor, a shushing sound. Your dress and corset fall in rustling waves.
You gasp as you step into the water. "Oh," you say, the small sound imbued with a simple, common pleasure.
He feels the tension like fog over the kingdom waters in summer, when the heat is tangible and the nights are short. You look so soft in your clothes. Outside of them, Steve can only imagine.
He tries very hard to push it from his mind, feeling an unwelcome heat rise anyhow. He blames it on the humidity of the room.
You pitter for a moment, in awe of the heat.
"How–" His voice gets caught. He clears his throat, tries a second time, "How do you wash your hair?"
"I lather the soap in my hands and–" You seem to be victim of the same affliction as he is. "Steve, could you pass me my soap? I'm sorry, I've left it on the vanity with my dress."
"If you want me to help you, you need only ask. I've been said to have very hard-working hands."
"I thought you were a thief?"
Steve stands up grudgingly. He usually has much better luck with the ladies, yet all his joking flirtation soars straight over your head. Not that he actually wants it to land, nor does he think he could handle your attention.
He doesn't look at you as he grabs your bar of soap. He unwraps its beeswax covering and hands it to you, looking decidedly at the damp wall opposite. He feels your wet hand touch his. Your skin is so hot it startles him, and the bar of soap slips between your outstretched fingers, slamming and sliding somewhere unknown.
"Shit," he says. "Alright, best cover yourself."
He hears quick movements in the water as he turns to you, throwing his gaze to the floor, only a split flash of your naked skin to be seen. Your soap has rounded the corner of the wooden tub, lying behind your straight back. He kneels to pick it up, scowling at the scum sticking to its underside, and nearly headbutts your forehead as he stands.
He springs back, and he stares. You have water running in rivers down your face, your wet hair framing your shining cheeks, pooling down. It covers the swell of your chest so precisely that Steve bites his tongue, forcing his eyeline back to your waiting face. You have water in your eyes like tears, their lashes turned to triangles, clinging to one another.
You look like one of the women from his storybook. A water nymph. A siren. The room is warm with steam, and his cheeks, hot to begin with, emanate enough heat to warm your tub again as he makes the comparison. Your looks alone might draw him to drowning.
"Steve?" you ask, holding out your hand.
Hair shifts over your body like a dancing shadow, or a beaming light. He isn't sure. There's something about it that feels extraordinary, not just in the length of it.
He passes you your soap. Ridiculous, he thinks. Imbecilic. Your hair is hair and nothing more. While you're achingly pretty and you have a fine hand, that is where your remarkability ends.
"Could you turn around again?" you ask, flustered.
He turns around.
—
"You brought your pan?" Steve asks you, bewildered. He's standing by the small, thin window, metal-wrought panes that filter the last of the sun's rays.
You stand shivering by your potato sack and frown at him, setting the pan on the sheets. "I think we might have a more pressing issue."
"We don't have anything." He seems to appraise your condition. "How do you usually dry your hair?"
"You wouldn't believe me."
"How cryptic! I'm afraid you're destined to freeze here, my heart. Or we could take you home, where you may comfortably perform whatever ritual it is that you perform and dry your hair."
"Wasn't there a fireplace downstairs?"
"We aren't going back down there."
"We aren't," you say in agreement, turning his distaste of the collective pronoun back on him. "I'll go by myself."
"That is a horrible, terrible, awful idea."
"I'm not going home. I want to– I’m going to see the paper lanterns."
Steve sighs. After your bath, he'd taken the smaller basin of clean water and washed up, now standing in front of you in his only change of clothes, a darker, navy tunic buttoned to the throat and simple slacks. His shoes are tightly laced even at this hour. You look down at your bare feet and feel majorly abashed by their new blisters and haphazard bandaging. You can't make yourself put your slippers back on.
He continues his sighing as he crosses the room. He's still grumbling when he opens the door.
"Well?" he asks, holding it open.
You pat his arm gently as you pass. "Thank you."
You trek down the stairs, careful with each footstep that you aren't trodding on a misplaced nail or scary splinter. Wood changes to stone flooring, tiles of a terracotta colour that are large and misshapen. You keep your eyes on them as you cross the room to its only source of heat, a blistering hearth just shy of the room's stage and piano. Somebody sits behind it on the piano bench, though they aren't playing the piano at all, but a great wooden instrument you've never seen.
"What is that?" you ask Steve.
He doesn't bend under your attention. He frowns ever so slightly. "What?"
You point to the instrument as conspicuously as you can.
Steve takes your shoulder into his hand and guides you toward the fireplace without malice. He's prompting you along, as you've stopped in the middle of the room.
"You've never seen one of those?" he asks.
"Not in any of my books."
"I guess they're still new. That's a vihuela. It's a… it's a nice sound."
You nod appreciatively, and feel much happier as Steve pulls a nearby chair as close to the hearth as he can without garnering any disgruntled looks from the other patrons. You sneak a peek at their faces. Most are naturally intimidating; there are men with weathered, unkind faces lining the walls with tankards of ale in hand; there are travellers such as yourselves, though they look hardened, sharper than you ever could, coin purses on tables as if daring you to try lifting them; there are women, sparsely, who are sharper in a different way. They remind you of a summer rose, darkly red, a gorgeous head of petals distracting from a thorny stem.
You sit down in your chair and feel the heat of the fireplace greet your chilled skin, and your soaked back. Your dress has soaked up much of your hairs dripping, the kind of unfortunate happenstance that might spiral into your hypothermic death. Steve puts his chair beside yours and turns his entire body toward yours. You like it. It's like he's hiding you from everybody else, replacing their sneering gazes with his fed-up acceptance. You find extreme comfort in this feeling, as though Steve is the only person in the room with you.
"Turn to me."
"What if my hair catches?"
"You aren't close enough for that."
You turn to Steve completely. You look like lovers, you must, worse when he takes your slippers and holds them on top of one of his thighs. He has wide thighs, and they make you feel a feeling you don't understand. Everything you know about men has come from Mother or books. Mother claims them to be evil in their entirety. Of the few books you have, and fewer that talk of men beyond the factual, none have ever mentioned why their legs look like that, and why it will make you feel like you've swallowed something much too hot.
"I'll make sure your hair doesn't go up in flames," he promises grandly, unnecessarily, "consider it one of my guidely duties."
A shy, pleased smile takes your lips. "Thank you."
"Yeah, you're welcome." He closes his eyes and tips his head back. "Stars, I'm hungry."
"I have–"
"We'll buy dinner. They have hunter's stew here, have you ever tried that?"
"No."
He laughs, crossing his arms across his chest. "Of course not. Alright, this will sound gross, but it's really old stew. Years old, maybe decades. They keep adding and adding to the pot with whatever’s in season."
You don't know everything, or anything, really, but you know that sounds like food poisoning in a bowl. "How doesn't it kill you?"
"They keep it really, really hot, all day long."
You like the way he says it, even if he's maybe making fun. He almost sings each word, a melodic cadence to his pronunciation that endears you further.
"And you've had it? What does it taste like?"
"See, you'd think it tastes a bit muddled, right? But it's good. You'll like it."
He makes no move to get up and get the aforementioned soup. You aren't particularly hungry, leaning back just a little so the brutal heat of the flames can warm your damp shoulder. The wetness of your dress is fading, warmed but still undeniably wet, and you wonder if the heat is hurting your hair. Mother always says to keep your hair as far from the hearth as you can at all times, and gets angry when you sit too close.
The soot, darling. The soot will cling to your hair and ruin it. It is, in Mother's opinion, the most beautiful thing about you.
Mother. She shouldn't be back home for days now, and still you're worrying. Mostly about being caught. But if you're caught, and she knows you left…
You have a strange love for your mother. The kind that makes you feel sick in intensity. You want, at all times, to please her. And you know this isn't something she would approve of, Stars, she'd be so disappointed in you for taking this risk.
You stare up at a wooden beam past Steve's head and try not to tear up. Anxiety eats at you until there's nothing left but your skin, your insides a tangled dark whorl of misery. She must know you've left home. She must know how terribly ungrateful you are for everything she's sacrificed. She must know–
"Are you okay?"
You blink hurriedly and face Steve, hoping this will dispel the quick-welling tears clouding your vision. It doesn't work: blinking can’t erase years of pent up worry. You wipe your eyes before they can roll down your cheeks and humiliate you further.
"I'm okay," you say.
Steve frowns again. He's a frowny guy.
"What's wrong?" He takes your elbow into his hand.
"Nothing. Uh…" You smile through your embarrassment. "We don't light the hearth at home, often, and uh, I think the smoke is irritating my eyes." You nod for emphasis.
Steve does not believe you, clearly, but he squeezes your elbow and nods back.
He looks at your face until you're uneasy.
"I'll go get that stew,” he says, patting your arm.
You feel strange once he’s gone. It's nice to be by yourself for a moment. You've spent the majority of your adult life alone while mother goes here, there, and everywhere. You're never allowed to go with her, too stupid for the outside world and all its challenges.
You look around the room now and wonder if this is really the world she means. Sure, it's foreign, and it's unsettling, and without Steve by your side you might not be left alone as you have been, but you'd expected more. Where are all the insects that make you sick, and the men with cutlasses and shackles?
Your eyes drift to the vihuela player. He's moved to sit at the opposite side of the fire. He strums lackadaisically at his instrument, his shoulders against the wall and a cup of mead at his feet. It's obvious nobody's given him any coin in a while.
Behind him sits the piano, glimmering with the flickering firelight. You've read about them, you've even seen drawings of harpsichords, but never heard one played. You wonder what it sounds like. Any music at all is amazing to you. All you've ever heard is singing. One song.
Steve returns with two bowls of hunter's stew. You're scared to try it but horrified that you might look like a coward in front of him. Again. Your tears had been bad enough.
You swallow a spoonful and your eyes water unbidden. "Oh, wow."
"Good, huh?"
You try not to cough. "It's rich."
"I guess you haven't had stuff like this before, huh?" He forks through his bowl and pulls out a big pale vegetable roughly cubed. "You like potato?"
"Yeah," you say, and before you've finished he's pushing the potato against the lip of your bowl and pulling the tines of his fork free. It falls into your stew with a small splash. "Oh. Thank you."
You try to eat as much of it as you can but start to feel sick somewhere in the middle. You set your bowl aside and Steve, bowl emptied, drops his next to it, wiping his hands together and standing.
You look up, puzzled.
"Come on."
Your hair isn't quite dry, a tugging weight for your neck as Steve slides his hand over your warm shoulder. You worry it might never full dry again, not without a helping hand.
He leads you up the small platform to the piano.
You look to him inquisitively.
"It's alright. I asked them if you could try it. Just try not to play too loudly and disrupt the bard."
"How do you adjust how loud it is?"
He pushes down on your shoulders until you're sitting on the bench. "You play softly. It's going to be a little loud no matter what. Don't smash the keys."
"Are they fragile?" you ask worriedly, holding your tensed fingertips above the white and pitch keys.
"No," he says, laughing without any judgement, "move over, I'll show you."
He sits on the bench beside you. There's not a whole lot of room, and his arm presses hot to yours. He places his hand above the keys like he knows what he's doing, and presses down. He plays a line of notes, the sounds a plinking rising melody that has you gasping in awe.
"Don't," —he presses down a huge chunk of keys, and the sound is awful— "do this."
You look up to see if anybody's glaring. Then you burst into giggles, face pressed to his shoulder on automatic as you try to smother the sound. He laughs warmly near your ear.
You probe curiously at the keys and try to make a song. You don't know how, don't know one note from another, you can't fathom how someone might make this into anything more than the bard's lazy fingerings.
"Do you know anything?" Steve asks.
Do you know anything? Mother demands. Darling, I've told you a million times…
"No. Sorry," you say.
His voice is sincerely sweet, like he's confused you'd ever be sorry, "For what? I can play you something. Choose a song."
"I only know the one."
He blinks at you. You shrink into yourself as he averts his gaze, knowing what he's thinking. How useless you are.
The song starts slowly. Steve taps one key, and then another. It lends and lists into music suddenly, the repetition of a simple melody. He doesn't sing, just speaks the words as he plays.
"She sends me a flower to hold me," he says, an echo of song in his tone. "She sends me a flower to– night." He moves his hands up to a higher sound. "She loves me too much, so she's told me. But if she loved me, oh loved me, she might… Come to see me, oh sweetheart, come to see me, oh lover, come to see me, oh darling." He smiles at you. "Come to see me to– night." He clears his throat, hand stilling. "You'd sing the bridge again, but I think I'll spare your ears."
"Is that yours?" you ask him.
He drops his hand into his lap. "No. Steve Harrington doesn't pen love poems, I'm afraid."
"Only plays them."
His smile turns to a smirk, so sticky it's catching.
"You're not the mouse I'd thought you were," he says.
"Was this realisation before or after I tried to maim you with a cast iron pan?"
He's about to answer, a spark behind his eyes, when the door opens wide enough to split its hinges. The origin of the hole in the wall is clear, and he waltzes in with a band of men behind him, grinning.
"Oh, for Stars’ sake," Steve mutters.
"What?" you ask.
The man at the front of the group of men — or, as they step into the light and reveal themselves, boys — sets his one un-patched eye on you and Steve, smiles like the devil, and croons, "Stevie!"
Steve's smile is gone.
"Eddie," he says tiredly.
"You're back!" Eddie looks you up and down, and his expression turns to one of complete surprise. "With a wife? My, my, we have been busy."
Steve stands, and Eddie, in all his darkness, dark hair and eyes and tunic, his grin turns mean. You hide behind one of Steve's thighs, hesitant. He drops his hand against the top of your head.
"Why's it matter?" Steve asks.
"It doesn't." This Eddie sounds all too cheerful. "What does matter, I'm afraid, is the debt between us."
"I don't owe you anything."
You watch with widened eyes as Eddie unsheathes his sword. The scabbard has a mottling of shiny reds and blacks, and the blade glows silver to white in the light. It's sharp.
Steve pulls a small knife from his hip. You hadn't realised he was carrying a weapon.
Eddie takes a step forward, his shoes like a thunderclap across the wooden floor.
"I'm afraid my Sweetheart here doesn't agree."
˗ˋˏ ☆ ˎˊ˗
eddie isn’t a bad guy he’s just confrontational <3 thank you so much for reading! i hope you enjoyed, and if you did, please consider reblogging i promise it makes a huge difference <3
summary - carter learns to appreciate his favorite perk of being in a relationship - cuddles.
a/n - just a little baby fic for my boy. he's too cute i literally can't. ik there's a normal word for clavicular notch but i can't remember (this is what a&p does to a person). just watched episode 5 and i think i need to write something to put robby in his place. he's high key pissing me tf off. STILL. IT JUST KEEPS GETTING WORSE.
---
John Carter had never experienced true affection, not even as a young boy. His childhood was overseen primarily by nannies and boarding school dorm parents. His sister was uninterested in him, his brother took out his anger on him, and their family was never the same after his passing.
The only person he really felt connected to was his Gamma, although she was still a woman of class. She’d hug him stiffly, kiss his cheek in greeting, but that was the extent. She wasn’t overly warm, or snuggly, like some grandmas were. As a kid, he’d see his friends get picked up from school, or at their baseball games with their parents cheering them on in the stands. Forehead smooches were wiped away in disgust, hugs shrugged off in embarrassment. And John couldn’t understand exactly why those sights always left him feeling just a bit hollow.
He’d never had affection, so he didn’t realize how much he missed it.
Until you.
When he met you, it was head over heels. Love at first sight. Ironic, seeing as you didn’t believe in those things, but he did. He knew they did because it had happened to him.
You were a paramedic, newly trained, and brought onto the scene as Riley’s partner when Shep moved out of the county. You knew there was history between Shep and Carol, who you became fast friends with. You didn’t prod. But Carter could feel Carol relax as you proved yourself time and time again to be the opposite of what Shep was. You were kind, steady, and always willing to help. You could take someone down if you needed to, but only then, and you were wonderful at getting through to the patients reluctant to ask for help.
And you were gorgeous. It always baffled Carter how you could look so ethereal after spending hours running around, sweating in the heat. Your uniform was drab, but on you? Carter loved to see it. Though, he’d love to see you in a potato sack, for all he cared. The look of concentration that fell over your face while working drove him nuts, and he’d been distracted by it more than once. Then you’d yell at him to focus up, and he’d get his head together.
See, you were witty and not afraid to make a joke, but when you had a patient in front of you, that was the priority. There was no pulling you from someone in need. While Carter certainly admired you for that, it made it difficult for him to find a natural time to talk to you, get to know you, and ultimately, confess his undying love for you in a relaxed, breezy type of way.
Because Carter was sure about you. You met on one of the first true spring days of the season, with an open ankle fracture and Benton breathing down your neck. Just four or five months of inane stuttering and acute fits of idiocy in your presence, and Carter finally summoned the courage to ask you out on a real date, and the rest was history.
A few months in, Carter was proving to be the sweetest boyfriend you could have hoped for. Attentive, loving, considerate, he regularly went out of his way just to make your life the tiniest bit easier. He saved your favorite recipes to cook, picked up the book you mentioned weeks ago on his day off, brought you little gifts just because they reminded him of you. But you noticed one thing he seemed to struggle with.
Touch.
Now, in the bedroom, all was good and well. In fact, a little better than that. But despite what he did in the sheets, he still asked to hold your hand. Still apologized if your legs brushed sitting next to each other on the couch. Still slid over to his side of the bed when you spent the night, allowing at least a foot of room between you.
The strangest thing was, he seemed to like touch. When you did hold his hand, he lit up like a Christmas tree, and if you scratched his head, he’d close his eyes and lean into you. He just seemed hesitant to initiate it, as if he was afraid of bothering you, or scaring you off. You tried to be patient, let him go at his own pace, but sometimes you just wanted to cuddle your boyfriend after a hard shift.
So one day, you decided to clear the air, for good measure.
“You know,” you said lightly, one night, over chinese takeout and Jeopardy. “You don’t have to ask to hold my hand. You can just hold it.”
He glanced over at you, eyebrows raised.
“Oh?”
“Yeah,” you said, setting your chopsticks down, growing smile on your face. “I mean, it’s very polite. I appreciate it. But… I like it when you hold my hand. I’ll never say no.”
He broke into a bashful smile, cheeks tinting pink, and he looked down at his noodles. You scootched over a bit closer to him, and ran a finger over his brow fondly.
“I just don’t wanna make you feel uncomfortable,” he said, eyes still down.
“That’s sweet,” you said, heart burning for the softness in his voice. “But consider this a standing acceptance to hand holding. Or anything. If I’m not in the mood, I’ll tell you. Okay?”
He nodded timidly, and you kissed his cheek and picked up your chopsticks again. You let your attention turn back to Alex Trebek. Sometimes the contestants were so stupid, they made you want to try and get on the show. But as you shouted out answers, you felt Carter’s warm, slightly clammy hand inching up under your arm. You let your hand fall away from your box of food and he threaded his fingers through yours.
You didn’t look at each other, just grasped each other's hands tight and watched your show.
That was the start. Hand holding. At first, he was still a little nervous. Still working to accept what you said as true, that you wouldn’t be mad, or annoyed, or disgusted by his spontaneous touch.
After the third or fourth time, it was like a dam broke. At every turn, there he was grabbing your hand. He would wake up early on his days off just so he could hold it as he walked you to work. In bed, on the couch, on dates, even at work sometimes, you could always find his hands linked with yours. Even just pinkies crooked together under a table if there were people around.
Eventually, as much as you hated it, you couldn’t keep holding things up for it. You couldn’t stop cooking, or reading, or fixing the showerhead to hold hands with him. So he expanded. He started keeping a hand on your lower back, or linking your arm through his, or running his hands up and down your sides. He’d dig his fingers in if he wanted to hear your laugh.
Soon enough, there was a constant point of contact between the two of you. Arms hooked, heads on shoulders, legs wound together. You found yourself with less of a boyfriend, and more of a koala. He’d cling to you like his life depended on it, headbutting you until you ran your hands through his hair.
You complained. But you didn’t mean it.
“John,” you said, as he nuzzled into your neck. “I’m trying — Johnny!”
He just hummed, hands running all along your body, your thighs, your butt, your tummy, your boobs, your armpits — any spot he could find. You couldn’t help but giggle as he pressed lazy kisses to your neck, which really undercut your stern tone.
“I’m trying to read this article!”
“Then read,” he drawled, and you could feel his grin against your skin. “I’m not stopping you.”
You huffed, amused, and playfully pushed his head away. To your surprise, and slight disappointment, it appeared to work, as he pulled back. But as you craned your head to see him at the foot of the bed, he began tugging on the bottom of your hoodie. You squealed as his cool cheeks pressed against your bare stomach, as he shoved his head right underneath the oversized sweater. You let your paper fall to the side as he pulled himself through and rested his head on your chest, eyes just barely peaking out from the collar. His arms followed, and his hands went right to your chest too.
You sighed.
“This is your sweatshirt, you know,” you said, pretending to be indignant. “So if you stretch it out —!”
“Worth it,” he mumbled, nosing your clavicular notch.
You wrapped your arms and legs around his sleepy weight and let yourself relax. He was warm, and soft, and grounding. It didn’t take long for his snores to lull you into a slumber of your own.
It was an amazing thing to Carter that he could feel such comfort whenever he wanted. That not only did he find an amazing woman to fall in love with, she loved him back. And you did. Every time you gave him a scalp massage, or kissed a pout off of his lips, or gave his bum a waggish squeeze as he made dinner, he could feel his heart swell.
Although to date you had never turned down his touch, whether loving, teasing, scandalous, or comforting, there were of course external factors to consider. Too many times would your lovely face distract Carter from work. He’d think about wrapping all his limbs around you, feeling you everywhere, senses completely filled by you. It was an intoxicating daydream.
“Carter!” Benton would yell. “Get your ass up and make yourself useful!”
Carter would mutter an embarrassed apology and rush off, not before catching the mirthful glint in your eye.
Carter spent most of his time at your apartment by the time you reached the six month mark. It wasn’t bigger than his, the heating and air conditioning went out at less than convenient times, and the washer and dryer were five floors down in a creepy basement. But it was homey, with tokens of your treasured memories adorning every possible surface, the fridge plastered with photos under souvenir magnets from all the places you’d visited. Home knit blankets, mismatched mugs, and movie posters painted the dingy apartment into something comforting.
He never wanted to leave. He loved knowing that you were never more than 15 steps away from him. Your sheets smelled like you. He used your lotion just to keep part of you with him throughout the day. You scolded him for it, but after hard days you’d smooth your most expensive face masks on him in the tub, and let him use as much of that lotion as he wanted.
One Saturday, the last free night you had together before some back to back shifts, he was getting ready for bed, and realized — the two of you had built a happy home. It was welcoming, and warm, everything his childhood home wasn’t. Yours was full of love and laughter, dancing in the glow of the refrigerator, and shopping together in pajamas. It was everything he never dared to let himself dream of.
And he didn’t ever want to live without it.
He turned to you, where you sat under the covers, reading an Agatha Christie book you’d read a million times before, eye mask ready on your head, hair up, a spot of zit cream on your face, and he could feel it in his whole body.
His eyes never left you as he crawled under the comforter on his designated side of the bed. He didn’t need to look to know his watch, tattered book, and vitamins were on the nightstand, and he knew his blue toothbrush was sitting next to your green one in the bathroom. As he settled down, you set Agatha aside and grabbed vaseline from your table.
It had become a sort of night time ritual, you moisturizing his hands with vaseline. You knew he never did it himself, just kept using hand sanitizer and antibacterial soap on his poor hands, which were already strained pushing meds, lifting patients, and suturing. You rubbed the vaseline into his cracked skin with such gentle care, and right now, he couldn’t take his eyes off you.
Your tired ones met his, and you smiled suspiciously.
“What are you looking at?”
“Just —” he sighed, eyes wide as saucers, in awe of you, of the privilege it was to see you like this. “Let’s live together.”
You froze, mouth parting a bit.
“What?”
He scooted closer to you, removing his hands from your grip to cradle your waist. He was nervous, but smiling like an idiot.
“You make me the happiest I’ve ever been,” he said. “And whenever I go back to my place, I — I feel so homesick. I can’t live when you’re not around.”
You just stared at him.
“You’re crazy,” you said, but it came out mushy.
“I don’t care,” he said, pulling you fully into his lap. “I really don’t. I just want you. More than anything.”
You couldn’t control your smile as he kissed your face.
“We’ve only been going out, what — six months?”
“And seventeen days,” he said, playing with the baby hairs at the nape of your neck. “Look, I totally understand if you don’t want to. I just want you to know that I’m ready whenever you are.”
“I’m ready,” you breathed. “But are you sure you want to move in here? I wasn’t sure I was gonna renew the lease, and —”
He didn’t even wait for you to finish before he pulled you into a heated kiss. One hand roved under the almost ten year old high school softball tee you wore, while the other teased the edge of your granny panties, the cute ones with the polka dots. He knew you were always self conscious in them, but he might have preferred them to the white lacy pair you wore on Valentines Day.
He pulled back just to take a breath and pant, “We can move into a new place.”
You were smiling almost as wide as he was.
“With both our salaries combined we could probably get a bigger place,” he said. “Maybe even with a washer and dryer in the apartment.”
You giggled.
“Closer to work, too,” you said, as John began kissing down your neck. “Oh, and pet friendly! I’ve always wanted a cat.”
He resurfaced to raise a brow.
“Can’t we get a dog?”
You scoffed.
“When would we have the time to take care of a dog?” you snorted. “Besides, you’re a cat person, you just don’t know it yet. I had a cat growing up. She was my best friend. And she lived for like twenty years, too!”
“Thelma,” he nodded with a smirk. “I remember.”
You rested your head on his shoulder and he leaned back against the headboard, one hand still exploring under your top, in a domestic, familiar way, somehow.
“I promise you’ll love our cat,” you said, rubbing your nose against his freshly shaven cheek.
“It doesn’t matter,” he said, absorbing your touch. “I’ll give you a cat. I’ll give you anything you want.”
Three months later, you sat on the mattress of your partially furnished apartment. It was so close to work you could hear the L echoing in the distance, which Carter was worried about, but you loved. Your “bed” wasn’t really a “bed” yet, as you were still missing a frame. It was flat on the floor for now.
The couch was up, which Doug and Mark were only too happy to complain about as they helped Carter lug it up the steps. Apparently, according to Carter, you were too pretty to do grunt work on a hot summer day. You were inclined to agree, so you worked on building some shelves for the living room.
There were still pizza boxes on the floor, and clothes in piles in laundry baskets, but you didn’t care. You were tangled up together in bed, compensating for the body heat with three fans pointed at you and no sheets; and between you lay a little sleeping kitten. Louise, Carter had named her.
You watched smugly as your Johnny gently stroked the kitty between the eyes, watching her with pure adoration. You were fairly certain he was minutes away from tears of joy.
“I told you,” you whispered sleepily, but proudly. “You love her.”
Without ceasing his petting, lest Louise protest, he squished his face right next to yours.
“Yeah,” he said. “But I love you more.”
---
a/n - would ppl be interested in a meet cute blurb with paramedic!reader? i actually kinda love that dynamic
🍯💌 with carter where she's trying to study for a presentation and he keeps deliberately trying to distract her
thank you for the request!! 18+ mdni cw suggestive themes, allusions to sex, carter initiates sex , academic rivals series academic rivals / friends with benefits <3 fem!reader, 0.8k words
1.5k follower fairy garden party celebration ⋆˚ʚɞ you're invited!
"I swear you never listen to me."
John is one of the most attentive men you know, and unfortunately it's not even close. He hangs off your every word, even if it's just to use it against you later, but that doesn't change the fact that he's usually listening to you quite hard.
But it's real late, the two of you have been studying pretty much non-stop most of the day, and you've been at your desk the entire time so he hasn't even been able to get handsy.
"I could literally recite your entire presentation backwards," he says. He's laying on his back on your bed, your pillow on his stomach and his legs half under your duvet. "It's so late. I'm sleep deprived."
"The sun is just setting now," you deadpan.
"Exactly," he pops up with almost comical speed. "We should go get dinner. I'm starving." He's been snacking pretty heavily for the past few hours from the stash you keep in your dorm room, and you're going to let him take you to get food eventually. But the dining hall is open for three more hours and he owes you for making you quiz him for Defence Mechanisms and Disease or a full hour.
"Can I do it one more time?" You huff.
John groans like you've just asked him to donate a kidney. "You said that twenty minutes ago," he complains. "I'm retaining nothing. My brain is soup. Academic soup."
Doesn't help that he's pavlov'd himself; he's rarely on your bed for innocent reasons anymore. He's not fully hard, but his mind keeps wandering. You're dressed simply in pyjamas, a hoodie and some jogging bottoms, and he's practically drooling at the idea of having your tongue in his mouth.
"You're so dramatic," you spin in your rolly chair, muttering.
There's a beat of silence which, with John, is suspicious. Then the mattress creaks. He rolls onto his side, propping himself up on one elbow. "You've been at that desk for what, eight hours?" His voice is gentle, trying to cajole you if he can't whine at you.
"I've taken the same number of breaks as you have, Carter." You don't look up from your flashcards. Carter rolls forward and finally comes to his feet behind you.
He kisses your forehead, resting his chin on your head. "Come lay down with me. Just for a little, I won't let you fall asleep I promise."
That's not what you're worried about even a little with him. Your... relationship, or whatever it is, with Carter has always been some form of transactional. At first, it was purely vitriolic, his annoying voice in your ear as you write your papers, ensuring you don't half ass anything. Then, as you two have started sleeping together, that had really been all it was. Studying together and trying to, like, cooperate or help him or whatever. This is new.
You're so tempted to fall back into your regular pattern with John. Unfortunately you have stupid presentation about hepatobiliary care.
"I have shit to finish," you try and swat him off. "Carter, c'mon. Can you just pretend to care about what I'm talking about for like fifteen more minutes and then we can go get you more hot pockets or whatever that gross stuff it is you guys eat."
"I care deeply," he says seriously as he forcibly spins you around to face him. "I care so much. Come explain it to me over here, I need to be so close to you to make sure I absorb it all."
You shake your head at him, trying not to smile. "You're such a boy."
"Come on," he coaxes. "Elastography, endoscopies..." he struggles to think of something else. "...Liver stuff." He takes your wrist, careful not to ruffle your flashcards. "Am I getting you in the mood?"
"It's about as hot as you usually are," you raise an eyebrow. You let him guide you to come sit on the bed but you still have every intention of ignoring him. "Carter, my presentation is tomorrow afternoon. That's my last assignment due this week. Can you wait until then?"
You're visibly tired, John isn't blind. He's been with you all day, you weren't entirely honest about taking all of the same breaks as him; he's spent about a full hour over the course of the way watching you organise your slides.
"Okay," he gives in. He doesn't need you to promise him sex to stop pouting. John's not sure where the line between wanting you to take a break and let him ease your stress stops and turns into putting his own needs above yours. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to..." he looks down at his lap. "We can do whatever you want."
Unfortunately, sitting on your bed so close to Carter, watching him look at you so mournfully, feeling bad for distracting you...
"Fuck it," you tie the rubber band around your stack of notes and toss it back onto your desk. "Stop talking, take your clothes off."
John's shirt is pulled over his head before you even finish your sentence. "And you say I never listen to you."
You think you've always secretly known Carter can't stand you for the same reasons you can't stand him.
Tags/Warnings:
SMUT 18+, dialogue heavy, there's a buildup okay, enemies to lovers, workplace romance, you're both kinda dummies so, technically idiots in love, mild age-gap, forced proximity, lowkey submissive-and-breedable Carter, (consensual) manhandling, hickeys/love bites, dry-humping, oral (fem-receiving *cheers*), John is a WHORE and I will not be taking criticism about it, not BETA'd
WC:
4.5 k
Author's Note:
This idea came to me in several parts that I smashed together into a single one-shot so if it seems a little plot-lazy, that’s why. I'm also only on season 2 of ER, so canonical inconsistencies are highly likely. Please remember that I am human, so if you notice any mistakes – no you didn’t. I hope you enjoy and have a lovely day/night <3
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“As I already said, John, I gave it to you two hours ago.”
You look up from the chart in your hands to glare at him. Carter shoots the same, spiteful look right back down at you; he hates when you call him John in that tone, especially because that usually means you’re trying to be a hard ass.
“Well, I don’t know what to tell you. It’s. Not. There.” Every word is punctuated with irritation and a tilt of his head while he follows close at your heels as you try to get away from him. He’s become good at trying to cancel out every move you make lately.
“Well, someone must’ve fucked up something,” you say, smiling tightly at Carol as you pass her while ignoring her glance up at John trailing behind you, as well as the quirk in her lips when she looks back down at her work. She always does that.
“Hm, I wonder who that could’ve been.” He puts a hand onto his chin, feigning a look of puzzlement that does absolutely nothing to hide the patronization.
It’s moments like these, on other days you’ve had this exact conversation with the resident nearly word for word and certainly insult for insult, that you wonder how you’ve yet to be restrained from taking a swing at him—right across his stupid face.
“Would you both shut up?” Susan breaks the thick air hovering between the two of you, slapping a folder against Carter’s chest. “Carter,” she looks up at him, turns to you, repeats your name with the same tone of voice, then briefly spares him another glance, “please, try to act like grown-ups during the hours you’re working at a hospital?”
She leaves you both standing there defiantly. John expels a heavy huff in your direction, looking down at the file, then back at you. “I didn’t tell you to leave it on my desk.”
“Oh, Jesus,” you exhale, turning away from him without sparing another glance. You’re lucky to leave the conversation with both of your eyes still in their sockets, with how much you’ve been having to roll them. Sometimes you think John wakes up some days with the sole purpose of being dissatisfied with everything you do.
And on days like today, when that seems to be the likely case, you’re usually better off just avoiding him—which, to be fair, is what you usually do.
Unfortunately, today you just can’t seem to get away from him.
“I need another line in,” he tells you as he passes you in the hall. “Room five.”
You’re already on your seventh IV of the hour…
“I want the you to get the labs for Kelson, Morris, Martin, and Alan ordered, and make it quick.”
You already have two sets waiting…
Eventually you just end up switching some of your assignments with other attendants, just to get a few minutes away from his constant barking. It’s usually not this bad. It’s never this bad, you have to say. Sometimes even, horrified as you are to admit it, he’s not all that miserable to be around—only, of course, as long as someone else is with you both and neither of you actually have to be alone with each other. You’ve never had to spend more than five minutes alone with Carter since your first day. Haven’t even cared to wonder if you could even possibly stand it, either, as the chances of that actually happening have been dwindling day by day.
Of course, it would be just your luck that you’re at work on the day the possibility swings wide open like a door on loose hinges.
You hear your name said loudly over the hallway bustle after another hour of bickering between collisions throughout the area, Carter’s immediately following. Susan is standing stiff with a clipboard in her hands, though her face looks rather proud for someone who sounds so pissed.
Carter gets to her just as you do. Both of you glance at each other with equally narrow eyes.
“Alright kids,” Susan begins, “let’s for, just a short while, play nice so we can get our work done, hm?” She smiles between you both. “There's a supply closet that needs its inventory taken.”
“Inventory?”
You both say the word at just the same time, just as baffled. You veer your head at him, and just as you do so, his head is already turned at you.
“Yes. Inventory. Maybe you’ll both learn to work together for once.”
And you know that’s not what she means. You and Carter can work together just fine. Hell, you’re one strange, hell of a pair when you’re not being so stubborn. With patients, you flow around each other like you’re both on tracks, knowing where to and not to move to get things done efficiently around one another. During procedures you’re on the same wavelength, too. You both have the same laser-focus that pulls through when you need it. If you didn’t despise each other, you might just make a good team.
So, as you crowd yourselves into the miniature-home-sized supply closet while trying not to stir up dust, you try to figure out what this is really about. To understand Susan’s mindset when she made the decision to lock the two of you up (metaphorically, as the closet you find yourself in doesn’t even have a lock) for however long it’ll take to log all of this.
At the very least, it’s a break from the bustle of the ER. It’s a busy day and Susan has found someone to cover for both of you for the hour—the least she could do as an apology for locking you up with Carter in the first place. That nearly makes this worth the hassle. Nearly.
After all, the small, subdued smiles and giggles from the direction of the front desk were not lost on you as Susan gave you both the ‘briefing’, and you’re betting they weren’t lost on John either. The more you question this ‘assignment’, the less happy you are with the lot of them.
You know about the rumors. The generic ones that always come in workplaces when there are two people who are even somewhat relative in age and disposition. No one ever says anything when Carter is barking tailored orders at you. When he’s looking at you sternly while, at the same time, giving you positive feedback on a patient or decision of yours’. No one does anything but stare and smile behind their hands, and of course, that’s plenty to get the general idea of what’s going on in everyone’s heads.
You’ve ignored it, thus far. You pretend it’s not that big of a deal to you because really, it shouldn’t be. They’re just rumors. The result of low-maintenance days around the wing with nothing much else to do but wonder why you and Carter look at each other like that while just less than shouting at each other at the same time.
“Count?” Expelling the thoughts of it all from your mind, you look up from the clipboard Susan gave you to John, who’s leaning up and over one of the shelves into a tub on the top. “What’re we working with?”
“Uhm… sixty—no. Fifty-seven.” He puffs out his cheeks and drops his heels back down to the floor. “It’s uh, it’s fifty-seven.”
You nod. Another box checked. One less reason to spend any more time in this sauna.
This is part of the level that no one bothers to do any work on. It’s air conditioning has been out for months. Another reason, you’ve noted, to be pissed off at Susan.
Carter, somehow, must be thinking the same thing, because he plops down onto the floor next to you with a hand over the back of his neck. “Fuck, I thought they fixed the air.”
“Not here, apparently. Susan has us working out of the sixth layer of Dante’s inferno.”
He laughs. It’s sudden, quiet, but a laugh nonetheless. A genuine laugh at something you said. There’s a first time for everything, it seems. “Ah, could be worse.”
“You think?”
“Sure,” he says confidently, looking at the palm of his sweaty hand before looking up at you, “I could be in here with Benton.”
Snickering involuntarily, you fold your arms around the clipboard and hug it to your chest. “I though you liked Dr. Benton?”
Assuming that statement is true, considering John has never actually told you this himself.
“Course I do. He’s the best resident I’ve ever worked with. Hell of a guy,” he confirms, looking down at his feet, then quickly looking back at you with an intensity that feels like he’s piercing right through to your soul. “I just can’t stand to be around him sometimes.”
You hum. Know that feeling.
It’s his words that make you start to think you understand why you and John behave towards each other the way you do. Because you’re not immune to knowing that somewhere, deep down, you admire John. Honestly, it’s the only reason you can stand being around him as much as you can. He knows what he’s doing when it comes to doin his job. Caring, compassionate, and attentive to every patient. Smart, too, you know. Might not always seem smart, but he is. Capable. He's really not all that terrible, at least as a doctor. You don’t hate him. Not at all unfortunately. As much as you’d like to be able to, you can’t.
A silence settles over you both. Some unknown reason prevents you from speaking up about the eleven categories you still need to take inventory of, so in silence you both remain for a long time.
“Look,” he says, finally breaking through the quiet haze filling the room. Your name falls off his tongue with a sigh, then he hangs his head down, tapping his knee with his thumb. “You know, I’m not—I’m not hard on you just to be an asshole. Right?”
“Sure.”
He chuckles—the kind that tells you your answer exasperated him—and looks up at the dim ceiling light. “I’m not,” he repeats, looking up.
After a moment of dragging out your silence, you nod, resigning your stubbornness to the backseat. “I know, John.”
Impulse bids you to add on a little bit of a dig to the end; just as a force of habit, really. Doesn’t make you any less of an asshole, you want to joke, but don’t. Strange.
“Good.”
Another stretch of silence, this one louder with the presence of your mutual inner thoughts than the previous.
It’s not that this is some incomprehensible revelation. You had figured (or, possibly just hoped) that John wasn’t just being an asshole to you for no reason. You’ve had other mentors; one’s that are sweet on you, one’s that are hard on you, and one’s that fall somewhere in the middle of the spectrum. John is strange in that sense. Even if he’s less than sweet about it, he has always challenged you for the better. You know at the end of the day, it’s helped you to make improvements in your work and education. It’s kept you entertained, for sure. All of the bickering and snide comments and little jabs at each other’s work ethic that are never truly more than a way to annoy the other.
And maybe that’s why you’ve always tried to follow it all with a grain of salt and an equally hard-ass response. It’s irritating on the worst days; something close to fun on the best.
“You’re gonna be a great doctor.”
John’s voice is quiet, softening the unfathomably sudden weight of his words.
You quickly look at him. He’s already staring back at you, eyes gentler than you think you’ve ever seen them.
There’s a stillness you can’t seem to break from holding you right where you are. You feel your eyes drift over John’s face. You’ve never been so close to him before. Never been able to get a proper look at his features. When he’s not being such a jerk, he’s actually pretty handsome. (Only when he’s not being a jerk, you have to specify to yourself, otherwise you’d have to admit that you’ve always known he’s handsome.)
“Thank you.” It comes breathless from you, without much thought. You’re not sure what else you could’ve possibly said, anyway.
John nods, looking away, shoulders stiff. His lips press tight together, chin dimpling. You never noticed it did that before.
It goes on for too long; the stillness. You watching John. John watching his hands. Neither of you seem capable of moving, you’re sitting there for so long.
“We should probably—”
“Yeah,” you confirm, thankful he was the one who decided to press play again. “Probably.”
And yet neither of you stand. The stillness continues, now with confirmation you definitely should be doing something else.
John sighs. Runs a hand over the back of his neck. You try not to notice the way his arms stretch out or the ridges of the veins flowing underneath the skin.
“John—”
You stop, as that’s as far as your thoughts got before you started speaking.
He sighs again, heavier this time, expectant. It makes you feel like you’ve made a mistake.
“I’m sorry.” You shake your head at yourself, backtracking. “I don’t know what—”
“It’s alright.” His hand shoots out to gently touch your shoulder, only for a moment, before he withdraws. “You’re fine, it’s just… I’m—”
“Yeah, I know,” you say. You understand that you’re both thinking the same thing. “Resident.”
John’s shoulders droop down with a puff as he says your name again quietly, more to himself, it seems.
“John, it’s okay. I shouldn’t have… We should just get back to work.”
You stand up and go to start sifting through bins once more, but you feel a tug on your arm. Suddenly his warm fingers are wrapped around your wrist, thumb against your pulse point.
And then he’s pulling gently on your wrist, wordless. You follow his lead and inch your feet closer to him. It feels awkward, standing there while John stays crouched down on his feet below you, and it immediately feels even more awkward when he drops his forehead against your knee.
“… John?”
You stare, totally stunned, as he rolls his cheek over your leg with a groan. He starts shaking his head, like he’s answering a question he’d asked himself in his mind.
“I shouldn’t be doin’ this.”
“You’re not doing anything, John,” you say, trying to sound comforting.
“Aren’t I?” He looks up at you, eyelashes casting a shadow over his iris. “And, please, stop that,” he adds, scrunching up his face.
“Stop what?”
“Calling me that.”
“Your name?”
“Yes.”
Huffing, you bend your knees and drop down to be at his eye-level. He watches closely as you do, every move you make tracked by his eyes.
“I like your name,” you say.
“Nobody likes my name.”
“Do you just enjoy neutralizing everything I say or is there some sort of bet going on that I’m not aware of?”
“I do not—”
You tip your head a little at him, eyebrows standing tall.
John presses his lips together. For a moment he stays that way, then in a sudden burst, he laughs softly and nods.
“I do, don’t I?”
“Often.”
You’re both smiling, and it’s almost possible for you to forget how you got to this point in the conversation in the first place. Almost.
It gets quiet suddenly. So very quiet. Both of your smiles start fizzle out, but your eyes remain locked on each other. The heat of the room becomes much more noticeable in the silence. You notice the thin sheen of sweat over John’s forehead, the way his hair sticks to it in thin, long spikes. His cheeks are pinker than usual.
“John,” you murmur. Suddenly, your eyes are focused on his lips.
“I told you to stop that,” is his response, a smile repositioning his lips ever-so subtly. “Seriously, I hate it.”
“John,” you repeat in the tone you know very well he hates. You’re not sure what you’re trying to achieve now, but it is still fun nonetheless.
A huff blows out from his nose, but the smile remains, so you keep going. Or, at least, try to.
“J—”
You don’t get the satisfaction of finishing his name. Before you can, your tongue is being held incapacitated by John’s lips. His hands are gripping your hips, and all you’re able to do is sink into it. Your legs go useless under you, body giving way. John’s chest cushions what would be your fall, his hands pulling you flush against him.
And then his lips are cruelly dragged away from yours. It causes a quiet whine to escape you. A whine which only slightly makes you want to die from embarrassment.
John whispers your name with a sigh. His head shakes, and he starts to say something, but you don’t give him enough time to make any sense before you’re catching his lips back into a kiss to stop him from continuing. He doesn’t complain about it at all, just tightens his hands over your hips and scoots a knee between your thighs.
“We can’t be doing this,” he tries.
You just hum, kissing, kissing, and kissing him some more between every attempt he makes to change your mind—maybe to change his own mind, too.
“I shouldn’t—”
“Please stop talking,” you manage to get out between kisses, firmly enough that you hope he understands this is an alternative measure to get your point across rather than to gently smack him like part of you wants to.
John grunts, squeezing your hips, and nods.
Smiling at his silent agreement, you sift your hands through his hair, down the back of his neck, nails scraping lightly over the skin above his collar as you trail all the way down to his shoulder blades. You’re able to feel the muscles flexing across his back through his shirt.
You don’t think about things you should; not the possible (and likely) repercussions there could be on both of your careers if this is to go on or the fact that this supply room has no lock, not the fact that you’re not actually supposed to like John according to your own strict set of personal rules. All you’re thinking about in this moment is the desire you have to find out what John’s skin feels like under these clothes.
So, you start tugging. Lifting John’s shirt out from under the waistband of his pants. The movement of your bodies makes it a little difficult, but you still manage to get it off quicker than you thought you would, and the second his chest is bare your hands glue themselves to it. His skin is softer than you’d thought it’d be. Covered in a layer of thin fuzz and not much else. As you skim your hands over his chest, he migrates his lips down your neck. Sliding his teeth over your skin. Suckling along the ridges that aren’t hidden by your own scrubs.
He's getting handsier by the second. The grip he has on your hips is tightening, loosening, then tightening again even more. Teeth, scratching a little more with every pass over your neck.
Eventually, he seems to get frustrated with the barrier between his lips and your skin, and suddenly your shirt is being torn off of you and thrown to the corner of the room. He’s back on you in an instant, too. Back to sucking on your skin, almost certainly leaving little red spots all over you, which should bother you, considering you are still at work and, given the circumstances, will look very suspicious once you leave this room—but it doesn’t. At the present moment, all you want is to be marked up by John in every possible area, visible or not.
And he’s delivering on that desire just fine on his own, leaving marks all along your body; over your shoulders, down your neck and down your chest, reaching the plush skin available in two slivers above your bra cups. He seems to like it there especially. Spends plenty of time pressing his face into your chest, breathing you in.
“Thought about this,” he then says, muffled into your skin. “Thought about this a lot.”
You don’t necessarily register the importance of this statement. Just nod and smile, pet the top of his hair. “Me too.”
He groans, sliding his hands up your back. His teeth graze the edge of your bra strap. You wonder, briefly, if he’d be able to undo the clasp with his teeth.
“Want you,” he murmurs suddenly, slightly crazed. “Want my girl.”
Oh.
Your own craze follows, hands grasping and gripping all over him in desperation. Your teeth find his ear, gently clamping down. A grunt punches out of him as his hands smack down over the curve of your ass, fingers digging into the plush skin through your pants.
“Yes, John—fuck.”
You feel the shape of a smile against your breast. His breath his hot and heavy. The sensation of the sweat on his skin mixing with your own makes you shiver.
“My baby,” he says, and you only now realize he’s been whispering to you this whole time. Rambling words that dilute themselves against your skin. “You’re my baby. My girl. All mine, all mine.”
Shit. You’ve heard some of what the other ladies around the unit have had to say about John. You’ve known, at least in theory, that he has the notion of a reputation with women. But Jesus, you weren’t expecting this. Not the rambling of a man deprived or the desperation in his touch. You’ll have to remember to wonder if he’s like this with every girl or if you’re getting special treatment—some other time though, as you’re plenty content focusing on the needy man devouring you in the present moment.
Before you know it, you’re on your back. You don’t question how you got there; all that matters is that John is on top of you with his knee pressing up between your legs and his hands pinning you down to the floor. You moan into his mouth as he digs his knee against you just right, sending a wave of heat up your body.
“Like that?” He sounds eager. So desperate to please.
“Yes, baby. Right there.”
“Like that,” he repeats, satisfied. In the midst of all of this depravity, you find yourself thinking that he’s kind of adorable.
One of his hands disappears, so you break away from where your lips are attached to his neck to search for it and return it to where it belongs on your body.
You’re somewhat torn from this thought when you find it: pressing palm-down onto the tent in John’s pants in a rough rhythm. It works alright there, you suppose, listening to the quiet whimpers pouring from John’s throat as he grinds his hand down on himself.
“Touching yourself, baby?”
“Mhm.” He licks his lips right up against your skin.
“You gonna come?”
“No… want you to…”
You smile, kissing his nose. He shudders, shoulders tight. You feel it shoot down through him to where his knee is still pressing against you.
“Then make me come, baby.”
He lets out all of the air in his lungs, shoulders going loose, body nearly collapsing on top of you. His skin seems to be getting hotter by the minute.
It's only a few more moments before he’s slipping your pants off and tossing them out of sight. His hands hitch up your thighs and then he’s there, lapping at your wet slit and pressing his nose against your clit.
He doesn’t disappoint you. Not one bit. It seems that his… knowledge… of the female anatomy does him well in many aspects of life. He knows just where to suck. Where to gently slide his tongue against to make your back arch off the floor.
You don’t know how long he’s on you for—only that by the time he finally drags himself away you’ve come at least twice and your legs feel weak. He pants against the inside of your leg, face damp, kissing you between heavy breaths. His fingers stroke over the tops of your thighs, gentle circles, easing you down from your orgasm.
“S’okay baby,” he coos. His lips come down to press a kiss to your stomach, the side of his face coming soon after to rest on you. You feel his body relaxing, so you find the top of his head and gently brush your fingers through his hair. He sighs, the corners of his mouth curling up. You never thought you’d be able to know when he’s smiling just through the sensation of it.
You lie there together, just long enough to catch your breaths and to cool off—hard to do in the room now steaming with the additional heat of your bodies. You don’t feel compelled to speak, and he seems to feel the same. Things remain quiet, nothing but the sound of your shared breathing filling the space.
The eventual process of getting your clothes back on is… interesting. It’s not silent. Not very verbal either, though. You both take turns bumping your shoulders against each other, snickering when fabric won’t go smoothly over a head or a button won’t poke through a hole. It feels light; the weight of your fake-distain for one another has lifted and you’re now free to enjoy each other’s presence. Despite this, neither of you will actually talk. Really talk. No actual words pass between you until you’re both dressed and standing next to each other awkwardly, looking around the small room, looking at the work you still need to get done.
For some reason, it’s then that it finally occurs to you that this truly had nothing to do with inventory.
“You don’t think that Susan—”
“Probably,” he replies before you can finish, looking up from where he’s been staring at his feet.
You sigh, place your hands on your hips, and drop your chin. For a moment you think about what to do now, then try: “Do you think we should—”
“Finish?”
“Yeah.”
“Yeah, probably.” He nods. “She’ll send us right in again if we go back with unfinished paperwork.”
“Probably,” you say, but add: “Wouldn’t be the worst thing, though.”
Both of you smile at each other simultaneously.
“No, it wouldn’t be.”
“But we have work to do,” you say solemnly, a faux frown tugging on your lips.
“But… we have work to do,” he repeats, his smile weakening. “Right.”
“So we should get to it, then.”
“Yeah. We should.”
The smile he returns in response to your own makes it easier to be unsurprised when it takes another hour before you’ve finished taking the inventory, and another thirty minutes before you both emerge from the closet—messy hair, hickeys, and all.
The looks you both get once you return to the unit tell you there are likely to be several bets coming to an end today. You can’t bring yourself to pay it much mind; you just care about the piece of paper folded up in your pocket with an address written messily in blue ink.
˖ ࣪⭑ friends to lovers!steve harrington shifting closer to you, resting his knee against your own, brushing your hand with his hand, pretending to be listening to the conversations happening around you but only focusing on the way your breath hitches in your throat, not so discreetly looking at you, mapping out your features like he hasn't seen them a thousand times before, the world could be ending and steve would barely be able to pay attention to the task at hand if you were in the room, he feels like pining was invent just to mess with his head, he could kiss you right now, he would if there weren't so many people in this room, if the air didn't feel so thin & warm in here or if you just gave him a hint that you wanted him to ˖ ࣪⭑
summary: when visiting your friend robin in hawkins turns into an indefinite stay, you decide to entertain yourself by getting under steve’s skin. it turns out different than you expect. maybe better.
word count: 13k
content: fluff, slight angst, no major st5 spoilers (just settings used), upside down is implied but not explicitly mentioned, prob some inaccurate wsqk descriptions, r is a little delusional, a couple of small time jumps, mentions of blood (nosebleed), and a kiss!!
a/n: hiii guys!! it’s been too long since i’ve written a long steve fic and i had so much fun with this one!! i just had to write steve a little bitchy (but in a yearning way) after ppl accused him of being annoying in s5. that’s my princess!!! thank you to my angel @bruisedboys for looking over bits of this one for me! i hope u all love it <3
(¬`‸´¬)
What was meant to be a quick visit to Hawkins turned into an indefinite stay.
While quarantine wasn’t exactly how you saw your spring break trip going, but it isn’t all bad. Despite it being a small town, you’ve managed to find ways to entertain yourself. One of those being getting on Steve’s nerves, finding your way under his skin.
You’d never actually met him before, only ever heard of him through Robin’s letters and phone calls. First, it was complaining, annoyance at how he waltzed through Hawkins High like nothing affected him. Then a ‘hey, you’re not going to believe this’ and stories about the pair working at Scoops together, a tally board that amused Robin at Steve’s expense.
And, maybe most surprising of all, them becoming partners in crime. Robin’s tone towards Steve turned more familiar, still teasing but far warmer.
You and Robin became friends in middle school, the kind of friendship that started with a simple introduction and grew into giggling under covers at sleepovers and knowing that someone saying ‘don’t tell anyone’ didn’t apply when it came to your best friend.
Your parents decided to move before high school, but you’ve stayed in touch with Robin ever since. A few visits scattered throughout the years, far more conversations on two sides of a phone line, cords twisted around your fingers.
A trip (back) to Hawkins for you had been a long time coming, and though it obviously didn’t end up going according to plan, you’re grateful for it, in an odd way.
Your first couple of years in college weren’t going as well as you’d hoped. No friend group to mess around with, no courses to especially inspire you. It was exactly what you’d wanted and not at all like you’d imagined.
A break from it all is probably good for you, minus the whole devastating disaster thing.
Your school was not willing to let you resume studies when you got back, despite your very valid and sort of unavoidable reason, so you’d basically lost a whole semester of classes that you didn’t even enjoy in the first place.
It’s like you’re in some kind of snow globe—minus the snow—with nothing much to do but sit and let the world shake you, let the glitter tumble through the air and fall to the ground at your feet.
Some people would probably be going stir crazy in your shoes. Eager to get back to their life. You’re grateful for this in between to figure out what to do next. What you really want.
Plus, it’s been nice to be back in Hawkins. It’s the only place that’s ever truly felt like home, even after moving away. Even better to be welcomed into the fold. Introduced to Robin’s friends and get pulled in by the group’s tide like a shell on the beach.
And then, of course, there’s Steve Harrington.
Steve, who you’ve heard so much about. Who you feel like you know already despite never really meeting him. When Robin had told you they’d become close, like, almost inseparable close, you’d been surprised but pleased. It was like you went on their whole friendship arc along with Robin.
She spoke so highly of him, about how different he was now, how he was kind of a massive dork and not nearly as cool as he pretended to be (to her, this was a positive), and naturally, you’d been looking forward to meeting him.
Even more so after she sent over a polaroid of the two of them, Steve reluctantly posing, an annoyed look on his face that’s broken up by a hidden smile, Robin grinning wide, both in their Family Video vests.
He was handsome. It was impossible to deny.
Unfortunately for you, Steve has decided, for some reason, that he is not your biggest fan.
Your first official meeting was at Family Video, actually. Pre-quarantine. Robin had asked you to stop by during her shift so you could pick out a movie to watch together later, and you’d happily obliged.
The bell above the door chimed happily with your entrance, and Steve was the one who greeted you.
“Hey,” he called from behind the counter.
You walked up, and found that the picture didn’t even fully do him justice. His t-shirt sleeves tight around his upper-arms as he leaned on the counter, hair flopping over his forehead all intentionally messy, like its had fingers run through it.
He straightened when you approached. Smiled politely, even. Big brown eyes trailing over you and focusing on your face.
And something passed between you then. The air heavier, the room and the muffled radio drifting into the background. He looked at you like you were something rare.
“Hi,” you spoke. And maybe you shouldn’t have. “Is Robin here?”
Because that’s when the moment cracked, fizzled out. That’s when Steve dropped his elbows back onto the counter, like he couldn’t hold himself up any longer.
“Sorry!” you heard Robin’s voice ring out, coming closer until she was beside you. “Sorry! I was in the back, didn’t hear you come in.”
“Wait,” Steve said. “Who are you?”
“Um,” you started.
“Steve!” Robin chided. She reminded him of your name, and he mouthed it after she said it, confused. “My friend from middle school who’s staying with me for the week? It’s why you’re covering my shift tomorrow, dingus. I told you like ten times.”
“By that she means twice,” you joked, trying to extend some sort of ‘we both tease Robin’ olive branch.
He seemed to remember himself during the brief conversation, his face hardening, building a wall around himself brick by brick. His eyes were no longer intrigued, his gaze no longer weighted. No, he was something akin to irritated.
“Oh, don’t be jealous, Steve,” Robin said, clearly noting the shift in his demeanor, too. “I do in fact have friends that aren’t you.”
Steve rolled his eyes at her, and you opened your mouth to say something else, but you weren’t sure what words would suffice. Robin linked her arm through yours and guided you away before you could say anything else, anyways.
“Did I do something?” you whispered.
“Ignore him,” Robin urged you. “He’s fussy sometimes, but I swear he’s not an asshole. Anymore.”
Okay. You believe her.
At first, you’re bothered, looking over your shoulder at him like maybe you could figure out what you did wrong just by looking at him.
But then, later, when you’re in the guest room of Robin’s house laying in bed and staring at the ceiling, you remember that look. The first few seconds before you mentioned Robin, before she walked over.
Those moments where he seemed more honest, more open and warm and kind. And then he armed himself, dropped the mask of his helmet and became different.
If Robin says he’s a good friend, a good guy, then he must be. And everyone has their off days, you can understand that. Even relate. So you write it off as a one time thing, thinking next time he’ll apologize for being short with you and introduce himself properly and remember your name.
You’d only gotten that last bit right.
When he saw you next, it wasn’t an apology or a reintroduction. Rather, he’d said your name like it bugged him just to form the sound.
After the massive earthquake, you joined Robin to volunteer. You were directed to the station Steve was already manning, and Robin to the sandwiches.
When you walked up to the table, you took the time to observe him before he noticed you. Towel slung over his shoulder, his eyes heavy, like he’d been tired or seen too much. He smiled at people walking by, helped them find what they needed with a gentleness you admired.
You wanted to forget last time, give it a clean slate, so you walked up with a small but genuine smile and said a small ‘Hey, Steve.’
He looked up from his folding, pressed his hands onto the table and assessed you. Steve wasn’t mean to you, not necessarily, but he was a bit cold. Unwelcoming. “What are you doing here?”
“I’m actually from here and I just.. thought I could help. Looks like I’ll be sticking around anyways,” you shrugged, making your way around the table to join him on the other side. “Unless you wanted to fold all of these boxes on your own?”
And maybe you let your loose sweater slip off your shoulder to expose your lace bra strap. And maybe you noticed the way his eyes flicked over to your newly exposed skin before quickly flicking back to your face, like he just couldn’t help himself.
“You don’t need my permission,” he muttered. Then, “You picked an excellent time for a trip, didn’t you?”
“Yeah, thanks,” you deadpanned. “I like to plan all my travels around disastrous events.”
“Ha,” he responded, unamused.
You’d folded boxes of donations in silence for the remainder of the day.
Normally, if someone didn’t like you, you’d spiral about it a little bit. Wondering what you did wrong, how you could fix it. But it’s different with Steve.
It’s thrilling, actually, to get under his skin. To rile him up by simply being around. You know he’s got to have a reason for it, because the longer you spend in Hawkins, the longer you spend around him, you’re slowly starting to see the way he interacts with everyone else.
How much he cares about Dustin, how worried he is about Max, the way he drives Lucas to visit her every time he asks.
Steve’s not a mean guy, but he’s snappy with you. And you like to bring it out of him. Maybe he needs an outlet for his frustration, or maybe it’s just something about you, but you can’t bring yourself to be upset over it.
No, you’re determined.
You’ll make Steve Harrington crack one of these days. One way or another, you’ll tear his walls down, unarm him. You won’t let him scare you off.
-
It’s been a couple of months now. Spring giving way to the heat of summer, that stretch at the end of May into the beginning of June that warms up quickly.
And yes, you’re still in Hawkins. You’re sort of becoming a local again, you think.
With the weather warming up, you’re all finally able to take advantage of the Harrington’s pool. Sunlight bouncing off the ripples in the water tinted blue from the pool’s tile. It’s just the older bunch today, Lucas and Mike and the others doing their own thing that you’d probably rather stay curious about.
Robin had extended the invitation to you to come to Steve’s, because he’d never invite you himself.
Even after months spent around him, in his orbit, he’s still keeping you at arm’s length. Holding you back with a firm hand on your collarbone and a practiced scowl on his face. You won’t give up, though.
There’s something beneath that front he puts on around you, a reason that curtain is drawn, and you intend to find it. To tear the curtains open and let the sunlight pour in.
So, naturally you’d agreed when Robin asked if you wanted to join. Yes, it would be nice to go for a swim, to sit out in the sun and just drift for a while. But it’d be even nicer to get a rise out of Steve again. To see him roll his eyes at your jokes or sigh at your arrival or drag a big hand over his face at your prodding.
Luckily for you, you’re an overpacker and thought to bring a bathing suit with you. Even luckier, it’s one of your nicer ones. A two piece that sits high on your hips, thin straps sitting on your shoulders.
You show up to the Harrington’s in it and a pair of denim shorts, sunglasses pushed up on your head like a headband, worn tote bag hanging from your shoulder.
Steve opens the backyard gate when Robin knocks on it and follows up with a shout a solid three seconds later.
“Still here, are you?” Steve asks when he sees you.
“Oh, I’m sorry, let me just break a military-ordered quarantine to get out of your hair, princess.”
“Aw, guys,” Robin whines. “It’s too early for this. We haven’t even walked through the gate yet.”
You raise your eyebrows at Steve, because you’re not the one with the problem here. Though you suppose you do egg it on. Just a little.
“Don’t worry Robs,” you say. “Somewhere deep down, Steve likes me. He just has a funny way of showing it.”
And with that you walk through the gate, forcing Steve to move aside for you. He and Robin linger a few paces behind.
Just as you’ve been welcomed into the fold, yours and Steve’s bickering has become a usual occurrence.
“I thought we talked about your attitude, dingus,” she whispers harshly.
“I do not have an attitude.”
“Right, and I don’t have a problem with rambling. Any other lies you’d like to spew?”
“Whatever,” is his retort. Admittedly, not a great one.
By the time Steve and Robin are done with their hushed conversation, you’ve already dropped your stuff by one of the lounge chairs on the pavement, waving hello to Nancy and Jonathan where they sit with their legs dipped in the pool before turning back around and reaching for the button on your shorts.
You glance up as you do, and find that Steve’s already looking at you. Huh.
Looking him in the eyes, you purposefully slip your shorts off slowly, making a show of pushing them down your legs and stepping out of them. He looks away quickly once your shorts reach your ankles like he’d been caught, his cheeks reddened. Maybe from the sun, or maybe not.
Tucking your shorts into your tote bag, you bite the inside of your cheek to suppress a pleased smile.
It’s these kinds of things that keep your faith in Steve alive. The secret glances, the way his eyes find you before his mind can tell him otherwise. And his eyes are so honest then, so expressive and deep with words he refuses to say.
But you’ll get them out of him. You’re willing to play the long game here.
For now, you grab a worn paperback lent to you by Nancy out of your bag and settle onto the lounge chair on your stomach. Elbows holding you up, sunglasses slipped down over your eyes, knees bent so your feet hover in the air.
The sun beats down on your back, but you welcome it. It isn’t that harsh, aggressive burn that comes in the height of summer, but the gentle whispers of warmer days ahead.
You barely get a chapter in before a shadow falls over the yellowed pages of your book, and you can tell just by the silhouette that it’s him.
“Hey, you’re cramping my style, Harrington,” you call.
“Didn’t know the sunlight belonged to you, princess,” he responds, arms crossed, firing the nickname from earlier back at you.
Only, it doesn’t sting one bit. You imagine him saying it in a softer way, sweeter. Then you remember you’re meant to be a nuisance and wave your hand at him, urging him to scoot out of the way.
He simply rolls his eyes and steps aside.
Too easy, you think. At least, until you hear the slap of his feet against concrete as he runs towards the pool, doing a stupid cannon ball as close to you as possible, effectively splashing both you and the pages of your current read.
You glance over your shoulder at the pool as Steve comes up for air, shaking out his hair like a wet dog.
“Thanks for that,” you say, and he wipes the water from his eyes to watch you speak. “I was starting to get too hot anyways.”
He splashes you again with his hands.
“Real mature,” Robin says to him from the corner of her mouth.
You give him a pointed, sarcastic smile before turning back to your book. And that smile turns into something more real, your fingertips tracing the water droplets on the pages as if he placed each one himself.
“Asshole,” you mutter to yourself with a shake of your head, though it comes out somewhat affectionate.
One of those drops of pool water landed directly on the word cares, and you tap it once more before shutting your book and resting your head on your arms.
That’s just it, you think. Steve must care in some capacity about you. He wouldn’t be so easily frustrated, so easily revved up if he didn’t.
You wind up falling asleep like that, the sounds of water sloshing and your friends laughing fading into the background as you drift off. Your neck is sore by the time you wake up, though judging from where the sun still shines high in the sky it couldn’t have been that long.
Robin has moved to the chair next to yours, Jonathan and Nancy sharing a floaty in the pool. And Steve is no longer in sight.
“Hey, sleepyhead,” Robin says when she sees your head lift.
You rotate onto your back and stretch your arms above your head. “Mm. How long did I sleep?”
“I dunno. Twenty minutes, maybe.”
“Where’d Harrington go?”
She gestures loosely towards the house. “And there goes my peace,” a pause, then, more serious; “I really wish you two would get along.”
“We’ll get there,” you say, reaching over to pat her hand. “Don’t worry, I have a plan.”
“I think that makes me more worried, actually.” And when you swing your legs over and push yourself to stand, she adds, “Where are you going?”
“Just gonna grab a drink. I’m not gonna like, jump him, or anything.”
“Please don’t, he’s only ever won one fight.”
How many fights does one have to get into for only one win to really be notable, you want to ask, but you refrain. You take your sunglasses off completely and leave them on the chair and make your way inside.
The cool air or the AC hits you as you step inside, a welcome break from the heat that seems to be rising with the afternoon.
You’ve been in Steve’s house before, but never on your own like this. You walk to the kitchen slowly, taking in the decor around the house, the notable lack of family photos, or even ones of just Steve. It feels lived-in, yes, but it lacks the warmth of a family home. You frown at the framed landscape on the wall and move along.
You’re alone in the kitchen too, at first. Wooden cabinets giving the room a warmer tint, white backsplash with the occasional fruit tile, silver appliances. It’s simple, classic, and so clean that it doesn’t look like anybody’s cooked in it in a while.
The fridge isn’t too bad, though, a variety of sodas and a few beers, milk and orange juice and a vegetable drawer. You grab a can of Sprite and crack it open, the pop of the tab echoing in the empty room.
You close the fridge and lean your lower back against the counter. It’s cold against your sun-soaked skin.
“Oh, sure, make yourself at home,” is how Steve announces his presence, shoulder leaned against the doorframe.
He’s always doing that, you’ve noticed. Leaning on something, resting his weight somewhere as if it’s exhausting to keep himself upright, to keep himself steady.
“Aw, thank you. Very hospitable of you, Harrington.”
He scoffs at you. “You’re impossible.”
“And you’re an excellent host.” You hold up your can in mock cheers.
And then it happens again, that split second where Steve’s eyes speak for him. They trace your figure, and you suddenly feel exposed in nothing but your swimsuit. Not in an uncomfortable way, necessarily. Just.. heated by his stare, by the warm brown of his eyes and how they seem almost pained.
Besides, you do your own looking, too. Steve’s still shirtless, still damp from being in the pool earlier. His shoulders pink from the sun. Your eyes follow the path of a drop of water that drips from his hair onto his chest, through the thatch of hair there and down over his stomach, disappearing into the band of his swim shorts.
You both suck in a breath at the same time, your eyes flicking upward to find his. Neither of you says anything about it, but there’s an awareness there, like the ACs been shut off, the room growing thicker.
“That was my last one,” he says, nodding to the can in your hand. Though it lacks the usual irritation he employs when speaking to you. It’s slight, like he’s trying to find it again.
The armor’s back.
“We could always share, Stevie,” you poke, holding the drink out for him.
He scoffs and spins on his heel to leave the room. You grin behind the can and take another sip.
-
The heat feels more cruel in August. A lingering, sweltering thing that has ripples coming off pavement. The humidity makes the air feel harder to walk through, a wall of resistance greeting you each time you step outside.
Today is one of the hottest days yet. So much so that even the shade doesn’t help very much.
In the time since Family Video’s… closure, Robin has found her new calling as a radio host, Steve working the sound effects and making sure things run smoothly, because God forbid they’re ever employed in separate workplaces again.
You’d helped them set things up at WSQK when they’d first taken this whole thing on. Unpacking boxes, figuring out a way to tame the mess of wires in the booth, getting some actual furniture in the place.
This time, you’re mostly just there to hang around, to watch them in action. To see Robin make use of her endless source of words to say and to watch Steve, a pencil tucked behind his ear, juggle the sound effect tapes and his can of soda. Still, he manages to look relaxed while doing it, hip leaned on the desk, t-shirt a little wrinkled. A little sweaty, even.
It’s an old building, with a severe lack of AC that is especially obvious on a day like today. Not a single cloud in the sky, the sun beaming relentlessly.
A fan whirs inside the booth, placed as far from the mic as possible. Another spins where you sit, aimed directly at you.
After a solid twenty minutes you get a little fidgety just sitting there. Assuredly, it has almost nothing to do with Robin’s hosting skills—who you’ve heard rehearsing through the walls at night—and almost everything to do with you.
You feel like you need to make yourself useful, especially after everything Robin’s done for you. Letting you be her roommate free of charge (“Your currency is putting up with Steve for me”), being completely willing to let you just join her friend group. To tag along to a life that isn’t naturally yours.
Tracing a finger along the surface of the table next to you and frowning when it comes away dusty, you decide to help them out by cleaning up a bit.
You find the supplies easily. You’re pretty sure you’re the one who unpacked them, and that they haven’t been touched since. There’s a duster, all-purpose cleaner, some paper towel, the basics. You grab it and shut the cupboard quietly and decide to start with the area outside the booth.
It’s easy enough to get into a rhythm, especially with music filling the speakers. If Steve weren’t currently occupied, you’re certain he’d give you shit for the way you bounce on your feet as you clean. You can almost hear him in your head. Wiping surfaces really puts a pep in your step? Seriously?
The booth is, obviously, currently (and for you, sort of always) off limits, so when you finish up with the little seating area, you move along to the living quarters. The two bedrooms are still a work-in-progress, some boxes still unopened, mattresses with no sheets, so you leave them alone and head into the kitchen.
It isn’t fully equipped, either, but a little more so than the bedrooms. It’s warmer here than where the fans had been going, and you lift your hair off the back of your damp neck and fan yourself for a second.
You check the fridge, but it’s pretty barren. At the very least, you shut your eyes and let the cold wash over you for a few seconds.
The heat seems to creep up on you here, beads of sweat building on your forehead, your mind going a little fuzzy in it. You finish wiping up the countertops and decide to go in search of another fan that probably won’t help much. It’ll only blow around the hot air, but a breeze is better than the thick stillness.
Just as you reach for the door to the basement, a voice stops you. His voice, of course.
“You can’t go down there,” Steve says, sneaking up on you, making you jump the slightest bit.
You turn to face him and find him with his arms crossed. Unsurprising. His t-shirt sticks to his chest a little, pushes against his arms, rides up to expose the band of his jeans.
“Didn’t know I needed authorization to go down a flight of stairs, security guard Harrington.” You wipe the back of your hand over your forehead. “I just wanted to grab another fan. Not sure if you’ve noticed, but it’s boiling in here.”
“We don’t have another one. Two not enough for you?”
“No,” you huff, but you give up and walk away, muttering a “dunno how you’re even wearing pants right now” as you pass him.
He follows that with a stupid call of “Perv.”
You pause, not wanting him to get the last word. He sighs audibly and walks back into the booth, and just before the door clicks shut behind him, you add an immature “Weirdo.”
It’s silly, but the annoyed furrow in his brow you spot through the glass tells you it worked.
Unsuccessful in your search for a fan, you go back to the kitchen to finish cleaning in there. Climbing up onto the counters to dust the tops of the cabinets, even busying yourself by wiping down empty drawers and shelves in cabinets.
You’re onto the one beneath the sink when you get a little dizzy, your hands reaching up to grip the edge of the countertop to keep yourself from tipping over. It passes quickly enough, but it leaves you feeling a little funny. Disoriented, sluggish.
When you push yourself up to stand, it worsens, little spots dotting your vision like you moved too fast, your head aching. You lift your hair from your neck again, squeeze your eyes shut. It doesn’t help much, but it forces the dizziness to subside enough for you to walk out of the kitchen, through the main room, and out the front door.
Yes, it won’t be any colder outside, but maybe the fresh air will help a little. It’s stuffier inside, heat being pushed around by the fans, a thickness with nowhere to go.
The sting of the harsh sunlight on your eyes makes your head pound, but you breathe in deep a few times, still hoping whatever you’re feeling will pass like a leaf carried by the wind.
Only, it doesn’t. If anything, it just keeps building. Your heartbeat thumping in your ears, nausea creeping up on you, the spots dancing in your eyesight again.
You have to catch yourself on the station’s wall just to stay upright. Closing your eyes and taking heaving breaths.
You’re so caught up in it you don’t even hear the door opening and closing. Don’t hear the footsteps approaching until there’s a shadow in front of you and a question that comes out more genuine than you’d expect.
“What’s wrong with you?” Steve asks. The wording is a little harsh, because that’s how he’s used to speaking to you, but his tone is quieter, honest.
“Not used to Indiana summers anymore, I guess,” you reply, head tilting back against the wall with a little thump. It makes you wince.
And Steve, well, he surprises you. He doesn’t tell you it’s ’cause you don’t belong, or that you should’ve just stayed home. Instead, he wraps an arm around your waist and says “C’mere.”
“I’m fine. I just need a minute,” you say, embarrassed.
Still, you let his hand dig into your skin, let him hold you up and guide you over to where his car is parked. He doesn’t even let go of you when he digs in his pocket for the keys.
It’s probably the closest you’ve ever been to him, and despite the circumstances, you let his touch seep into you. Let his smell surround you, amber and something a little sweet. A hint of hairspray and the saltiness of sweat.
Steve opens the car door and guides you into the driver's seat with the arm still around your waist, the other hand placed delicately on the top of your head so you don’t hit it. He leans over you to start the car, holding himself up on the centre console and fidgeting with some buttons and knobs to turn the AC up.
You resist the urge to lean into him and sink into the seat, your head tipped back against the headrest.
“I’ll be right back,” he says, pulling away and shutting the door gently. You watch him jog off through the window, feeling warm in a completely different way.
True to his word, he’s back in a couple of minutes, a water bottle in one hand and some paper towel in the other. He opens the BMW door and then takes the cap off the water bottle before handing it to you.
Your fingers brush when you take it from him, a spark zipping up your arm. You take a few sips, and when you’re done Steve takes it and screws the cap back on.
He sets the bottle onto the roof of the car. “Here,” he says, a hand slipping to the back of your neck to get you to lean forward. You oblige, and Steve lifts your hair out of the way and places the damp paper towel there to help cool you down.
“How’s that?” he checks, a hand going in front of one of the car’s air vents to make sure they’re working. “Too cold?”
“‘S good,” you say.
And you do feel better, the pounding in your head shifting to a dull ache, your eyes focusing as they should. You feel fuzzy in a new way, looking at him. Taking in the way he makes sure the vents are aimed at you, how he hands you the water bottle again and coaxes you to take a few more sips.
It feels like you’re dreaming now.
Steve is nearly silent as he does it, like it’s completely natural for him to take care of you like this. To drop whatever he’d been outside for and let his concern bleed through the look on his face, the softness of his gaze.
It’s probably the longest he’s ever gone without snapping at you, the longest you’ve gone without taunting him in some way. The gloves have come off, and it’s just you and him. The real versions.
He sees your eyes flutter and lets the words slip before he can catch them, gentle and doting. “Hey, you feeling okay? Talk to me, honey.”
Honey. It’s earnest. Not sarcastic, but soft. What would have been a jab another time dulled to a poke, not a stab.
Steve freezes a little after he says it, worried you’ll call him out on it. Say something about how different he’s being and why he is the way he is with you.
But you do something worse. You look at him like you can see right through him, through every layer he’s covered himself in, nod, and say a delicate, “Thank you, Steve.”
He doesn’t understand why you don’t hate him by now. Can’t fathom how you never get angry at him for the things he says or the way he pushes you away. He almost wishes you would, because it would make it all so much easier.
Steve knows it’s the wrong way to go about it, has heard it from Robin a hundred times now, but his demeanour with you is his own twisted way of protecting you.
If he doesn’t let you get close to him, you’re at a greater distance from the mess he’s entangled in. If he keeps you at arm’s length, you won’t ask questions, won’t get yourself into trouble willingly.
If he didn’t care about you, he wouldn’t have to push you away to protect you. To protect himself. But it’s far too late for that.
At first, the annoyance was real. Frustration at how clueless you were to everything, at how Robin brought you around without concern. Irritated at the prospect of having another person to look out for when he could barely manage everyone already.
But somehow, you’ve wormed your way into his life without struggle. Lingering in the corners of his mind when you’re not around, his eyes drawn to you whenever you walk into a room like a string ties him to you.
He indulges, just for a moment, and traces a knuckle across your cheek before straightening.
It’d be so easy to tell you everything, to let it spill from him in a rush and tug you close afterwards. To let the truth seep from him and move forward. But Steve, who is meant to be brave, is so afraid.
The last thing he wants is for you to get hurt because of him. So he pulls away.
“Don’t sweat too much on my seats,” he tells you before shutting the door and walking away. He’s glad he isn’t facing you, so you can’t see how hard this is for him.
You watch him leave, the hum of the air conditioning filling the space that all of a sudden feels so empty.
-
Just as it always does, August gives way to September. The heat of summer lingers during the day, the first chills of fall creeping in at night.
Not quite cold enough to wear a jacket, not warm enough to be in a tank top. This evening, you’ve opted for a mini skirt, tights, and a sweater. Steve’s in his usual jeans and a crew neck.
Steve, who you’re currently, miraculously, alone with in the WSQK van.
You’d been helping out at the station again when something went wrong with the broadcast, and after diagnosing the issue that you know nothing about, Robin sent you and Steve out to pick up some supplies to fix it.
“It’s a two-person job,” she’d urged. “And I have to stay here and be Rockin’ Robin.”
“I don’t need help,” Steve had insisted, offended at the thought of being incapable on his own.
“Actually, you do,” Robin stated. “Last time I sent you to get something you got it wrong because you can’t read labels.”
“I can read-” he cut himself off. Robin’s just as stubborn as him, and he’s not in the mood to go back and forth. “Okay, fine. Whatever.”
Steve walked out, keys spinning around his finger, without a word directed at you. That is, until he’d noticed you weren’t following him and tilted his head at you. “Well? Are you coming, or what?”
“Oh,” you’d been surprised he gave in so quickly, actually. “Right. Sir, yes sir,” you saluted like an idiot.
And now you’re here, sitting in the passenger seat of the van, Steve beside you, his hands gripping the wheel a little too tight, the radio barely audible over the sound of the wheels turning, the wind around the vehicle.
It’s nearly dark out, that shade of blue just after the sun has fallen behind the horizon, streetlights flicking on and casting a warm glow on everything.
He hasn’t said a word to you besides a muttered ‘buckle up’ since you got into the car, and you’re starting to get antsy in it. You think you’d prefer his pointed comments, his barbed words, over the silence that feels louder than it should.
It isn’t awkward, not quite, but it’s strained in a way. Like there’s some unspoken battle going on and whoever says the first word loses.
Tired of pulling at the loose thread on your skirt and saying nothing, you reach forward to mess with the radio. Turning up the volume so you can hear it properly, flipping through channels and pausing each time to hear what’s playing. You glance at Steve’s reactions, too.
You’re successful when a song sounds through the speakers and he actually winces. You turn it up a bit more to drive it home.
He’s getting predictable, you think. The twitch of his eyes or the arch of his brows.
Except, he does surprise you, sometimes. He did. That day in August, when you got overheated and he caught you effortlessly. When he doted on you and called you honey all sticky sweet like the word itself. When he was the barest you’ve seen him yet.
Steve, almost completely unguarded. Almost.
Today, though, his fences are mended. Built up once more. Which is why you’re not surprised in the slightest when he side-eyes you, huffs a dramatic breath, and mumbles “I hate this song.”
“Oh do you?” You look over at him, knees tilted towards his side of the van. “I couldn’t tell from the exaggerated sighing.”
He gives you this bitchy little twitch of his lips and flips it to another station. You hate how good he looks doing it.
You give him a sweet smile and switch it back.
And just to really get him, you start to sing along. Poorly. Completely off-key and a little shouty and absolutely uncaring.
Steve drags a hand over his face, but you aren’t deterred. You keep singing, grabbing the walkie from the dashboard and using it as a faux microphone. You don’t push any buttons, because that’d probably give him an aneurism.
“My ears,” he whines. “This is so-”
You cut him off by singing even louder. Totally annoying, but you can tell he’s battling a smile behind his hand, little crinkles at the corner of his mouth. It makes you grin stupid and genuine.
Then there are headlights shining through the windshield, bright enough to make you squint. You quiet and twist your head to get a look at the car, eyes widening a bit when you notice it’s one of the military vehicles.
Sure, their presence is known, expected, even, but it’s an odd time of day to see one driving around.
By the way Steve’s grip on the wheel has gone from tight to white-knuckle, he seems to think so too.
The vehicle’s red brake lights shine next, slowing to a stop just after passing by the van, and Steve slows, too. Not as abruptly, but to a crawl, keeping the military truck in his rear view. It pulls over. Steve does too.
“Shit,” he whispers.
“What?” you ask, brows furrowed in confusion. “The U.S. army after you, or something?”
And Steve, who would usually give you some stupid retort about how you’re more likely to be on their radar—Tourists are liabilities, he’d say morosely—says absolutely nothing. Stares in the rear view mirror with concerned focus on his face. Eyes a little wide, the rest of his face composed.
“Steve?” you prod again.
“Stop it,” he says, eyes still glued to the mirror. “Just act.. normal.”
You don’t know what it is that forces you into gear. Whether it’s the look on Steve’s face or the tension in his shoulders, if it’s the beating of your heart that feels like a warning, or maybe the sound of a car door slamming and the cool blue beam of a flashlight turning on. But something has your instincts kicking in, and you unbuckle your seatbelt before climbing into the back of the van.
Steve, even with how he acts around you, looks away when he notices the way your skirt rides up. A gentleman even when perpetually irritated.
“What the fuck are you doing?” he asks once you’re settled in the back. He turns around to look at you over his shoulder, at how you’ve kicked your shoes off.
You get on your knees and lean forward, unbuckling Steve’s seatbelt for him and grabbing a fistful of his sweater to get him to follow you into the back of the van.
“Giving him a reason to leave us alone.”
Steve, stunned, lets himself be pulled along by your grip, climbing out of his seat and into the back to join you. He kneels, too, your knees slotted together like puzzle pieces, his bumping your thigh.
You’re still holding his shirt even though he’s right in front of you, and you can feel the steady rise and fall of his chest underneath it, can smell his cologne and feel his breath fan across your cheek.
“Uh-” he starts, but fumbles. Never finds the words to say.
In his defence, you don’t really give him a chance to. The flashlight shines through the back window, heavy footsteps on pavement drawing nearer.
You do the only thing you can think of that’ll make the problem go away. You pull Steve in by his collar and kiss him.
Steve is, understandably, completely frozen at first. You bring your other hand to the back of his neck to try and get him to understand. His hesitation doesn’t last long after you sink your fingers into his hair, scraping his scalp a little.
No, he dives in. Hands shooting to find your waist and squeeze slightly before moving again, like they can’t settle in one place. A wide palm is splayed across the small of your back, the other lowering to your hip to urge you to scoot forward.
His mouth moves against yours like you’ve done this a hundred times before. It’s heated, a little frenzied, like he’s just been set loose. The hand on your hip shifts again, running up your arm, over your collarbone, knuckles tracing the side of your neck until he plants it on your cheek, using it to tilt your head where he wants you.
Yes, your goal had been to get him to kiss you convincingly enough that the man outside would just see a pair of young people making out and walk away, Steve goes beyond.
He kisses you like you’re the one that needs convincing of something. His lips firm, bruising, his grip unwavering.
The kind of kiss that tomorrow, even a week from now, you’ll feel warm just remembering.
Steve knows, somewhere in the back of his mind, he knows this is a terrible idea. That falling into you this way will cause irreparable damage for him. That pushing you away will become ten times more difficult, little shards of glass embedded into his heart with each shove.
But God. He just can’t stop himself.
Not with how soft you feel against him, how well you fit, how you let him guide you and make the tiniest involuntary noise when he nips at your bottom lip. How you pulled him in, nerves in your eyes, but determination, too.
How you stepped in to help him without asking any questions.
He doesn’t deserve to have you this way, and yet he can’t imagine a world in which he’d pull away first.
Which is why you’re full on making out in the back of the van, the windows probably starting to fog, the radio, the chirp of the blinker, all fading into the background and all that’s left is the sounds of your breathing, the panting when you break away from each other just for a second before dipping forward again.
You don’t hear the man curse and walk away, you don’t notice the absence of the flashlight’s harsh glow. You don’t even notice he’s gone until you hear the door slam again, the tires rolling off, headlights fading into the distance until they’re gone completely, swallowed by nighttime.
It’s only then, when you’re certain the vehicle’s gone, that you pull away from Steve with a lewd smack.
Your eyes flutter open just in time to see the way he chases your kiss when you go.
And then his eyes are open, too, searching your face frantically, blinking like he’s not certain this whole thing has actually just happened. His hands slip away until they’re resting on his knees. Though, with the way you’re sitting, legs slotted together, you can feel his pinky brushing the inside of your thigh, tracing the seam of your tights.
You follow his lead now, dropping your hands away and sort of hugging yourself.
“Sorry,” you say. Quiet. “I probably should’ve asked before I… you know.”
Steve looks at you. Really looks at you. At how your arms are crossed over your stomach, your shoulders dropped. It’s like you’re trying to fold in on yourself, to make yourself smaller. To make his target more difficult to hit.
His hands twitch on his knees. His pinky still runs its tiny course against your leg.
“No, it was, um, smart,” he says. His voice comes out rough, not totally himself. “Good plan.”
You look at Steve, too. And you can see whatever inner struggle he’s having written on his face. His stupid, beautiful brown eyes looking a little lost, a little further away.
You understand him. Somehow, you know what he needs. When to push, when to back off.
“Steve Harrington giving me a compliment?” you say, attempting to bring things back on track. To diffuse his racing thoughts with something he’s used to. “Are you sick or something?”
You straighten and press the back of your hand to his forehead for emphasis.
Like a rehearsed routine, he scoffs lightly, smacks your hand away gently. Even then, it lacks its usual conviction.
-
As expected, the kiss is on your mind. Often.
This whole thing with Steve started out lighthearted. Flirting, teasing, poking, prodding. But over the course of your months spent back in Hawkins, it’s become more than that. Something in you seeks to be around him, even if it means shouldering the weight of his distance.
It’s become clearer the longer you spend with him that it isn’t how he really feels, but how he thinks he should feel. How he thinks he should act around you.
Your goal is much the same. Get under his skin, but even more than that, you just want to know the truth. The why.
You actually like him, and you haven’t even had the privilege of knowing the Steve that’s tucked away beneath the layers of protection. There are glimpses, light breaking the shadows, but a cloud always comes back to cover up the cracks.
After that night in the van, after that kiss, you’re more determined than ever. Because there’s no faking that. The want and desire, a match lit by the press of your mouths, by the touch of his hands.
So, yeah, you’re thinking about kissing Steve a lot. Sometimes, you’ll press your fingertips to your lips when the memory pushes itself forward, like you’re trying to remember exactly how it felt, that it wasn’t a dream.
Even now, sitting across from him in a booth at the diner, you’re thinking about it.
About how easy it would be to bridge the gap again, to see how he’d react if you weren’t doing it as a cover, if it was out in the open, no security blanket of pretending for the sake of your safe getaway.
You’re not hiding your distraction well enough, if the little kick and accusing glance Robin gives you from her seat beside you is anything to go by.
You shake your head at her, not sure if you’re denying whatever she’s thinking or just putting it off for now. Either way, it works, and she goes back to whatever debate she’d been having with Nancy, Jonathan chiming in every now and then and getting mostly overlooked save for a sweet pat on the knee from his girlfriend.
You watch them interact with a small smile, this group of people that have become your people. The way they’re able to joke with each other and know it’s out of love and warmth.
You look away when Nancy concedes and Robin, too proud, celebrates her win with her arms raised and a chant of ‘victory!’
Steve’s eyes are already fixed on you from across the table when you turn your head. And like that day at the pool those months ago, and other days since, he doesn’t hold your gaze, he looks away as if caught. Red-handed and the tips of his ears going pink.
The group’s silence is a hint for you to follow their lead and look over the menu, even though you all get the same thing every time. So you drop your gaze too, letting the toe of your shoe tap against Steve’s shin lightly.
Could be an accident, could be something else. I see you, it might say.
His leg shifts, but you’re not sure if it’s in response or just a reflex.
You look down at your menu and scan the options that you’ve practically memorized by now. There are only so many places to eat in Hawkins, after all, especially when groceries aren’t as easy to come by.
You’re reading the handhelds section when a splotch falls onto the page and interrupts your reading. It’s a small dot, and you look up to find the source when you feel the pressure in your nose. Another drop falls when you look back down and realize the source is you.
“Shit,” you mumble, reaching for some napkins.
Everyone looks at you at once, various levels of question and concern written on their faces as you hold a crumpled napkin to your nostril.
Steve’s the first to speak, and it’s a tone reminiscent of that day at the station when he sat you in the BMW and took care of you like it was easy, natural. “You okay?”
“Yeah,” you say, and it comes out awkward with the way your hand is held in your face. “Just a nosebleed.”
Only, that doesn’t seem to reassure him. Or anyone. They’re all still staring at you.
“I’ll just, uh, go clean up,” you say, scooching out of the booth and walking in hurried steps to the bathroom.
Steve watches you go. Well, they all do, but the look on his face is a little different. It’s not only worried, it’s etched with fear.
“I’m gonna check on her,” he announces. It hasn’t even been two minutes, but he doesn’t care. His heart is racing, and he doesn’t think it’ll slow until he can see you alive and talking.
For once, Robin doesn’t give him any crap as he walks off.
Uncaring and far too concerned, Steve shoulders the women’s bathroom door open after knocking twice. He doesn’t give you time to respond.
You’re standing at the sink, a fresh piece of paper towel held to your nose as you look in the mirror, assessing the damage. Luckily, no blood spilled onto your shirt. You flinch when the knocks come, when Steve comes tearing in like a heavy breeze, door blown open and shutting heavily behind him.
“Steve!” you pivot to face him, hip leaned against the counter, the arm that isn’t occupied with holding pressure crossed over your chest. “You know this is the girl’s bathroom, right?”
He ignores you. Doesn’t respond and instead searches your face with frantic, gorgeous eyes. “Have you been getting headaches lately? Nightmares?”
“Um, thanks for the therapy session, but-“
“Please.”
Steve Harrington, pleading with you. Safe to say it shuts your sarcasm off, makes your stomach twist with the way he shoves an anxious hand through his hair.
“No, Steve. I’m fine,” you tell him. It’s sincere. A promise, almost. “It’s probably just dry in here, or something. It’s like you’ve never seen a nosebleed before.”
“I’m not playing around.”
“Me either,” you say, but get frustrated with how your words come out a little nasally with your nose blocked. You pause, twisting to look in the mirror again and pulling the paper towel away to check if the bleeding has stopped. Luckily, it has.
You turn to Steve again, making sure to catch his eye, to hold it and speak as honestly as you can. “I’m okay. No headaches, no nightmares. Just a regular, boring nosebleed, alright?”
He holds your eye for a second afterwards, as if searching for any sign that you’re being dishonest. When he doesn’t find one, he nods, messing with his hair again and looking down at the floor. Breathing a couple of deep breaths.
You can’t look away from him.
You’re trying to find where his distress is coming from, as if you might see the answer written on him somewhere. You don’t think you’ve ever seen Steve so afraid, and it’s completely unmooring.
He cares about you, that much has become clearer now, but there’s something holding him back. Something other than himself. Something that genuinely frightens him.
“Can you tell me what’s going on?” you ask. Gentle, trying not to spook him into hiding again.
“I-” he starts, but stops himself just as quickly. He shakes his head, reroutes. Steve walks over and pulls another piece of paper towel from the dispenser and wets it in the sink.
“Here,” he says, squeezing out the excess water and coming to stand right in front of you, the toes of your shoes touching.
Steve tilts your head up for him, his hand splayed on the side of your neck, his thumb tucked under your chin. He uses the damp paper towel to wipe the dried blood from your nose.
“You don’t have to-”
“Please, honey” he says again. “Just let me.”
You do.
It’s impossible to say no to him this way, with his voice low and quiet and rough, his touch so delicate. The reappearance of the word honey. It nearly undoes you. Your eyes flick over his face as he cleans you up, his tongue poked out the slightest bit in concentration.
You’re afraid to speak, afraid to shatter whatever’s happening here. Afraid to revert whatever’s made Steve drop his weapons at the door and reveal himself. Here, in the silent bathroom, it’s your own little bubble.
The rest of the world muffled, shining pink and blue in the light and tinting the moment that way, too.
When Steve is satisfied with his work, he tosses the paper towel into the garbage without moving away. His hand is still cradling your jaw lightly, like he’s afraid to hurt you. The other, now free, wipes away the leftover moisture on your upper lip with his thumb.
Steve drops it after that, as if burned. You catch his wrist before he can let the other hand fall away the same. He doesn’t meet your eye until you squeeze, your thumb feeling the rush of his pulse.
“Hey.”
He seems embarrassed all of a sudden. His cheeks getting warmer, some kind of self-appointed guilty grimace on his face. “Mm?”
“Thank you.”
You say it in that way that feels exposing to him. Thank you, but there are other meanings sheltered beneath the two words.
I understand. I can tell you’re hiding something.
I know exactly who you are, Steve Harrington. You don’t have to tell me.
You drop his wrist then, having said what you needed to. And Steve turns on his heel and leaves after whispering a small ‘yeah. ‘course.’
His shield is held in front of him again, though it no longer feels like a tough sheet of metal, but a mere piece of paper, easily poked through with the right tool.
Easily poked through if you’re the one on the other side.
-
There’s a slight shift to things since the nosebleed.
Or maybe this is only when you notice it, the tiny bits and pieces slowly building up over time until they’re big enough for you to see. A house settling on the ever-shifting earth, cracks in the porch steps, a door becoming harder to shut.
Steve hasn’t rolled his eyes at you, hasn’t so much as sighed, in at least a week. It’s probably the longest he’s gone without doing so since you’ve met, and you know it means something.
That the rock face that is Steve Harrington’s guard has slowly been eroded away by your efforts. Changed by the constant tide. His carefully pointed words dulled into a teasing that makes you feel like you’re in on the joke rather than the butt of it.
If you weren’t so zeroed in on him, if you didn’t know him well enough to be able to see his eyes soften or hear the change in his tone, you probably wouldn’t have paid any mind to any of it.
But you do focus on him. You do know him. Whether he wants to let you or not.
It gives you this dangerous little seed of hope. It's taken root in your chest, petals unfurling with every glance he steals that you pretend not to notice.
Hope that your mission, completely driven by your feelings for him now, might be succeeding. That you could make Steve crack. That you’ve chiseled away at that stony exterior to get a glimpse of the heart on the inside. Caring and kind, endlessly loyal.
Hope that things could truly be different. Better. That you could, at the very least, become friends.
Though the word friends doesn’t feel quite right. A square peg pushed into a round opening. It just doesn’t fit.
Not after everything that’s happened these last few weeks. Taking care of you in the sun and with your nosebleed, the genuine concern, the tenderness that leaked through. Especially not after the way he kissed you in the van.
You think about it now, walking up to the doors of the WSQK building, the van parked outside, ground crunching beneath your feet.
You weren’t planning on coming by today. You were fully planning on lounging around at Robin’s for the day. Watching whatever movies she has lying around, napping on the couch. You’d gotten about five minutes into movie number one when you saw Robin’s lucky coin left on the coffee table.
She’d told you about it once when she asked if you had any change and you had pointed it out. Told you that she keeps it in her pocket for every broadcast, that it would be ‘an abomination’ to get rid of it now.
You can tell it’s the coin because she’d placed a dollop of nail polish on it to differentiate it from the others. Won’t that mess with its luckiness, you’d asked her. Um, that’s totally not how it works, Robin had responded, like it was a ridiculous question.
So anyway, when you spotted it left behind on the table and knew she was doing a broadcast later today, you wanted to bring it to her.
Turns out her lucky token is kind of shit when it’s in your pocket instead.
You open the doors to the Squawk, expecting to find Robin and Steve bantering in the main area. To hear them, at least. Or to see Dustin fixing something with the satellite or whatever it is.
Instead, you’re met with silence.
You know people are here though. Steve’s BMW is outside, too. The doors unlocked, the lights on. There’s even a half-empty pot of coffee in the kitchen. A couple of dirty dishes in the sink.
However, your search of the main floor comes up empty. Briefly, you wonder if they’re pulling some kind of stupid prank on you. If they saw you walking up the drive and decided to hide and jump out and say ‘gotcha!’ when you jump.
Then your eyes land on the doors leading to the basement. The strip of light slipping through the cracks of the door.
You can’t go down there, you remember Steve saying. All stern and irritated. But things aren’t how they were in August. You shake your head and walk towards the doors.
Tugging a heavy one open with a click, you breathe a sigh of relief at the sound of voices travelling up the stairs.
“There you guys are!” you call, heading down. “I’ve been looking everywhere. Robin you forgot your-”
You freeze at the bottom of the stairs. Everyone is down here. Like, everyone. And they’ve all gone silent, staring at you with varying expressions of surprise and nerves, like they’re worried you overheard or saw something you shouldn’t have.
“-lucky coin,” you finish weakly.
“Oh!” Robin walks over to you and takes the coin from your palm, sliding it into her pocket. “Well, thanks for bringing it. We were just, uh..”
She’s doing that frantic rambling thing, saying a bunch of words that don’t actually mean anything strung together. You look around and find that pretty much everyone else is acting strange.
Jonathan’s shoulders are tensed high, Nancy worrying the inside of her cheek. Lucas and Mike share a look that says something like ‘what do we do?’ and ‘I don’t know.’
And Steve. Steve can’t even look at you.
“What’s going on?” you ask. “Is everything okay?”
“We’re fine!” Robin tells you, but the squeak in her voice isn’t very convincing. “Why don’t you head upstairs, and we’ll be right behind you.”
“I know when you’re not being honest, Robin,” you say.
It’s one thing when it’s the others hiding something. Lucas or Mike or whoever. You could live with them not telling you something. Hell, you’ve been coping with Steve’s secretiveness this whole time and you still haven’t given up, but it’s different with Robin.
She’s your best friend, and she doesn’t trust you enough to let you in on this.
“It’s nothing,” she tries again.
“Robin. Come on, it’s me.”
“I, um.”
Robin doesn’t get the chance to find the words, because Steve finally looks up from the floor and steps forward.
“You should go,” he says. His voice is cold. Detached, almost.
You’re taken aback by it. Not the words, necessarily, but the way he says them. This is the Steve from before. Not the one you know now.
“What?” you say, weak.
“Leave,” he practically spits.
“No. No, just tell me what’s going on. Maybe I can help.”
“You can’t,” Steve adds. Every word is a sharp little paper cut swiped against your vulnerable skin. “You aren’t even supposed to be here in the first place. You don’t belong.”
“But-”
You can feel your resolve cracking with every syllable. Your heart beating an uncomfortable rhythm in your chest, your stomach sinking.
Then, he really does you in.
“You never should have come to Hawkins.”
It’s something aimed to not only cut, but stab. Words picking at an old wound.
Because there’s an underlying message in there. That you were never supposed to be in his life, that he didn’t want you in it. It’s as cruel as saying he wishes he’d never met you.
You look around at everyone else in the room, face heating, embarrassed. Nobody says anything. They don’t defend you, they don’t tell you to stay, that Steve didn’t mean it.
You nod, chin wobbling, and turn around, rushing up the stairs. Robin tries to grab your wrist, but you shake her off, the door slamming harshly behind you as you go.
The tears don’t fall until you’re outside, the wind speeding them along and making them tumble in fat drops down your cheeks, streaking your face.
You don’t belong, when you thought you’d been making progress. That maybe Steve actually liked you. You never should have come to Hawkins.
No, maybe you shouldn’t have, you think, wiping at your cheeks and your nose with the cuff of your sweater. Your hands are harsh, much harsher than Steve’s were in the bathroom at the dinner.
You kick a pebble. Even now, when he’s hurt you, he’s on your mind.
Back in the basement at the Squawk, the group’s eyes have turned onto Steve instead of you. Robin’s are the most accusing of all, though they all feel heavy against him. It makes his skin itch, uncomfortable.
“What?” he bites, before going upstairs himself.
And the thing is, Steve thought he was done nipping at you like that. He wanted to be done. With all of it. The name calling and annoyed looks, the sighing and the comments.
He wanted to move forward. He’d been trying to figure out how to apologize to you, actually. What the right words would be, if they would be enough.
Because he fucking cares about you. So much it scares him.
He doesn’t even know every piece of you, and he cares this much. It terrifies him to think about how big his feelings could get if he let you in. How badly it would hurt him if you got hurt, if it was because of him.
Steve knows what he did today was wrong. It wasn’t even what he wanted to do, but he was trying to get you as far away from the danger as possible and it manifested itself in the way he was used to.
He’s not an aggressive person. He isn’t who he used to be in high school. He doesn’t know why he bites.
And that look on your face just before you left, the wobble of your lip and the way your eyes welled but you wouldn’t let a tear fall, the defeat, your shoulders deflated. Well, that look will haunt him for a long time.
But if there had to be a monster in your life, at least it’s him and not something much, much worse. At least you’re still alive and breathing.
Steve can bear the weight of your hurt, can let it crush him and break him down to dust, as long as you’re alright in the end.
-
You cry the whole way back to Robin’s.
It’s the sadness, at first. The hurt and the sting of everything that had happened. Everyone’s silence, Steve’s words and how he sounded like a different person when he said them.
After that, it’s frustration. At yourself for thinking things had changed, for letting yourself cry over it now. And at Steve, for being so confusing. Because when the emotions subside, you look at things more broadly.
Sometimes, he can be so sweet. His eyes go soft and honest and expressive, and then he pulls it away. He puts up a wall that he just refuses to let you tear down or climb. You really thought you’d found a way, that you’d met in the middle of it.
You did your share of trying, of finding your footing between stones, and Steve held out a hand and tugged you the rest of the way over.
And then today happened.
But now, with your tears dried and your head less clouded, more than anything, you’re fed up. Tired of throwing fake punches and watching them land. Of taking hits yourself. So you come up with another plan.
You’re going to get answers out of Steve, and this time, you won’t back off until you get them.
First, you wait. You turn on the radio and listen to the Squawk, trying not to relive this afternoon every time you hear Robin’s voice or catch a sound effect and know that Steve is behind it. You listen until the broadcast ends sometime in the evening. Then you wait some more, calculating the time it would take Steve to get home from the station.
Once you’re pretty sure he’d be back at his house, you slip your shoes on and head out the door again.
The skies have darkened since earlier today, the sunset hidden behind gray clouds, but you don’t care. Don’t pause to grab an umbrella or a jacket, you just keep walking.
Eventually, rain starts to fall, but you let it seep into your clothes and over your skin.
You’re soaked by the time you get to the Harrington household, pressing the doorbell nonstop until you see Steve through the glass and hear the lock turn.
“What are you doing here?” he says, not nearly as harsh as his tone had been earlier today.
Steve is shocked to see you, but he’s glad, too. He was afraid that how he’d acted today was enough to push you away for good. It’s what he thought the right thing to do was, and it felt like the complete opposite.
He looks you over. The same clothes from before, now drenched, your shoes squeaking a little as you bounce on your feet. Your wet hair clings to your cheeks. You look beautiful, you always do.
Your shivering has him springing into action. “Jesus, you must be freezing. Come in.”
Steve tugs you inside with a hand loosely wrapped around your wrist. He drops it to shut the door behind you, then leaves. You slip off your shoes in his absence, wrap your arms around yourself.
He comes back with a towel and a blanket, first draping the towel over your shoulders, then following it up with the blanket. He rubs your arms to help warm you up.
And this is exactly what you’d been talking about. The contrast between the Steve from earlier and the one standing in front of you now is clear. Now, his instincts have kicked in. And those instincts have him taking care of you once more.
He pushes your hair off your face and behind your ear so tenderly. It’s what makes you finally speak.
“Did I do something?” you ask.
Steve drops his hand, but he doesn’t back up. “What?”
“Was there something I did to make you not like me?”
“I- I don’t not like you,” he stutters out.
“Then how come you act the way you do? Like today?” You don’t even give him the chance to respond, to lie weakly to your face. “I really thought we were getting somewhere. I even thought-”
That you cared, you almost say.
You shake the thought off and continue. “I just want to know why, okay? Then I’ll go.”
“You didn’t do anything,” he says. He sounds torn, pained. “You didn’t.”
“So tell me the truth,” you try. It’s strained too. The drops of water spilling from your clothes and your hair might as well be your blood with the way you feel. Like you’re bleeding out in front of him and waiting to see if he’ll wrap the wound or slice you further. “Stop being so afraid, Steve.”
“That’s not fair. You don’t understand.”
“No, I don’t. So make me understand.”
Steve runs an agitated hand through his already messy hair. Like he’s been doing it all day. His chest is heaving, and a part of you wants to reach out and place a hand over his heart, to see if he’s as affected as you are.
His head turns to the side, you pry it back to you with a murmured, “Steve.”
“I was just trying to protect you.”
A breath is punched from you. Maybe because you’re finally getting what you wanted, that your suspicions have been confirmed. Or maybe because, even though you’d been right, it doesn’t feel good.
“You had to be.. to be mean to do that? Really?” You almost laugh at how it sounds. What could possibly be so bad that made him think he needed to in the first place? “I’m not defenceless, Steve. I’m not dumb or weak.”
“I was trying to keep you safe!” he huffs, as if you hadn’t heard him the first time. “I’m still trying to.”
“Well, stop. It’s not for you to decide what I can or can’t handle, Steve.”
“I know-”
“So what is it? What’s this big bad secret I can’t possibly be strong enough to keep?”
“That’s not what I mean.”
“Then tell me what you mean. Please, Steve, for once, just tell me.”
He’s practically panting now, and he knows you won’t stop until he gives you something, and maybe he’s tired of hiding, too. Both hands come up to fist his hair, drag down his face.
He’s fighting a battle that’s living in his own head, not with you.
“Steve,” you say his name again, and it undoes him.
“Because I care about you, okay?” the words seem to spill out of him like they’ve been trying to escape for a long time now, rushed and loud.
But then something changes, Steve’s wild eyes scan your face, like he’s waiting for you to shut him down, to run. When you hold his eye, scrunch your brows in a gentle question, it’s like he’s been set free completely.
“I like you,” he says, quieter now but no less intense, wholly honest and devastatingly relieved, a weight finally dropped to the ground and off his back. “I like how you never mind your own business and how you reread the same books over and over. I like that you sometimes mouth the words Robin says because you know her so well. I like how much you fit in with everyone, how Dustin asks you for advice and Lucas talks to you about Max.”
Your eyes well for a whole other reason. All this time.
“I like how you speak with this little accent ‘cause you moved away, and I like that you came back.” He huffs a small laugh to himself. “I like you so much it scares the shit out of me, because this town, us, we’re not normal. It’s not- it’s not safe.”
“Wha-”
“And I thought that by pushing you away, by keeping you at a distance, you’d be far from the danger, too. That as long as you were safe, I could handle being the villain in your book, or whatever.” Steve looks down at his feet. “I realize now how stupid that sounds. I’ve been called an idiot plenty of times before, so, yeah.”
Your eyes are soft on him, and you look at him the way you always do. Like you know who he really is.
“I like you too, Steve,” you say finally, and it feels freeing. An ember relit in your chest. “You could have just talked to me, you know.”
“I should have,” he settles on. It’s his version of a white flag waving. I’ve dropped my weapons, he’s saying. It’s a battle finally over. Troops called back, the sun rising anew. “I’m sorry, honey.”
You’re still cold from the water trapped in your clothes, but the room feels far warmer.
“I’m sorry, too,” you tell him. “I was kind of riling you up on purpose, so..”
“I fucking knew it,” Steve whispers, shaking his head, but he lets himself smile when he does. The fondness not only in his eyes but in the shape of his mouth this time.
He steps closer, your toes almost touching, and pries your hands away from where they grip the edge of the blanket tight. He holds them between his own, larger and far warmer. Steve hisses through his teeth when he feels how icy your fingers are, dipping his head down to blow some warm air on them, tightening his grip.
There are still things left unsaid, questions unanswered, but the touch is grounding. Reassuring. It’s a promise that they will be said soon, that he isn’t going anywhere.
“It worked, didn’t it?” you joke gently.
“Yeah, it worked.”
You’re not sure who moves first after that, all you know is that you’re shrugging off both the blanket and the towel to free your arms, Steve dropping your hands in favor of framing your face, thumbs running sweet lines across your cheeks.
Yours wrap around his back, drag him closer, one hand fisted in the material of his shirt, the other on the back of his neck. He shivers, from the coolness of your touch, yes, but from the honesty of it, too.
The familiarity.
His eyes flick between yours once, twice, and then he’s kissing you, lips bruising against yours, but not as heated as that time in the van.
It’s a slow dance, him taking your bottom lip between his, you meeting him in the middle, your stomach swirling.
The best part isn’t the way he licks at your lip in between kisses, though it makes your heart flutter, or the sweet caress of his thumbs on your cheekbones, but the way that he pulls away.
Because the kiss is broken by his smile. Unabashed at last.
You can’t help but mirror it, cold long forgotten when he leans in and drops his forehead against yours, like he can’t bear to not have you close anymore.
“So,” you start, voice soft in the space between your faces. “Will you let me come?”
“Uh, a little forward, honey-”
You swat his stomach. “Mind out of the gutter, Harrington. Am I a part of this now?”
Steve pulls back just to make sure you can really see him, hands still warm on your cheeks as he says, “Yeah, you’re with me.”
(¬`‸´¬)
thank u so so much for reading! if you enjoyed, please consider leaving a comment and/or reblog and letting me know!! reblogs are the best way to support writers like me and it would mean a bunch!! love u!!
hi hi honey! so i sent this request before but tumblrs been eating my asks so i’m gonna send it again,
i’m the person who asked about the kisses before dinner universe and so since u said u hadn’t gotten any requests for it i wanted to send u one! u mentioned that it was quite nerve wracking the first time reader got pregnant so maybe u could do a blurb where steve’s just comforting her and reassuring her during that time? if u want something more simple, it could just be a small blurb of how their night goes when reader comes home from work or something? ty and i hope tumblr actually ate my request and i’m not bombarding u with this again :(have a good day lovely ❤️
i love kisses before dinner i wanna write a thousand blurbs for them, thank you for requesting! here's steve and u when ur pregnant the first time with avery <3 fem!pregnant!reader
You're more young than you'd planned to be, the first time. Young and terrified.
Steve knows how scared you are, and though he hasn't suggested anything again since the first time you'd made up your mind, you know that any path you take is the one he wants to take with you. Having his support makes it easier, but it certainly doesn't make it easy.
Pregnancy is terrifying. It can make you so sick. It can kill you. So while it's beautiful, and Steve insists it's doing numbers for your complexion, it's gruelling.
You're not even that pregnant yet and still you're fucking tired.
"Stevie?" you call, or try to, voice hoarse with fatigue.
He emerges rather than answer, arms open wide and waiting. "Hey, sweetheart."
And that's new. Steve has always been a "babe" or "baby" kind of guy. Your pregnancy has made him soft.
He's careful not to press against your stomach though it doesn't hurt even slightly when he does, abdomen held away from the small swell of your bump as he gets his arms under your armpits, hands rubbing over your shoulder blades. "Hello," he says sweetly, kissing your cheeks, your chin. "I missed you so much." He hesitates for a second, and then he lets a hand slide between your bodies.
You lean back to let him know it's okay.
"And you," he adds, palm flat over your stomach, "I missed you, too."
"I don't feel very well."
He nods. "Alright. Come and sit down."
That's another one of his insistences. Total, awful honesty. Pregnancy is full of problems, like morning sickness and heartburn and back ache and nausea and headaches. It leaves you stressed and exhausted, and Steve had made it very clear that any complaining was welcomed.
You know, in your heart of hearts, that he's more excited for this baby than you are. He's terrified, too, but he's brimming with joy half the time, so eager to meet whoever it is that comes out on the other side. And you know he feels indebted to you, though he shouldn't. You want this baby a lot.
But Steve aches for them. He's gonna be a great dad.
Right now, he needs to be an amazing boyfriend almost husband.
I don't want a pregnancy proposal, you'd said.
His guilty smile had given him away fast. I want to marry you.
And I want to marry you, Stevie, I do. But not because we're having a baby.
In your mind, he's not your husband or your boyfriend, he's your Steve, as silly as it sounds. He's your everything. He's the only thing getting you through this.
Steve sits you down on a cushion in the kitchen and plants another kiss on top of your head. You haven't lost any mobility yet, but the pleasure of being cared for so deeply makes it hard to turn him down when he guides you around like this. Though, sometimes, when you're cranky, you complain about being babied. He takes it all in stride.
He cracks open a cold bottle of water and gives it to you. Then he turns back to the chopping board next to the stove and finishes what he'd been doing before you arrived, funnelling slices fruit into the colander. He rinses it, and then he pours it into a bowl and puts it in front of you.
"You want peanut butter?" he asks, wrapping his arms slowly and carefully across your shoulders, chin hooked over your shoulder. "Honey? I could melt down some chocolate?"
You pick up a shimmering slice of watermelon and tip your head back to feed him.
"Salted caramel?" he asks as he chews.
You smile softly at him and lift your chin until he gets the memo, leaning down enough for you to kiss the side of his mouth.
"Stevie," you say, because he's so fucking lovely and you love him and not everything hurts when he's around, "I love you. I hope you know how much."
He blinks at you, swallowing hurriedly. "I know," he says.
"Okay, good."
"You think I don't know? Sweetheart, you're carying our kid."
"But if I weren't, I'd still love you this much."
He softens like taffy in the sun, rubbing the tip of his nose into your cheek adoringly. "If you weren't, I'd still love this much, too."
You breathe him in, the wet crush of watermelon between you and his lingering aftershave.
"But you are," he says eventually, kissing your cheek again and then pulling back. "So you better tell me if you want peanut butter of chocolate."
You choose. Steve is delighted, spoiling you with fruits and toppings and asking about work as he starts to make dinner instead. That's another conversation you've already had — he's still working now, but when the baby comes, he's gonna stay home even after maternity leave ends. And if you change your mind and want to stay home instead, that'll be okay too. He's a dream like that. Accommodating your every want and wish.
And so, he's teaching himself how to cook. It's more hit than miss, shockingly, and almost always nutritionally golden.
"Broccoli again?" you ask, trying to hide your amusement.
"Our munchkin's gonna be the healthiest kid ever. TV dinners are for schmucks."
You aren't sure he'll be saying that when he actually has a kid. "She won't be able to eat broccoli for the first six months."
"She wont," he agrees, clearly overjoyed at the idea of a little girl, "but when she can, she's gonna love it."
The fruit is nice and then not. You might've overindulged, or maybe your stomach's being sensitive, but suddenly it smells very strong and you have to push it away, keeling in on yourself with a sigh.
Steve doesn't fuss dramatically, but he does fuss, hand hesitant behind your shoulders.
"You need a bucket, baby?"
"No, I-" Saliva pools in your mouth. "Maybe."
He's swift, kneeling in front of you with the bucket positioned at your feet, hand sliding between your legs to find your hand where it's kneeding your aching stomach.
"She's bullying you, huh?" he asks sympathetically.
"She's barely the size of an apple," you moan, sweat prickling across your brow. "How can she do this to me?"
He strokes the inside of your hand with both thumbs. "She doesn't mean to."
You know that.
Eventually the sickness subsides. You don't throw up. Steve seems as happy as you do about this, kissing your hand with a very apologetic expression.
"I'm sorry," he says.
You lean back in your chair, back already aching, and pull him up onto his feet. If he's surprised at your strength he doesn't say anything, only closes you in again with his arms over your shoulders and his cheek pressed to your warm forehead.
"Don't be. We knew-" You laugh. "I knew this would be hard. I knew it would suck. But I want to do this with you."
"Even though you're scared," he murmurs.
"Even though I'm scared."
His hugs are a balm, always. You melt with relief the longer he holds you, listening to the pot simmering on the stove, lid rattling, steam whistling out of the gap. There's a fondness in his hands you find difficult to describe, devotion or something similar, big palms roving the lengths and slopes of your arms and back like you're made of the most precious thing on earth.
"I won't let anything happen to you."
That's sobering. You suppose you can fall into dramatics about it. Pregnancy is solemn, but it's also completely normal. Millions of people are pregnant right this second. You smile into his jaw, breath hot as you laugh.
"I know, baby," you say, more cheerful than you've sounded all night. "Promise."
He laughs too.
"My girl," he says, too much like the song. You're worried he's gonna start singing. Actually, you might like it.
"Can we listen to the radio?"
"Depends. Will you dance with me?"
You dance with him. You suppose it's a good idea to get all your dancing out now while you can, because in a month or two you'll have cankles, and not long after that you'll have your arms full. He pulls you in and spins you out, brown eyes dancing with a brand new happiness, silky hair falling in perfect layers either side.
"I hope she has your eyes," you say. The shape of them.
"I hope she's your carbon copy," he says, twirling you around, radio hiding the clumsy patter of your socked feet. "A mini you. God, what will I do then? I can barely say no to you."
"You never say no to me."
"Exactly."
He smiles so hard his lashes kiss in the corners, a pleased squinting grin. He can say what he likes. If she doesn't get his smile you'll riot.
pairing: steve harrington x reader
word count: 4.1k
summary: six weeks have passed since your little sex contract. six delusional weeks of crawling into this metal box, pretending a list of rules can undo what’s already etched into muscle memory. and it's driving you insane, the way steve harrington follows each one like he’s being graded on precision. down to the fucking letter, not a single one missed.
warnings: 18+ mdni, fwb to eventual lovers, fwb w rules, angst, mutual pining, oral sex (m!receiving), deepthroating, van sex, no-kissing sex :(, d/s undertones, first time subdrop, unexpected subdrop, aftercare, slow burn, pre-s5
pt. 1
“Wait—fuck—just... just slow down, jesus—”
He tastes like sweat-salt tonight.
There’s something painfully familiar about it. The musky, slow-built heat, the bitter smack of honey that sticks to the back of your tongue, thick and stubborn and unmistakably his.
You shouldn’t know the taste of him. Not like this. Not with the kind of certainty where you could pick him out in a lineup blindfolded, relying on tongue alone.
It’s exactly the kind of shit the rules were supposed to wring out of you. This obscene bodily recognition. This intimate, involuntary fluency.
But habits carve their own quiet shapes in the dark. And your body has spent eleven Crawls learning the shape of his.
Your palms slide up his thighs, fingers slipping over warm, twitching muscle. You settle into the rhythm your mouth knows by heart.
Up. Down.
Up. Down.
Most things get easier with repetition. Pattern breeds comfort. Routine breeds numbness.
That’s the lie, anyway. That if you repeat something enough times, it’ll stop meaning anything. That habit will file down the edges until everything is dull and safe and numb.
You’re still waiting for the numbness.
Six weeks have passed since your little sex contract.
Six delusional weeks of crawling into this metal box, pretending a bullet-point list can undo what’s already etched into muscle memory. Like the rules are helping, like they’re giving structure, like they’re guardrails and not bright-white chalk outlines against black pavement.
And Steve Harrington follows each one like he’s being graded on precision.
Perfectly. Painfully. Down to the fucking letter, not a single one missed.
No touching once you’re done? He pulls away the second you finish, hands dropping like your skin scorched him.
No talking about it outside the van? Daylight Steve performs casual so hard he might actually sprain something—hands shoved in pockets, grin easy and boyish, acting like he doesn’t go home twice a month with your nail marks on his hips.
Rule #3, though. That one’s the real knife.
That’s the one that’s slowly skinning you alive.
But it’s fine. It’s doesn’t matter.
It’s okay that his hands shake when they close around your waist.
It’s okay that he holds his breath when your face drifts too close.
It’s okay that lately....
That lately he doesn’t let you face him at all.
He turns you around now. Every time.
Guides you by the hips, the waist, the small of your back, gentle palms that used to cradle your face now wrapping around to rotate, to keep everything angled cleanly away.
You brace yourself on cracked vinyl, on metal brackets, dig your nails into shag carpet or the edge of the back bench while he fucks breathless sounds out of your throat—keeping your face far, far away.
Away. Always away.
You should be relieved.
It's what you asked for, isn’t it?
Carved those words into him in permanent ink.
Signed your initials together, side by side, might as well have etched it into a fucking tree like two kids in love; one heart, four letters, arrow clean through the middle, immortalize your doom with a dull pocketknife and walk away like it’s not bleeding sap behind you.
And the thing about carving into trees is that they bleed sap no matter what. Doesn’t matter if the cut is meant as a promise of ending or a promise of eternity.
Rule #3: No kissing.
Now, you spend more time looking at each other between the thighs than in the eyes.
But maybe that’s just the point.
Distance through proximity. Intimacy without tenderness.
Your face is buried down there now, dark-washed Levi’s pushed down to his knees. The moonlight washes him in silver tones, turns his sweat into shimmering trails and draws long shadows out of the tremor in his lashes.
You relax your jaw, try to breathe around the sheer girth of him as you flatten your tongue against the heavy, pulsing underside.
Up. Down.
Up. Down.
There’s only one way to keep from drowning in a boy like Steve Harrington.
Smother the softness before it can breathe. Bury tenderness beneath something filthier, louder, easier to name.
Every bob of your head strips away a thought, every swallow submerges a feeling.
He’s close. You can feel it in the twitch of his thighs, see it the tightening in his gut. Taste it in the small bead of slick that bleeds from his tip, salted and bitter, smearing across your tongue before it melts into your throat.
You drag your nails up the insides of his thighs: ten neat lines that make him jerk, make his cock jump exactly how you knew it would. It fills you with a strange, hollow satisfaction, like winning a game you shouldn’t be playing.
You pull off with a slick pop.
Steve hisses, hips jerking up instinctively; it’s pure inertia, that split second when the brakes slam but the body lurches forward.
You blink up at him through wet lashes, a slow, wicked smile curling your mouth.
He looks wrecked. Chest heaving, chin tipped to the sky, throat bared in a long column of flushed, freckled skin. His knuckles glow bone-white where he’s got a death grip on the seatbelt bolt beside him.
You lean in, lips brushing just under the swollen ridge of his cock.
Not quite a kiss.
But his body shudders like it is.
Your voice is a low, sultry hum when you murmur:
“I want you to come in my mouth.”
He jolts like you’ve struck him. Breath ripping out of him in one violent catch, shoulders snapping back against the vinyl seat.
“Jesus—don’t—don’t say it like that.”
You hold his stare and drag your thumb through another bead of slick at his tip, smearing it lazily.
“Like what?”
His jaw clenches hard enough to crack teeth, throat coming up with nothing but a thick swallow.
But his stare—god, his stare—says everything.
It pours over you, molten and heavy, sliding down the bridge of his nose and spilling hot across your skin. It settles at the base of your throat like a phantom hand, calloused fingers pressing down, holding, stroking, claiming, even though he isn’t touching you at all.
Instead, his hand lifts in a hesitant arc toward your face, close enough you feel the heat of his palm before he veers away at the last second, fingers raking through his own sweat-curled strands.
“You want that? Want me to come in your mouth?” he breathes.
You guide him back to your lips, suckling around the flushed head.
“Mmhm.”
He groans low at the vibration, hips twitching in a helpless little rut.
“You’re... you’re gonna—hah—gonna take all of it?”
“Yeah,” you murmur, stroking slow along his length, made glossy with your spit. “Want all of it. Make me choke on you.”
His eyes slam shut, fist yanking at his own hair so hard it must hurt.
“Okay,” he pants. “Okay, just—ah, fuck—!”
You sink down in one long glide.
Deeper, deeper, until the thick weight of him presses into the back of your throat. Your jaw aches instantly, tongue flattened painfully against your molars, pinned by the girth that widens at his base.
You force yourself lower.
Then you pull up an inch. Drop again, harder.
Tears sting your eyes, blurring him into a trembling smear of gold-lit skin and shadows.
You keep your focus on movement. On depth, on rhythm. The wet squelch that fills the van with each downstroke, thick suction layered over the ragged noises tearing from his throat.
“God,” he whispers. Wide, brown eyes narrowed to sharp slits, they burn straight into you. “You’re—”
Whatever he means to say dies when you angle your head and take him past the tight catch of your throat, sinking until your nose is buried in the soft curl of hair at the base.
You’ve never taken him this deep.
Steve chokes on a sound, halfway between a groan and a sob, palm slamming against the fogged window in a frantic splay.
“F-fuck—oh my god, I’m gonna—”
Everything inside him goes taut, then snaps.
Tears spill hot down your cheeks as you stay there, choking yourself open while he floods your throat in heavy, helpless bursts. You don't look up; you keep your gaze fixed on his stomach, the way his sweater bunches tight with each shuddering breath.
He groans your name like he’s been swallowing it back all night.
Then the rest of it unravels.
He chokes on the word as it rises, tries to force it down, but it’s out, it’s out, it’s out, and it slips into the dark before either of you can stop it.
“Baby—”
He never calls you that anymore.
Not intentionally.
But instinct is older than intention.
And Steve Harrington has always loved like muscle memory.
He loves hard, in old grooves carved deep, in tiny unguarded cracks he tries to smother on nights like these.
Affection runs through him like a river he cannot dam, hidden like groundwater, impossible to drain. The leftover pulse of a boy who used to love out loud before the earth split open and swallowed his softness whole.
But not all of it. Never all of it.
Even after monsters and heartbreak, after grief and exhaustion and the calloused edge he’s learned to wear like armor, something tender inside him refuses to die.
And no matter how many borders you draw—no matter how carefully he tiptoes around each one—the river spills.
That’s all it is, though.
Spillover.
Reflex.
Old devotion leaking through the cracks.
Instinct baked into his bones from a past life: teddy bears, rose bouquets, first dates at a movie theater that’s been dark for months, windows boarded since the soldiers shuttered half the town.
The body remembers what the mind tries to bury.
Maybe that’s why his hand finally drops, trembling fingers threading into your hair. Not to push, just to hold.
Maybe that’s why his voice shakes when he breathes out, thumb brushing your temple as he tries to coax you off him, even while he’s still twitching on your tongue.
“Jesus, you’re—are you okay? Hey, hey, just—just take a breath.”
You ease off him slowly, gasping as he slips free. Saliva and his release string between your lips, and you swallow the rest down in one raw gulp.
Cold air rips through your lungs in a sudden, ragged burst; too much, all at once.
Your hands are still braced on his thighs, but they hardly feel like his anymore. Just warm shapes under your palms, losing definition, slipping out of meaning.
The van tilts. Or maybe you do. It’s impossible to tell.
Your heartbeat is a thick, syrupy-slow thump in your ears, too heavy and off-tempo to match anything around you.
Nothing fits.
Nothing holds.
You’re drifting, helpless.
“Hey—hey—” A voice cuts through the panic. “Look at me. Baby, can you look at me?”
Your eyes try. They really do.
But your focus skitters, catching on the silver wash of moonlight across his shoulder, the fogged window, the lingering burn of salt on your tongue.
Everything feels… off.
The world is still spinning when Steve drops to his knees.
The shag carpet swallows the impact, turns what should be a thud into nothing but a soft, muffled noise.
Or maybe that’s just the cotton in your ears, stuffing everything into silence.
You blink at him through a thick haze, thoughts sliding around like butter. Your limbs feel stuffed with fluffy white clouds, soft wisps that float and drift far,
far,
far away.
Away. Always away.
Except...
He isn’t, now.
Not tonight.
He’s right here. Kneeling in front of you.
Big brown eyes—honey in the sun, toffee in the dark—sweep over your face, pinched quietly at the corners. His brows are drawn tight, like it physically hurts him to look at you.
Your name falls out of him on a cracked breath.
Then there’s warmth.
Wide, trembling palms that press against your cheeks, hot enough to melt the cold-hard shell of a Midwestern winter.
You’d know those hands anywhere.
Always runs hot, your Steve.
Made of golden summers and silver springs, his is a body that remembers wildflowers in a town where nothing blooms anymore.
You don’t realize you’d been leaning toward him—slowly, helplessly tipping—until your forehead bumps against his.
He catches you before gravity can claim the rest.
One hand stays firm on your cheek, thumb brushing over cold-blanched skin; the other slides behind your neck, the heel of his palm warming your spine as he holds the full, molten weight of your head.
It feels so easy here.
Safe.
Nose-to-nose, pressed close enough to count the flecks in his irises, close enough you think there’s maybe a little green tucked under that canopy of honey oak-brown. Roots and branches and all the stubborn things that grow even in the cold.
Hearts, arrows—all trees bleed the same.
“Hey,” His breath feels so warm. So close. Close enough you could tip forward and kiss him without trying. “You okay?”
You attempt a nod. It comes out slow, delayed, your brain still clawing its way up from whatever deep place you’d sunk into.
God, he’s warm.
Always so, so warm.
It would feel good to lean in, just a little more. To nuzzle your face closer, tuck into the scent of him: soap and sweat and citrus and Steve.
“Easy,” he whispers, steadying the wobbly tilt of your head, thumb tracing slow arcs over your cheek. “You’re okay. I’ve got you.”
The words wash over you like warm water. Make goosebumps out of frost-bitten skin and dissolve the static in your head until all that’s left is blissful quiet.
Your lips tip into a soft, dazed smile.
He pulls back a little, just far enough to see you. Eyes round and dark, glossy like melted chocolate, they search your expression for something you’re too fogged to name.
He sweeps his thumb carefully over your bottom lip, wiping away spit and the faint, salty trace of him still glistening there.
The crease between his brows digs deeper. Like he’s in pain.
Strange.
Didn’t you make him feel good?
“You’re okay.” he repeats, voice cracking. “I’ve got you.”
He draws you in, tucks your face into the warm curve of his neck. It’s darker there, beneath his jaw, his voice a low rumble against your cheek. You sag into him, the soft, heavy heat of his body enveloping you like a blanket fresh from the dryer.
He breathes against your temple, whispering soft words into your hair.
Nice words. Sweet words.
Sweet nothings.
So aptly named.
Nothings, because they weigh nothing.
Because they float.
Because they leave no marks, no promises, no consequences.
None of it ever meant to last.
But god, do they taste sweet going down.
You catch one in your mouth, hold it on your tongue like candy. Let it melt slow before swallowing it the way you swallowed everything else tonight, hungry and grateful.
His palm is rubbing slow, firm circles between your shoulder blades.
Each pass sinks you deeper.
And deeper.
And deeper still.
You melt against him, boneless, lashes drooping until the fog swallows you whole.
And once you’re swept away by the tide, you don’t hear the tremor in his exhale, how it slips quietly into the emptiness around you.
You don’t see him bend down.
You don’t feel the soft, hesitant press of lips to the crown of your head.
The gentlest pressure.
Like a snowflake landing.
Not quite a kiss.
But your body shudders like it is.
...
Warmth.
It’s the first thing you notice when your mind claws its way back to waking.
The second is a heartbeat. Not yours. Louder, faster, a steady, insistent thump-thump-thump that echoes right against your ear.
The third thing is the fabric under your nose: soft knit, pilled and worn smooth, smelling faintly of detergent and a body that runs too hot for winter.
You jolt upright.
“Whoa—hey, hey—” Steve’s voice catches, quietly startled. His hands rise instinctively, palms out, hovering without touching. “You’re okay. You just… dozed off for a bit.”
Your throat burns. Your tongue feels like paper. Your lips stick when you try to speak.
“Mmph…” You scrub at your eyes, blinking against the haze. “Crawl?”
He shakes his head gently. “It’s over. Nothing tonight.”
You nod, slow and loose, your head doesn't feel attached quite right. Your eyes drift to the shallow dent pressed into his sweater, just beneath his collarbone, in the exact shape of your face.
Dread prickles cold under your skin.
You don’t dare ask how long you were out. Or how long he stayed there holding you. Or why he didn’t wake you.
“Sorry,” you mumble, voice small, shame cinching like a wire around your throat. “Didn’t mean to fall asleep on you.”
“It’s okay,” he says, quick and soft, earnest. “Just—” He tips his head, searches your eyes. “Do you... feel okay?”
You blink up at him, thin frown tugging at your mouth. “Yeah... I’m fine.”
You stand. The van immediately lurches, the ceiling dipping, walls tilting, everything spinning in a slow, nauseating wave.
“Hey! Whoa—” A warm hand catches your arm. “Sit. C’mon, just sit down for a sec.”
He eases you into the chair behind the radio equipment. Something cool and heavy gets pressed into your palm.
A water bottle.
Steve’s hand is still around it, fingers slow to let go, wrapped around yours until he’s sure you have a grip.
He’s still kneeling.
“Oh—hang on.” He twists toward the front console, rummaging loudly until he lets out a triumphant little ha! under his breath.
He turns back holding a silver-and-orange wrapper.
“Here.” He slips it into your free hand. Laughs softly when you shoot him a weak but pointed look. “Don’t give me that face. It’s good, I’m telling you.”
He drops to the floor below you, cross-legged, fingers picking at a loose red thread in the shag carpet. You take a shaky sip of water and pretend not to notice the half-second glances he keeps sneaking up at you, like he’s checking to see you haven’t toppled over.
The cold soothes the raw burn in your throat. When it finally feels bearable, you reach for the wrapper. The crinkle sounds absurdly loud in the tiny space.
You break off a piece and hold it toward him.
He grins, shakes his head, smoothing a hand over his stomach. “Nah. I’ve had like, three of those today. I’m at my limit, trust me.”
Too tired and too embarrassed to insist, you pop it into your own mouth.
The taste blooms instantly. Rich chocolate melting into caramel warmth. Soft crackle of crisped rice and smooth, gooey nuttiness spreading thick on your tongue.
It makes you wish you hadn’t turned him down all the other nights he’d offered it.
You wish a lot of things.
Steve watches you finish the whole bar. Only when you tuck the last piece between your teeth does he speak.
“So… uh,” he clears his throat. “Home?”
You hold the last bite on your tongue. Let it melt slow.
Then you swallow and manage a small smile.
“Yeah. Thanks.”
The sugar burns warm on the way down.
...
Drop-offs are always the worst part.
They’re quick and easy in theory; you hop out, he drives on.
Except, Steve Harrington never actually leaves right away.
Sometimes he fiddles with the radio, pretends he needs a better station to listen to on the drive back to his place.
Sometimes he sits there tapping the wheel, glancing at you through the window.
And sometimes, like tonight, he gets out with you.
Your shoes crunch on gravel as you hop down, bag slung over your shoulder, ready to beeline for your porch. You’re three steps into the walkway when he calls your name.
“Hey—wait. Hold on.”
He jogs around the front of the van, breath puffing white in the cold, hands shoved deep in his jacket pockets.
“You, uh... you got really quiet afterward,” he blurts. His face scrunches as soon as the words are out.
“...What?”
“Sorry—no, I mean—” He sighs, drags a hand through his hair. “You just seemed really tired. And kind of zoned out? And you were shivering a lot, so…” His hands leave his pockets long enough to make a small, helpless gesture. “That’s why I was holding you. In the back.”
“Oh.”
The memory’s still fuzzy: warm hands around your cheeks, scratchy wool under your nose.
“Right. Uh… sorry if that was weird.”
“No, it wasn’t weird,” he says quickly. “I was just—” he breaks off, blinks. Does a funny little shake of his head.
“Has… uh… anything like that ever happened to you before?”
You blink. “No, not really.”
He exhales, long and heavy, a cloud of white fading into the dark.
“Okay. I just… I don’t know. Maybe I went too far. You got really quiet all of a sudden, and I couldn’t tell if that was normal or if I did something wrong. Or if I—” He winces quietly, jaw twitching. “—if I hurt you.”
You frown at the guilt etched into his face, sharp and earnest. So expressive. So painfully Steve.
“I’m okay,” you say softly. “You didn't hurt me. And what happened after wasn’t your fault. Really.”
He nods, shoulders stiff.
You’re just about to tell him you should go when a sudden gust of wind slices through your yard. It bites across your collarbones, stealing the last bit of heat clinging to your skin.
Your body jerks with a small, involuntary shiver.
Steve’s brows knit instantly.
“Jesus, you’re still—” He doesn’t even finish. He’s already wrestling out of his jacket.
“Steve—”
“Just take it. You’re shaking again.”
“I’m literally about to walk inside.”
“Yeah, well,” He steps in close and eases the jacket over your shoulders. “You’re gonna freeze before you get there.”
His hands skim over your upper arms in a quick, almost absentminded rub. A firm up-down that leaves warmth in its wake before he returns his palms to your shoulders. They stay there a beat longer, holding the jacket in place.
The heat that blooms under your cheeks is impossible to blame on the weather. “You should keep this. You need it more than me. It’s like twenty degrees out.”
“No kidding,” he mutters, lifting the collar higher, tucking it gently under your chin. “That’s why you need a jacket. And not just—” He nudges the string of your hoodie with a finger. “—this thing.”
You shoot him a look that’s too soft to be a glare. He rolls his eyes, waving you off.
“It’s fine. Just bring it back next time.”
Next time.
You fight back a shiver that's got nothing to do with the cold, pulling the jacket tighter around you.
It’s warm, fleece-lined. Heavy with his heat and scent. Soap and sweat and citrus and Steve.
It feels like being held again.
Steve steps back, hands shoved into his jeans, flashing you a small, boyish smile. Daytime ease again, even though it’s midnight and nothing about what’s happening is easy anymore.
“So... you’re really okay?”
“Yeah. I'm good.”
“Okay,” he nods, eyes flicking over you once. “Now get inside before you turn into a popsicle, jeez.”
“I’m going, I’m going...” You hesitate at the first step, stealing one last glance at him. “Night, Steve.”
“Night. Now go! Jesus, it's freezing.”
...
He doesn’t leave until you’re inside.
You hover near the window and watch him jog back to the van.
Watch him climb into the driver’s seat.
Watch him sit there, hands resting on the wheel, staring at the dark windshield.
Your mind floats distantly to dryer-warmed blankets and sweet, soothing murmurs. Of oak trees and mossy forest floors and the stupid, quiet thought of forever.
Eventually, he shifts into drive.
The taillights flare red, then dim, then disappear down your street.
You follow their glow until the darkness swallows them whole.
...
It’ll hit you later that night.
While you’re lying in bed, staring at his jacket folded over your chair, the smell of him still clinging to your skin.
Rule #1: No talking about it outside the van.
Rule #2: No touching once we’re done.
Two rules. Broken clean through. Shattered like they were made of glass.
But what you won't know—what he'll never say—is that Steve white-knuckles the steering wheel the entire drive back to Loch Nora.
That when the light turns red, he slams the heel of his palm against the leather, swearing at himself under his breath.
That he lies awake for hours, eyes locked on the ceiling, replaying the one rule he never should’ve agreed to.
The one he initialed before he understood the cost.
The one that’s been strangling him for six weeks straight.
The one he's fantasized about tearing to shreds a million times over.
He thinks about the exact moment he almost fucked it all up tonight.
You ran out on Steve almost three years ago in the middle of a sweet fling, but now you’re back in Hawkins, and there’s a little girl on your hip that looks just like him. fem, 14k
afab reader, second-chance romance, girl!dad steve, slow burn idiots, no upside down au
⋆ ˚｡⋆୨♡୧⋆ ˚｡⋆
You realise how fucked you are pretty quickly.
It’s something in the way the kid is looking at you. He’s staring at you, not unfriendly but piercing, and his gaze keeps flicking to Leah like he’s trying to make sense of her, and his mouth is stuck obnoxiously with his tongue flat and pulled into that cruel letter ‘S’.
You freeze up like you’ve been caught, which doesn’t help.
And the kid spins in his Nike’s and races for the entrance, ditching a basket full of veggies and a pack of gum in the middle of the aisle.
“Okay, Lee,” you say, sweating despite the November chill. “Let’s get going.”
Leah grins in her seat in the shopping cart. “Meemaw’s?” she asks.
“Yeah. Let’s go make sure your meemaw had her dinner.”
Your ears ring all the way home. They don’t stop ringing. You spend the night waiting for a phone call you don’t get, awkward and clammy. There’s a certain way that rich families work in Indiana. You can see the coming hush money or the threat to leave town almost as clearly as you could see the loveless marriage years ago. You and Leah need to get out of dodge before you’re stuck having conversations you never wanted to have.
I mean, who could’ve predicted that? One of Steve’s teenagers recognises you in the grocery store three years after your fling, how’d they even remember?
The phone doesn’t ring, that night.
Or the next.
Maybe Steve didn’t believe the kid. Maybe the kid had an emergency completely unrelated to Leah. Maybe Steve believed it and didn’t care. You deem yourselves safe from harm in a venture to the grocery store when your mom asks for chicken noodle soup.
It’s there you recognise your mistake. Steve Harrington’s shiny BMW sits parked in the bay by the sign for the laundromat and the man himself sits inside with a paperback bent open on his thigh. He’s glaring at it like it killed his whole family.
You move bodily away from him with Leah clasped to your chest, wondering if you can beat him in, but then a chirp sounds near the door and you watch in slow motion as a young teenager brings a radio to his mouth and says, “Code milkshake!”
You hear a curse and can’t help looking back, right at the bimmer, where Steve is looking up through the windshield with a look of frozen trepidation on his face.
—
So.
How did you end up where you are?
You aren’t one for thinking about the past. Don’t like doing it. In fact, you try your very hardest not to think of the past when you can help it. Once Leah was born, that was easy to do. Babies are demanding, they take over your entire life, and your new life in Portland was already busy to begin with. You find thinking of the past incessant and unnecessary, but. Things are happening oh so fast —you had genuinely figured you could get through your homecoming without being spotted. You figured you could leave Leah at home with your mom while you shopped, but meemaw’s stroke has affected more than her body, and you couldn’t leave Leah there in good conscience in case an accident happened.
It’s not like you had many friends, before you left. Any, in fact. Steve was the first guy to ever show any interest in you, and as nice as he’d been in the quiet moments after, he hadn’t exactly brought you roses or promised you anything. You’re the dummy who got pregnant by the ‘washed out’ king of Hawkins High. It was probably going to be one of his peers, and it was never going to be Nancy Wheeler.
Things were obviously more detailed at the time, but you and Steve had come together in a fling. It’s not a relationship that you’d pictured for yourself, but it’s not as though you set your sights on him and thought, yeah, I’m going to fuck him. It was more that he was friendly, and you were both at the same bar at the same time sitting by yourselves, and with a little gin and a ton of mutual loneliness, it’d felt natural to let him kiss you against the hood of his car. When he drove you home, worried you’d get stuck in the rain, you’d offered him into an empty house. Things snowballed from there.
The sex was good. Steve was kind. He was a bit awkward from time to time and he didn’t know what to say without putting his foot in his mouth, but you liked it. Liked him.
Then the test. Then the memory of his Harrington name, how his mom wanted him to marry a socialite and his dad was priming him to get into the family business, whatever that may be. That silly conversation about kids. “I’d never put them through it,” he’d said, naked and tracing a star into your shoulder blades through the sheets, his hair damp at the nape of his neck with sweat, “are you joking? They’d be the loneliest kid ever.”
You remember laughing softly. You’d wanted him to say something different, but you aren’t sure what it is he could’ve said to make it right enough to stay.
In the end, you figured Leah could be part of a brand new start. You applied for a job in the classifieds and uprooted the rest of your life to go to it, and when you finally had your baby, you didn’t let yourself call Steve. What use would that have been, letting him smash the lingering, aching bit of your heart that wanted him to love you? You were smart enough then to recognise that your dream for the future was about as childish as getting knocked up at nineteen.
It hurts now, though, as he gets out of the car, how badly you want him to want you, and how stupid you’ve always been.
Steve shuts the door to the BMW and makes his way in a jog across the parking lot. He breathes your name. You’re nervous, not stupid. You don’t try to hide the baby.
She grumbles on your hip.
Steve stands in front of you. He’s remarkably not shouting at you, but he’s not smiling, either. He looks different than the last time you’d seen him for sure, fuller and broader, lip dark with stubble and his hair shorter (but not short). There’s a funny scar stretching unkindly against his throat, startlingly new to you but clearly healed.
He stands there in quiet.
Leah makes a fawning sound, like she’s tired and excited to see a new person.
“Hi, Steve,” you say, to get sound out in the air.
His eyes fall on Leah. She’s a good mix of you both. Got her dad’s eyes and her mom’s nose and a handful of his beauty marks, small dark freckles that sprouted all over her body a few weeks after she was born.
“Is she mine?” he asks, cutting straight to the fat.
You shift her closer to your chest. He’s impossible to read for once, not a lick of anything on his face as he waits for you to answer. The cold chaps your lips and the late-fall sunshine threatens to blind you where it’s rising from behind him.
“You didn’t want to have a baby,” you say carefully. Each word said with less enthusiasm than the previous.
He doesn’t speak. Leah whines at the pause, her hand spreading against your collarbone in protest.
“I know you didn’t. You said it’d be miserable, and you’d get stuck with a woman you didn’t love to save face, and I knew that. I didn’t see any good in… in making you go through that.”
To your complete and utter surprise, his face softens. His mouth puckers in sympathy and his arm twitches like he’s going to reach for you. His hair curls into his eyes in the cold breeze. He squints against it, gaze falling once again on Leah, who he can’t get enough of. He’s full-blown gawking at her, watching her sigh and sniffle and press her hand into your neck.
“Is she mine?” Steve asks again.
You clear your throat to answer, but you can’t summon the words. Your nod is jerky and embarrassed and annoyed, all at once. Of course she’s his baby. She looks so much like him, and you never let anybody else touch you.
Steve opens his mouth to finally speak and you cut him off. “Well, she’s mine,” you say tightly.
He nods like he understands. He doesn’t even look mad at the insinuation.
“Her name is Leah.” If he’d been angry with you, cruel, even agitated, which maybe he deserves to be, you’re not sure you could offer this to him now. “She… she looks a lot like you, huh?” you ask.
Steve manages a laugh, strained as it may be. “Yeah. Yeah, she does.” He swallows harshly. “I thought if I came by the house you’d turn me away. Uh. Because I thought there must’ve been a reason you didn’t want me to know, but now we’re… here.”
You glance around the parking lot. His tattle of a child has made himself scarce.
“Do you wanna come home with me?” you ask. Mostly for want of something to say.
“Yeah.”
You go to leave, but Steve makes a sound and brings you right back. Without comment, he curls an arm around your shoulder and pulls you into a half-hug, slotting his nose against your temple like he used to, even as you tense up in his embrace.
“I thought you’d be more angry at me than this,” you say under your breath.
“Yeah, that’s not really how I work.” He parts from you awkwardly and points to the car. “I’ll follow you?” he asks.
“Okay.”
“Okay.” He turns very suddenly and makes his way to his car.
You meander to your own car and pop open Leah’s door. “Sorry, Lee,” you murmur, tucking her into her carseat.
“Why?” she murmurs.
“We’re gonna go to meemaw’s, okay?” If your mom could hear you calling her meemaw before her stroke she’d have knocked you up the side of the head, but it’s all Leah’s ever known her as, and meemaw doesn’t have much choice in the matter now. You’d laugh if you didn’t feel sick.
“Okay.”
You kiss her cheek, getting stuck there with your nose in her hair, all manner of panic and awkwardness and I’d-rather-nots thrumming through you. I should’ve stayed in Portland, you think.
Leah kisses your cheek while you’re stooped there. Your misery takes a backseat as you gather your bearings.
You climb into your own seat, close the door, lock it, and shove the keys in the ignition. Steve’s car idles a few spaces behind, waiting for you to go. You cannot put this off much longer, but you’d pictured the moment so differently, there’s a sense of unreality now. Is this happening? Did you really spill the truth to him the very first time he asked?
Where’s your backbone?
Where’s your common sense?
With a groan, you pull the car out of the space and begin the drive to your mom’s house. You were never close with her, as strange as it seems. She was a woman with interests and her kid happened incidentally. It doesn't bother you anymore. You came to Hawkins to take care of her. Nobody else was going to do it for you, but so far she’s been an easy patient. She needs help making dinner and she can’t walk more than the length of the hall without finding herself breathless, but she’s recovering slowly, so long as her mental faculties recoup with her body, she’ll be alright.
You, however, have screwed the entire pooch. You look at Leah in the rearview mirror and worry you’ve ruined her entire life.
“Chill,” you say to yourself quietly, almost missing the road to your mom’s house. Worst comes to worst and we go home to Portland, you tell yourself. Nothing has to change.
“Mommy?”
“Mm?” you ask.
Leah leans forward in her car seat, huffing with annoyance when the belts keep her in place. The jacket she’s wearing has bunched into a lump under her chin. “Off?” she asks.
“Two minutes.”
“Off.”
“Let me park the car, Lee. I’ll take it off of you as soon as we get home.”
She whines long and loud.
“Sorry, sweet girl. Two minutes and we’re there.”
Leah sulks the entire way there. You park in the space in front of the house and hurry out of the car, quick enough to see Steve in the bimmer pulling onto the sidewalk. You open Leah’s door and offer her a huge smile, hoping to cull a tantrum with bubbly affection. “Hi, off?”
“Yes!”
You laugh to yourself and bring her out, even as your heartbeat climbs up your throat. You can hear Steve getting out of his car as you unbuckle Leah from the car seat and drag her out. You sit her in the slight dip of the window and use your stomach to keep her up as your fingers search for the zipper of her coat. You pull it tight down and unzipper her, freeing her of the thing that had been irking her so bad and restoring her good mood.
She exhales dramatically in relief, which has you laughing again. “Is that better?” you ask through it.
“Better,” she echoes.
Leah sits up at the sound of shoes on gravel. Steve’s crossing the drive, hands shoved in his pockets.
“Who?” she asks.
Uhhhh.
“He’s gonna come in and have dinner with us, okay?”
“Y’okay.”
“Yeah?”
Leah nods enthusiastically. You can see Steve grinning in your peripheral vision, and it’s so much like Leah’s smile you find your heart going haywire.
“Okay,” you say, your full attention to Steve. “Is that cool?”
“Can we talk, first?”
You don’t blame him for asking.
“Yeah, we’ll talk first. But… my mom, she’s not doing the best right now, so. Maybe we should talk outside?”
“I’m not going to yell.”
“No, but. If you’re angry, I get it, but she can’t cope with that right now.”
“Are you angry?” he asks.
“No.”
“Then we don’t have anything to worry about,” he says, the sound of his smile palpable as Leah gives one back. “I’m not gonna yell. I promise.”
You show him into the house. It feels like walking yourself to the gallows.
The room is narrow. The sides of your vision start to dissolve as you drop your car keys in the bowl by the door, then walk Leah to the kitchen. You hold her one handed as you palm off her shoes, dropping them and then her on the floor by the kitchen table. “Okay?” you ask her.
She wanders off toward the living room and the sound of TV.
Steve Harrington’s standing in your mom’s rinky dink kitchen waiting for you to talk. You’re standing there useless, taking sips of air that sting, waiting for him to cut the crap and berate you. It would make sense. If he’s upset that you didn’t tell him you were pregnant, or that you were stupid enough to keep her, to get pregnant in the first place, it wouldn’t surprise you. Men are cruel, and Steve had a reputation for popularity. It would make sense for him to be mean to you now.
“How old is she?” he asks finally.
“She’s turning two soon.”
Steve seems to be holding his tongue.
“Just– ask.” You try to look sorry. “Ask me whatever you want.”
“Can I–” He throws a hand out, the first sign that he’s not as genial as he appears. “Can I be her dad?”
You flinch. “What?”
“Like, I want to be her dad. A real dad. I want to be in her life, I want her to know me. Did you think I wouldn’t want that?”
“I didn’t think you wanted kids at all.”
“I want kids.” Steve crosses his arms over his chest. “I always wanted a whole team of them.”
“That’s not what you said.”
“When? When you told me you were having my baby?”
This is more what you’d been expecting. There’s a cruel pleasure in being vindicated. “When you told me you didn’t want kids, Steve. You said you didn’t want a miserable kid in a miserable marriage, what was I supposed to glean from that?”
“Exactly, I didn’t want a miserable kid, which is exactly what I was, and I didn’t want it in an arranged marriage that my mom thought would be good for me.” His anger drains a little. “I never meant– I mean, even if I didn’t, you should’ve told me.”
“She’s my baby.”
“That’s not fair.”
“That’s totally fair, she’s literally mine.”
“It’s not fair to act like I wouldn’t have cared,” he clarifies, frowning at you. It’s so disappointed-looking it pisses you off worse, but you're trying to keep a level head. Nobody here deserves for you to blow up and say words you don’t mean.
You bite your lip. “I’m sorry, Steve, but I wasn’t convinced that you would. I wanted what was best for me and her.”
“I can be best for you both.”
You wait for him to hold it up. To prove what he means.
“If she’s mine, I want to be her dad,” he says.
“If?”
He waves a hand, like he could roll his eyes. He should thank his lucky stars he didn’t. “Not like that, I’m not saying she’s not, I just want to look after her.”
“She’s looked after.”
“I’m not saying she’s not,” he says, uneasy now, shifting to hide a hand in his pocket. He wasn’t expecting you to be difficult, you think. “I’m not saying that. I’m not saying anything about you, I’m asking you if I can do right by you.”
“You might not actually want her, Steve.”
“I haven’t stopped thinking about her since the kids told me. I didn’t get a good look at her, but the idea? Just the idea of her? I wanted it.”
You sigh, frustrated, and set your sights on the fridge. “Can’t believe you had kids posted up at Bradley’s to stalk me,” you murmur.
“I needed to see her for myself.”
“Steve... You’re twenty three. We aren’t married. You don’t have to be anything to her, you don’t have to do right by me, we don’t have to play house until you’re miserable. In a couple of months we’ll go home to Portland and you don’t have to do anything. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you, but you don’t have to worry. You can tell everyone you tried and I said no and you’ll still look good.”
“Why are you being like this?” he asks, leaving little air between your sentence and his. “What are you talking about? I’m asking you if I can keep you guys and you’re trying to run me out?”
“Keep us?” you ask indignantly.
“Yes!” He clears his throat. “I don’t get why you left without telling me and I am angry, but I also don’t understand what it’s like to have to make that decision, and I’m sorry you made it by yourself, and I don’t blame you for running away. Okay? Is that okay?”
He’s so loud, then, so tightly wound and upset, his voice a shade of pleading, that the protests you’d been making die on your lips.
“Yeah,” you say quietly.
“You didn’t think I wanted a baby, and I guess I didn’t give you a reason to think that, but I do want one. I would’ve— if you’d told me, I would’ve lost my mind. I’m still losing it.”
You pull out a chair at the kitchen table to take a wobbly seat. Your heart is racing, that stupid kiddie feeling of being in trouble for hurting him clouded by a lingering sense of mistrust. You’d thought… all these years, that Steve didn’t want kids, or marriage, or anything, and– and– maybe you didn’t run away because of him, maybe it was all you, maybe—
“Hey,” he says, a hand landing between your shoulders, “I’m sorry.”
“For what?” you ask, sharper than you mean to.
“I don’t know. I wanted you to stop freaking out.”
“Well,” you say, licking your lips, your breath coming short and shallow, “it didn’t work.”
Steve Harrington rubs your back. You try desperately to chill out, Leah in the other room, your mom sleeping or listening, probably already wound up from all the ruckus, and Steve, who you haven’t seen in years, who used to kiss all over your face before he’d hug you in the dark of his bedroom, waiting for you to calm down so he can say what he needs to.
A chair pulls out next to yours after a while. Steve sits beside you, resting his hand on your knee.
After a few minutes, you cover his hand with yours.
“She’s beautiful,” he says.
“Looks like her mom,” you mumble.
“Yeah, she does. More like me though.”
You huff a weak laugh.
“Are you gonna throw me out?” Steve asks.
“You want to be her dad?”
For a few seconds, you worry he hasn’t heard you. But he rubs a small back and forth on your leg and says, “Please.”
“Okay. Okay, then. I’m not letting you meet her if you’re not serious, Steve. You have to mean it.” You raise your eyes to his and all his perfect lashes. “Promise?”
He offers his pinky, which is so dumb. This whole scenario is so stupid. Too bad it’s mostly (almost entirely) your own fault.
You shake his pinky. He keeps them tied for a long time.
In a rush, you sniffle yourself dry and usher Leah into the room with a hand on her shoulder. She is so, so small. At least your mom missed the commotion, sleeping sat up in the armchair.
“You promise?” you ask Steve, pausing at the table.
Steve nods emphatically. By the looks of things, he’s all in.
You pull your chair out opposite Steve and scoop Leah into your lap. You hold her wrist in your hand gently and lean down to talk in her ear. “Okay, Lee. I gotta tell you something, okay?”
“Y’okay.”
“This is daddy.”
You can tell he’s not expecting such a straightforward introduction, but after a moment, he cannot hide his smile. Leah looks at him with his almond shaped eyes, all smiles in return.
“Okay? This is daddy, and he’s gonna spend some time with us.”
“Huh?”
You point at Steve, smiling even as your hand trembles between you both. “This is your daddy. He missed you very much and wanted to see you. Can you say hi?”
“Hi,” Leah says, her voice raspy and high.
“Hi, Leah,” he says, ever so slightly choked up. Just barely.
“He was my best friend,” you say, “and he wants to be your best friend, too. Do you want to play a game with daddy?”
“Wam’ play game?” Leah asks Steve.
“Please, I would love to play a game. What game do you like?” he asks.
“Um…” Leah places her hand in his and you could probably weep, but he’s smiling at her with so much love as he waves it up and down you never get there. She shakes her fist up and down in his, giggling when he over exaggerates her strength.
“Woah, strong girl!” he says. “Don’t break my arm!”
Leah gives him a good shake.
—
“I do not understand why you’re so calm. How you’re so calm. This is not how I’ve seen you react to things.”
Steve pushes the shopping cart into Robin’s hip. She squawks and thrusts it at him, the crate of kiddie water bottles he’d balanced on the bottom rung hitting him clean in the ankle.
“How am I supposed to react?” he asks, wincing as he brings his leg up to rub at the new wound.
“Uh, to blow the fuck up?” She tucks her hair behind her ears, staring at him. “I was expecting more whining, if I’m totally honest.”
Steve gets back to the task at hand. The aisle they’re in is pink no matter where you look, full of Barbie dolls and ballerina tutus and teddy bears with hearts in their palms. “What would you want if you were two?” he asks.
Robin offers one of her kinder smiles. “I guess I’d want everything.”
“Well, Y/N’s not gonna like that.”
He wants to take care of you both. He doesn’t want to make you feel like you weren’t doing that already. So. The cart is full of stuff for him mostly, things he’ll need to look after Leah should he ever be allowed to take her by himself, which he assumes he will. He’s got diapers, sippy cups, wet wipes, rash creams, a mountain of clothes he has to remember to keep the receipt for, baby snacks, a changing pad, bath toys. He has a towel like a poncho with a ladybug hood and a great big bottle of bathroom cleaner to shape things up for his baby.
He also got you pajamas. He’s not sure why. He remembers that old pair you used to wear whenever he’d make it to your place with the pink and purple plaid, and he’d been wondering if you kept them, and a desire to see you in them again had come over him and now they’re in the cart. He’s hoping he can sort of slip them in between diapers.
Steve doesn’t want to show you up, but he does want to prove he’s being serious, emotionally and physically —financially. Leah is his baby. Kids are expensive, and she must’ve already cost you a small fortune, and you didn’t want his help but you can bet you’ll be getting it, not singularly because he cared for you (he has to gloss it into that one word, care, things being complicated enough as it stands without remembered notions of falling and love) but because Leah is literally his baby.
He pauses on the spot.
Leah is his girl. He’s allowed to buy her things. It will not be an insult.
He grabs a Barbie with a puppy dog on a leash, a box of stickle bricks, a teddy bear with a big cutesy grin, and purple bunny rabbit to be his best friend.
Robin watches him put it all in the cart in silence.
“Is that enough?” he asks, despite previous internal decisions. She’s his best friend. Everyone needs one.
Robin turns on the spot to look at the shelves behind them, grabbing a box set of storybooks bound with ribbon down the spines. “These ones are from me,” she says, dumping them next to the second jumbo box of diapers.
“I’m not, like, super angry,” he says, getting behind the cart to push for the checkout. “I want kids. I want Leah. This isn’t a bad thing.”
“You kind of missed out on a lot,” Robin says. Carefully, not to be cruel, but to present it to him in case he hasn’t thought about it. Obviously he’s thought about it, but.
“I mean, yeah. But do you remember being a baby?”
“It’s, like, a deep down thing.”
He swallows. “Sure, I don’t like that I didn’t get to be there when Leah was a baby, but… I’m finding it hard to be mad when she was protecting all of us from things we didn’t want, or, that’s what she thought.” Steve gives a jerky shrug. “I’m sure she got enough love from her without me, but I’m gonna make up for whatever she missed out on.”
“Okay. Well, when you explode, I’m literally right here.”
Steve is overcome with the urge to snuggle her in the middle of the store, but he hits her with the shopping cart again and feels the thanks get stuck in his throat. “I’m not gonna explode. I’m happy.”
Steve is thrilled. He has a baby. He has a child. Maybe it’s not the wife and six kids he thought he wanted, but Leah is his baby.
“She’s mine,” he says.
“I know, dingus. You’ve said it a hundred times.”
He parks his cart at the belt behind a grandma buying cat food. “I can’t wait for you to meet her, Rob, she’s–”
“She’s beautiful,” Robin says, rolling her eyes. “We’re way too young for kids, Steven. You were supposed to go to college.”
“I’m still gonna go!”
“With what money?”
Steve will save again. It’s community college.
Robin holds his eye. He avoids it, starts putting things on the checkout belt. “You’re doing the only thing you can do,” she says, “I don’t wanna be friends with a deadbeat, but I wanted you to go. I’m too young to be an Aunt.”
“I’ll going, Rob.”
“Fine. I believe you.”
“Can you help?”
She pulls stuff out of the cart reluctantly.
Together, they pack what can be bagged and take it all to the car. Steve drops Robin off at home without much of a goodbye —either she’ll call him tonight or he’ll call her, ‘cos one way or another, they’re gonna talk. Then he takes the side road to your mom’s house and parks the bimmer behind your old blue Pontiac.
He grabs the toys and the bag of groceries. He’ll have to make another trip for the diapers, but he figures it’s best to see your reaction before he lugs it all up the driveway.
You answer the door. Parenting has been going better than expected considering you kept the baby a secret for two whole years, and you’re already smiling when you see him. Things were awkward that first week, but he’s been coming by every single day after work if he works, bright and early if he doesn’t. He can tell you’re growing more confident in his promises. He’s not gonna realise how big this whole thing is and run. He’s well aware of how world-changing his decision was to stay, but it wasn’t a decision at all.
“Hi, is she awake yet?” he asks. Leah naps every day at noon.
“Mm-hm. She was asking me for daddy all morning,” you say. Secrets you may have kept, but you’re glad for both of them whenever Steve and Leah get along. “I promised you’d be here after dinner.”
“Is it cool that I’m early?”
You eye the bags in his hands. “Sure. I already told you, I’m not gonna dictate anything. You can see her when you want to… What’s that?”
“I was thinking I’d make dinner?” He shakes the lighter bag. “And this is for Leah.”
“Right. Okay.”
You let Steve in. He, despite all things in his body that remember this song and dance and demand he kiss your cheek hello, powers through to the kitchen without making a fool of himself.
“Brought your favourite. Thought Leah would probably like it, since you liked it so much,” he says. “And those pastries you loved.”
“You want me to go grab her?”
“Where is she?”
“She’s sitting with my mom. Don’t think she heard the door, she would’ve come out running by now. She’s a little sleepy.”
“That’s okay. I can put all this away and I’ll go see if she’s awake.”
You cross your arms over your stomach, leaning against the counter. “You didn’t have to get stuff for me.”
“I wanted to.”
“You don’t have to, though. Leah’s your baby, but I’m…”
He feels achy in his jaw. He abandons the bag full of groceries to look at you fully. “If you’d turned up here without Leah, after two years of full radio silence, no letters and no clue where you went, if you came back, I’d want to see you. You know that, right?”
“I…”
“I asked your mom where you went, did you know that?”
“No.”
“Well, she wouldn’t tell me.”
“I don’t think she knew.”
Steve hates how much that annoys him, hates the way he relates to it. He dries his hands on his pants, not sure if he wants to hug you or tip your head with his thumb at chin, forcing you to look at him, to say the things he’s said in his head before bed a couple nights a week for years.
Steve Harrington does not love by halves.
“You’d tell me if you were gonna leave again, right?” he asks.
“We are leaving.”
“I know, I know, but. You’re not gonna disappear in the middle of the night.”
“No, Steve. I’ll tell you before we go home. I promise.”
His shoulders relax. “Okay, then, I’ll keep bringing stuff you like, too. Trade deal.”
“Mutually beneficial. I won't kidnap your baby again and you bring me raspberry turnovers.”
“Exactly.”
You surprise him with a laugh. “Okay.”
“Okay, good,” he says, grinning, wondering if he’s finally paving a path into your lap again.
From the doorway of the kitchen comes a pleased gasp. “Daddy?” Leah asks, her eyes widening in delight, feet stomping on the spot, “Hi, daddy!”
He was supposed to give this up for community college? Steve squats down in a half-second and holds out his hands, ready for an armful of sleepy toddler. Her hair is all puffy and her pajamas big at the neck like she’d wriggled for hours, but she’s soft, smells clean as he wraps his arms around her and she burrows into his neck.
“Hi, Leah,” he says softly.
Leah hums her content.
“Good nap?”
“Yeah.”
“Yeah? Did you have a good dream?”
She laughs as he strokes her back. He must’ve tickled her. “Da-ddy,” she says, a long, pulling word.
She’s so small Steve can’t hug her properly like this, so he hooks her in one arm and stands up to his full height, catching your unreadable expression from over her shoulder. Whatever you’d been thinking fades away, your smile strengthening as Leah pulls out of his neck to wave at you.
“Mommy,” she says, poking at Steve’s neck. “Look. Daddy’s for dinner.”
Steve laughs loudly. “I’m for dinner? You’re gonna eat me? I thought you liked me!” His head falls in a dramatic agony. “Leah wants to cook me up for dinner, I can’t believe it.”
“No!” Leah says, giggling as she grabs his face. She pulls at his cheeks, forcing his head up. “Not eating,” she says, like he’s silly.
Steve shifts her so she’s sitting braced on his lower belly, looking down at her. God, she’s so pretty. She’s perfect. She’s tiny, slim for her age according to you, but she isn’t weak. She holds herself up, her hands confident as they spread over his chest. Steve has to confess that this feeling is the strongest he’s ever experienced. Nothing compares to looking at this little kid who already treats him like he’s the best person she’s ever met, knowing that she’s his. He has to look after her. He gets to be loved by her without hesitation. Leah has no reason to love him, and yet here she is giggling in his arms from the excitement of seeing him. It’s like every day she likes him more, and every day, Steve gets to love her more. It’s so weird, but it's nice.
“I brought you something,” he says, shifting her again so he can cover her back with one arm, using the other to brush a stray bit of lint off of her face. “But– mommy, can she have it now?” he asks.
You flush. Steve recognises this look on you, pleased and startled. He’s seen it on you a hundred different times. You were always that girl who didn’t expect kindness, or to be considered. He remembers how endearing it was to surprise you with a kiss to say thank-you, or picking up the bill no matter how casual dinner felt, or something as small as helping you into your pajamas after you’d both showered. It was heartbreaking, but he’s never been unfamiliar with the bare minimum.
“Yeah, of course she can.”
“Alright,” Steve says, grinning. “Your Aunt Robin sent me with a gift for you, but daddy’s is better, so you can have mine first.” He twists for the bag it’s in and yanks it out, Barbie to him so she can’t see. “It’s only small, but I saw it and I thought you’d like it.”
“Can have?” she asks.
“Depends. Can I have a hug first?” he asks, checking your face to make sure he’s not being weird.
Leah nods erratically and throws herself forward. Steve gets a big kiss right on his smooth-shaven cheek, and he can’t stop himself from beaming, his punched out sigh poorly suppressed as he turns her to give her a much gentler kiss at the very top of her cheek. “Thanks, Lee.”
Her eyes squint with a smile. “Can I have, please?”
Steve brings the box up and tosses it to flip it, brandishing it right way round to her glee.
“Barbie!” she cries.
“With a puppy!”
“Oh gosh.”
Steve bursts out laughing. “Gosh! Should we get the box open? Then you can gosh at the accessories. She has two pairs of shoes, Leah. Two!”
Leah squirms to be put down, hands clenched tightly on each side of the box. You’re already grabbing scissors to get it open.
“Thank you.” You lean over Leah to start the dissection.
“Don’t,” he says, quiet but less shame-faced. “You don’t have to say thanks.”
You shake your head to yourself. “Yeah, well.”
“She deserves it, and it’s not up to you to say thanks. I’m serious.”
“It’s nice of you.”
He doesn’t know how to prove how certain he is about staying. He decides to keep his mouth shut for now, which is hard. Almost slips up that whole evening. You don’t look happy when he doubles back before he leaves that night with the bag of snacks and the huge box of diapers, but he catches you as you and Leah stand on the stoop waving at the bimmer. You’re smiling. A real one, teeth on display for the first time since you came home.
—
“Okay,” you say quietly, “up, baby. And another one. Good job.”
Leah demonstrates a unique level of concentration as she climbs up the stairs with you. You’d have carried her if she didn’t insist she could do it herself with a displeased squeal. Her eyes are nearly closed, her tongue slipping between her lips and a hand thrown out for balance, the other held in your own as she manages two, then three, the few shallow steps that lead into the WSQK building.
“Hi,” you greet a quiet man sitting at the door. “Is Steve in?”
“Think so. Why?”
“I wanted to talk to him, if that’s okay.”
The man gives you a suspicious look that eventually metes. “Sure. Gotta knock the booth before you go in, though, they might be on the air.”
“Sure. Thank you.”
Leah stumbles with you inside. There’s a wide wooden panelled room and smaller glass one within. You knock on it and wait for movement, too scared to look through the panels. You’ve learned that Robin has her very own radio show on the 94.5 called The Morning Squawk, and Steve, through best-friend nepotism, gets to be her sound guy. He has this WSQK van they drive around to do on the road interviews, and they’re both a hundred times happier here than they were rewinding tapes at Family Video.
It’s a pretty firm knot of roots to lay.
The door opens a good fifteen seconds after you’d knocked. You’re immediately greeted by a blondified Robin Buckley, her freckled cheeks slack with surprise. “Uh…”
“Hi, Robin.”
“Hi,” she says.
The last time you saw Robin, you’d been laying on Steve’s couch in his socks and what might’ve been Robin’s own sweatshirt, the three of you arguing on what movie to watch and what candy you were gonna tip into your popcorn. You’d laid your head in Steve’s lap.
“Leah,” you say, clearing your throat as subtly as possible, “say hi, bubby.”
“Hi, bubby,” Leah says.
Robin snorts.
“This is your daddy’s best friend ever, Aunt Robin,” you say, shooting Robin a sorry look as you mouth, “Is that cool?”
Robin culls your misery and manages a real smile. “That’s me, babe.” She bends at the waist. “Oh, you really do look like Steve. Shit, this is so cool.” Her awkwardness has melded to full-bodied delight. “You’re like his twin! Well, you do look like your mommy, duh, but this is trippy! Hey, did you get your books?”
Leah looks up at her with huge eyes.
“Did you like your storybooks?” you ask Leah, kneeling down behind her to hold her shoulder. “Aunt Robin gave you those ones, remember, daddy read one to you about the ugly duckling?”
“The duckies,” Leah says factually.
“Awesome,” Robin says. “I’m so happy you liked them, sweetie. And I’m so happy to meet you.”
You don’t question for a second that she means it.
You pat Leah on the shoulder. “Aunt Robin is your daddy’s best friend in the whole world.”
“Daddy’s here?” she asks Robin.
“Uh, not right now, he had to go get lunch.”
“Oh.”
“But you can totally come in!” she says, opening the door to the booth wide. “I can show you how the radio works! And then Steve– then dad can come back. I bet he’ll be here any second.”
“You’re not busy?” you ask.
“I mean?” Robin laughs, nervously incredulous, “if I ever have kids they’d be her cousins. That’s pretty important. And, like, she’s Steve’s, so? I’d die for her?” Robin scratches a hand through her hair. “Come on, baby Stevie, I’ll show you the keyboard. It’s your dad’s favourite gimmick.”
You hover in the middle of the small room as Robin slides a chair over to the desk with a keyboard and a mic balanced on top of it. She glances at you before she holds her hands out to Leah, and Leah goes into them willingly. Robin pulls her up and settles her in the chair. She can barely see the keys, but she’s already reaching for them as Robin starts to explain which ones do what, toggling a switch that you assume makes sure whatever sounds Leah plays are off air.
You sit yourself down on a loveseat by the door.
“We can play all of this stuff on the radio in the car,” Robin says, “do you listen to the radio?”
“The music, bubby,” you say.
Leah gives a neck-breaking nod.
“Well, me and dad choose what songs to play. Do you have a favourite song?”
“She loves ‘Save it For Later’ by The Beat. She gets super into it,” you say.
“Oh, we have that one! Let’s queue it up, Leah.”
Leah mashes the keyboard in a cacophony of introductions and funny sounds, then a long run of the Rockin’ Robin intro. She finds a sound bite of applause loaded up on the tape deck, hitting it over and over as she giggles.
“Be careful, Lee, don’t break it.”
Her hitting doesn’t slow.
“Lee,” you say more firmly, “baby, stop. You have to be nice. Don’t slap the buttons.”
Leah throws you a glare. “Mommy,” she whines.
“What? You have to be nice to other people’s things. Aunt Robin is letting you play with her keyboard, but it’s important. It’s okay to try all the buttons! But with nice hands. Yeah?”
The ajar door opens fully. “Is my Leah not being nice?” Steve asks, already beaming with all his teeth as he sees her behind the keyboard. “I don’t believe that for a second!”
Leah wiggles her excitement in the depths of the chair. Doesn’t bother calling out for him, there’s no need. Steve laughs, saying hi with a quick hand dropped on your shoulder, the gentlest squeeze anyone’s ever given with his thumb rubbing a half circle before he bends down by Leah’s chair. “Hi,” he says, your heart beating so loudly in your ears that you hardly hear him. “You’re at the radiohouse! Did Rockin’ Robin show you how to play a song? Do you wanna talk on the microphone?”
“Hi,” Leah says.
“Hi.”
“Hug me now?”
Steve’s like butter in the sun. He melts into nothing. “Yeah, babe, right now.”
She slinks forward and he picks her up, standing with a baby on his hip like he’s been doing it all his life.
“I’m gonna play her a song,” Robin says. “My queues almost empty.”
“Okay, thanks,” he says, to which Robin wrinkles her nose.
“Sure,” she says, sending you a look as she heads to her desk. Like, get a load of this idiot.
Steve presses his nose to Leah’s hair and smells her. Then he smiles, patting the small of her back.
Leah looks straight at you and says, “Daddy’s here,” in case you weren’t aware.
Steve blinks away a pained flutter, his brow pulling like he’d been in pain, quickly wiped away and hidden by the time Leah glances at him again.
You think maybe, for a second, he’d wanted to cry.
“Steve?” you ask quietly. “You okay?”
“Yeah. No, yeah.”
“You sure?”
He tugs Leah higher on his hip. “I’m okay,” he tells you, holding your gaze, his left sclera bloodshot but his nearly-tears blinked away. “I’m great, ‘cos Leah’s here,” he adds, pressing his mouth to Leah’s cheek, “at work! She’s a working girl now, we gotta get you on the payroll.”
It’s a little while later, sitting on the couch and waiting for Steve to ask you what it is you’re doing here, when the door opens. Leah perks up in his lap, the headphones she’d been wearing falling down around her neck in a heap that makes her cringe, giving a warbly cry as Steve offers assurances to her.
You’re focused on the teenager standing in the door. It’s the kid.
His eyes widen at the sight of you.
“Lucas Sinclair,” you greet, giving him a stony look. “You ratted me out.”
“Uh– did I?”
“I know it was you.”
Lucas grimaces. “Are we sure it was me?”
“I saw you.”
“Steve could’ve got the information from anyone.”
You glare for a few more seconds, then relax. “I’m messing with you, Lucas. I’m not mad. Even if you are a narc.”
“I am not! I told Dustin and it was Dustin that radioed Steve. He’s the narc. I said we had to wait for proof.”
“Well, thanks for trying.”
Lucas hesitates with you, though he comes further into the room and lets the door shut behind him. “I am sorry. Kind of.”
“We’re working things out.”
Leah tugs the headphones off of her head and out of the outlet in a great show of toddler rage, Steve laughing where he holds her. He grabs the headphones before Leah can throw them at the floor. “Hey!” he admonishes through laughter, “Those aren’t mine, babe. Should we put them on the desk?”
Steve takes them from her and sets them high. He moves the chair, bumping Leah on his knee, forcing her eyes to the new figure in the room. “Look, Lee, it’s your Uncle Lucas.”
Lucas gives an awkward, endearing smile. “Hi.”
“Hi!” Leah says.
“What’s up?” Steve asks.
“Can I get a ride, tonight? I asked my dad but he’s going to that miniature car thing.”
“Where to?”
“Max’s.”
“Why are you being cagey?” Steve asks, lifting an eyebrow.
“I’m not!”
“You so are, dude. What’s happening at Max’s?”
“Nothing! She doesn’t, like, know I’m going, that’s all.”
Steve leans in his chair in what would be a total act of casual derision if he weren’t also holding Leah to his front, his fingers waving patterns into her tummy affectionately. “So I’m gonna be on her shit list for whatever it is you have planned? No deal, dude.”
“I’m not in trouble. She’s not mad at me,” Lucas says.
“For once.”
“She’s not. I have a surprise planned? And it’s gonna get ruined on my bike, so.”
Steve’s suspicion wavers. “What sort of surprise?” he asks.
His smile is nice. Doesn’t it suit him? He’s calm where he sits despite the rumble of noise coming from Robin’s booth and Leah talking to herself in his lap. The red glow of the ON AIR light makes his brown hair nearly purple at the tops but leaves his face untouched, tan fading pale in the fall, his beauty marks the darkest bit of colour to him when you aren’t looking into the well of his eyes. His irises are like wet tree bark. His lashes look long from across the room.
And his biceps don’t look half bad when they’re wrapped around your baby. Her tiny stature emphasises the bulk he’s put on while you were in Portland. You’ve been noticing more of him lately—his weight gain, the change in his muscle, the cut of his hair, those reading glasses he keeps in the console of his car. But there are things about him that didn’t change. He’s pretty happy, as things go. He likes doing things for other people.
Their conversation drifts into focus. “…not too much, right?”
“Nah, I think that’s appropriate. Four years of dating is a long time.”
“Even if you’re broken up for half a year in the middle?”
Steve chuckles. Leah looks up at the sound. “I wouldn’t mention that part,” he says. “Look, I’ll come get you after I’m done here–”
“You’re not coming tonight?” you ask, entirely sincere in asking. Not a lick of judgement in it, but surprise, and a second emotion you aren’t eager to name.
“I was– I was gonna come,” Steve says. “If that’s cool.”
“Oh, sure. Sorry. I thought you were– Yeah, it’s fine,” you say.
Steve looks at you for a long second. “I can’t miss out on dinner,” he says, dipping down to speak in Leah’s ear, “can I? What am I making tonight, Lee, do you remember?”
“S’getti,” she says, with a vindication bordering evil.
Steve presses his lips together. Shrugs at Lucas smugly. “S’getti,” he says. “I’ll be there at six, okay?”
Lucas shoots an “Awesome, thank you, sorry,” over his shoulder as he leaves.
“Thank you sorry,” Leah repeats.
Steve has to lock into work and he doesn’t ask you to leave, moving Leah around in his arms and plugs the headphones in. She enjoys the novelty enough to sit there without complaining, bathed in attention. It’s weird to have Leah with you without having to look after her. Like, she gets uncomfortable and Steve moves her. She whines in his arm and he opens a drawer to uncover a bag of chips. He does ask if it’s alright for her to eat them, but you say yes and he doesn’t need guidance after that. He wipes her dirty face in his sleeve and twists a knob on the keyboard.
He is startlingly capable.
You are startlingly hot.
You pull at your neckline, wishing you’d brought a book to read or a zip tie to garrote yourself with for thinking such stupid shitty thoughts.
—
Steve packs his shit up at five with Leah on his hip, happy to stay with him. You’ve been quiet bordering silent and he hasn’t summoned up the bravery to ask why. He didn’t wanna look a gift horse in the mouth, ‘cos you’re here, and you brought Lee without any begging on his part. He shows her off to everyone they pass on the way out, less subtly to the smiley cleaner Cindy who loves to call him handsome in the morning. Who’s this? she asks.
This is my baby, Leah.
The problem arises when he’s trying to pass Leah to you to part ways in the parking lot.
“I don’t think I’ve ever heard something that loud,” Robin laments, blinking fast. Because, despite years and time to learn, he’s her ride home.
Leah screams another ear-splitter. “No!” she’s shouting. “No, no!”
She sobs.
You try to disentangle her from Steve’s chest. He can feel your individual fingers pressing into his pecs. “Lee, come on!” you say, laughing nervously. “Daddy has stuff to do, we’ll see him for dinner!”
She sobs louder.
Robin shakes her head as though dislodging water from her ears.
“Baby, please,” you say, apparently possessing the patience of a god, “it’s okay, I promise, it’s not long. We’ll be okay for a bit.”
Leah sews her hands in his hair tightly, yanking until it stings. Steve flinches and you immediately stop trying to make Leah disengage.
“Sorry, honey,” you say, and Steve realises with a full body start you’ve spoken to him, your hand resting open on his upper shoulder. It’s an obvious slip of the tongue. You lean forward with a slight stammer, “I– Leah, don’t pull, you’re hurting.”
“Not going,” Leah says.
“Just for now!”
“No!”
You give Steve a wide-eyed frown. “I’m sorry, I don’t know what’s going on. She doesn’t do this… usually.”
“That’s okay, it’s fine, maybe you could come with me?”
You nibble your lip. “I gotta go check on my mom, I haven’t been home all day, I don’t know if she’s eaten yet.”
Steve tries to pass Leah into your arms with renewed purpose. The snap of hair behind his ear gives him pause. “Uh, can she come with me?” Steve asks, loud now, his head angled against her hand. “Ow, Lee!”
Leah stops pulling his hair with a sob.
“I’ll take her with me and I’ll drop Robin off, pick Lucas up early, and we’ll come straight to the house.”
You falter.
The thought of you not trusting him hurts his stomach, but you say, “Steve, can you deal with that? She might not get any happier for a while.”
“Sure I can, you’ve had to do it a hundred times. I’m mostly patient. If she doesn’t calm down, I won’t yell–”
“I didn’t think you would.” You pout, wrinkling your nose. “You’d have to move the car seat–”
“Yeah, I got one.”
“You got a car seat?”
“Installed it last week. Jesus Christ, Leah, not the hair!” He reaches up to force her hand as gently as he can away from his scalp. “Baby, owwww. Not the hair.”
Leah shudders away to check he’s not angry. He can see it on her tiny face, the worry. He brings his hand to her cheek, finds his hand is too big, and has to rub her cheek with his thumb alone. “You wanna come with daddy to drop off your Aunt Robin?” he asks.
“Yeah.”
“Yeah?”
“Come with you,” she says, a crocodile tear rolling down her cheek.
“But mommy has to go home, is that okay?”
Leah shudders again. “Y’okay.”
“Okay. Give mommy a big kiss,” he says, repeating one of your favourite lines when it’s time for Steve to leave.
You get a kiss. You’re startled, he thinks, almost expressionless in how slack you’ve gone, but Steve smiles at you and you smile in turn. “You know how to do the car seat?” you ask.
“Sure. It’s got the two mechanisms, right? Her arm goes through each of the triangle strap thingys?”
“Yeah. Okay. Are you sure you can manage?”
“Are you okay with me taking her?”
You shrug. He can see why Leah does it as much as she does. “I guess I am. I mean, when we go home… like, you’ll have to have her for summers, I guess?” you ask, and you’re as beautiful as you usually are, the awkward twist of you and your tired eyes don’t touch it. You were beautiful when he walked into the sound room and found you in the loveseat, beautiful when you told him you’d stay for now without saying goodbye, beautiful when he spotted you across the parking lot with his surprise on your hip. You’ve always been beautiful. He knows you don’t feel strongly about your looks, but he does, and now you made his girl? And she looks so much like the two of you?
Steve stares at you, not even in hopes of any realisation, but he stares at you and thinks I cannot let this girl go back to Portland without me.
He doesn’t expect you to stay. All he needs is to beg a ride.
Because yes, Steve will become your awkward cling-on. He’ll find a shitty apartment close to you and he’ll build his life around Leah if that’s all he can have.
But it’s not everything he wants.
“You go take care of your mom, and we’ll meet you for dinner at 6? 6:15 at the latest?”
“Okie dokie.”
Steve rolls his eyes to stop from kissing your cheek. “Say see you later, mommy,” he tells Leah.
“See you later, mommy,” Leah says.
You use his shoulder as an anchor to kiss her cheek. He swears you rub his arm as you pull away, but Robin would call that delusional thinking. “See you soon, bug.”
He watches you walk away. Every step is perfect. “Your mom’s such a bombshell,” he murmurs, “holy sugar, she’s everything.” You turn over the top of the car and give him a wave, blowing Leah a kiss. He wants to catch it. He finger waves back.
Then he spins and finds Robin judging him hard.
It takes them twenty whole human minutes to figure out how to get Leah safely secured in her car seat. Then he spends four minutes framing her face in his hands and kissing her cheeks, enamoured beyond anything to see her in the bimmer. Robin laughs at how lame he is and he strokes a hair off of Leah’s forehead rather than feed into her ridicule. His baby laughs up a storm as he chucks her under the chin.
“Steve, I’m gonna starve!” Robin warns.
“Right, right!”
He kisses Leah’s small forehead and clambers out.
Robin talks a big talk, but she bends around in the passenger seat to chatter to Leah the whole way to her neighbourhood. “And then dad got us stuck on the side of the road! It was crazy! I told him we were in trouble and he kept laughing! But nothing is that funny, Leah, nothing. I think it’s ’cos your dad has a bunch of screws loose from that time he slipped on melted ice cream at work.”
“Don’t listen to her, Lee!” Steve protests, laughing at her rolling giggles.
“He busted his head! Luckily I saved him, because I am very very smart and I went to camp–”
“You went to Girl Scout’s sleep away camp, that’s not real camp! You were there for a week.”
“But they taught me what to do when your dingus gets a concussion,” Robin says, in her silky radio voice that Leah’s magnetised to. “And that’s why dad only looks a bit wonky, as opposed to a lot.”
“I’m not wonky, am I, Lee?” Steve asks, checking the rearview for her.
“Wonky?” she asks.
“Does daddy look wonky?”
“Mm,” she says.
“What! That is so mean! Baby, I thought you liked dad?”
She giggles and goes all shy. Robin, bless her clumsy, alternative, mixed-up huge heart, goes soft as taffy against the seat. “We don’t like him at all, do we?” she asks, reaching out to rub Leah’s arm. Steve nearly hits a curb trying to watch. “Stinky dad. You can be my girl instead, if mom wants to share. I don’t mind your Harrington blood.”
He drops Robin off, but her mom comes out and wants to meet Leah and that’s a whole thing. She’s squarely heartbroken when she first sees her, going, “Aw,” and “Oh,” as her eyes fill with tears.
“Mom!” Robin says.
“Sorry, but she’s beautiful. Well done, Stevie.”
He murmurs a Thank you, Mrs. Buckley and gets the usual It’s Melissa, Steve.
It takes another ten minutes to get Leah in the car after her quick trip. He heads straight for Lucas’ and finds him freaking out about the bouquet he got Max —Erica told him to put salt in the water to keep them fresh. Steve drives him to the florists ten minutes before they close and they end up with two smaller bunches combined into a vibrant hodgepodge.
Steve buys a handful of daisies for Leah, tucking one behind her ear.
Max likes her flowers, but she’s far more interested in the baby. Lucas stands behind her rubbing his mouth.
“She does look like you,” Max says thoughtfully.
“Right? She has my eyes.”
“Yeah.” Max leans into the car. “Hi, Steve’s baby,” she says quietly.
“This is your Aunt Max,” Steve says.
Leah, who has taken all these new aunts and uncles in her stride (or is too young to get what the hell is going on), offers Max a huge smile with her tiny baby teeth. “Hi Am’ Max,” she says.
Max grins despite herself. “Hi. Are you having a good day?”
“Yessss.”
“Yeah?” She glares at Steve momentarily before standing in front of him, like she’s annoyed he’s seen her being normal, like he doesn’t catch her in a good mood all the time. “Don’t worry, you don’t have to lie. Did you have dinner?”
“Max, I am perfectly capable of looking after her.”
“I’m just checking!” She shakes Leah’s hand nicely. “This party had enough boys,” she says.
Steve ruffles Max’s hair, unbound and bouncing behind her. He’s lucky he makes it to the car with his hand.
Steve sighs when they’re on the road to your place. “Okie dokie,” he says, clenching the steering wheel to listen to the leather creak, “let’s go see your mom. It’s only–” He checks his watch. Blinks big and wide. It’s 6:37PM already, and it’s a five minute drive to your side of Hawkins. “Oh, my god. You’re mom is gonna kill me dead.”
“Kill?”
“Kiss!” he says, cringing. “Yep, she’s gonna kiss me! No other words.”
“Y’okay.”
“Who taught you to say that so cutely?” he asks, fully stressed now, the tightness in his voice surprising a giggle out of Leah. “Stop laughing!”
She giggles worse.
He can’t be more anxious as he pulls up to the house. He climbs out of the car, grabs Leah from her car seat, and in his rush to get her home before you murder him, slams his head so hard into the roof of the car he sees stars.
“Oh, fuck,” he says, holding Leah to his chest as his vision fades out.
Your laugh sounds out from behind him. “Every parent has to do it, Steve, I’m sorry to say,” you call, jogging down the path to the car. “I was wondering where you guys went. It’s… Steve?”
He blinks hard as he stands up, his arms around Leah shaky as his head pounds and pounds and pounds. “Sorry,” he says.
“Steve, what’s wrong?” You rest your arm behind his shoulders to hold him. “Hey, are you okay? Do you need to sit down?”
He urges you to take Leah.
The pain is radiating from the centre of his skull outward, into each eye and down the nape of his neck. It’s such a sudden sharpness he loses his breath, spotty vision fading in and out as he curls into himself.
“Lee, can you go inside, baby?” he hears you ask. There are a few steps, your dark shadows on the ground drifting further away before one returns, all alone. “Steve, what happened? How hard did you hit your head?” you ask softly.
“It’s– I got that–” Every word pulls at the nausea brewing in his stomach. “I’m gonna–”
Steve gags. He aims for the grass. Everything goes white.
—
Steve does a valiant job of keeping himself upright long enough for you to sit him down inside, but after that, he’s useless.
“Okay, it’s okay,” you’re saying, a ringing in your ears you can’t cope with, “it’s alright, Steve, you’re okay. Come forward, honey, let me see–”
You aren’t sure he’s conscious, but he slumps forward regardless to expose the back of his head. You feel through his hair and pull your hand out quick to check for blood on your fingertips, but they come away clean.
“Daddy?” Leah asks, wandering into the living room with her little smile and a daisy drooping behind her ear.
“How was meemaw, bub?” you ask.
“Sleeping.”
“Why don’t you go snuggle with her for a minute? I’ll bring you a buppy?”
Leah hugs your leg from behind. “Buppy?”
“Yeah, do you want one?”
Leah shoots for the bedroom. You take her absence as an opportunity to pull Steve’s head up, meeting his droopy gaze. “Steve, baby,” you say, so softly it’d be a wonder if he could hear you, “are you okay?”
He groans. “Just a migraine.”
“Are you sure?”
“Feels like one.”
“You get them a lot?”
“More since you left.”
You swallow roughly. “I’m gonna call an ambulance.”
“No.” At that, he sits up, holds his own head up to plead, “You don’t have to. I’m fine, this just happens sometimes. After I hit my head at the mall, I get these killer migraines.”
“You hit your head, though. I think you have a concussion.”
“Not my first one.”
You hold his cheek in your hand. Your thumb brushes over his beauty marks. “No?” you ask.
“Had three.”
“You never told me.”
“I know. Didn’t want you to think I was– some loser? I don’t know. I don’t know, I don’t know why it was hard to be honest with you, guess I thought– it’s not like it’s ever done any good before. I always say the wrong thing.”
You get on your knees in front of him. To cope with the strain of looking up at him, but more to see him face to face. “Steve, you nearly yacked in my yard. I think we’re past appearances.”
Steve covers his mouth with a big hand.
You tuck as much of his hair behind his ears as you can. “Can you look at me? I want to check your pupils.”
He opens his eyes properly, pouring his gaze into yours without hesitation. You check the size of each pupil and find them normal, though the longer he looks, the bigger they become. “I think there’s something wrong, Steve. Your eyes are blown.”
“It’s fine. It’s not ‘cos I hit my head. It’s a headache.”
“You almost knocked yourself out. You’re throwing up. What if I don’t call the ambulance and Leah’s dad dies on my couch?”
“I don’t need an ambulance. I barely puked, it was all spit.”
“Steve.”
“I’m serious. I didn’t even go for the first two concussions, and the third one, they said this could happen. Turns out that taking a couple of bad knocks to the head makes you fragile, I’m fine.” He cups your cheek. “Jesus, don’t feel sorry for me–”
“I do feel sorry. I’m so sorry.”
Seconds of stringy silence follow. He squints at you through the pain. “It’s okay,” he says, his own thumb rubbing at your veins. “I’m sorry, too.”
You pull his hand off your face. Not without care.
“…Can I please call an ambulance?” you ask, uneasy.
“I don’t need one.”
“How do you know?” you whisper.
He turns his hand in your grip to hold yours. His eyes are brown and teary with pain, but they’re so familiar. “I just do. Can you trust me, please?”
You try to stand. Steve squeezes your hand in his and makes you sit on the couch beside him as his eyes shutter closed and his head tips back, the column of his throat there and pale and working as he swallows his pain. You stare at the length of it with your hand too hot in his grip, wondering when it’s acceptable to pull your hand away, and if you’d even want to when the time came.
You told me you didn’t want this, you think, your two joined hands rising and falling where he’s pulled them to his chest. You swear you can see his heart in his chest. The gentle bump-bump of it against skin. A miserable wife.
“Can I get you anything?”
He croaks a hum. “Mm, no.”
“Are you sure? I have aspirin.”
His fingers flex. “It’ll go away.”
“When?”
“It depends. It can take a few hours, sometimes, but I don’t get the worst of the pain for long.” His voice is hoarse with its quiet.
“The other times?”
“They can last for days.”
You’d seen the physical change in Steve. He went weak and sweaty in seconds. His nausea was obviously extreme. You can feel the tremor in his hand as he talks like every word spurs pain.
“It won’t, though,” he says. “Don’t worry. I need five minutes and I can make dinner.”
“Uh, no you can’t. You can sit right here until you feel better, thanks.”
He sinks impossibly further into your mom’s old couch. “Okay. Sorry.”
“It’s okay.” You lower your tone. “I don’t mind. I’m sorry if you thought I would.”
“I didn’t mean to–”
“To what? Give yourself a concussion on the roof of the car? I gathered that.”
“Didn’t mean for it to become your problem,” he says.
“You’re not a problem, Steve. I promise.”
You fight for better judgement and lose, letting yourself caress a piece of hair away from his pale neck.
“I think I really screwed up,” he says. “Think I made out all the wrong things. You didn’t think you could tell me about the baby–”
“We don’t have to do this again–”
“Yeah, we do. We do. Because I made you think I wouldn’t want you. I lied to protect my ego and I could’ve had everything I wanted,” —his brow pulls tight and glared, his jaw rigid— “and I hurt you.”
“I hurt myself. You didn’t make me run away, Steve. I did it all alone. I’m good at that.”
“I don’t want you to be alone.”
“I don’t want you to live a life that you hate.”
“I don’t. I won’t. How could I ever hate anything about her?”
You have to give him that. But. “I didn’t tell you for a bunch of reasons, Steve,” you confess, hardly wanting to let it out. “I was scared of everything, you and your parents, making you into the reluctant husband, or– or at the least the reluctant father. I didn’t want to deal with it. And I didn’t wanna be that stupid girl who got knocked up by the prom king. I ran away and nobody had to know.”
“It wouldn’t have been like that.”
“I realise that now.”
His head lolls to see you. He pulls his lashes apart enough to peek through them, that dark hedging a line you’d like to count. You tip your head toward his and face him across the couch cushions, hands joined and hot as a hearth.
“It was never messing around, to me,” he says quietly. Sweat wets the hair at his temples.
“You don’t have to–”
“I got my heart stomped on pretty hard over and over and I stopped trying. I put all my cards on the table every time. But with you, I couldn’t do it again. I thought I couldn’t, so I acted less into you than I was.”
You remember all his kisses and tight armed hugs, his affectionate nudges, his nose lined to your temple as he bore down. It hadn’t felt like less. But you’d never thought it was more, either.
“I pretended we were this summer fling, told you I didn’t want kids, that I wanted to live in the city and get a full time job at a firm with a company car, like that stuff mattered.” He frowns at you deeply. “I’m sorry. I wish I could change it.”
His throat bobs.
“S’it still hurting?” you murmur.
“So much,” he murmurs too, holding your hand against his heart. “I can’t get it to stop.”
“I can’t do this with you.”
He shakes his head minutely. “M’not asking you for anything you can’t give me. I’m just sorry.”
You want him to lean in and align his mouth to yours. You imagine it vividly, the press and taste of him, the scratch of the stubble on his upper lip and his hand slipping behind your neck, squeezing your nape gently, his thumb at the hinge of your jaw trying to open your mouth. You want him so badly it’s a palpable ache in your teeth, like he’s already kissed you harsh and quick, that clack of a collision and the subsequent metallic on your tongue.
But you aren’t lying. You can’t do this.
A thudding noise echoes from your mom’s room, compelling you up and away from his warm touch. Your hand sings with pins and needles as it falls out of his.
“Lee?” you call. “Sorry. I have to go make sure she’s okay.”
He frowns again as he pinches the bridge of his nose. “That’s fine. I’ll be here.”
—
The bedroom throw blankets haven’t changed since you were here last. Your mom didn’t waste much time turning it into a guest room, but the sheets and blankets are the same, soft with wear in your hands as you lay them out. Leah waits for you to finish before climbing into bed, her bottle teat bitten between her teeth. It slips out of her hand with a rush of air as she slips into the pillows. You pick it up and offer it to her again, your shoulders aflame with the weight of an uncommon gaze.
“What side do you sleep on?”
Steve, at half-mast but less obviously pained, takes his time answering.
“Left.”
“Left side’s all yours.”
He shuffles forward in a polo and a pair of his old sweatpants. You, in a horrible stroke of great luck, had them in the bottom of the chest of drawers.
“Make room for me?” he asks Leah.
She grins around her bottle.
You’re pretty sure that if Steve can’t open his eyes for more than ten seconds at a time, he can’t drive, and you don’t want him to fall asleep at home and never wake up. Hence your impromptu sleepover. The bed is a queen and you have a shared child as a buffer, but you’re already annoyed with yourself. Your arms keep remembering what it felt like to stretch out over him whenever he ended up on his front. It is not helpful.
You put the big light out and the nightlight on, a ladybug on a mushroom that glows a warm orange on Steve’s side of the room. In your own sweatpants and a vest, you climb into the right side of the bed and nearly fall straight back out at the lack of space.
Steve curls an arm around Leah tentatively, encouraging her into his side to make room for you.
“You okay?” he asks Leah quietly.
“You okay, daddy?” she asks.
“I’m fine, beautiful. I’m good.”
“Sleep?” she asks.
“With you, if that’s cool?”
“Cool,” she says decidedly.
When you lie down, Leah immediately rolls out of Steve’s grip and makes herself comfortable in the curves of you, her nose digging hard in your arm, the bottle warm on your chest.
“I’ll move her when she falls asleep,” you whisper, nodding to the foldout cot next to the bed with its padded interior.
Sleeping in the same bed as Steve Harrington is a long gone artefact of the past. It’s odd to be face to face with him, to smell him so close, the toothpaste on his breath and the salty, earthy sting of sweat mixed with allspice. You don’t strictly mind it, but you didn’t think you’d ever be this close again. It hurries the heart. You miss him like a slap.
Refusing to think on it is the best way forward.
“You sure you’re okay?” you ask him under your breath.
Leah suckles at her bottle, breaking the quiet, though it’s a monotone sort of sound. Steve doesn’t answer. You glance at him and find him dozing already, not a blanket over him nor a sheet untucked.
“Steve.”
He blinks to attention. “Huh?”
“Pull the blanket up over yourself.”
He must like your tone. You’d gone soft by accident, too used to lulling Leah to sleep via sweetness and dulcet murmuring. He kicks it down and then pulls it up to his ribs, a tight white parcel with the pink throw laid over his feet.
“It’ll be cold tonight. Does that make the migraines worse?” you ask.
“No. I’ll be okay.”
You let him fall asleep. Leah snuggles under your chin. This isn’t the daydream. You aren’t being cuddled and coddled by warm kisses along the side of your face, his big arm around you, your baby between you. Steve keeps a good distance and he’s exhausted.
Leah takes a lot longer to fall, but when she does it’s for keeps. You give her ten minutes tucked up on your chest but decide to move her when you feel your own eyes drifting shut. A rush of unnecessary shushing and a soft kiss later, you creep toward the bed and lay down on your side. Steve sleeps as your mirror, one cheek and eye hidden by the pillow, the sheets pulled haphazard over his hip. You yank them from under you and pull them up to cover him to the shoulder, tempted to tuck his hair behind his ear again. It’s long enough.
“Can feel you staring,” he whispers.
Your heart leaps in shock, though thankfully you don’t jump. “Hm?”
“Staring at me.”
“Trying to gauge whether you died in your sleep.”
“Still ‘live.”
You do reach for him, then, stricken by how badly you want to take care of him. “I can see that.”
He peeks down at your hand on his cheek and grins dopily. “Missed you,” he says.
“Missed you, too.”
You wouldn’t tell him if it weren’t dark, if he weren’t in pain.
“You did?” he asks.
“I always miss you,” you say. You pull your hand away like it’s him that’s said the wrong thing, annoyed at your own boldness, moving onto your back to stare at the ceiling.
He feels at your wrist, up your arm. Steve slides his palm over your stomach and holds it there. When you’re starting to think he might’ve fallen asleep again, your breath aching in your throat to be expelled, he presses down carefully and sighs. “I wish I got to see it. Don’t know why you were alone.”
“I wasn't.”
“Would’ve looked after you, though.”
“Steve…”
“I would’ve.”
“I know.” You know now. You could’ve stayed here and had him look after you, but it’s not what you wanted. “I wanted… more, than that.”
He stares at you across the pillows. Your breath catches as he brings his hand up to your cheek and encourages your head toward him, as he lifts himself up off the pillows to bear down over you.
“Do you still want that?” he asks.
You laugh, weak and weary. “Not when you’re concussed.”
He laughs in your face. It’s quiet to leave Leah sleeping, and to stop from hurting himself again, but it’s a genuine laugh of joy leaning over you. His hair falls in his face and he’s beautiful. All freckled and gold in the dim amber light sunning in from behind him.
“I am not concussed,” he says, leaning down.
You don’t kiss. Won’t lift your lips to his where he waits, though waiting might not be the right word. It’s like he’s alright with anything you’re about to do, or not do, sharing your breath.
“I don’t believe you,” you tease lightly.
He’s moved so much to be over you. It is unquestionably the position of a man who’s going to kiss you.
You press your forehead to his chin.
“We should sleep,” you say, because you shouldn’t kiss.
Portland feels very, very far away as he trails his fingers down the front of you and takes a handful of your hip.
“I’m not concussed,” he says, though it’s not asking for anything; Steve’s already pulling away. He sits up and slightly away from you, rubbing a wave into your abdomen lovingly, like you never went to Portland at all. Like it’s the sleepover after a night spent kissing slow and watching shit TV. “Get some sleep, angel,” he adds, so quietly you’d doubt he spoke if you hadn’t watched his mouth shape the words.
—
In the morning, you wake to find Leah chest to chest with Steve, his hair like water on your pillows.
“An’ my hand an’ my nose as my mouth,” she says factually.
“And your ears,” he says back to her quietly, stroking a path from her shoulders to her lower back and up again. “Your eyebrows, and your hair, and your neck.”
“Yeah.”
“Your tummy, and your legs, and your little toes.”
“Am’ my toes,” she says.
“Even your toes are pretty,” Steve agrees. “‘Cos duh. Leah’s the prettiest girl I ever met, right?” His voice drops low enough to rattle hoarsely. “Just as pretty as mommy. I didn’t know that was possible.”
You hide your face in the pillows, pretending to sleep.
This is not going to go how you’d first thought.
—
thank you for reading!! so excited I love steve and I know he could be bitchier and angrier here but I’ve decided to make him whipped instead cos he’s cute when he’s in love and if it’s not implied enough he’s still whipped for the reader lol. hope you enjoyed it thank you very much for reading and taking the time
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