| Josie | 33 | She/Her | UK | 18+ Blog | Plus Size | Elder Emo | In My Reading Era | Has a thing for guys who like bats, ride dragons and master the shadows 🖤
I saw this comment on this TikTok post and it says exactly how I felt about this scene but couldn't articulate.
So I made a video compilation of Ilya's and Shane's POVs with the lyrics of two different verses from "All the Things She Said." (Solely because I need it on my blog so I can keep rewatching it on my own time.)
Also, I hadn't noticed until I made this video that Shane kept his eyes close (like it says in the lyrics) while he was kissing Rose and later having sex with her.
pairing: steve harrington x reader
word count: 2.5k
summary: you don’t do dates. you do the backseat. you do frantic, messy sex on hideous shag carpet, killing time in a metal box while you both wait for the world to change, or maybe for it to just end. the rules of the crawl are simple. but whatever this thing with steve is? it's not even close.
warnings: 18+ mdni, st5 spoilers, friends with benefits to ...?, piv sex, touch/affection-starved!steve, sex as coping, ‘no-strings’ relationship, fwb with rules, rough hate sex, van sex, no-kissing sex (?), light power play, dirty talk, teasing/taunting, end-of-the-world angst, lil bit of mean!steve but in a nuanced s5 way, oh look he’s love-starved in this one again
a/n: ...fine. I caved. here’s angsty van-fucking w steve
Crawl nights always start out the same.
You, in the passenger seat, snapping gum between your teeth with your boots kicked up on the dash. Steve, slumped beside you, flipping through that same dog-eared copy of Cosmo he’s read so many times he could probably recite it in his sleep.
Crawl #8.
Two hours, eleven minutes, and counting.
The walkie’s been quiet tonight. And god, do you hate it. Because nights like this have started to feel dangerous in a whole new way. Because silence leaves room for thought, and thinking opens up doors you can’t afford to walk through right now.
The van’s parked beneath the treeline on Cornwallis, though it’s less than a pathetic excuse for a cover. The branches are stripped bare this time of year, skeletal limbs clawing at the sky, dripping silver in the cold moonlight.
There’s nothing to do here. Nothing to chew on except the same square of Wild Cherry Bubble Yum, sucking the sugar dry until the flavor’s gone and your jaw starts clicking louder than the aimless buzz of static.
It’s been months of this. Months of driving around in circles, chasing ghosts, getting nowhere. Months of Hopper’s vapid updates crackling through the radio while you and Steve rot in the van like two strangers locked in the same cage.
Except, you're not exactly strangers, are you?
No. Not after hours spent side by side in the dark, listening for things that aren’t there, waiting, hoping, pretending that this isn’t the closest thing either of you has had to a date in months.
But you don’t do dates.
You do the backseat.
You do frantic, messy sex on ugly shag carpet, killing time in a metal box while you both wait for the world to change, or maybe for it to just end already.
You fuck until it hurts, until your skin stings and your lungs burn, until the sound of your own blood is louder than the relentless beep-beep-beep-beep of the telemetry signal.
You fuck. You wait. Then you fuck again.
No restaurants, no movies. No roses or candles or foreplay.
None of that normal, mundane shit. Not anymore.
It’s just this. This van. This backseat. This hideous carpet and those cheap vinyl seats that squeak every time the car rocks.
This strange, suspended limbo where you touch each other like it doesn’t mean anything—just habit born of frustration and boredom—only it’s getting harder each time to keep pretending that’s true.
The windows are fogged up like hell tonight, late-December air leaking in through the busted seal on the back door. It nips at your skin, makes you squirm, sends a chill sharp enough to forget the gnawing emptiness that’s slowly eating you both alive.
Your foot’s wedged up against the ply lining, his jacket bunched beneath your head in a makeshift pillow. His skin glistens with sweat, slick to the touch; boy runs hotter than a furnace, even in the dead of a Midwestern winter. You feel his palms burn against the back of your thighs when he hoists up your legs, hooking them around his waist.
If you close your eyes, if you pretend hard enough, you can drown out the high-pitched beeps bleeding through the headphones beside you. Replace the crackle of static with the desperate slap of skin on skin, the creak of the van as it rocks and shudders with each snap of his hips.
But it's his voice that shatters your focus, his chest heaving against yours while he pants close to your ear:
“You know we’re—we’re not supposed to be doing this, right?”
No shit.
It’s kind of funny, actually. You almost laugh.
But the sound that comes out of your throat is less a laugh and more a strangled exhale, one that’s cut off and jagged because, well, it’s a little difficult to make noise when he’s fucking into you this fast, this hard, his weight pinning your ribs to the carpet with barely any room for air.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” you manage, voice thick with breath and taunting mirth. Your words get punched out in uneven bursts that match the frantic pace of his hips. “Did you want to stop so you can ask for permission?”
You tip your head back, glancing pointedly at the walkie sitting on the dash, then turn back to him with a smile so saccharine it's nearly cruel. Lips pouty, brows scrunched in mock sympathy, it’s all, Too much for you to handle, huh? Poor baby.
It’s the same bullshit game. Every time.
You poke, you prod, you tease and you push, because he always has to push back. The suggestion that he can’t keep up, can’t fuck you good enough to hold your attention, that’s his hairpin trigger.
You feel it in the muscle running down his back, how it ripples under your fingers as his pace quickens, hips snapping harder.
It used to fluster him. God, it used to make him sputter: pink cheeks, hand to the back of his neck, indignant little huffs and breathless excuses. Back then, a jab like that—must be losing your edge, huh, Harrington?—was enough to make him roll his eyes and pretend he didn’t care as much as he did.
But the end of the world has a way of sanding people down.
And Steve Harrington has been ground into something different.
Sharpened by way of dulling, it’s left him callous. Darkened his appetite where he once craved softness: vanilla sex, vanilla sweetness.
Now, he doesn’t flinch at sharp edges. Doesn’t crave the normal, mundane shit. Not like he used to.
“You’re really kind of—hah, fuck—insufferable, you know that?” He breathes, teeth dragging down the curve of your neck, lips sealing around your pulse point to suck. It’s not hard, doesn’t hurt, but it stings all the same when you realize he's keeping it gentle on purpose. Aiming for bruises soft enough to fade come morning. None of it ever meant to last.
“Insufferable, huh?” you murmur, laughter breathy and slurred as he grinds you down into the carpet. “Jeez, big word for a guy who—”
You don’t get to finish. Not when he shifts, driving up at an angle that has your back arching off the floor. The pressure makes you clench around him involuntarily, a sharp gasp torn from your throat.
“Who’s what?” He’s impossibly close now, nose to nose, every ragged breath he draws leaving you gasping for your own. His arms cage you in, sparing no room to squirm away as he quickens his pace. He’s zeroing in on one spot and one spot only, hitting deep enough to make your eyes sting, pressure winding tight in your stomach.
“Finish it,” he murmurs, undercurrent of a command that has you clenching around him harder. “You had something to say, didn’t you? Say it then. Come on, baby.”
And it’s strange, isn’t it? This push-pull inside him. The way he taunts with a word so sweet and disarming as baby. The way he’s rubbing over your clit, caressing, really; two fingers, gentle circles and careful pressure. His other hand’s holding yours against the carpet, only he isn’t holding you down, no, he’s holding you in. Holding you close, holding onto you, fingers laced together, palm to palm.
And all the while, he’s got you pinned under his gaze. Staring down over the bridge of his nose, molten amber, sharp as broken glass, those eyes don’t miss a single thing. Sweat beads at his temples, hair falling into his eyes with every thrust as he tilts his head just so, predatory smile playing at his lips while he revels in the rapid flutter of your lashes, the way you struggle to return his gaze.
You squirm under the weight of it all, his attention, his intensity, the thick press of him nudging deep-deep-deeper inside.
"Yeah? Right there?"
He lets out a quiet sigh, almost a laugh, tongue lolling out to drag across his bottom lip. A flash of white teeth, a hairline fracture in flawless porcelain, it’s all mock sympathy; Too much for you to handle, huh? Poor baby.
“You close already? Gonna come for me?”
“Shut u—oh my—fuck!"
The pleasure slams into you all at once, more pain than relief. You clench around him like a vice, pulsing helplessly, squeezing, whimpering, endless waves of blinding-white heat crashing through you. The force of it cuts deep crimson half-moons across his skin.
“Shit!” He comes not a second later, collapsing onto his elbows and burying his cry into your mouth.
You’re still trembling through the tail-end of your orgasm when he slants his lips, licking into you, tongue sliding over yours in a slow, insistent rhythm that steals what little breath you have left. You’re too wrecked to question it, too gone to do anything but part your lips for him, panting wildly into the heat of his mouth. The aftershocks are making your whole body jolt, stomach tensing each time he draws out slowly before sinking back in, fingers refusing to let up on your throbbing clit.
He doesn’t stop talking afterward, either. Never does.
Quiet praises muffled against your lips, words tumbling free like he can’t hold any of it in:
Yeah, there you go. Keep coming. Let me feel it. So pretty, you know that? All fucked-out on my cock.
The blood’s rushing so fast past your ears it’s hard to hear much of it at all.
And yet, in the deafening roar of your own pulse, his words feel more real than anything he’s admitted in the light of day.
That's it. All mine, just like this.
...
The Wild Cherry bubble pops in the quiet of the van.
A tacky patch of it clings stubbornly to the corner of your mouth, and you chase it with your tongue just to have something to do.
The van smells like warm vinyl and sweat. Crisp deodorant. Steve’s shampoo.
Heat still clings to your skin in places you don’t want to acknowledge. Your thighs tack slightly against the faux leather when you shift.
Another pop of the bubblegum punctuates the silence like a starting pistol, restlessness coiling in your stomach until it snaps into confession:
“I think we should establish some rules.”
Steve freezes mid-page flip. For a guy who acts like nothing rattles him anymore, he’s still a stickler for order. Rules are the anchor he clings to when everything else is falling to shit.
His eyes snap to you.
“Rules?” he repeats. “For what?”
As if he doesn’t know.
You don’t bother answering, just let your gaze drift to the back.
The place where you’ve been making all your worst decisions since Crawl #4.
The ridiculous, shag-carpeted shrine where your self-control goes to die on its knees. Where Steve Harrington’s mouth has done just about everything, including the thing Rule #3 is about to outlaw in permanent ink.
He follows your gaze, blinking once, twice. His jaw tightens so sharply you can hear his teeth click.
Looking back, that should’ve been your first warning.
But you, idiot that you are, reach into the glove box instead, pulling out the beat-up WSQK notepad with the frayed spiral and the coffee stain on the cover.
You start writing.
Rule #1: No talking about it outside the van.
Rule #2: No touching once we’re done.
Rule #3: No kissing.
Rule #4: This e—
“—Woah, okay, hold on—give me that.” He snatches the notebook from you mid-scribble, lifting it up to read.
His eyes skim the list, and you watch his expression shift in real time.
Steve Harrington has never been good at hiding his face. It’s always been a little unfair to him, expressive in ways he’d probably kill to tone down. He tries to school it now, but you catch everything.
Confusion. Disbelief. Annoyance.
“No talking… fine, whatever,” he mutters, eyes darting back and forth. “No touching once we’re—” He squints, incredulous. “No kissing?”
He looks up at you then, blinking like he’s waiting for the punchline.
“But... we did that already. Like, a lot.”
You clear your throat. “Yeah. That’s why we’re making this list now.”
Something in his expression pinches, subtle but sharp. “Right. Sure. I mean, yeah. Makes sense if you were... if you weren’t into it.”
You shake your head, unconsciously mirroring the divot between his brows. “It’s not about that, Steve. I just… I don’t want this turning complicated, that’s all.”
He scoffs, quick and humorless. “Yeah, 'cause there’s nothing complicated about this, right? What, a whole legal contract just so we can... make out in a van?”
“Make out?” you echo, raising a brow.
He reddens. “You know what I mean.”
Wordlessly, you pry the notebook from his hands and finish writing the last rule.
Rule #4: This ends when the Crawls end.
He falls silent. Stares at that line for a long time.
Long enough that you start to wonder if he’s about to laugh, or call this whole thing off, or just climb out of the van and never look back.
When he finally lifts his head, his eyes aren’t the same. They’re muddled, knotted, dark with something you’ll never be able to put words to.
“The hell does that mean?” he asks quietly.
“It means… when the Crawls are done, this stops.” you say, equally quiet.
He blinks, slow. Once at you. Once at the notebook.
His head drops again, nostrils flaring in a tiny, sharp breath.
The page crinkles under his thumb.
“Yeah,” he says finally, voice low. “Okay. Rules. Sure.”
That should’ve quieted the ache inside you. It only stirs it up worse.
He keeps his eyes fixed on the page, jaw working quietly as he idly spins the plastic ring along the spine.
He draws in a breath.
“Except, just—” He falters, swallowing it back with a light shrug. “That third one seems kinda unrealistic, don’t you think?”
You tip your head, letting your voice lilt playfully. “Why, you don’t think you could do it?"
His eyes snap to yours, quick, sharp, the dim light doing nothing to soften the way he's glaring.
You hold his stare for all of one, two, three seconds before he huffs and looks away, eyes rolling to the ceiling.
Without looking at you, he thrusts his hand out. “Gimme the pen.”
You place it in his palm.
Jaw tight, he bends over the page and scribbles something fast at the very bottom, the scratch of the pen hissing sharp.
You don’t see what he’s added until he tosses the notebook back into your lap.
And later—when the weight of your own choice collapses in on itself and you’re left trying to make sense of the pieces—you’ll remember the way his hand trembled.
You’ll remember the tight press of his lips. The quiet, swallowed words he never let out.
And you’ll realize this was the moment where things truly went wrong.
Two letters. Pressed so hard into the paper you can feel them from the other side.
