Hello, I'm Georgie! I'm actually Matty GOATarople's biggest fan. I mostly use He/Them pronouns. But in general I'm fine with any pronouns, ALSO! Note I am a minor, so please don't say too much weird shit to me.
I post mostly do shit posts, maybe even art if I want to, sometimes I'm not really online on tumblr much. Also, pretty PLEASE interact with me if you like any of the following:
Selfie 2014
A Series of Unfortunate Events
Wheels of Fortune
South Park
Archibald's Next Big Thing!
Carved 2024
Dad (Dadfeels)
Conventional (Fun Size Horror Vol. 2)
David Lynch and Crispin Glover's Big Box Office Blockbuster
Some of these are really underrated media, I would really like to see if more people know them :')
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On the other hand, please just don't interact with me if you support anything that's considered illegal or extremely weird
Okay, so that's basically all thank you and goodbye!
𓎢𓎠𓎟𓎠𓎡𓎢𓎠𓎟𓎠𓎡𓎢𓎠𓎟𓎡
"I feel morally queasy. It could also be from eating this hot dog I found on the ground"
Exposition In the Elevator Shaft (And Esmé Steals Some of the Spotlight)
Hello! Welcome to the fifth ‘chapter’ of my Seven Six Widdershins Family Members AU. Inspired by the Six Baudelaire AU by unfortunate-stranger-losers, in this AU, the Book!Widdershins Family and Netflix!Widdershins Family are now combined together to make a family of six. If this is the first time you're seeing the AU and curiosity has you wanting to learn more, you can browse the tag chronologically via this link.
I apologize for the long gap. I ran out of energy to write for the AU. But in the gap years, I regained energy to write mostly everything up to The Grim Grotto. I do hope to post each 'chapter' semi-frequent.
Where we last left off: the Baudelaires after illegally living at Lucky Smells Lumbermill, got sent to Prufrock Prep. They befriended Duncan and Isadora Quagmire, and their friendship risked the two Triplets disguising themselves to have the Baudelaires do well in their final exam that would lead to their getting kick out. But the disguises work to a point; Olaf had the Acting Troupe present -the White Face Women- kidnap the Quagmires, and have Verne (Netflix!Fernald) and Fernald be the getaway drivers.
With Violet, Klaus, and Sunny Baudelaire still not his clutches, Olaf decided he needs to get outside help in his latest scheme once again. Luckily for him, Esmé Squalor is partaking in the scheme. Esmé’s husband Jerome Squalor wanted custody of the children early on (the same time Olaf got custody of them). Esmé stopped him by going over the “in and out” way of thinking, and Jerome didn’t want to argue.
Having been asked by Olaf for help against the Baudelaires —Esmé’s grudge on their mother is still going strong even after the woman’s death— Esmé managed to ‘push’ the idea of orphans with those she hanged out with (all those with influences), and soon, orphans are now in. Jerome is ecstatic to hear the news, and instantly went to Mr. Poe’s office to persuade the banker that he (Jerome) and his wife should be their guardian.
Esmé got dragged along for the thing, if only to make sure Mr. Poe didn’t screw up. And Mr. Poe is screwing it up by refusing to let them be guardians.
Mr. Poe, looking at the papers in the file, and tsks: “I’m sorry, but the papers explicitly written by Mrs. and Mr. Baudelaire states that they want their children to be raise in a specific way with specific people they approved of.”
Esmé: “But we knew the late Baudelaire Parents, Arthur! My husband was even friends with the late Mrs. Baudelaire herself!”
Jerome: “Esmé, you were once considered her a friend as well, alongside her husband. You were always hanging out with them and their friends. Like Jacq—”
Esmé: “Don’t interrupt me, Jerome. Financial people are talking to one another here.”
Mr. Poe: *coughs* “That may be so, but your husband doesn’t fit all the criteria that Mrs. and Mr. Baudelaire want in their children’s guardian. Therefore, this extension applies to you, Esmé Squalor. I’m sorry, but my decision is final.”
Esmé: “Now look here Arthur—”
Jerome: “Please Esmé. Don’t make a scene. I hate making a scene more than making arguments. Outsiders would be poking their heads, and then ask what’s going on.”
Esmé: “I’m not making a scene, Jerome. I’m trying to explain how we can we at least earn the right to be their guardians!”
Mr. Poe: “There is no need to explain given you don’t fit all the criteria.”
Jerome: “If I’m allow to interrupt, may I ask why the Baudelaires parents thought to send their children to a boarding school as fitting the criteria? I’m still confuse on that.”
Esmé: *getting an idea* “Actually, my husband is right to ask that. We all know that the Baudelaires ran away before you could take them to their next guardian, Elwyn What-his-last-name, and they lived over a month at Lucky Smells Lumbermill.”
Mr. Poe: “Yes. If they haven’t done that, I would have to find another person for them to live.Their Uncle Elwyn died in a tractor accident within the time period.”
Esmé: “So the Baudelaires going to Prufrock Preparatory was in fact, a means to temporary house them while trying to find their next guardian?”
Mr. Poe: “Yes.” *cough*
Esmé: “So, given your confession, why shouldn’t my husband and I raise the children? We may not fit the criteria, but shouldn’t circumstances make us the closest people to fitting whatever wishes the Baudelaires parents wanted for their children?”
Mr. Poe: *looks back at papers* “Considering the next person on the list doesn’t seem to have any contact information, I supposed if I ask the right people…”
With Esmé and Jerome now the Baudelaire guardians, Olaf enacts the new plan to capture them and their fortune. Olaf decides that this time around, he’ll deliberately stay away to give the Baudelaires false reassurance, as well as to make them concern over the missing Quagmires, who at this point in time, are at Olaf’s home, lock up in the Tower.
Fernald was pick by Olaf to be the other associate in on the scheme, this time as 667 Dark Avenue’s doorman. Before he could get started, Esmé explained how ‘in’ the location is, so Fernald just can’t be the new doorman so quickly, or else the management of 667 Dark Avenue will start getting suspicious. Luckily for Fernald, Esmé decided to help Fernald make the fake resume. Fernald almost wished she didn’t.
-
Esmé from what Fernald recalled of the fashionable, mathematical woman, never liked using a typewriter and keyboard unless 100% necessary. Paper and pen and pencil were her prefer way, as well as clicking away on her calculator. Yet here she is, typing away on the typewriter. Fernald was pretty certain that Esmé stole it from Snicket. Which one, he wasn’t sure, and he didn’t dare to plan on asking.
Speaking of plans, Fernald original had plans to ask Lucy or Penny to help type his resume, but Esmé was very persistent on helping him. Fernald wasn’t sure why.
“I must say,” said Esmé, typing way quickly, “it’s nice for us to spend quality time with one another again, Fernald. Of course, never I expected it to be like this.”
Fernald glanced down at the papers spread out on the table that Esmé took the occasional glance at. “I wouldn’t say we spend quality time back then either.”
Esmé gave out her usual laugh. “You don’t think all our time shopping at the mall with one another counts as quality time?”
“If quality time means dragging my stepfather and I from our quality time to carry your shopping bags, then yes,” answered Fernald dryly. “Out of all the people you know, you picked us. And the fact my stepfather even agreed to it!”
Esmé continued to type, not looking up at him. “And I picked you two because your stepfather is willing to volunteer his assistance for the most mundane, simplest things. It’s a stupid trait, but a trait that I can is why at one point, we were close to one another.”
Fernald rolled his eyes, and scoffed. “You two ran in different circles, and not just within the organization! Stepfather would rather be dead than appear in the latest popular restaurant or the newest fashion store! He doesn’t go for what’s in and out!”
Whatever in what he just said, it had Esmé briefly stop typing. Her lips curled into a smirk, and she turned to Fernald’s attention. Her eye shone brightly, like she was ready to make a sick joke.
“I said we were close to one another. I never said anything about liking him. There’s a difference, Fernald.”
Esmé turned her attention back to the typewriter, and typed away for a few more seconds before the sound of a ‘click!’ enter the air. “All done! That took less time than I thought! Now, let’s find an eye-pleasing folder to put it in, as well as an ‘in’ color scheme. Appearance is everything!”
She stood up, and walked pass him. Esmé playfully slapped his face, and laughed again. “If you’re that clueless, go ask your uncle what your stepfather did briefly during his missing years. You’re a grown man, Fernald. You should know what adults do.”
Fernald stay put in his chair, leaning back against the hard wood. She did not imply what he thinks is being implied, right?
Right?
-
Moving along with the horrors of what is hopefully Esme making up lies, Fernald got the doorman job sooner than expected. As such, Verne was unable to procure another set of fake wooden hands. Fernald resorted to wearing the oversize doorman uniform jacket to hide his hooks, alongside an oversize hat to cover his face. It’s around the time of Fernald getting the doorman job did Olaf ordered the rest of the Acting Troupe to move the Quagmires to the cage in the elevator shaft.
Violet, Klaus, and Sunny when officially arriving, were able to ‘relax’ for two weeks, but relaxing is difficult due to worrying for their friends and feeling guilty at times for having a comfortable life and the Quagmires are in God-Knows-Where.
[With the Quagmires due to living in the elevator shaft, they are given only one meal and drink a day. Olaf needs them alive, after all.]
The day Gunther arrives was chosen by Esmé. She was making sure that the Baudelaires truly had their guard down. Or at least felt like things are mostly safe.
Being a very good actress, Esmé fools the Baudelaires into thinking she like many other adults, got trick by Olaf’s disguise. Things go sideways though, when Fernald messes it up later in the night. He wasn’t supposed to slip-up how Gunther hasn’t left the penthouse; not yet at least. The slip-up has Esmé being forced to call Gunther who answered from a payphone (it took a lot of tries to find the right payphone too; Esmé wanted for a long time for Olaf to answer).
Upon the return back to the house, Olaf marches over to Fernald, and slams the man against the wall. He kicks Fernald in the stomach, and grabs up again, this time by the throat. Olaf then holds Fernald against the wall, looking like he’s wanting to kill. Perhaps Olaf was ready to kill, for the Troupe acted according. Most of them, at least.
Penny and Lucy: “Fernald!”
Fernald: *is choking*
Harper: “Oh no. This isn’t good at all.” *runs off to get Verne*
Seller, laughing and rubs hands together: “Oh, this is going to be good.”
Olaf: “How much of an idiot can you be!? What if the orphans realize your mistake! You ruined everything! God, I’m starting to regret allowing you to join all those years ago!”
*Verne runs alongside Harper, and the two manage to break Olaf and Fernald apart. Harper is with Olaf, while Verne is with Fernald. Fernald’s face is red, and he’s inhaling and exhaling deeply*
Verne: “You have to calm down, boss! I know you don’t think it, but I think what Fernald did can be put to our advantage! If we give Esmé the right cards to play, we can capture the Baudelaires in the elevator shaft with ease!”
Olaf: *crosses his arms, looks intrigue by Verne’s words* “Go on, Nemo.”
And thus, the plan of Esmé throwing the Baudelaires down the empty elevator shaft is created! After moving the Quagmires into the red herring (after allowing the Baudelaires and Quagmires to meet up; give them false hope, you know) the Acting Troupe sans Fernald are getting ready the net. Harper soon learns that Fernald is not Verne’s brother, but his nephew, after Lucy comments how protective of an uncle Verne is.
Verne: “What is with people thinking this?”
Penny: “It’s a common mistake to make. It’s not our fault you’re close in age.”
Harper: “I thought an uncle is older by a number in the double digits.”
Penny: “Not in their case. You got to blame it on a remarriage between two adults with already adult children.”
Lucy: “Yeah, a remarriage leading to Nemo getting two brothers of similar ages!”
Penny, counting on her fingers: “There’s the oldest with the former funny mustache that Verne said once resembled parentheses. I don’t remember his name though, other than it starts with the letter ‘V’, like Verne’s own name.”
Verne: “You probably can’t even pronounce it anyway.”
Penny: “And there’s the other one with a fondness of fire. Ryan? Ronald? No…fuck. What it is? It’s on the tip of my damn tongue.”
Lucy hums a bit, and then snaps her fingers: “It’s Roland! Sort of like Childe Rowland! You know, that fairy tale where this boy kicks this ball over a church, and he loses his sister, because she went counterclockwise around a church to get the ball?”
Seller: “The fuck kind of name is Roland? It sounds rather primitively medieval. Only a parent with an old-fashion name themselves would name their child that.”
Verne, annoyed: “Rowland is the medieval name variation. Roland is not.”
Seller: “Still a medieval name, then.”
Harper, connecting the dots: “Roland, huh? I guess he’s the one who taught you Roland’s Folly, because he created it.”
Verne, softly: “Yeah. If you think I’m an unbeatable monster, Harper, you should have seen Roland playing. Especially against me.”
As Verne thinks about his brothers (step-brothers) and setting up the net with everyone else, Ephraim is traveling around the sea in his submarine the Nautilus.
Ephraim (Netflix!Widdershins) was sent on a solo VFD mission regarding 'THAT', and having seen how Tegan (Netflix!Fiona) worked well alongside her stepbrother (Book!Widdershins) when it came to saving Josephine Anwhistle's library, he decided Tegan should start her captain apprenticeship, with her stepbrother being her chaperone. Things are tense between the stepbrother and stepsister, but it's not like the older man has knowledge of this.
Ephraim had just sent his final dispatch report about how he hasn’t spotted ‘THAT’ in the last few days, and asked permission to go back to visit Tegan, and waits for a response.
-
Ephraim hovered his hands over the top desk drawer, and pulled it open. He then dug through countless of folders and papers that were always kept around for sentinel purposes, until he found a very worn-out photo taken years ago. Ephraim couldn’t help but smile. The photo was of him and a young Tegan, standing on a stool to be visible.
Around Ephraim’s shoulder was a hand. Ephraim desperately wanted to unfold the photo to see the smiling figure beside him. But if he does that, he would have no choice but see everyone else, all smiling and happy, not knowing of the future that laid before them all after the photo was taken.
“We change so much since then,” said Ephraim quietly, tracing a finger over the photo. “I wish you were still here with me. With all of us. We’re not the same without you.”
WRANG! WRANG! WRANG!
Ephraim quickly placed the photo into his jacket pocket, and soon stood up. He then ran, running all the way to the belly of the beast that is the control room. Ephraim silently lectured himself to relax in a such a moment of peace and quiet. Never Ephraim lowered his guard throughout the mission, and the one time he decided to do it…
He who hesitates is lost. Ephraim would rather know the danger late than never at all.
He turned the metal door open as fast as he can, and entered. Ephraim made his way towards the main control panel, alarm still screaming, red lights blinking. He didn’t bother to turn both off. He only locked eyes onto the sonar radar.
On the sonar radar, there was the blinking ‘N’ that is the Nautilus. Moving towards the ‘N’ was a fast-moving question mark. Ephraim without hesitation, turned to the nearest port window, and gasp.
Ephraim barely had time to properly react to the gigantic, dark eye glaring through the window, before hearing the familiar, terrifying roar.
My guy was always woke and correct. I aspire to be them/him/her/any other pronouns I left out because there's a lot and I don't know if I can name them all in one Tumblr post.
PLEASE rate all the outfits of the hench person !!
This got out of control, and I tried to stick to my favourites!
Anyway, the first one. I love the autumn colours and the patterns. 7/10
Holy shit, that lace shirt is gorgeous. Such pretty ruffles. The vest and scarf just completes the look. 10/10.
Nurse Lucafont has arrived! One of my favourites. 9/10
Please note the pink dish washing gloves. The Henchperson knows how to accessorise.
Moving onto some fur. I personally don’t feel it. 4/10
Season 2 commences. Once again we have pretty ruffles, and I’m really digging the head scarf. 8/10
Gloves! Hat! Pinstripes. Sleeves with little pearls sewn into the fabric! What’s not to like?! 10/10
We only get this for a split second, but I love feather boas, and look how happy they are! 9/10
I’m pretty sure this is the same shirt as in TEE, but in a more boring outfit. However, I love the beret and the glasses, so 7/10
Nurse Lucafont returns! Notice the state of the uniform, dirty and gross compared to its first appearance, matching the aesthetic of the hospital. I also assume it spent all this time in a dirty trunk, which explains a lot. 9/10 for that attention to detail.
This is the best cap I could find of the Carnival outfit, which I love more than any other of their outfits. I love the wide skirt, the colours, the fact that they’re still wearing the same shirt we’ve seen before, proving that the trunk of Olaf’s car isn’t bottomless. 11/10
A closeup, because I love their hair, the hat, and the flower. 15/10 because they’re so pretty.
Look at this cute hat. The scarf is great too. 8/10
And now, the final outfit… get ready for glory. Finally a dress that’s truly opulent, colourful, and wholly feminine. Elizabethan excellence at its finest.
I love love love the crown and the hair and the jewelled ruff. 100/10, because look how happy they are now! They deserve this outfit.
Eh, this is probably somewhere around 150 lines. Enjoy!
Steve's POV (in progress) for the lead up to the Sword of Damocles:
Keith Miller is ugly. Like God, who'd ever fuck him kind of ugly. The hair cut's unflattering, his clothes are baggy, he clearly never washes his face with acne like that, and his teeth are crooked. He's got weird hands and what Steve's dad always calls a "weak chin", and even though he's criminally tall, he slouches all the time. If Steve had gotten lucky enough to get be several inches over six feet, he'd have made a college team for sure, maybe even the NBA. That height is wasted on Keith.
Steve also makes the mistake of ranting out loud about this to Robin, who sits there with her arms crossed, eyebrows up.
"You know he's poor, right, Steve?" she asks, and it's pointed in a way that lets Steve know he's already fucked up somehow.
"So?" Steve says, and it's the wrong thing to say, but he has no idea what the right thing is, so he braces himself for beration.
"So you think us poor kids can afford your fancy face wash?" she asks. "I'm lucky. I have good skin and straight teeth, but if I didn't, my parents couldn't have afforded braces or acne treatment."
"Okay, but his clothes—" Steve knows he should shut up, should stop trying to defend himself and take his licks, but Keith's shirt today could have fit two of him inside it. Why the hell does he have on a shirt that's probably an XXL when he's a large at most?
"Yeah, Steve! His clothes! That he gets off the rack or at Goodwill. He's tall—"
"Yeah, I know," Steve interrupts. Isn't sulking about all that NBA height being lost on a nerd.
"Tall but thin. His arms are crazy long. Like monkey long! His sleeves didn't even cover his wrists. The only way clothes are going to look good on him is if he gets them tailored or learns how to sew. Does he look like the kind of guy who sews?"
"His face is still ugly," Steve mutters, because he's an idiot.
"Yeah, we can really help our genes, dingus," Robin scoffs.
It's been months since she called him dingus, not since she got it out of him that everyone called him an idiot, and even if it was true, it still sucked. Relatedly: Steve is no longer smoking weed around Robin. He might have earned this 'dingus', but he gives her the—fine, undeserved—silent treatment for the rest of their shift. He does bring her a blueberry muffin the next morning as an apology, one of those fancy ones with the sugar crumbles on top. ("Muffins aren't an apology, Steve." "It has sugar crumble, Robin.")
Once he cools down after Robin's scolding and gives her a begrudging but verbal apology, he gives the whole Keith situation more thought.
Steve doesn't get what it means to be poor, not really. Yeah, his dad cut him off to "teach him a lesson" for not getting into college—which, aside, was total bullshit. Steve doesn't test well—he might have bombed both the ACT and SAT—and he's not great at essays. His only extracurriculars were sports, and he spent a fair bit of his senior year on the bench after Hargrove fucked up his head… anyway, none of that was news to his dad. Steve applied to the good schools his dad was pressuring him to apply to, ones that "matched his potential", and he should have applied to safety schools, and he meant to, but college applications sucked to fill out, and besides, who doesn't get into—
Anyway, never mind. He didn't get into college is the point. But his dad's "lesson on taking his future seriously" is cutting off his allowance. That's it. They still stock the food in the house, pay the bills, and don't charge him rent. His mom buys him clothes whenever the mood strikes her, which is often. Steve's job mostly has to cover gas, eating out, dates, and similar things. He stashes a fair bit of it away as his "follow where Robin goes" savings.
He has no idea how much the electricity is, the gas, his parent's mortgage. He doesn't buy the groceries. He's got an idea of how much his clothes cost, and… those alone would eat up a large chunk of every paycheck, because Steve's mom likes name brands from the department stores in Indy. Steve's not even sure what all bills his parents pay.
He should probably figure that out before he has his own place.
He wishes he could ask his mom how to budget because she's the one who doesn't explain things like he's an idiot, but unfortunately, the only thing she knows how to do is stay under the allowance Steve's dad gives her. His dad's actually happy to walk him through it when Steve asks, saying, "It's about time you took some accountability for being an adult instead of coasting and mooching off your mom and I." And come on, how is Steve supposed to know he needs to know this stuff if no one (say, his parents) tells him? It's not like he has a checklist somewhere of "stuff Steve doesn't know" that he's ignoring.
His dad walks him through the numbers, and he budgets for so many more things than Steve realizes, like the BMW's still under his dad's name and his dad pays the car payment and the insurance on it. That number is… high. Really high. It's a nice car, and his dad has total coverage on it. His dad covers Steve's health insurance, and there's insurance on the house, and the phone bill, and money set aside every month for car maintenance and repairs or in case the appliances need to be replaced. His dad had to replace the furnace last year and Jesus, the one he bought cost more than Steve makes in a year.
This is the point Robin's trying to make: Steve can survive on what he makes at Family Video, but he can't live his current life on it. He can't have his BMW and excellent heath insurance and never have to worry about food on the table or heat in winter. Steve thought he'd saved up a lot: it's not going to go anywhere near as far as he expected once he moves out. His dad helps him find apartment listings in the newspaper in Hawkins. He warns Steve that rent will be a little higher in a mid-sized city like Indianapolis, but 'criminally' higher in large, popular cities Chicago, New York, or Los Angeles. He works Steve through a mock budget of rent, groceries, and bills.
Having hard numbers in front of him gives Steve perspective that Robin's "He's poor," didn't quite manage, helps him concretely wrap his head around the difference in twenty-five cents for a thrift store T-shirt and twenty dollars for a new one. His mom, when he asks, shows him the bills from her tailor and ouch, that is not going in Steve's mock budget. Steve's broader and shorter than Keith: off the rack fits him in a way it never will Keith, and now Steve feels a bad about mocking Keith's ill-fitting shirt in a way he doesn't know how to fix.
Keith doesn't like Steve and he sets the roster, so they're never scheduled together if there's another option. It's not like Steve plans to apologize for the shitty things he said behind Keith's back—the only thing worse than having said them is saying them to Keith's face before owns up to the mistake—but he figures he can do something to make it up to him.
Keith sees each nice gesture Steve makes as an attempt to suck up, to sway Keith into giving him a raise or better shifts, no matter how often Steve insists that's not what's going on. This insistence is sabotaged by the fact that Steve can't tell Keith what is going on without admitting to being just as awful as Keith always assumes he is, and "I'm just being nice," isn't anything Keith buys.
Steve gives up after awhile; they aren't around each other much anyway. At least not until after they kick Vecna's ass and close the Upside Down for what is definitely, for sure, one hundred per cent the last time. Yeah, Steve's sticking around for a couple years. The Upside Down can't keep it's creepy invasion out of Hawkins for longer than about a year, so two should be past the danger point. Unfortunately, this latest round of mayhem left everyone's parents in the know, and while Steve's so, so glad the kids are safely away from any chance of a Vecna repeat, it's lonely, especially with Robin gone to college and his parents moved to Chicago. They talk on the phone all the time, but it's not the same.
After Vecna, so many people have left Hawkins and more are bailing every day, settling down in new towns and cities, half the homes and jobs in Hawkins destroyed by the widening and spreading cracks. With everything settling and stabilizing, Steve's one of the few employees left. Keith should be scheduling them for solo shifts, but Family Video's one of places still doing business and cutting hours means people don't get paid. Keith's a grump and a jerk, but he's got a heart. The employees still in Hawkins have full time work, even if that means Keith has to put up with Steve.
When Steve was a kid, his brain used to freeze. He'd be looking at something and then… his eyes wouldn't move. He'd be entranced, locked in on whatever it was, unable to look away. This wasn't a problem when he was staring at something inanimate, but when it was people… he got a lot of grief as a kid for staring, until he learned to blink and break himself out of it. Until he learned to turn that brain stall into a weapon, mocking whatever it was that had the audacity to draw his eye: a nose, the hairs on someone's arm, the shape of an ear. All the fascinating ways people varied, that Steve couldn't stop his brain from drinking down, that he threw back with vitriol because it was better to be an asshole than the weirdo who couldn't stop staring.
He's gotten better at reigning it in since he was a kid, catches it faster, learns to keep his eyes to himself. And then he works with Keith, and Steve can't stop staring at Keith's hands. They're oddly elongated, long palm with long fingers, and the joints are a little knobby: hypnotic. Keith loves to snap them in front of Steve's face to get his attention, and only the fact that he yanks them back keeps Steve from getting caught looking. Steve sneaks peeks when he can, hoping that if he looks at them long enough, he'll fill whatever part of his brain is so obsessed with them.
And then he thinks about sucking on them for the first time while he's jerking off, and it's over. He's never getting free of them. He wonders how they'd feel in his mouth or just inside him, if they'd feel different than Steve's own fingers. He starts worrying about getting turned on at work because Keith's hands are right there, in reality instead of fantasy.
And then there's his hair. And the cut could be more flattering—how hard could it be to learn to cut hair? Could Steve learn? Could he fix it?—but the hair itself fluffs up and it looks soft. Steve's hair is soft, before he puts the products in, but he always has to choose between soft and styled and… he's vain. He'd rather look good than have his hair float around his face. Steve crosses his arms at work a lot, keeping that insane impulse to run his hands through Keith's hair in check.
The acne scars are the worst, because they're right on Keith's face. It's absolutely the worst place to stare because if Keith notices, Steve's going to have to get creepy or get mean, and he's trying not to be that person anymore. He wants to be the guy Robin's proud to have as a friend, isn't afraid to introduce to people. But those cheeks. Steve accidentally sees them up close once, the way the pores are closer to crags, creating tiny valleys and mountains on his face. Steve's not a poet, but it's like looking at the moon, and he never wants to stop.
Like the absolute idiot he is, he keeps finding ways to get close to Keith's face, just for a glimpse. Keith's never going to let him look is fill, so leaning over the desk obnoxiously to "check his shifts" when Keith's trying to put the work roster together or timing his turn around so they nearly collide or asking for Keith to explain something on the computer so he has to lean in close, face near Steve's.
That last one's a mistake, because he ends up close enough that Steve can smell whatever soap he's using, or shampoo, or something that itches at his brain, makes him want to figure out exactly what scents make it up. He can't make a habit of getting close to Keith. Steve's got a reputation, well earned, as a lady's man that has covered his more egalitarian indiscretions, but if he gets a reputation for being a queer… it's going to be a long year left in Hawkins if those rumors go around with the wrong crowd. If Keith had been in the theater clique instead of one of the dungeons and dragons nerds, Steve would be more confident in crusing him a little, seeing if something sticks.
It takes Steve a tragically long time to realize what's going on.
In the end, it's the not looking that tips Steve off. Steve's so busy being careful about how he looks at Keith, priding himself on never getting caught, that he misses for months that Keith is making it easy for him. Keith is always so careful about never looking at Steve unless he doesn't have a choice, and maybe if Steve was straight, it wouldn't seem odd. But once Steve starts paying attention, it's the way he doesn't look at Steve—or at any of the cute boys their age who come in—that tips him off. Keith is causal with women, with older people, with kids. He doesn't guard where he looks. He does with the boys who come in. He does with Steve.
Man, he must hate it that he thinks Steve is hot.
Steve maybe makes it a little rough for him. He's a recovering asshole; he's not perfect. He wears his shirts a little short, stretching his arms over his head to make the hems rise up, showing off his stomach. He wears the tightest jeans he has, bends over to pick up boxes with his back instead of his legs—he's twenty, he'll be fine if he doesn't lift with his legs; god, Keith, chill out and enjoy the view—while conveniently forgetting to close the office door. Hey, how's he supposed to open it with a box in hand? Keith getting a good view of his ass is just a bonus.
That office desk starts featuring in more of Steve's fantasies than he'll ever admit.
