a small corner of the internet mostly dedicated to steve harrington and joe keery.
expect imagines, blurbs, edits, late night thoughts, fictional yearning. mostly stranger things for now, but other characters, films, actors, and random hyperfixations will slowly find their way here too.
a little bit organised mixed with a little chaos
if you have any recs or requests, please don’t hesitate to send them in
Summary: In the middle of a late night cram session for a huge test, you finds a massive spider on her desk and, rather than wake her parents, calls Steve on her rotary phone at nearly 1am,
A/N: Found a spider in my room last night and threw my moisturiser at it, and it escaped. So naturally I couldn't sleep so stayed up and wrote this. I NEED a Steve. Enjoy your days my lovelies
The numbers on your algebra textbook had started to blur somewhere around eleven-thirty, but you kept going anyway, because the test tomorrow, today, technically, since it was well past midnight now, was going to make up thirty percent of your grade, and thirty percent felt like a number that could ruin your entire semester if you let it. Your desk lamp was the only light on in the house. Everyone else had gone to bed hours ago. Your parents' door was shut at the end of the hall, and the house had that particular quiet that only came after midnight, when even the pipes seemed to stop ticking and the only sound left was your pencil scratching against paper and the occasional car passing on the road outside.
You had a mug of tea gone cold beside your notebook, a highlighter capped and uncapped in your other hand, and a study guide with more scribbles in the margins than actual notes. You were rereading the same paragraph about quadratic equations for what had to be the fourth time when you reached for your pencil case and your hand brushed against something on the edge of your desk that was decidedly not a pencil case.
It moved.
You didn't scream, you'd like to say that for the record, later, when you were telling this story, but you did make a sound, a strangled little gasp that came out somewhere between a squeak and a cough, and you shoved your chair back so fast it nearly tipped over. Your heart was going a mile a minute as you stared at the thing now very much visible on the corner of your desk: a spider, and not a cute little one either, not the kind you could scoop into a cup and release outside without a second thought. This thing had legs. Legs that seemed to go on forever, thick and dark, and a body the size of a quarter, and it was just sitting there on your school books like it owned the place, like it hadn't just nearly given you a heart attack at twelve-forty in the morning.
You scrambled backward until your knees hit the edge of your bed, putting as much distance as the size of your bedroom would allow, which wasn't much, and you stared at it from there like it might lunge at you if you looked away. Your first instinct was to run and get your dad, he was the designated bug-killer in the house, always had been, ever since you were seven and cried over a moth he'd had to escort out with a cup and a piece of paper, but the thought of waking him up at this hour, of him grumbling down the hall in his robe just to swat a spider while your mom asked groggily what all the noise was about, made you wince. He had work in the morning. Early work. The kind where he needed every hour of sleep he could get, and you weren't about to be the reason he showed up to the plant running on four hours because his daughter couldn't handle a bug.
So you did the only other thing that made sense to you in that moment, heart still hammering, eyes still locked on the eight-legged threat currently daring to test the structural integrity of your pencil case: you tiptoed to your nightstand, picked up the phone, and dialed Steve's number from memory, fingers a little unsteady as they caught in the rotary and dragged it around, waiting for each number to click back into place before you could dial the next.
It rang four times before he picked up, his voice thick with sleep and confusion. "Hello?"
"Steve." You kept your voice to a whisper, even though the walls in your house weren't exactly thin enough for that kind of caution to matter, but it felt right somehow, like whispering made the whole thing more dire, more real. "Steve, I need you to come over."
There was a rustling sound on his end, like he was sitting up, the springs of his mattress creaking. "What? What's wrong? What time is it?"
"There's a spider in my room." You glanced over your shoulder at your desk, half expecting it to have vanished, to have proven you an overreacting lunatic who woke her boyfriend up after midnight over nothing, but no, it was still there, still sitting on your notebook like it was reading your notes on quadratic formulas and judging your handwriting. "It's huge, Steve. It's, like, the size of my hand. I'm not exaggerating."
There was a pause. You could practically hear him blinking in the dark, trying to catch up. "You called me. At - " a pause, presumably him checking his clock, "twelve forty-five in the morning. Because of a spider."
"Yes."
"Can't your dad -"
"He has work in six hours. I'm not waking him up for this." You lowered your voice even further, glancing at your closed bedroom door like it might somehow relay this conversation down the hall to your parents. "Please, Steve. I have a huge test tomorrow and I cannot study with that thing sitting there. I can't even look at my desk right now. I need you to come kill it."
Another pause, and you could hear the smile creeping into his voice even through his exhaustion, that particular tone he got when he found you funny and endearing and was trying, and failing, to sound annoyed about being woken up for it. "You want me to drive across town at quarter to one in the morning to kill a spider."
"Yes."
"In your room. Where your parents are asleep. Down the hall."
"You've done it before," you reminded him, because he had, more than once, climbing up to your window with more confidence than the situation probably warranted, always managing to make it look easy even though you were fairly sure at least one of those times he'd nearly fallen off the trellis and broken his neck for the privilege of sneaking in to see you for twenty stolen minutes before curfew caught up with both of you.
"That was different. That wasn't a bug emergency."
"Steve." You said his name like it was the only argument you had left, which, frankly, it was, because you'd already exhausted logic and were relying purely on the fact that you knew him, knew that underneath the tired grumbling he was already reaching for his jeans, already resigning himself to the fact that he was going to spend his night driving to your house to fight a spider for you, because that was who he was, that was who he'd always been with you, even when he pretended otherwise.
You heard him sigh, long and dramatic, the kind of sigh that was more performance than genuine reluctance. "You owe me so big for this."
"I'll make you breakfast."
"You can't cook."
"I'll buy you breakfast."
"That's better." Another rustle, the sound of him standing, his voice a little clearer now like he'd pulled the phone away from his ear to grab something. "Okay. Give me fifteen minutes. Don't- don't let it near your bed or anything, just, I don't know, keep an eye on it and don't lose it."
"I'm staring at it right now. I haven't blinked in like four minutes."
"That's insane, blink, you're gonna go blind."
"I can't risk it moving somewhere I can't see it, Steve, that's worse, that's so much worse, do you understand? At least right now I know where it is."
You could hear the smile again, wider this time, fond in a way that made your chest go soft even in the middle of your spider-related crisis. "You're ridiculous. I love you. Give me fifteen minutes, I'll come around back like usual."
"Thank you, thank you, I love you too, drive safe."
"Yeah, yeah." And then the line clicked dead, and you were alone again with your nemesis, who had, in the time you'd spent on the phone, decided to relocate approximately two inches to the left, which felt like an act of aggression, honestly, like it knew you were plotting against it and was repositioning itself accordingly.
You sat back down on the very edge of your bed, as far from the desk as you could manage while still keeping visual contact, and you waited, watching the second hand crawl around your alarm clock with a patience you did not currently possess for anything else in your life. Fifteen minutes had never felt so long. You kept replaying the call in your head, the sleep-rough sound of his voice before he'd fully woken up, and despite the very real terror still coursing through you every time the spider so much as twitched a leg, you felt a warmth creeping in alongside it, because he hadn't hesitated, not really, not past the initial grumbling that you both knew was mostly for show. He was already out of bed and pulling his jeans on before you'd even finished asking.
That was the thing about Steve that you didn't think you'd ever get used to, not even after this long, the way he complained and rolled his eyes and made a whole production out of being put out by something, and then did it anyway, every single time, without fail. You'd learned a while back not to mistake the grumbling for reluctance. It was just how he talked himself into things he was already going to do.
Around the twelve-minute mark you heard it, the soft, distinct crunch of gravel under tires a few houses down, engine cut early so it wouldn't rumble too loud past your parents' window, followed by the quieter sound of a car door easing shut instead of slamming. You allowed yourself one glance away from the spider to check the window, and sure enough, a familiar shape was making its way across your backyard in the dark, hands shoved in his jacket pockets, hair somehow still doing its thing even at this ungodly hour, like gravity itself had agreed to leave it alone as a personal favor.
You went to the window and pushed it open as quietly as you could manage, wincing at the small creak it always made no matter how careful you were, and looked down at him standing beneath it.
"Hi," you whispered.
"Hey." He was already reaching for the trellis, testing his footing with the same casual confidence he always did, like he'd done this so many times his body had simply stopped registering it as a risk. "Where's the little guy? Still on your desk?"
"He's not little. That's the problem. Also don't call him a little guy, you're supposed to be on my side."
"I am on your side, that's why I'm climbing a trellis at one in the morning." He hoisted himself up another rung, jacket catching slightly on a nail that had been sticking out of that wood since before either of you were born, and you reached down to help pull him the rest of the way through the window, both of you moving with the kind of practiced quiet that came from doing this exact maneuver more times than either of you would probably admit to your parents.
He landed inside your room with a soft thud, immediately straightening up and brushing off his jacket, and then his eyes found yours in the dim lamp light, and something in his expression softened the way it always did the second he actually looked at you properly, like the grumbling had been a formality he needed to get through before he was allowed to just be happy to see you.
"Hi," he said again, quieter this time, and leaned in to press a kiss to your forehead before you could even respond, one hand coming up to rest at your waist like it belonged there, because at this point, it did.
"Hi," you whispered back, some of the tension from the last fifteen minutes easing out of your shoulders now that he was actually here, now that the problem wasn't yours alone to sit with anymore. "Thank you for coming."
"Yeah, well." He glanced past you toward the desk, spotting the spider immediately, and you watched his whole posture shift, some invisible switch flipping from boyfriend-mode into designated-bug-killer-mode, shoulders squaring like he was about to walk into battle instead of swat an insect. "Okay. Where's your shoe. Or a cup. Do you have a cup?"
"There's one on my nightstand, but Steve, I want it dead, not released outside to come back tomorrow night."
"You want it dead."
"I want it dead."
"Bloodthirsty," he muttered, but he was already moving toward the desk, grabbing one of your textbooks off the floor with far more purpose than the moment probably called for, and you pressed yourself back against the wall by the window, watching with your hands half over your face, peeking through your fingers like you were watching a horror movie instead of your own boyfriend approach a spider with a geometry textbook raised like a weapon.
"Be careful," you whispered. "What if it jumps?"
"Spiders don't jump. I don't think. Do spiders jump?"
"I don't know, that's why I called you, you're supposed to know these things."
"I run a video store, not a pest control company." But he was grinning as he said it, easing closer to the desk with the kind of exaggerated caution that made it clear he was performing bravery more than he actually felt it, sneaking glances back at you like he wanted to make sure you were watching, wanted credit for every inch of ground he covered toward the desk.
You held your breath as he raised the textbook, and there was a beat of silence where you were fairly sure the whole house could hear your heart pounding, and then, smack. The textbook came down hard against the desk, rattling your pencil case and knocking your highlighter clean off the edge, and you both froze for a second, waiting to hear if the noise had carried down the hall, listening hard for any sound of your parents' door opening.
Nothing. The house stayed quiet.
Steve lifted the book slowly, peering underneath it with the kind of hesitant curiosity of someone checking if they'd actually won or if the thing had somehow scuttled away in the half-second of impact, and then he let out a low, satisfied breath.
"Got him."
"Is he dead?"
"He is extremely dead." Steve set the book down, wiping his hand on his jeans like the mere proximity to the aftermath required some kind of decontamination ritual, and turned back to you with the pleased, slightly smug expression of a man who had just single-handedly defended his girlfriend's honor against an eight-legged intruder. "You're safe. Threat neutralized."
You let out a breath you didn't realize you'd been holding and crossed the room to him, wrapping your arms around his middle and pressing your face into his chest, and he laughed, low and warm, arms coming around you automatically, one hand smoothing over your hair.
"My hero," you mumbled into his shirt.
"Damn right." He pressed a kiss to the top of your head, and you felt him relax properly now that the mission was complete, his hold on you loosening from tactical to simply affectionate. "You know, for someone who once told me a bee was, and I quote, 'basically harmless, just don't be weird about it,' you sure had a meltdown over one spider."
"Bees don't sneak up on you at midnight while you're trying to study."
"Neither does a spider, really, it's not like it was hunting you."
"It was on my notebook, Steve. It was violating my personal academic space."
He laughed again, ducking his head to press his forehead against yours, and you could feel the exhaustion in him now that the adrenaline of the mission had worn off, a softness in the way he held you that made you feel a little guilty for pulling him out of bed, even though you weren't sorry, not really, not when it meant getting to stand here in the quiet of your room with his arms around you at one in the morning.
"You should go back to bed," you said, even though you didn't particularly want him to leave. "You have work tomorrow."
"So do you have a test tomorrow. Today. Whatever." He glanced past you toward your desk, where your abandoned study guide still sat open, half the page covered in your increasingly frantic handwriting. "You look exhausted."
"I have to keep studying. I can't afford to fail this."
"You're not gonna fail it." He said it with such simple, unwavering certainty that you almost believed him just from the tone alone. "You've been studying for like a week straight. You quizzed me on this stuff yesterday and I didn't understand a single word and you explained it to me like three different ways until even I got it, and I am, by every possible measure, bad at math."
"You're not bad at math."
"I got a D in it, babe."
"You got a D because you weren't paying attention, not because you're bad at it."
"See, this is exactly the kind of teacher energy that's gonna get you an A tomorrow." He pulled back just enough to look at you properly, hands settling on your shoulders, thumbs brushing gently over your collarbones. "You're gonna be fine. But you also need sleep, or none of that studying is gonna stick anyway. That's, like, science. Sleep helps you remember stuff. I read that somewhere."
"You read that somewhere," you repeated, unable to keep the smile off your face.
"Robin told me. Same thing." He shrugged, unbothered by the source correction. "Point is, you should sleep. At least for a few hours. Set an alarm, wake up early, do one more pass through your notes before school if you have to, but you're not gonna do yourself any favors staring at the same page until sunrise."
You knew he was right, in the way you always knew he was right about things like this, even when your anxious brain wanted to argue otherwise, wanted to insist that one more hour of studying was worth more than sleep, that you couldn't afford to stop until every formula was memorized cold. But you were tired, you'd been tired for hours now, the kind of tired that made the words on the page swim even when you focused as hard as you could, and having him here, having successfully dispatched the spider and having his arms still loosely around you, made the exhaustion suddenly feel a lot harder to ignore.
"Will you stay?" you asked, quieter now. "Just for a bit. Until I fall asleep."
Something in his expression went soft in that particular way it always did when you asked him for something small like this, something that had nothing to do with heroics or trellis-climbing and everything to do with just wanting him close. "Yeah. Course I will."
You climbed into bed first, and he followed after a moment, kicking off his shoes and settling in beside you on top of the covers, one arm sliding beneath your pillow so you could curl into his side the way you always did, your head finding its spot against his chest like it had been carved out specifically for you. He smelled like his cologne and the cold night air still clinging to his jacket, and underneath your ear his heartbeat was steady and slow, and you felt yourself relaxing into it almost instantly, the frantic energy of the last hour draining out of you all at once now that the adrenaline had nothing left to hold onto.
"Thank you for coming," you murmured again, eyes already drifting shut.
"You don't have to keep thanking me." His hand found your hair, fingers combing through it slowly, an absent, soothing motion he probably wasn't even fully aware he was doing. "That's kind of the deal, right? You call, I come. Even for bugs. Especially for bugs, apparently."
"I really am sorry I woke you up."
"I'm not." You felt more than heard the low rumble of his voice against your ear, and you tilted your head up just enough to look at him in the dim light, and he was looking back at you with an expression that made your chest ache in the best possible way, something unguarded and fond that he only ever seemed to let show in moments exactly like this one, quiet and half-lit and entirely just between the two of you. "I like this. I like that you called me instead of waking up your dad. I like that when something's wrong, even something dumb like a spider, I'm who you think of first."
"You're always who I think of first."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah." You pressed a kiss to his jaw, feeling him smile against the top of your head in response. "Who else would climb a trellis at one in the morning for me?"
"Nobody. Which is exactly why you should marry me someday, for the trellis-climbing skills alone." He said it lightly, teasingly, the way he said most of his bigger, softer thoughts, dressed up in a joke so neither of you had to sit too long in how much he meant it, but you felt the truth of it anyway, warm and steady beneath the humor, and you tucked yourself in a little closer, letting your eyes fall shut properly this time.
"I'll think about it," you mumbled, already half asleep. "Depends how you do on the next spider."
"I will literally fight every spider in Hawkins for you. That's a promise."
"Good. That's the right answer."
You felt him press one more kiss to the top of your head, felt his arm tighten slightly around you, grounding and warm, and the last thing you were aware of before sleep finally pulled you under was the steady rhythm of his heartbeat under your ear and the quiet, contented feeling of being exactly where you belonged.
You woke a few hours later to grey early light creeping around the edges of your curtains, your alarm not yet gone off, and found the bed beside you empty, the covers tucked carefully back over the spot where he'd been, like he hadn't wanted to disturb you slipping out. On your nightstand sat a folded piece of notebook paper, torn from the corner of one of your own study sheets, his handwriting messy and slanted across it.
Snuck out before your parents woke up, hero's gotta stay anonymous. You're gonna crush that test. Call me after and tell me how it went, and if there are any more spiders, I expect a full report before you handle it yourself. That's MY job. Love you. - S
You read it twice, smiling to yourself in the quiet morning light, and then you folded it carefully and tucked it into the corner of your mirror where you kept the other little notes he'd left you over the months, before you got up, got dressed, and gathered your things for school, feeling, for the first time in days, like maybe you actually were ready for that test after all.
Divas, I’m currently preparing my Kinktober posts 👀 My goal is to hopefully post every other day, if not every day, using a few pieces from the deep, dark folder of smuts I’ve been hoarding.
BUT I want your opinions!! What kind of content do we want? Soft Steve? Rough Steve? Joe? Potentially Gator?? 👀
I can also write for other characters, so if there’s someone you’d love to see, please don’t be shy! Inbox me, comment, send me an idea, all suggestions are welcome, lovelies. I want to make sure I’m writing things you’ll actually enjoy 🫶🏻
So please, feed me your ideas because Kinktober is coming and apparently I’ve decided to make it everyone’s problem 💋
Summary: You come home three drinks past sensible and immediately declares him the prettiest boy alive
A/N: Can you tell I came up with this premise after a night out, trying to read my half written mess the next morning may as well have been a full time job. Enjoy your days my lovelies 🤍
The cab dropped you off at the wrong end of the street, you were fairly sure it was the wrong end, anyway, though in your current state you weren't entirely convinced you knew which end was which, and by the time you made it to the front door you'd already laughed at three things that weren't funny and stubbed your toe on the same crack in the pavement twice.
Your keys did not want to cooperate. You held them up to the dim light of the hallway like that might help, squinting at the little brass shapes as though you'd never seen a house key in your life, and you were maybe a full minute into jabbing the wrong one at the lock, giggling under your breath the whole time, because apparently drunk-you found this hilarious, when you remembered, belatedly, that you were trying very hard not to wake the neighbours through the thin walls. You clapped a hand over your own mouth like that would undo the noise you'd already made, glanced guiltily at the door across the landing, and went back to the keys with the exaggerated concentration of someone who thought they were being extremely quiet and was not.
You did not have to worry about waking anyone inside, though. The lamp by the door was already on. And when you finally got the door open and stumbled into the entryway, toeing off one shoe before you'd even shut the door behind you, you could hear the low murmur of the TV drifting from the living room, just a few steps away.
Joe was still up.
Of course he was. He always was, when you went out without him, not because he didn't trust you to get home in one piece, but because he liked being the one you came home to. He'd never said it in so many words, but you knew it anyway, the same way you knew most things about him: not because he announced them, but because you'd learned to read the quiet parts of him a long time ago.
You found him on the sofa in old sweatpants and a T-shirt soft enough that you knew it was one of his favourites, one knee pulled up, the blue light of some show he clearly wasn't paying attention to flickering across his face. He had that particular slouch he got late at night, comfortable and unhurried, like the whole apartment belonged to him and he had nowhere else to be. The second he heard you in the hallway, he twisted around to look, and you watched the exact moment his face changed, the small, private smile tugging at one corner of his mouth, the way his eyebrows lifted just slightly.
He didn't need you to say anything. One look at you, the too-bright eyes, the crooked way you were standing, the fact that you were still holding one shoe in your hand like you'd forgotten what to do with it, and he already knew exactly how the rest of the night was going to go.
"Joey!"
His name came out of you like it was the most wonderful discovery you'd made all evening, like you hadn't fully expected him to be sitting right there, in your own home, exactly where you'd left him. You dropped the shoe, it landed somewhere near the shoe rack, more by accident than design, and crossed the living room in a handful of uneven steps before all but throwing yourself into his lap.
He caught you easily, huffing out a laugh as your arms looped around his neck and your face pressed into the side of his throat. "Hi," he said, amusement warm in his voice, one arm coming around your back to steady you, the other bracing against the sofa cushion so neither of you toppled sideways. "Hi, hi. Okay."
"I missed you," you told him, muffled against his skin, entirely sincere, like you'd been gone for a week rather than a handful of hours.
"You've been gone since seven," Joe said, but he was grinning as he said it, and his hand had already started moving in slow circles against your back, the way it always did when you weren't feeling well or feeling too much of something. "It's barely midnight."
"Still missed you." You pulled back just far enough to look at him properly, swaying slightly even sitting down, your hands migrating to either side of his face like you needed to hold him still to look at him properly. Up close, he looked impossibly soft in the low light, hair messier than usual from where he'd clearly been running a hand through it, a little furrow of fond concern between his brows that hadn't quite smoothed out yet. "Did you miss me?"
"Terribly," he said, completely deadpan, and then laughed again when you made an offended noise and swatted weakly at his chest. "I did. I missed you. Did you have a good night?"
That was apparently the exact right question to ask, because you launched immediately into an account of your evening that had absolutely no regard for chronological order. One sentence you were telling him about the bar you'd started at, the next you were three stories deep into something that had happened to your friend's cousin, and somewhere in between you seemed to remember an entirely different anecdote and pivoted without warning, leaving Joe to piece together the actual sequence of events through context clues alone.
He didn't seem to mind. He never did. He sat there with you curled half in his lap, nodding along, asking exactly the right follow-up questions to keep you talking, not because he needed the information, you suspected, but because he liked watching you like this, loose and happy and entirely unfiltered, your hands gesturing wildly enough that you nearly caught him in the jaw twice. Every so often his eyes would crinkle at the corners in a way that had nothing to do with anything you'd actually said and everything to do with simply looking at you.
"and then Priya said the bartender said it was on the house, which, obviously that's not true, bars don't just give away drinks, but she was so convinced, and I didn't want to be the one to tell her-"
"Naturally," Joe said gravely.
"-so I just let her think it, and honestly? I respect the confidence. I would've believed him too."
"You believe most things people tell you when you've had a few," he pointed out, not unkindly.
"That's not true." You considered this for a second, swaying slightly. "Okay, it's a little true."
He laughed, properly laughed, the sound rumbling under your ear where your head had drifted back down to his shoulder somewhere in the last two minutes without your noticing, and pressed a kiss to the top of your head before nudging you gently upright. "Come on. Let's get your coat off before you fall asleep in it."
You informed him, with great dignity, that you did not need help, that you were an adult woman fully capable of removing your own coat, and then proceeded to get one arm stuck in the sleeve so thoroughly that you nearly toppled off the sofa trying to free yourself. Joe caught you by the elbow before you could go down, biting back a smile so hard his whole face was fighting him on it.
"Fully capable," he agreed, already working the coat gently off your shoulders while you huffed and grumbled about traitorous sleeves. "Completely independent. Not falling over even a little."
"I'm not," you said, and immediately proved yourself wrong by listing sideways into him the second the coat came free.
He didn't laugh at you, not really, not in any way that stung. It was fonder than that, softer, the kind of teasing that only ever made you feel more looked after rather than less. He got the coat draped properly over the arm of the sofa, then crouched down in front of you to deal with the shoe you were still wearing, one hand braced warm against your ankle as he tugged it loose.
"You're too good to me," you told him, watching him with the kind of unguarded affection that only ever came out after a few drinks, when every soft feeling you had was suddenly right there on the surface with nowhere to hide.
"I'm really not," Joe said, glancing up at you with a smile that said otherwise. "I just like taking care of you."
He asked if you'd eaten somewhere in the process of steering you toward the kitchen, one hand resting light against the small of your back like he wasn't quite trusting you to walk the ten feet unassisted. You told him yes, of course you had, you'd had, and then paused for a beat too long, visibly searching your own memory for evidence, some chips. At the bar. Definitely.
"Chips," Joe repeated, deeply unconvinced.
"Bar snacks count as a meal."
"They really don't."
You opened your mouth to argue the point further and then seemed to lose the thread entirely, distracted instead by the effort of hoisting yourself up onto the kitchen counter, which took two attempts and Joe's hand steadying your hip before you managed it. Once you were up there, legs swinging, you looked entirely too pleased with yourself, like scaling the countertop had been some great personal triumph.
Joe shook his head, but he was already moving toward the fridge, already resigned to the fact that you were getting fed whether you thought you needed it or not. He pulled out eggs and bread, a block of cheese, moving around the kitchen with the easy, unhurried competence of someone who'd made this exact meal a hundred times before, for you and for himself, on nights that called for something simple and warm rather than anything complicated.
You watched him from your perch on the counter with your chin propped on your hand, tracking every small movement, the way he cracked eggs one-handed without looking, the little frown of concentration when he checked the pan wasn't too hot, the sleeves of his T-shirt pushed up his forearms.
"You're so pretty," you said, apropos of nothing, entirely matter-of-fact, like you were commenting on the weather.
Joe huffed a laugh without turning around. "Thank you."
"I mean it. Like, genuinely. You're so pretty it's kind of unfair." You tilted your head, studying him with the exaggerated seriousness of someone conducting very important research. "How do you just, look like that. All the time. Even in old sweatpants."
"I don't know what to tell you," he said, glancing back at you over his shoulder, clearly fighting a losing battle against his own smile. "Genetics, I guess."
"Lucky genetics." You sighed, long and dramatic, letting your head fall back against the cabinet behind you. "I'm so lucky. Do you know that? I'm the luckiest. I get to just, come home to this. To you. Every day. That's crazy. That's actually insane, if you think about it."
He did turn around properly then, spatula still in hand, something in his expression going soft and a little overwhelmed in the way it always did when you said things like that, things that were easy for drunk-you to say out loud, things sober-you felt just as deeply but usually kept folded up smaller, tucked away where they were safer. He crossed the kitchen just to press a kiss to your forehead, quick and warm, before he went back to the stove.
"I'm the lucky one," he said, quiet enough that you almost missed it under the sound of eggs sizzling.
You made a small, pleased noise and let your legs swing a little harder against the cabinets, entirely too warm and soft-focused to argue the point, though you privately thought he was wrong. You always thought he was wrong, on this particular subject. It was one of the very few things you two disagreed on with any regularity.
The moment the toast popped, you were reaching for it, fingers already halfway to the plate before Joe caught your wrist without even looking, steering your hand gently back toward your lap.
"Wait," he said. "It's not ready."
"It's toast. Toast is ready the second it's toast."
"It needs butter."
"I can wait for butter after I've had a bite."
"You cannot," Joe said, with the weary patience of a man who had had this exact argument before, on other nights, in other states of sobriety, and lost it roughly half the time. He nudged your hand away again when you made a second attempt, this time going for the cheese directly off the cutting board, and you huffed at him, wounded, cradling your rejected hand against your chest like he'd committed some grave injustice.
"You're mean to me."
"I'm feeding you," he said. "There's a difference."
By the time he finally set the plate in front of you, eggs, cheese, toast properly buttered, all of it simple and warm and exactly the kind of thing your stomach actually wanted, you'd forgiven him entirely, mostly because the smell of it made you realise how hungry you actually were underneath all the not-hungry you'd insisted on in the cab. Joe pulled a stool up beside the counter and sat with you while you ate, one hand resting on your knee, watching with quiet satisfaction as you worked steadily through the plate.
He didn't rush you. He didn't say much at all, really, just let you eat at your own pace, occasionally reaching over to push a stray piece of hair back from your face, or to steal a very small piece of toast off the edge of your plate when you weren't looking, which you caught him doing exactly once and threatened, with great solemnity, to never forgive him for.
By the time the plate was mostly empty, the adrenaline of the night had worn off entirely, and what was left in its place was a heavy, pleasant kind of tired that made your eyelids feel three times too heavy. You set your fork down, and without any real decision behind it, your head found his shoulder, tucking in against the curve of his neck like it belonged there.
"Tired?" Joe asked, voice low, one hand coming up to rest against the back of your head.
"Mm," you agreed, which was really all the answer you had left in you.
He noticed the exact second you started to properly drift, your breathing slowing, your weight going soft and heavy against his side, one hand losing its grip on the edge of the counter, and gently eased you back before you could tip sideways off your perch entirely.
"Okay," he murmured, brushing a thumb along your cheekbone until your eyes blinked back open, bleary and unfocused. "Bedtime. Come on."
"I can walk," you told him, with the misplaced confidence of someone who had, several hours ago, been capable of walking in a straight line.
You made it approximately two steps off the stool before your ankle rolled slightly on absolutely nothing, and you pitched sideways directly into Joe's chest, who had clearly been anticipating this exact outcome, given that his arm was already there to catch you before you'd fully started falling.
"Floor's uneven," you informed him, with the deep offence of someone wrongly accused.
"Sure it is," Joe said, not even bothering to argue, already looping an arm firmly around your waist, tucking you into his side in a way that meant you couldn't list too far in either direction. "C'mon. Bed's right here."
He walked you the short distance down the hall at a slow, careful pace, one hand splayed warm against your hip, patient through every wobble and every moment you stopped dead to lean your full weight into him and declare that you needed a break, actually, right here, in the hallway, this was fine. He didn't argue with that either, just held you steady until you decided on your own that continuing on was, in fact, the better plan.
In the bedroom, he sat you down on the edge of the bed and disappeared into the closet just long enough to find your pyjamas, the soft set, the ones you always reached for when you weren't feeling great, because he knew you well enough to know that even drunk-and-happy counted, on some level, as not quite feeling great, and laid them out beside you before stepping back toward the door.
"I'll be right outside," he said. "Yell if you need help."
"I don't need privacy from you," you said, squinting up at him, faintly scandalised by the very idea. "You've seen me naked like a thousand times."
"I know." His mouth twitched. "Still gonna give you a minute. Yell if you need me."
You did, in fact, yell for him, not because you'd fallen or gotten stuck, but because you'd gotten distracted three sentences into changing and forgotten what you were doing, and needed him to come back and remind you. He came back laughing, helping you the rest of the way into your pyjama top with the practiced patience of someone who'd done this before and would happily do it again.
He sat you in front of the bathroom mirror after that, running a warm washcloth gently over your face to work through the last of your makeup, careful around your eyes, quiet and unhurried the whole time. You watched him in the mirror rather than watching your own reflection, the concentration on his face, the softness in the set of his mouth, and felt something warm and a little overwhelming settle in your chest, the kind of feeling that was too big and too simple to put into words even when you were sober, let alone now.
"You're really good at this," you told him.
"At washing your face?"
"At all of it." You gestured vaguely, encompassing the bathroom, the washcloth, the entire evening. "Taking care of me. You're really good at it."
"Lots of practice," Joe said, setting the washcloth aside and brushing a strand of hair back from your face with gentle fingers, tucking it behind your ear.
He walked you back to the bed after that, pulled the duvet back for you, and while you settled in he moved around the room finishing the small things, a glass of water on your nightstand, your phone plugged in and charging on the dresser, the lamp dimmed rather than switched off entirely, because he knew you liked a little bit of light on nights like this. Only once all of it was done did he finally climb in beside you, the mattress dipping under his weight, and you immediately gravitated toward him, seeking out his warmth like it was instinct.
"I'm sorry," you mumbled against his chest, already half somewhere else, your fingers curling loosely into the front of his shirt. "For making you look after me. Like this. You shouldn't have to."
"Hey." His voice was gentle but firm, one hand coming up to rest against your back, holding you close. "You have absolutely nothing to apologise for. Okay? Nothing."
"But-"
"Nothing," he said again, quieter this time, pressing a kiss into your hair. "I like taking care of you. I'd rather be doing this than anything else tonight. So stop apologising."
You didn't have the energy left to argue with him, not really, and some small, sober-adjacent part of you recognised that he meant it anyway, that this wasn't a performance of patience he was putting on for your benefit, it was just Joe, being exactly who he always was with you.
Once you were both properly settled, the lamp low, the duvet pulled up around your shoulders, his arm looped around you like it belonged there, you went quiet in a way you hadn't been all night. The rambling energy that had carried you through the last few hours had finally burned itself out, leaving something softer and slower in its place. You curled fully into his chest, one hand still fisted loosely in the fabric of his shirt like you needed something to hold onto, and pressed your face into the warm curve of his neck.
"I love coming home to you," you murmured, the words slurred soft at the edges but entirely sincere. "Like, always. Every time. But especially tonight."
Joe's arm tightened around you, just slightly. "Yeah?"
"Mm-hm." You nuzzled closer, chasing his warmth, your words starting to blur together the way they always did right before sleep pulled you under. "You're my favourite person. Did you know that? Like, out of everyone. In the whole world. You're it."
"I did not know the whole world was under consideration," Joe said, voice thick with quiet laughter, but his hand had started moving in slow circles against your back again, the way it always did when he was trying not to let you feel how much something had gotten to him.
"It was. You won." Your eyes were barely open now, your voice dropping to something closer to a whisper. "You're my safest place. 's not even, it's not a metaphor. I mean it, like, literally. Safest place I know."
He didn't say anything for a moment, and when you cracked one eye open to check, you found him looking down at you with an expression so unguarded, so completely undone, that it made your chest ache in the nicest possible way. He looked, in that moment, like a man who had just been handed something he intended to keep forever.
"Stay awake with me," you mumbled, already losing the battle against sleep even as you said it. "Till I fall asleep. Please."
"I'm not going anywhere," Joe said, and he meant it the way he meant most things, quietly, completely, without needing to say more than that.
You hummed, satisfied, and pressed a small, clumsy kiss to his collarbone, then another slightly higher, aimed vaguely at his jaw and missing by an inch. "Love you," you mumbled between them, the words disjointed, half-finished thoughts strung loosely together. "Love you so much. 'm so glad you're- you're just. Here."
"I love you too," Joe said, brushing his lips against your forehead, holding you like something precious. "So much. Go to sleep, okay? I've got you."
You made a small, agreeable noise against his skin, one more sleepy kiss landing somewhere near his ear, and then, mid-sentence, mid-thought, really, some fragment of a story you never finished telling him, you went slack against his chest, your breathing evening out into the slow, steady rhythm of actual sleep.
Joe stayed still for a long moment afterward, just looking down at you, at the way your face had gone soft and unguarded in sleep, at the way your hand was still curled loosely into his shirt like even unconscious you didn't want to let go of him. He smiled to himself in the dim light of the lamp, pressed one last kiss to your forehead, and reached down to pull the duvet a little higher around your shoulders before finally letting his own eyes close.
⤷ warnings: smut, p in v, cock slapping, overstimulation, cum eatingˎˊ˗
“J-just the tip, like you said, Stevie.” You’re not quite sure how you ended up in this position, lying flat on Steve’s bed while he had your knees folded up to your chest, and using one hand to rub the fat head of his cock through your soaked folds.
“Yeah, baby, I know. I promise.” Steve said shakily, too entranced by the sight of your hole dripping with arousal to look at your face. Before he pushed his length in, he slapped the angry head against your pussy, relishing in the way you recoiled backwards. You panted heavily as he bullied his cock into you, throwing his head back with a low groan, you were even tighter than he expected.
You were best friends, best friends weren’t supposed to fuck, but the horniness won over and Steve told you there was nothing wrong with having his cock inside of you if it was only the tip. You agreed, but now you weren’t so sure—the feeling of his girth stretching you wide enough to make you gasp was intoxicating. Your hands grasped at the sheets to hold on to something as your walls pulsated around him.
“Ohh—fuck, pretty girl. Don’t do that.” Steve’s lashes fluttered from the pleasure soaring through him right from his cock. He wasn’t even thrusting, yet he felt like he could cum just from this.
“Mmf—s-sorry. Stevie! What are you—what are you doing?” Steve’s hips moved before he could properly think about it, pushing his cock even deeper into your pussy with a squelching sound, definitely breaking his promise. “We can’t—we shouldn’t—”
“Shh, it’s alright, baby.” He muttered, gripping your thighs tightly to drive his length in and out of you at a steady pace. “I’m gonna make you feel so good. I know you can take it, that’s it.” Every time you opened your mouth, only a string of moans left your lips, making your head swirl and full of him.
“I—ngh—don’t stop, Steve! Oh god!” You cried out, the coil in your stomach started to tighten threateningly, your high inching closer and closer with every thrust that directly hit your g-spot.
“You like it, hm?” Steve smirked, quickening his pace once he realized neither of you were far off from an orgasm. “Told ya this was a good idea, shit, you hear how wet you are?” He laughed mockingly.
You could only squeeze your eyes shut, screaming in response. “My—ahh—my stomach feels weird, Steve.” You warned, as the pleasure inside of you kept growing hotter. Your chest heaved, his balls smacking against your ass while his brows furrowed in concentration.
“Weird, huh?” Steve repeated, his voice dripping with a honey syrup tone. “Thats good, sweetheart. Means you’re about to cum all over my cock. Do it f’me, just let go.”
Your legs shook from around his shoulders, an incoherent moan of his name echoing through the stuffy room as your orgasm won over. You never thought it could feel this good, but as the pleasure died down, overstimulation took its place.
“I can’t-t, Stevie. S’too much—urg,” but Steve only kept thrusting his now soaked cock in an uneven rythym, keeping a tight hold on you.
“‘M close, ‘m close, ‘m close!” Steve repeated through ragged breaths, before suddenly stilling inside you. “Fuckkk—mmm,” his body collapsed over you, crushing you further into the squeaking mattress as his cock shot ropes of his hot cum, leaking out of you once you couldn’t take it anymore.
You weakly pushed at his shoulder, and Steve balanced his weight one on his elbow, pulling out of you slowly. You hissed at the feeling of emptiness, he rubbed your thigh consolingly. “I know, baby.”
Steve reached a hand down, and scooped some of his cum back into your hole, causing you to shudder. He then brought the same hand up to your mouth, and swiped his fingers over your bottom lip. “Go on, sweetheart. Suck ‘em clean.” He coaxed you.
You stared into his eyes, before parting your mouth and closing them around his fingers, gently sucking them. “Oh, fuck.” Steve exhaled. “You’re gonna get me hard again.”
He quickly pulled them out and replaced his fingers with his tongue, kissing you messily. When you pulled apart, you could see the lust swimming in his eyes again. “Why don’t we go again, baby? I promise just to put the tip in this time.” Steve flashed you a toothy grin.
Summary: Steve can't go more than a few feet without touching you
A/N: Based on THIS request, really enjoyed writing this tysm for sending it in lovely! Hope you all enjoy your day 🤍
Steve had never been subtle about it, not once, not since the very beginning.
It started small. A hand on your knee at Family Video when Robin wasn't looking. His fingers finding the hem of your sleeve while you both stood in line at the store, tugging you half a step closer like the eight inches between your shoulders was an insult he couldn't let stand. You used to tease him about it, call him a golden retriever in a person's body, ask him if he'd been starved for affection as a child, whether his mother had held him enough. He'd always laugh it off, shrug one shoulder, say something like "can't help it, you're warm" as if that explained anything at all.
But three months into actually dating him, you'd stopped being surprised by it. You'd started building your whole life around the fact that Steve Harrington did not know how to exist more than two feet away from you, and somewhere along the way, without really deciding to, you'd stopped minding.
Tonight was a perfect example.
You were sitting on the couch in his living room, feet tucked under you, a bowl of popcorn balanced on the cushion beside you, and a rerun of some sitcom playing low on the TV. Steve had disappeared into the kitchen fifteen minutes ago to grab drinks, and you'd made the mistake of thinking that meant you'd have the couch to yourself for a minute. You should have known better.
He came back with two cans of soda, set them down on the coffee table without a word, and then instead of sitting beside you like a normal person with a normal amount of respect for personal space, he hooked an arm behind your knees and pulled.
"Steve-"
"Shh, m'watching the show," he said, entirely too pleased with himself, as he settled back into the corner of the couch and arranged you across his lap like you were something he'd been missing all day. Your legs draped over his thighs, his arm slung loose and heavy around your waist, his thumb already tracing slow circles against your hip through your shirt.
"You have your own cushion," you pointed out, even as you let your head tip against his shoulder, even as your body melted into him without your permission. "An entire couch, actually. Three cushions' worth of couch."
"Don't want the couch." He said it like it was obvious. Like you were the one being unreasonable, and he pressed a kiss to the crown of your head to punctuate it, like that settled the matter completely. "Want you."
"You're ridiculous."
"You like it."
You did. That was the annoying part. You liked it so much that you'd stopped fighting him on it weeks ago, had started just automatically curling into whatever space he made for you the second you sat down anywhere near him. It had become instinct. His hand found your knee, and your body leaned. His arm opened, and you filled it.
"Popcorn," you said, nodding toward the bowl now stranded on the empty cushion where you used to be sitting.
Steve reached for it without letting go of you, stretching his whole torso sideways in a way that had to be uncomfortable, just so he wouldn't have to loosen his grip on your waist even for a second. He grabbed the bowl, resettled, and held it out for you like a peace offering.
"See? Problem solved. Didn't even have to move you."
"You could've just let me get it."
"Could've," he agreed, popping a piece of popcorn into his mouth, entirely unbothered. "Didn't want to."
You rolled your eyes, but you were smiling, and he caught it, he always caught it, always noticed the exact second your sarcastic annoyance cracked into fondness, like he had a radar built specifically for your tells. He grinned back at you, all dimples and self-satisfaction, and dropped another kiss against your temple before turning his attention back to the TV like nothing had happened at all.
This was just how it was. How it had always been, really, since the very first week you started dating, when he'd shown up at your house to pick you up for a movie and ended up sitting so close to you on your own porch steps that his whole side was pressed to yours, his knee bouncing against your knee, his hand finding yours before you'd even said hello. You remembered thinking, even then, oh, he's going to be like this. You just hadn't understood the full scope of what "like this" meant.
It meant that grocery shopping took twice as long because Steve refused to push the cart from a normal distance, he'd walk close enough that his hip bumped yours every few steps, one hand permanently resting somewhere on you, your shoulder, the small of your back, the curve of your waist, like he needed the physical confirmation that you were still there even in the cereal aisle.
It meant that when you sat at the kitchen table to do anything, bills, homework, just existing with a cup of coffee,Steve would materialize behind your chair within minutes, arms draped over your shoulders, chin propped on the top of your head, breathing you in like he'd been deprived of your presence for hours instead of minutes.
It meant car rides where his hand never left your thigh, movie nights where you functionally became a Steve-shaped blanket, mornings where he'd wake up before his alarm just to pull you tighter against his chest before he had to actually get up.
You loved it. You loved it more than you probably should admit out loud, because admitting it just made him worse, made him bolder, made him lean into it even harder, like your affection was fuel and he intended to run on it forever.
The popcorn bowl went empty eventually, and the sitcom rolled into another episode, and you felt yourself getting sleepy against his chest, lulled by the steady thump of his heartbeat under your ear and the absent way he kept stroking his thumb along your arm.
"Bed?" he murmured against your hair, feeling you go soft and heavy against him.
"Mm. In a minute."
"You said that ten minutes ago."
"I meant it then too."
He laughed, quiet and warm, and you felt it rumble through his chest more than you heard it. "C'mon," he said, shifting beneath you like he meant to get up, which meant you had to get up too, which you protested with a groan that made him laugh harder.
"Carry me," you mumbled, only half joking.
You expected him to laugh that off too. Instead, he just said, "okay," like it was the easiest request in the world, and scooped you up before you could argue, one arm under your knees and the other around your back, hauling you against his chest like you weighed nothing at all.
"Steve, I was kidding-"
"I wasn't."
You looped your arms around his neck, giving up the fight before it even started, because honestly, this was exactly the kind of thing you'd stopped being able to resist. He carried you down the hall and into his bedroom like it was nothing, like your weight in his arms was just another way to be close to you rather than a burden, and set you down gently on the edge of the bed only so he could immediately climb in after you.
"You know," you said, as he tugged the blankets up and pulled you flush against his side, tucking you into the curve of his body like you were made to fit there, "sometimes I forget what it's like to sleep without a limb wrapped around me."
"Good," Steve said, unbothered, pressing his face into your hair. "Don't want you remembering."
"That's a little concerning."
"It's romantic."
"It's clingy."
"It's romantic clinginess," he corrected, and you could practically feel the grin against your scalp. "There's a difference."
"Is there?"
"Yeah. Clingy is bad. This is-" he paused, like he was actually thinking about it, actually trying to find the right word for something that, to him, probably didn't need explaining at all. "This is just wanting to be near you. All the time. Every time. That's not clingy, that's just-" another pause, softer this time, and you felt him press a kiss to your shoulder. "That's just how I feel about you."
You went quiet at that, because it was hard to argue with something so plainly, unguardedly sweet, and Steve, for all his bluster, for all his teasing and easy grins, had never been shy about telling you exactly how he felt once he'd found the words for it.
"Okay," you said softly, tangling your fingers with his where his hand rested against your stomach. "Romantic clinginess it is."
"Knew you'd come around."
"I didn't fight it that hard."
"You never do." He sounded pleased about that, smug in the quiet, satisfied way that meant he already knew he'd won before the conversation had even started.
You drifted off like that, wrapped up in him, and somewhere in the haze before sleep actually took you, you thought, not for the first time, that you didn't think you'd ever get tired of it. Of him needing to be close. Of the constant, steady press of his hand somewhere on you, like a promise he kept renewing every few minutes without ever having to say it out loud.
The next morning, you learned there was apparently no boundary Steve considered too far when it came to being near you, because you woke up to the sound of the shower running and an empty space beside you in bed.
You blinked against the morning light, stretched, and padded into the bathroom half-asleep, only planning to brush your teeth before he was done. Except when you pushed open the door, you found him already in the shower, steam curling up over the top of the curtain, and, apparently, talking. To no one. Or, well, to you, except you weren't in there yet.
"and then Robin says, completely deadpan, that the guy's been trying to return the same broken VCR for like a month, and I'm just standing there like, sir, we've explained this four times-"
"Steve?"
The water shut off mid-sentence. "Oh! Hey. You're up." He poked his head around the shower curtain, hair plastered to his forehead, grinning like he hadn't just been narrating his workday to an empty bathroom. "Get in, I was just telling you about the VCR guy."
"I wasn't in here."
"I know. I was gonna tell you the second you woke up anyway, figured I'd get a head start." He said this with the total confidence of a man who saw absolutely nothing strange about rehearsing a story for an audience that hadn't arrived yet. "C'mon, water's still warm."
You laughed, actually laughed, leaning against the doorframe. "You could've just waited five minutes."
"Could've," he agreed, echoing his own line from the night before without any apparent irony. "Didn't want to."
"You're unbelievable."
"You love it."
You did, again, unfortunately, hopelessly. You stepped out of your sleep shirt and climbed in after him, and he made a small, satisfied sound low in his throat, the kind that meant there, that's better, as he pulled you under the spray with him, hands settling at your waist like they belonged there. Which, at this point, you supposed they did.
"So the VCR guy," you prompted, tipping your head back to wet your hair.
"Right, so-Robin's dealing with him, and this whole time I'm restocking shelves, and I hear her say-" and he was off again, recounting the story with the same enthusiastic, overly detailed energy he brought to literally everything, hands moving as he talked even though one of them never actually left your body, tracing absent patterns against your hip while he gestured with the other.
You listened, half paying attention to the story and half just watching him, the way his eyes lit up telling even the most mundane story like it was the funniest thing that had ever happened to him, the way steam curled around his stupid, perfect hair, the way he kept touching you like it was as automatic as breathing, like he genuinely could not tell a story, could not exist in a room with you, without some part of his body in contact with some part of yours.
"You're not even listening," he accused, catching you staring.
"I am. VCR guy. Robin. Deadpan."
"Uh-huh." He didn't sound convinced, but he also didn't seem to mind, tugging you a half-step closer under the water like your attention span wasn't really the point anyway. "You just like watching me talk."
"Maybe."
"That's fair. I'd watch me talk too. I'm very charming."
"So humble."
"I contain multitudes."
You laughed again, and he kissed you then, unhurried, water running down both your faces, his hands sliding up from your waist to cup your jaw like he wanted to hold your whole face in his palms. When he pulled back, he was still smiling, still close enough that his forehead rested against yours, and you felt that same warm, sinking feeling you always felt when he looked at you like that, like proximity to you was some kind of relief he was constantly chasing and constantly, finally, getting to have.
"I like this," he admitted quietly, thumb brushing your cheekbone. "Mornings like this."
"Mornings where you barge into my showers?"
"Mornings where I get to be near you before either of us has to go be normal, functional people who have jobs and responsibilities and can't just-" he gestured vaguely between the two of you, "-do this. All day."
"You'd get bored of me eventually."
"No I wouldn't."
"Steve."
"I wouldn't," he said again, more firm this time, like the idea genuinely offended him. "I've had, what, four months of getting to be around you basically constantly, and every single day I just want more of it. That math doesn't really support your theory."
You didn't have a response to that, not really, not one that wouldn't come out sounding as soft and gone-for-him as you actually felt, so instead you just leaned up and kissed him again, slower this time, and felt him smile against your mouth like he'd won some argument you hadn't realized you were having.
Later, after the shower, after breakfast, after Steve had spent an embarrassing amount of time trying to talk you into calling in sick to work "as a joint activity, together, as a couple" you ended up back on the couch, this time with your laptop open, actually trying to get some work done. You'd made it three minutes before Steve flopped down beside you, then five before his head found its way into your lap, then approximately ninety seconds after that before he'd rearranged himself entirely so his whole body was stretched along the couch with his head pillowed on your thigh, watching you type with the unblinking focus of a man who had absolutely nothing better to do.
"You're staring," you said, without looking up.
"I like watching you concentrate. You get this little crease." He reached up and pressed his thumb lightly between your eyebrows. "Right here."
"That's not going to help me finish this email."
"I'm not trying to help you finish the email. I'm trying to be near you while you finish the email. Two different goals."
"They feel like competing goals."
"They're not. I'm very good at multitasking." As if to prove it, he tucked his face against your stomach and threw one arm over your legs, effectively pinning you to the couch, and went suspiciously quiet.
You managed another two sentences of your email before you gave up, setting the laptop aside on the cushion beside you, because there was truly no competing with a Steve Harrington determined to be held. You slid your fingers into his hair instead, and felt him practically melt beneath your hand, a low, contented sound escaping him that you felt more than heard.
"See," he mumbled, eyes already closing, "much better use of your time."
"You're going to get me fired."
"I'll support you. We'll live off my Family Video paycheck and your unemployment checks. Very romantic."
"Very stupid."
"Same thing, honestly."
You laughed, and scratched lightly at his scalp, and watched the tension bleed out of his shoulders, watched him go soft and pliant under your hands the way he only ever did with you, like all that constant, restless need to touch and be touched finally quieted the second he actually had what he wanted. It made something in your chest ache, a little, in the good way. The way that meant you understood, finally, fully, what he'd been trying to tell you the night before.
It wasn't about clinginess, not really. It was that Steve Harrington had spent a lot of his life feeling like an afterthought to somebody, to parents who were never around, to a version of himself he used to be, popular and hollow and desperately unseen underneath all of it, and now he had you, had someone who wanted to be near him just as much as he wanted to be near you, and he wasn't ever going to take that for granted. Wasn't ever going to let an available inch of space go unfilled if he could help it.
You could live with that. Honestly, you thought, running your fingers through his hair while he sighed contentedly into your lap, the sunlight from the window catching gold in the mess of his hair, the laptop forgotten beside you, the whole slow lazy stretch of the day ahead of you,
You could live with that forever.
"Hey," Steve said suddenly, cracking one eye open to look up at you.
"Hey."
"C'mere." He tugged at your legs, an unspoken request, and you slid down the couch until you were lying alongside him instead of above him, tangled together in the narrow space, his arms wrapping around you like there was nowhere else in the world either of you needed to be.
"This is not going to help my email situation," you murmured into his chest.
"Email situation," he repeated, already sounding half-asleep, one hand tracing slow, absent patterns along your spine. "Sounds fake. Never heard of it."
"Steve."
"Five more minutes." He pressed a kiss to your forehead, then your temple, then settled his chin against the crown of your head with a sigh so deeply satisfied it made you smile against his collarbone. "Just wanna hold you for five more minutes."
You knew, from experience, that five minutes with Steve Harrington had a way of turning into an hour, an afternoon, an entire day spent tangled together on the couch with nowhere in particular to be. You knew you'd let it happen anyway, every single time, because there was something almost embarrassingly easy about giving in to him, about letting yourself be held exactly as much as he needed to hold you, about matching his want for closeness with your own, quieter but no less real.
"Okay," you said softly, closing your eyes, feeling his heartbeat steady and warm beneath your ear. "Five more minutes."
You both knew it was a lie. Neither of you minded.
Summary: Steve's always been careful about slow, unhurried, easy. But when I love you slips out mid tangled up in the sheets, he freezes
A/N: Based on this request. Sorry for how slow the requests are coming out atm, Ive had so much motivation to write and so many ideas pop into my head im literally glued to my laptop 24/7. Enjoy your days my lovelies!
The rain had been coming down since dinner, soft against the windows of Steve's bedroom, the kind of steady white noise that made everything feel slower. Safer. His parents were out of town again, some anniversary trip they took every year without him, so the two of you had the house to yourselves since sundown. You'd spent the evening tangled together on his bed, an old horror movie playing off a VHS tape in the corner, the picture stuttering with tracking lines every few minutes, his fingers tracing idle shapes against your hip, your head tucked into the crook of his neck.
By the time he pulled you further up the bed, the VHS was still running to no one, the tape hiss filling the quiet under the rain.
He kissed you like he had all the time in the world. That was one of the things you loved most about him, how unhurried he could be, how he made you feel like the only thing he wanted to focus on, like nothing outside this room existed. Steve Harrington, who spent so much of his life running from one disaster to the next, always slowed down for you.
"Hi," he murmured against your mouth, smiling that lopsided smile you felt in your chest every time.
"Hi," you breathed back.
The lamp on his nightstand cast everything in low gold light. His hands were warm where they slid under the hem of your shirt, careful, like he was memorizing the shape of you even though he'd done this a hundred times before. You helped him get your shirt over your head, and he paused for a second just to look at you, the way he always did, like he still couldn't quite believe you were there.
"You okay?" he asked, voice low.
"More than okay." You pulled him back down by the collar of his own shirt, and he laughed against your lips, easy and warm.
Clothes came off slowly, unhurried, punctuated by soft laughter when his elbow caught the lamp and nearly sent it toppling, by the way he apologized into your skin like it mattered, by the little noises you couldn't help when his mouth found your throat. Everything about it felt safe. Familiar in the best way. Like coming home.
When he finally settled over you, his forehead resting against yours, his eyes found yours in the dim light and held there. There was something almost reverent in the way he looked at you, like you were something he still hadn't gotten used to having.
"You good?" he whispered.
"Yeah," you said, and you meant it, the word coming out breathless. "Steve-"
He moved slow at first, like always, watching your face for every shift, every catch of breath, adjusting like he had some kind of internal compass permanently tuned to you. Your hands found his shoulders, his back, the dip of his spine, and he groaned low against your ear, murmuring your name like it was something precious.
It built the way it always did between you two, unhurried and then suddenly not, his breath ragged against your neck, your fingers curling into his hair, the two of you finding some rhythm that felt less like choreography and more like conversation, like you were saying things to each other that didn't need words.
Except then you did use words. It slipped out before you'd even fully processed the thought forming, carried on a breath, soft and unguarded in a way that stripped away any filter you might've had.
"I love you."
You felt him go still.
Not still like he was savoring it. Still like something had short-circuited. His whole body seemed to lock up above you, his breath catching in his throat and staying there, his hips stopping mid-motion. For a second you thought maybe you'd imagined it, but no, his eyes had gone distant, fixed on some point just past your shoulder, like he was looking through you instead of at you.
"Steve?"
He didn't answer right away. His jaw was tight, his eyes doing that thing where they were open but not really seeing what was in front of him. You reached up, touched his cheek, and he blinked like you'd startled him out of somewhere far away.
"Hey," you said quietly. "Where'd you go?"
"Sorry- sorry, I'm-" He pulled back, sitting up slightly, putting a few inches of space between your bodies that felt like a canyon. His chest was still rising and falling too fast, but not from anything good anymore. "I'm here. Sorry."
You sat up too, pulling the sheet up around yourself, some instinct telling you the mood had shifted into something you didn't have the shape of yet. "Steve, what's going on?"
"Nothing, I just-" He raked a hand through his hair, and you watched him try to find his footing, watched him come up short. "I got in my head for a sec. It's fine."
It very clearly wasn't fine. You could see it in the way his eyes kept sliding away from yours, in the tightness around his mouth, in how his hands had gone still in his lap instead of reaching for you the way they usually did.
Somewhere in your chest, something sank. He hadn't said it back.
You'd said the truest thing you knew how to say, in the middle of the most unguarded moment two people can share, and he'd gone quiet and far away instead. Whatever ease had filled the room ten minutes ago had drained out of it completely, replaced by something awkward and cold, and neither of you seemed to know what to do with it now that it was there.
"We don't have to, I mean, we can stop," you said, hating how small your voice had gotten. "If you want."
"Yeah," Steve said, too fast, and something in you flinched at how quickly he agreed. "Yeah, maybe that's- let's just. Let's go to bed."
So that's what you did. You dressed again in silence, the kind of silence that felt loud, and slid under the covers a careful few inches apart from each other instead of tangled together the way you usually fell asleep. He turned off the lamp. The rain was still going outside, softer now, and it should have been peaceful, but it just underscored how much space had opened up between you in the dark.
You lay there for a long moment, staring at the ceiling, replaying it. The way he'd frozen. The way his eyes had gone somewhere you couldn't follow. You thought about the words again, I love you, turning them over, wondering if you'd misjudged something, wondered too soon, wanted too much.
"I'm sorry," you finally whispered into the dark.
You felt him shift beside you. "For what?"
"I don't know. For, however I made you feel back there. I didn't mean to make things weird." Your throat felt tight. "I just felt it, and it came out. I wasn't trying to put you on the spot."
"You didn't do anything wrong." His voice was quiet, careful, like he was picking each word up and checking it before he set it down. "It's not you."
"It kind of feels like it's me," you admitted.
"It's not." He said it firmly this time, but he still didn't reach for you, didn't pull you against his chest the way he usually did when you were upset. He just lay there, close but not touching, and you felt the absence of his arms around you like a physical thing.
"Okay," you said, because you didn't know what else to say, and because pushing felt like it would only make whatever this was worse.
Neither of you said anything else. Eventually his breathing evened out into something that might have been real sleep or might have been a good impression of it, and you lay awake a long time before you finally drifted off too, the space between your bodies feeling wider than it had any right to.
Steve didn't sleep. Not really.
He lay there long after your breathing had slowed, staring at the same crack in the ceiling he'd been staring at for two years, and let himself finally feel the thing he'd been holding at arm's length since the second those three words left your mouth.
I love you.
He hadn't heard those words directed at him, meant, not performed for anyone else's benefit, genuinely meant, since Nancy said them to him in his kitchen a lifetime ago, right before everything with them had come apart at the seams. He'd loved her so hard and so completely that when it ended, it hadn't just hurt, it had rearranged something fundamental in him. He remembered exactly what it felt like to hand someone everything he had and watch them decide it wasn't enough. He remembered the specific quality of silence in his house afterward. He remembered thinking he wasn't built for this, for being loved back the way he needed to be, for being someone's whole answer instead of someone's almost.
He'd told himself he was over it. Mostly, he was. He didn't lie awake missing Nancy anymore, didn't compare you to her, didn't feel the phantom ache of her absence the way he used to. That part of it, he'd genuinely healed from.
But apparently some doors didn't close all the way. Apparently there was still a version of him, nineteen years old, freshly gutted, standing in a kitchen that used to feel like his future, who came roaring back the second someone he loved said those words to him in a moment that mattered. His body had just locked up before his brain could catch up, some old alarm going off that had nothing to do with you and everything to do with a version of him that hadn't trusted this feeling in a long time.
And now you were lying next to him thinking you'd done something wrong.
He wanted to fix it. He wanted to turn over and pull you against his chest and tell you the truth, that he loved you too, that he'd probably loved you for months, that what happened had nothing to do with you and everything to do with a scar he thought had healed better than it had. But every time he opened his mouth in his head to rehearse it, his throat closed up the same way it had earlier, and he was left just lying there, wide awake, saying nothing.
He told himself he'd say it in the morning. That felt easier, somehow. Everything felt easier in daylight.
But morning came and he still couldn't find the words, and instead of reaching for you the way he usually did, instead of pulling you close over coffee or pressing a kiss to your temple on his way out the door, he found himself keeping a careful, cowardly distance. Not because he didn't want you. Because he didn't trust himself yet to open his mouth without either saying too little or completely falling apart.
He hated himself a little for it. But he did it anyway.
The distance didn't go away over the next two days. If anything, it settled in deeper, quiet and persistent, the kind of thing that didn't announce itself so much as accumulate.
Steve wasn't cold to you, exactly, he still called the house phone most evenings, still asked how your day was, still showed up when he said he would. But something had gone careful in the way he held himself around you. He didn't linger in doorways to steal one more kiss before leaving. He didn't reach for your hand without thinking about it first. When you sat next to him on the couch the second night, he didn't automatically pull you into his side the way he usually did, and you noticed, God, you noticed everything now, hyperaware in the way you only get when you're afraid you've broken something you can't see the size of yet.
You replayed the moment on a loop. The way he'd frozen. The look on his face, somewhere between panic and grief, like you'd said something that hurt him instead of something that was supposed to feel good. You started to build a story around it without meaning to, that you'd moved too fast, felt too much too soon, put a weight on him he wasn't ready to carry. That maybe what he felt for you didn't match what you felt for him, and you'd just embarrassed yourself by saying it out loud in the middle of sex like some kind of confession he hadn't asked for.
By the second evening, the ache of not knowing had turned into something closer to certainty, and certainty made you brave in a sad kind of way.
You found him in the Harringtons' kitchen, leaning against the counter with a glass of water he wasn't really drinking, the fridge humming behind him, staring at nothing in particular. He looked up when you came in, and something crossed his face, guilt, maybe, or something adjacent to it.
"Hey," he said.
"Hey." You wrapped your arms around yourself, even though the kitchen wasn't cold. "Can we talk?"
Something flickered in his expression, but he nodded, setting the glass down. "Yeah. Of course."
You took a breath, and the words came out in a rush before you could second-guess them into something gentler. "I think I crossed a line the other night. Saying that, in the middle of, I mean, that's not really fair, is it? To just drop something like that on you when you can't exactly process it or respond how you'd want to." Your voice wavered, and you pushed through it anyway. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to make you feel cornered into anything. If you're not there yet, that's okay, I just- I don't want this to be weird between us. I'd rather take it back than lose you being weird about it forever."
"Take it back?" Something sharpened in his voice, an edge you didn't often hear from him.
"I don't mean I didn't mean it," you said quickly. "I just mean- I don't want you to feel like you have to say it back before you're ready, or like I'm keeping score, or-"
"Stop." He said it quietly, but it landed like a full stop anyway. He scrubbed a hand down his face, and when he looked at you again, something in his expression had cracked open, something he'd clearly been holding together for two days finally giving way. "God, you think this is about you crossing some line?"
"Isn't it?"
"No." He said it so firmly it surprised you. He came around the counter, closing some of the distance that had been sitting between you for two days, though he stopped short of actually reaching for you, like he wasn't sure yet if he'd earned that. "It's not about you at all. I've been an idiot about this, I just, I didn't know how to explain it without it sounding..." He trailed off, jaw working like he was trying to physically push the words out. "It's not that I don't feel the same. That's not what happened."
"Then what did happen, Steve? Because you froze up and then barely touched me for two days, so forgive me for filling in some blanks."
He flinched, but he didn't look away. "Nancy," he said finally, quiet, like the name cost him something to say. "The last time- the last time I really meant it, with someone, the last time I let myself go all in like that, it ended, and it ended bad. And I know that's not- I know you're not her, I know this isn't that, but when you said it, some part of my brain just went straight back to standing in my kitchen while she-" He stopped himself, breathing out hard through his nose. "It wasn't a rational thing. It was just old, and it was loud, and it happened before I could stop it."
Something in your chest loosened, just slightly, understanding starting to bleed into the hurt. "Why didn't you just tell me that?"
"Because saying it out loud makes it real, and because I felt like garbage that my brain did that to you when all you did was tell me something good." He rubbed the back of his neck, and for the first time in two days, he looked like himself again instead of someone performing an okay version of himself. "You told me you loved me and I acted like you'd said something that scared me, and that's- that's not what I wanted you to walk away thinking. I've just been trying to figure out how to fix it without making it worse."
"So fix it," you said, and it came out softer than you meant it to, more plea than challenge.
He finally closed the last of the distance between you, hands coming up to frame your face the way they used to before all of this, forehead dropping to rest against yours. He was quiet for a second, like he wanted to make sure the words came out exactly right this time.
"I love you," he said, low and unsteady, like it had been sitting in his chest for two days waiting for permission. "I love you so much, and I'm sorry. I'm sorry I let two-year-old baggage make you think for one second that I didn't. You didn't do anything wrong. You said something brave and I fumbled it, and I've hated myself for it every second since."
Your eyes stung, relief crashing into you all at once. "You could've just told me you were freaking out. I would've understood."
"I know. I know that now." He huffed a small, self-deprecating laugh, thumb brushing along your cheekbone. "I panicked twice, basically. Once when you said it, and then again trying to figure out how to explain the first panic without sounding like a complete disaster."
"You are a bit of a disaster," you said, but you were smiling now, something easing loose in your chest for the first time in two days.
"Yeah, well." He pressed his lips to your forehead, lingering there in a way that felt like an apology and a promise both. "I'm your disaster. If you'll still have me."
"I already told you I loved you, Steve. I think that ship's sailed."
He laughed, actually laughed, the sound rough with something like relief, and pulled you into him properly for the first time in two days, arms wrapping all the way around you, chin dropping to rest on top of your head, like he was trying to make up for forty-eight hours of distance in one long overdue hold. You let yourself sink into it, into him, feeling the tightness that had lived in your chest since that night finally start to unwind.
"For what it's worth," he murmured into your hair, "I've loved you for a while. Longer than I probably should've kept it to myself."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah." His arms tightened slightly. "Wasn't planning on you finding out like that, though. Figured I'd do something less humiliating. Flowers, maybe. Not going catatonic mid-"
"Okay, we don't need to relive it," you said, laughing despite yourself, and felt him smile against your hair.
"Fair," he said. "I love you. That's the part that matters."
"I love you too," you said again, easier this time, no hesitation in it at all, and this time, when the words settled between you, nothing froze. Nothing went quiet or far away. He just held you tighter, like he was finally letting himself believe he got to keep this.
Outside, it had started raining again, soft against the windows, the same steady sound from two nights before. But this time it didn't feel like the backdrop to something breaking. It just felt like home, finally settling back into place.
it had just gone midnight, but you and joe were yet to settle down for the night.
you'd been non stop for over an hour, joe bringing you orgasm after orgasm in so many different ways before you eventually tapped out after you'd lost count.
laying on your stomach, a pillow under your hips, the duvet was all bunched up around where you were gripping it.
sweat slicked your skin, making your hair that had fallen half out of it's original bun stick to the back of your neck.
your head was pleasantly fuzzy, limbs heavy and eyes tired as you turned your head to press your cheek into the pillow.
joe collapsed on top of you, his weight crushing you in a deliciously comforting way.
"fuck you did so good for me baby"
you felt his lips on the back of your neck, his hand coming up to move some stray hairs out the way.
"you okay doll? talk to me" joe breathed against your shoulder.
"mm yeah" you smiled, turning your head even more to look at joe.
"there she is"
his hand found your jaw as he kissed you, heat still simmering beneath it, fading slowly into something softer.
"you’re so fucking hot" you hummed with a seductive tone, still drunk on the aftertaste of him.
"why thank you" he laughed against your mouth. "let's get you sat up"
carefully and slowly, he separated himself from you, holding your hips as he did, thumbs rubbing over the skin tenderly.
he rolled you over, propping up pillows behind you as he did before reaching over to the bedside to fetch a bottle of water.
"drink baby"
you wrapped your lips around the straw of the bottle that he was holding, looking at him dead in the eyes.
"stop looking at me like that" he shook his head smiling, taking back the bottle.
"you love it" you leaned up to kiss joe again, starting to shift over onto him.
"mhmm, wait there"
"no joe-"
"baby i'll only be a second"
he left the bed, pulling the duvet over your legs as he did before padding into the en-suite bathroom, pulling on a pair of shorts as he did.
you heard the faint humming of the bath starting, then the sink taps, then joe reappeared holding a small, damp towel.
knowing what he was coming to do, you laid down slightly, kicking the sheets back.
"you know you don't have to do all of this?"
"yes i do"
he kissed your temple as his hand made its way between your legs, gently cleaning up any hard evidence of the evening.
"yeah but-"
"i want to, it's important to me"
he wiped the insides of your thighs and up over your lower stomach before throwing the towel blindly in the direction of the bathroom.
he sat back on the bad properly, back against the headboard as he pulled your body into his lap, arms locking around you.
"i started the bath"
"i heard, thank you"
"should go pee in a second doll"
you grumbled into his neck, beginning to press open mouthed kisses there.
"princess"
pulling back to look up at joe with all intention of saying something teasing, the words got caught in your throat as a yawn teared through you.
"what was that hmm?" joe said with amusement.
"shut up"
joe chucked under his breath as he cupped your cheek with his whole palm, leaning forward to kiss you again.
you got lost in his lips, only breaking the kiss when joe gasped, remembering the bath was still running.
scooping you up effortlessly, joe lifted you out the bed and carried you across the bedroom to the bathroom, setting you on the toilet to turn off the bath taps after pausing halfway to flip the record that had been forgotten about hours ago.
whilst testing the water temperature, and adding more bubble bath, you joined him, wrapping your arms around his body from behind.
you moved with him as he leant over the tub, lighter in hand to light the collection of candles that decorated the side.
pressing your cheek into his shoulder, your hands roamed his upper body, finger tips brushing through the hair on his chest, following it down to his lower stomach past his bellybutton.
"it's ready princess"
he turned in your hold, pressing a kiss to your forehead before holding your arm as you stepped into the tub.
he helped lower you down, the warm water lapping around your body as you sat, bubbles settling over you, the heat seeping into your skin.
stepping back, joe removed his shorts as you rested your arms on the edge of the tub, watching him with wide eyes, smirking when he finally dropped the shorts.
"stop that" he warned, stepping closer to the tub.
"but you look so good" you hummed.
he shook his head as you leant forward to make room for him to step in behind you.
once he was sat, resting against the back of the tub, his hands found your sides, pulling you back to rest against him.
the water rippled around you, eventually settling over you like a heavy warm blanket as your heartbeat began to calm at the feeling of joes skin against yours.
"it smells nice" you observed.
"used the new stuff that you got from that fancy brand"
"i really like it"
"same, smells like you" he nuzzled into your shoulder, lips absentmindedly kissing your damp skin.
his hands rubbed soapy bubbles into your skin, massaging your shoulders, bringing the warmth down your arms and back up over your chest.
as he grazes over your boobs you arch into his touch, dropping your head back onto joes shoulder.
kissing your head, temples and anywhere over the side of your face that he can reach, joe continued to feel all over your body, each muscle relaxing under his touch.
you fell into a comfortable silence, the faint music of the record playing at the doorway just reaching round the corner to where you and joe lay, entangled in each other.
before you could stop it, your eyes fell shut and your body was pulled under into sleep, safe, content and warm in joes arms.
when you opened your eyes again, thinking it had only been a few minutes since closing them, you found yourself in bed, the duvet being pulled over you.
"joe?"
"shh princess" he whispers as he knelt down by your face. "go back to sleep"
"but when did-?"
"it's alright, i'm just going to get water okay?"
he stroked your hair, fingers brushing your forehead as he spoke so softly, your eyes threatening to fall shut once again.
joe was back before you knew it, slipping into bed behind you, wrapping his arms tight around you and pulling you into his warmth.
Summary: Steve Harrington has never been careful, but its your first time and he’s determined to make sure it feels good.
A/N: Apologies for the lack of posts yesterday divas, BUT we have two today to make up for it. Request coming out 5pm BST :) Hope you have a great day lovelies!
Steve Harrington had been many things in Hawkins: the king of the school, the guy who always knew what to say, the one who could talk his way into (and out of) almost anything. What he hadn’t been, until tonight, was this careful.
You were sitting on the edge of his bed in the dark, shirt already gone, jeans still half-on, and you looked like you were about to bolt. Your hands were twisted in the sheets. Your breathing was too fast. He’d kissed you down on his couch, slow and deep, and you’d kissed him back like you wanted it, until the moment his hand slid under your shirt and you tensed so hard he felt it in his teeth.
He’d pulled back immediately.
Now he was kneeling in front of you, between your knees, looking up. One hand rested lightly on your thigh. The other stayed open on the mattress, not touching.
“Hey,” he said, voice low. “We don’t have to do anything. You can put your clothes back on and we can watch a movie and I can pretend I don’t have the worst hard-on of my life. Totally fine option.”
You shook your head once. “I want to. I just… haven’t.”
Steve’s eyebrows lifted a fraction. “Haven’t…?”
“Anything,” you said, quiet. “Not even… you know. Hands. Mouth. Nothing.”
He went still for a second. Then he exhaled through his nose, slow.
“Okay,” he said. “Okay. Then we go at your pace. You say stop, we stop. You say slower, we go slower. You say ‘Steve I need a second,’ I give you the second. Deal?”
You nodded.
He stood, stripped his own shirt off, and sat beside you instead of looming over you. He kissed you again, soft, unhurried, until your mouth opened under his and your hands finally left the sheets to touch his chest. When he felt you relax a little, he guided you back against the pillows and stretched out next to you, one leg thrown over yours, body warm and solid.
His mouth moved to your jaw, your throat, the place under your ear that made your breath hitch. His hand stayed on your waist, thumb stroking skin, not pushing lower until you arched into him without thinking.
“Still good?” he murmured against your collarbone.
“Yeah.”
He took his time with your chest, mouth and tongue and the careful scrape of teeth, until your hips started rolling up without your permission. Only then did he slip his fingers under the waistband of your jeans and wait.
You nodded.
He worked them down, then your underwear, slow enough that you could change your mind at any second. When you were bare he just looked for a moment, eyes dark, and said, “Fuck, you’re pretty,” like it was a fact and not a line.
His hand slid up the inside of your thigh. When his fingers brushed between your legs you jumped; he stilled completely until you settled, then traced you carefully, learning the shape of you, the places that made your breath catch. He didn’t push inside yet. Just circled, rubbed, watched your face like it was the only thing that mattered.
When you were wet enough that his fingers slid easily, he pressed one in slow, just the tip at first, then deeper when you didn’t flinch. Your eyes squeezed shut.
“Look at me,” Steve said softly. You did. He held your gaze while he worked that single finger in and out, patient, until the stretch stopped feeling strange and started feeling good. A second finger joined the first only when you were pushing down onto his hand, chasing more.
He kissed you through it, deep, messy kisses while his fingers curled and found the spot that made your thighs tremble. When you came the first time it was quiet and sharp, your whole body going tight around his hand, and Steve kept moving through it, talking low against your mouth the whole time
“That’s it, just like that, you’re doing so good-”.
He didn’t rush to get inside you after. He waited until your breathing evened out, until you reached for his belt yourself. He let you push his jeans and boxers down. Let you look. Let you touch him with curious, slightly shaky hands until he had to catch your wrist and groan into your neck.
“Condom,” he said, voice rough, and reached for the nightstand. He rolled it on, then settled between your legs again, braced on his forearms so he wasn’t crushing you.
The head of his cock pressed against you. He didn’t push yet.
“Still with me?”
“Yes.”
He eased in an inch, then stopped. Your body was tight, really tight, and the stretch burned. Steve’s jaw was clenched, arms shaking with the effort of holding still.
“Breathe,” he said. “I’ve got you. We can stop.”
You shook your head and breathed out. He sank in another inch, then another, until he was buried to the hilt and both of you were breathing hard. He stayed like that, forehead pressed to yours, giving you time to adjust around the thick, unfamiliar pressure.
When the burn faded into something hotter, you rolled your hips experimentally. Steve made a broken sound and started moving, slow, deep strokes that never quite left you empty. He watched your face the entire time, adjusting angle when your breath hitched the right way, slowing when your nails dug into his shoulders, kissing the soft sounds out of your mouth.
It didn’t last long. You were too new, too sensitive, and the way he filled you kept dragging you toward another edge. When you came the second time it pulled him with you, Steve’s rhythm stuttering, hips pressing deep as he groaned your name against your throat and spilled into the condom.
He stayed inside you afterward, careful not to crush you, one hand stroking your hair while both of you came down. Eventually he pulled out slow, dealt with the condom, and came back with a warm washcloth. He cleaned you up without making it weird, then pulled the covers over both of you and tugged you against his chest.
“You okay?” he asked into your hair.
You nodded against his collarbone. Your body felt used in the best way, sore, open, still twitching with aftershocks.
Steve kissed the top of your head.
“Next time,” he said quietly, “we can go slower. Or faster. Or I can just use my mouth until you can’t think. Whatever you want. No rush.”
You believed him.
For the first time, being a virgin didn’t feel like something you had to hide. It just felt like the start of something Steve was more than willing to take his time with.
i just wanted to take a little moment to say thank you for all the love and support you’ve given me lately, especially with some of the heavier angst i’ve been writing. 🤍
a lot of the things i’ve been writing recently are quite personal to me too, and i think that’s probably why some of them have ended up being a little heavier than usual. sometimes writing these things is my own way of processing feelings i don’t really know how to put into words otherwise, so knowing that they’ve resonated with some of you has honestly meant so much to me.
and the messages you’ve sent me in response genuinely stay with me. hearing your own stories, experiences, and feelings, especially when you’ve trusted me with things that are difficult or painful to talk about, is something i’ll never take for granted. i know how vulnerable it can feel to share those parts of yourself with someone, so thank you for being brave enough to do that with me.
i’m really grateful that this little corner of the internet has become a place where we can be honest about the messy, painful, complicated things alongside all the fun and silly stuff. thank you for being so kind to me, for understanding where some of my writing comes from, and for reminding me that sometimes the things that hurt the most can also make us feel a little less alone.
love you all so much. thank you for letting me be a little vulnerable with you too. 🫶🏻
Summary: You has a severe needle phobia and finds out she needs a vaccine. Joe never once makes her feel silly about it
A/N: Based on THIS request. Love love loved writing this out, it felt like a cold October morning and no I won't explain. Enjoy your day lovelies!!
The email sat open on your phone for a full minute before you actually processed it. Vaccine appointment confirmed. Just a line of text, a date, a time, an address you already knew by heart. You read it three times like it might change if you looked hard enough.
"Everything okay?" Joe asked from the kitchen, not even looking up from the pan he was stirring.
"Yeah." You locked your phone and set it face-down on the counter, too fast. "Fine. Just an email."
He glanced over at you then, the way he always did when your voice went a half-step too casual. "What kind of email?"
"It's stupid." You waved a hand like you could bat the subject away. "I have to get a vaccine. It's booked for next week. It's genuinely nothing, I don't know why I'm being weird about it."
Joe turned the hob down and came around the counter, drying his hands on the tea towel slung over his shoulder. "You're not being weird."
"I am, though. It's a needle, Joe. It takes two seconds. People do it every single day and don't think twice about it, and I'm standing here feeling like I'm going to be sick." You laughed, but it came out thin. "It's so stupid."
"Hey." He caught your hand before you could turn away, tugging you gently toward him. "It's not stupid. Being scared of something doesn't mean you're being childish, or dramatic, or any of the words you're about to call yourself. It just means you're scared of it. That's allowed."
"I know it's irrational."
"Doesn't matter if it's irrational. Doesn't make it less real." He squeezed your hand. "D'you want me there? At the appointment?"
You hesitated, some old, stubborn part of you wanting to say you'd be fine on your own, that you didn't need looking after for something so small. But the thought of the waiting room, the chair, the nurse, all of it alone, made your chest tighten.
"Yeah," you admitted quietly. "I do."
"Then I'll be there." He said it like it wasn't even a question. "Whatever you need. I mean it."
"You don't have to, you know. It's not like it's a big deal."
"I want to." He tipped your chin up with two fingers until you were looking at him properly. "I'd rather be there and it be nothing than not be there and you need me. So. I'm coming."
You wanted to argue, some reflex in you that hated feeling like a burden over something so small, so ordinary. But there was nothing in his face that looked like he minded, nothing that looked like he thought less of you for it, and eventually you just nodded and let it be settled.
"Okay," you said. "Thank you."
"Don't thank me for that." He turned back to the pan, like the conversation genuinely hadn't cost him anything, and within a minute he was telling you about something absurd one of his friends had sent him, and you let yourself be pulled along with it, grateful for the shift even as the appointment sat quietly at the back of your mind, waiting.
The appointment took over your head in a way you hadn't expected. It sat somewhere behind every thought for the rest of the week, a low hum you couldn't switch off. You caught yourself checking the date on your phone half a dozen times a day, doing the countdown without meaning to. Five days. Four days. You'd picture the room, the chair, the little tray of needles, and your stomach would drop like you were already there.
Joe noticed, of course he did. He noticed the way you went quiet halfway through dinner, staring at nothing. He noticed you flinching at an advert on the tv that showed someone getting an injection, your whole body going rigid for half a second before you caught yourself.
He didn't make a big thing of it. He'd just reach over and take your hand, or pull you into his side on the sofa, put on something stupid and easy that didn't need much attention, and let you exist there instead of in your own head for a while. Some evenings he'd catch you laughing properly, forgetting for a moment, and you'd see the small, quiet relief on his face before he tucked it away.
One night he turned up with a bag of your favourite chocolate for no reason at all, dropping it in your lap without ceremony. "Saw it, thought of you," was all he offered, though you both knew that wasn't really the reason. Another evening he suggested a walk when he caught you staring blankly at your laptop screen, not typing anything, just gone somewhere else entirely, and didn't comment when you spent most of it quiet beside him, just glad of the air and the movement and his hand in yours.
He never once told you to stop thinking about it, never once said you're fine, it's nothing in the tone that would have made you feel small. He just kept showing up, again and again, in whatever way the moment needed.
It was on one of those evenings, tucked against his chest with some film neither of you were really watching, that it finally came out.
"I'm scared I'm going to panic," you said, so quietly you weren't sure he'd heard you at first. "Like, properly panic. In front of the nurse. And I'm going to make a whole scene and embarrass myself and they're going to think I'm insane."
Joe's arm tightened around you. "You're not going to embarrass yourself."
"You don't know that."
"I do, actually. Because even if you cry, even if you shake, even if you need them to stop for a second, that's not embarrassing. That's just what fear looks like. Nurses see it all the time, I promise you." He pressed a kiss to the top of your head. "And I'm not going anywhere. I'm not leaving you alone with it, whatever happens in that room."
You didn't say anything, just held onto the front of his shirt a little tighter, and he let you.
You didn't sleep, the night before. You lay there in the dark, running through it over and over, the walk in, the room, the chair, the needle you weren't even going to look at but somehow saw perfectly clearly anyway. At some point you must have made a sound, because Joe stirred beside you, voice thick with sleep.
"You awake?"
"Sorry." You hadn't meant to wake him. "I can't sleep."
He shifted, pulling you into him without needing to be asked, your back against his chest, his arm heavy and warm around your middle. "Talk to me."
"I don't think I can do it tomorrow." The words came out cracked, embarrassingly close to tears already. "I keep thinking maybe I could just cancel. Rebook it for some other time that isn't real, that I don't actually have to think about."
"Hey." He turned you gently so you were facing him, even in the dark. "We don't have to think about the whole thing at once, okay? You don't have to picture the needle right now. All we have to think about is getting there. That's it."
"And then what?"
"And then you tell the nurse you're scared, because you are, and that's allowed. And I'll be right there next to you the entire time. You're not doing any of it on your own." He brushed your hair back from your face. "You don't have to prove anything to anyone tomorrow. Not to the nurse, not to me, not to yourself. Being frightened doesn't mean you can't do it. It just means it's going to take a bit of courage. And you've got that, even if it doesn't feel like it right now."
You didn't believe him, not really, not that night. But you let yourself breathe against his chest until your eyes finally grew heavy, and somewhere in there, you slept.
The morning was worse.
You woke already feeling sick, that particular hollow, jittery nausea that made the thought of breakfast impossible. You picked at a piece of toast Joe put in front of you and managed maybe two bites before pushing it away. He didn't push. He just cleared it without comment and put the kettle on instead.
You were quiet while you got ready, going through the motions without really being present in any of it. You checked the time more than you needed to. Nine forty. Nine forty-three. The appointment wasn't until eleven, but it felt like the clock was closing in regardless.
Joe kept up a stream of easy chatter, something about a message from his brother, a stupid thing that had happened on his run that morning, not because he expected you to really engage, but because it gave your mind somewhere to land other than the drawer where you kept your appointment letter. Every time he noticed your eyes glaze, your breathing shorten, he'd gently steer you back with a question, a hand on your arm, anything to keep you tethered to the room instead of the one you hadn't gotten to yet.
It held, mostly, until you were both stood by the door, shoes on, bag over your shoulder, and it was suddenly, horribly real.
Your breath caught somewhere in your throat and wouldn't come back out properly. Your hands started to shake, and before you could stop it, you were crying, the kind of crying that comes on fast and full and impossible to reason with.
"I can't." The words tumbled out between gasps. "Joe, I can't do this, I can't go, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry-"
"Hey, hey." He was in front of you immediately, hands finding yours, steady where you were shaking. "Don't apologise. You don't need to apologise to me."
"I feel so stupid," you managed, voice wobbling. "I'm an adult, I know it's going to take like five seconds, I know it's completely safe, and I still can't-"
"Knowing it's safe doesn't make the fear switch off. That's not how phobias work. Your body doesn't care what your brain knows." He guided you down gently until you were sat on the bottom stair, crouching in front of you so you were eye level, still holding both your hands. "You're safe right now. Nothing's happening right now. We've got time."
You cried into his shoulder for a while, his hand moving slow circles on your back, and he didn't try once to talk you out of how you felt or tell you there was nothing to be scared of. He just let you be scared, right there, until it started to loosen its grip a little.
"We can take as long as you need," he said eventually, quiet against your hair. "And if at any point you want to stop, we'll figure it out together. I'm not going to force you into that room. But I think, if you want to try, I think you can do this. And I'll be right there the whole way."
You wiped your face, breath still uneven, and nodded. "Okay."
"Okay?"
"Mostly because you're coming with me," you admitted, a wet, shaky laugh escaping. "I don't think I'd be doing this at all otherwise."
"Then let's go together."
The car journey was quiet, mostly, aside from Joe's hand wrapped around yours on the console and the occasional bit of nonsense he offered up to keep your mind somewhere else, a story about a dog he'd seen on his run, a debate about what you'd get for dinner tonight as a reward for surviving the morning. You kept saying you didn't think you could do it, over and over, like saying it enough times might make it true, and every time Joe just squeezed your hand.
"You don't have to think about the injection yet. We're just driving right now. That's all we have to get through, the drive."
By the time you reached the car park, your stomach was in knots again, and the waiting room didn't help. It was too bright, too full, every poster on the wall somehow about vaccinations or blood tests, every rustle of paper making your head snap up. There was a hand sanitiser dispenser that clicked every time someone used it, and you found yourself flinching at the sound each time, your whole body bracing for something that hadn't happened yet. When the woman two seats down mentioned, entirely unrelated to you, that she was in for a flu jab, your whole body went rigid like she'd said it directly to you.
"I want to leave," you whispered, gripping Joe's hand hard enough that it had to hurt.
"I know." He didn't try to talk you out of the feeling. He just shifted so you could tuck yourself against his shoulder, angled slightly away from the room, and kept his voice low and steady in your ear, nothing important, just words, just the sound of him, until your breathing started to even out again.
"What if I stand up in there and just can't go through with it?" you murmured against his shoulder. "What if I get halfway and freeze?"
"Then we stop, and we breathe, and we try again when you're ready. There's no version of this where you get it wrong, okay? Whatever happens in there is just what happens. It's not a test." He pressed his mouth briefly to your temple. "I'm not timing you. Nobody's timing you."
You nodded against him, not quite convinced, but steadier than you'd been a minute before.
When your name was called, your stomach dropped straight through the floor. Joe stood the second you did, hand finding yours immediately, and didn't let go.
The nurse was kind, in the low-key, unbothered way that somehow helped more than reassurance would have. You explained, voice shaking, that you had a severe needle phobia, that you were sorry in advance if you made things difficult.
"Don't apologise," she said easily, like it was nothing. "We can take this as slow as you need. Just let me know when you're ready, and if you need a break at any point, we stop. No rush."
"I don't want to see it," you said. "The needle. Can I not look?"
"Course. Look wherever you like."
You turned toward Joe instead, who pulled a chair close and sat right in front of you, both your hands in his. "Squeeze as hard as you need," he murmured. "I'm not going anywhere."
He talked. About nothing, really, some ridiculous story from years ago, a running joke between you both, anything that gave your brain somewhere else to be. You held onto his voice like a rope.
"Is it over yet?" you asked, tears already slipping down before anything had even happened, your grip on his hands bruising.
"Not yet," he said gently, no false promises about timing, just steady. "Keep looking at me."
"I can't-"
"You can. You're doing it right now."
The sting came and went so fast you almost missed it entirely, your focus so locked on Joe's face that for a second you didn't register anything had happened at all.
"All done," the nurse said, taping a small plaster over your arm.
You blinked. "That's it?"
Joe's face broke into a smile, something soft and proud all at once. "That's it."
The adrenaline crashed all at once, and you were crying again,properly this time, the relief hitting you so hard your shoulders shook with it. You pressed your face into Joe's chest the second you were both back on your feet, his arms coming around you fully.
"I actually did it," you said into his shirt, half laughing through the tears. "I actually did it."
"You did." He kissed the top of your head, then again. "I'm so proud of you. You have no idea."
"I genuinely thought I was going to bolt out of that room."
"I was fully prepared to chase you down the corridor if it came to it," he said, deadpan enough that you laughed properly, a real laugh this time, breath finally coming easy again.
Joe took you to the little café near the surgery afterward, the one with the pastries you always claimed you didn't have room for and then ate anyway. You slumped into the booth seat beside him, wrung out in the particular way only real fear leaves you, and let your head rest against his shoulder while he ordered your favourite for you without needing to ask.
"I still feel silly," you admitted, turning your cup slowly on the table. "Crying like that over a vaccine. It's ridiculous."
"You're not allowed to say that." Joe's voice was firm, no room for argument in it. "You were terrified. You had a full panic attack this morning. You nearly didn't go at all. And you still walked in there and did it anyway. That's not silly, that's the actual definition of brave. Being brave was never about not being scared. It's doing it anyway, scared out of your mind."
You didn't have a response for that, not really, just leaned further into him and let the words settle somewhere they'd stay.
"Can I see it?" he asked after a while, nodding at the little plaster on your arm.
You rolled your sleeve up to show him, and he studied it with such genuine focus that you laughed, the sound easier now than it had been in days.
"That's it," he said, echoing himself from earlier, shaking his head slightly like he still couldn't quite believe how small it looked, how much it had cost you regardless. "All that, for that."
"Don't remind me."
"I'm not laughing at you. I'm just-" He exhaled, something soft crossing his face. "You were shaking so bad this morning I genuinely didn't know if we'd make it out the front door. And now look at you. Pastry and everything."
"Barely," you said, but you managed a small smile around your cup, feeling, for the first time in a week, like your body belonged to you again instead of to the dread that had been living in it.
By the time evening rolled around, you were curled into Joe's side on the sofa, the day finally, fully behind you. Something on the telly played quietly, neither of you paying much attention, his fingers tracing slow patterns along your arm.
"Thank you," you said eventually, "for staying with me through all of it. And for never once making me feel stupid for being scared."
Joe looked down at you like the idea hadn't even occurred to him, like it was something he genuinely couldn't picture doing. "Why would I ever make you feel stupid for that?"
"I don't know. Some people would."
"Well, I'm not some people." He pressed a kiss to your forehead, pulling you in closer. "You're never going to have to apologise to me for being frightened. Not tomorrow, not next year, not ever. And next time you're scared of something, whatever it is, you don't have to handle it on your own. You've got me."
You smiled then, properly, the last of the day's tension finally leaving your shoulders, and settled into him fully, safe and warm and entirely done being afraid, at least for tonight.
"For what it's worth," you murmured after a while, half into his chest, "I think I could do it again. Next time. If I had to."
"You definitely could." His fingers kept tracing slow, absent shapes along your arm. "Doesn't mean you have to be any less scared going in. You're just allowed to know now that you'll get through it either way."
"With you."
"With me," he agreed, like it wasn't even worth clarifying otherwise. "Every time."
You closed your eyes, the telly murmuring on unwatched in the background, and let yourself just be still, no countdown running in the back of your mind, no dread waiting at the end of it, nothing left to brace for. Just Joe's heartbeat steady under your ear, and the quiet, settled certainty that whatever came next, you wouldn't be facing it alone.
warnings : explicit sexual content; SMUT; 18+; fingering; unprotected piv; fingers in mouth; neck grabbing; nipple play; teasing; fluff; no use of y/n; possible grammatical errors; english is not my first language
💌 lillie talks : thank you so much @malikahsblog for this request !! 💕 I loved writing it so much lol. Enjoy it !! Read more of my work here : masterlist. Request are always open, feel free to ask anything !
It was a calm evening in your shared New York apartment. The sun was setting, the light night breeze was picking up, and the daily traffic was giving way to partygoers.
That wasn’t your plan for the night.
Joe came home earlier and stopped to buy some ingredients missing for your recipe. You’d decided to bake his favorite cake because he just got back home from tour after a month, but the eggs in the cabinet were outdated and you broke the vanilla’s bottle last week.
When Joe passed the door, a brown paper bag was tucked in his arms, his keys between his teeth.
“Hey, babe.” He mumbled as he closed the door with his foot.
You turned, immediately put the dish you were washing back in the sink, and ran to help him.
“Thank you.” He said after you grabbed the grocery bag from his hands. His arm slipped around your waist and he pulled you closer, giving your temple a soft kiss.
You walked back into the kitchen and gently set the bag down on the counter. Joe followed closely behind you, and once your arms were free again, he turned you around by the waist and wrapped his own arms around you waist again. He pulled you close to his chest and muffled his nose in your hair.
You smiled, your hands grabbed his neck firmly and you pulled him down for a kiss.
“Hey.” You smiled.
“Hey.”
“You had a great day ?” You asked.
He nodded slowly, “What about you ?”
“Yeah.” You answered quietly, gave him a delicate kiss and turned back around to the counter to empty the paper bag.
Thirty minutes later, the sun had completely disappeared and Joe had changed his clothes into comfortable shorts.
Now you were standing in the middle of the kitchen, holding a large bowl and a whip, mixing all the icing ingredients together while the cake baked in the oven.
Joe was just dancing besides you to some random indie song he’d discovered last day, balancing a beer in his right hand.
Sometimes his hands would end up on your waist, to make your hips move to the rhythm of the music. You’d laugh quietly and move your ass towards him, making him whistle and laugh.
Once the cake was cooked, Joe carefully grabbed it out from the oven after putting on potholders. He gently set it down on the counter next to you, while you were busy filling the pastry bag with the vanilla icing.
Joe gently removed the cake from its pan and placed it on a plate. You quickly started to cover it with the white icing, spreading it all around the surface with a spatula until it was smooth.
“A real chef.” You smiled to him, licking your index finger covered in icing.
He laughed quietly, “Not really,” he turned the cake on itself, “it’s not smooth here.”
“Sorry my cake isn’t perfect.” You said dramatically, making him laugh louder.
So he spread the mixture with his middle finger, adjusting the spot, “It’s perfect now.”
You laughed quietly and shook your head. Your eyes lowered down on his covered finger, you smiled and bit your lips.
It was purely innocent at first. You just grabbed his wrist, wrapped your lips around his long and thick finger, swayed your tongue around it to clean it up, and chuckled softly when you pulled away, wiping the corner of your mouth with your thumb.
But then you surprised him scraping out the rest of icing in the bowl with his two middle fingers, with a cocky smile on his lips.
With a quiet smile and without saying any words, he guided them to your mouth again.
You smiled teasingly, a soft breath left your mouth, and then your lips wrapped around his fingers again. You sucked them clean, and when you tried to pull them out of your mouth, he pushed them deeper into your mouth. Your eyes never left his.
You began to move your head forth and back, exactly like you did when you were sucking his dick, one of your hand’s wrapped firmly around his wrist. His lips parted, his brows pulled together and the corner of his mouth twisted slightly. The movement creating a tension between you.
When you finally took them out of your mouth with a wet pop, you started trailing kisses along his two fingers and sucked the tip.
He let them linger on your lower lips for a moment, never breaking eye contact. Then his hand moved to cup your cheek and his thumb brushed your cheekbone softly before he leaned down and pressed his lips on yours.
The kiss was slow and deliberate, his two fingers leaving your own saliva on your cheek. His tongue moved with yours smoothly and the wet sound of your salivas mixing echoed through the room.
His other hand grabbed your hip to pull you flush against his chest to deepen the kiss. You smiled against his lips when the hand that was on your cheek moved to grip one of your butt cheek.
His hands moved so quickly that all of a sudden your arms were wrapped around his neck and your legs around his waist, his two hands holding you up by the ass. He was walking slowly toward the door of your bedroom while you lowered your mouth to kiss his neck and suck on his Adam’s apple. One of your hand left his neck to open the door behind you blindly.
Joe stepped inside, still carrying you, and closed the door with his foot behind him. Your back hit the bed gently when he dropped you, his body crashed over yours immediately and his mouth found yours again.
It was messy and full of passion and desire for each other. The familiar taste of his tongue invaded your mouth, covering the sweet taste of your vanilla icing. One of his hand explored every curves of your body, lingering on the hem of your shorts before he pulled them down completely.
It only took few seconds for your shirt to disappear around the floor too, and other seconds for his hand to slip in your lace panties.
His fingers brushed gently against your hole, feeling your glistening arousal on his fingertips.
“Always so wet for me, baby girl.” He whispered between two kisses, his hot breath on your face.
His mouth moved to your neck, following his fingers that started circling your clit not so softly. His teeth bit your neck softly before his pink lips sucked a blue spot under your ear.
Your body arched against as he slid a finger inside your heat, immediately starting to pump it in and out of you in a quick motion.
“J-joe-” You whimpered, your head falling back into the mattress and your eyes shutting down. His ring finger joined the middle one in your hole, stretching you even more and teasing you better.
His free hand tangled in your hair and pulled them slightly. His thumb found your clit and added extra pressure, making you moan now.
Your nails digged into his large biceps and your lips parted, letting escape soft breath that turned into a new moan every time he moved.
“More ?” He asked murmuring, his face coming back to yours.
You nodded quickly, your eyes still shut, “No, i want to hear you, baby.” His hand that was in your hair moved back to cup your cheek, his thumb brushing your lower lip.
“Yes, Joe please, i want more-” You managed to say, “I need more-”
His fingers pulled out of you so fast you didn’t had time to gasp. In one smooth motion, his shorts and boxers ended on the floor, joining your clothes.
His hands grabbed your hips firmly and rolled you around so you end up laying on your stomach. You felt his hard erection pressions between your butt cheek as he lied back down on you.
One of forearm rested on one side of your head, and the other hand grabbed behind your knee to bend your leg.
He took a second to look at your dripping cunt through your lace panties, leaking white arousal from his previous work. “You look so beautiful.”
His fingers hooked into your panties and pulled them aside, before guiding his thick cock to your entrance.
He rubbed the tip on your intimacy, spreading your leak and his precum. Then he slid in, slow and careful at first, giving you time to adjust.
He started moving, bucking his hips in yours and shoving himself deep inside you. His hand held your waist firmly. He leaned down so his chest was pressed to you back, giving him the ability to kiss your shoulder softly.
“You okay ?” He asked quietly against your ear while thrusting into you. You nodded, letting a moan slip out of your lips.
“Faster.. please-” You whimpered, your left hand clenching the sheets beside you.
He listened to you and immediately started moving faster. Wet sounds started echoing through the room and the scent of your arousal took place in the air. Your moans multiplied, they were louder now.
Then, his hand left your hip to clench your hair, pulling your head a little so he could kiss your neck. His movement fastened even more, your moans getting out on each thrust.
His other hand wrapped around your neck, not choking you just holding. The two fingers that were in your mouth before teased your lower lip.
“Suck it.” He ordered. You quickly wrapped your lips around his fingers and began to suck them, moaning around them and rolling your eyes. “Good girl.” He said, his breath hot against your ear. You could hear the smirk in his voice.
His fingers were moving inside your mouth while he was thrusting faster and faster. He allowed himself to let out a loud whimper in your neck, pressing your neck slightly.
The hand that was in your hair found their way to your breast. His thumb teased your hard nipple, making you arch against his chest.
A loud moan left your throat when he touched the most sensitive spot inside you, “Just like that-” You mumbled around his fingers.
“You like that, huh ?” He smiled behind your ear, “Tell me you like it.”
“yesyesyes joe- i like it..” You whimpered before moaning louder again, small tears peaking at the corner of your eyes.
You felt his stomach tightening on your lower back, signaling that he was close. And so were you. Your walls began to clench around his thick dick, adding sensation for him.
“So fucking tight.” He whispered, “Come on, baby, cum around my cock.”
It took only few seconds after his words for you to come loudly, your back arching against his chest again. He spilled inside you with a loud moan, his hot cum painted your inside walls.
He kept thrusting though, shoving his leak deep inside you as you kept moaning from overstimulation.
He slowed down few seconds later, before finally stopping every movement and crashing over you. His fingers finally left your mouth and his hand unwrapped your neck. His other hand moved to your waist and brushed it gently with his thumb, while planting soft kisses on your shoulder.
He took the time to soften inside you, his breath hot and heavy against your ear and both your chest rising up and down in a steady rhythm.
“You okay, baby ?” He asked quietly, searching for your face.
You finally opened your eyes that stayed closed the entire time, your brows relaxed and grinned to him. “Yes.”
“Great.” He kissed your lips softly.
Later that night, you sat on the counter next to Joe sitting on a chair, both of you holding a small plate in your hand, and enjoying the cake you’d prepared together.
A sweet way to end your day, full of love and the after sex energy.
Summary: you take the full brunt of the internet's hate after your breakup with Joe, cheating accusations, twisted old clips, all of it, while he stays quiet, thinking silence is the safer option.
A/N: I dont know who we thought I was fooling when I said my next post would be fluff... But this has fluff aspects :). Have a great day lovelies
The dressing room smelled like hairspray and the candle your stylist insisted on lighting before every show, something with sandalwood in it, supposedly calming. It wasn't working.
Your phone had been buzzing against the vanity for the last ten minutes, screen lighting up over and over in that specific rhythm you'd learned to recognize without even looking: not a call, not a text from someone who mattered, but notifications. Hundreds of them, stacking on top of each other, a small glowing brick of everyone's opinions about your life.
"Five minutes," someone called from the hallway, and you nodded at your reflection like the person in the mirror was someone else entirely, someone who had her life together.
Around you the room moved the way it always did before a show, a stylist adjusting the back of your top, someone else running a comb through the ends of your hair one last time, your tour manager talking through the setlist changes you'd made that morning even though you weren't really listening. You caught pieces of your own reflection in the mirror between all of them: your face, done up in the kind of makeup that photographed well under stage lights, and underneath it, something tired.
Your phone lit up again. You didn't have to look to know what it was. You already knew, because you'd made the mistake of checking twenty minutes ago, and the picture was still burned into the back of your eyes, an old photo of you and Joe from over a year ago, laughing at something off camera, his hand resting at the small of your back like it belonged there. Someone had dug it up and posted it with a caption that had already been screenshotted and quoted a thousand times: bet she wishes she never lost him.
Under it, thousands of replies. You didn't need to read them again to know what they said, because you already knew the shape of them by heart. That you were the villain. That you'd used him. That you'd humiliated him publicly and were now writing an album designed to do it all over again. That you didn't deserve someone as good as Joe, and everyone was thrilled to remind you of it.
You reached over and flipped your phone face down without reading a single new comment.
"You okay?" your stylist asked, catching your face in the mirror.
"Fine," you said, and even you didn't believe it.
You stood, smoothed your hands down the front of your outfit, and let them lead you toward the stage, toward the song you'd be singing in exactly eleven minutes that was so obviously, painfully about him that you didn't know how you were going to get through it without your voice shaking.
It hadn't always been like this.
There had been a version of this, of you and Joe, that had nothing to do with headlines or comment sections. You met him through mutual friends at a party you almost didn't go to, and from the first ten minutes of talking to him you noticed the thing that made him different from almost everyone else you'd met since you'd gotten famous: he wasn't intimidated by you. He teased you before he even knew your last name. He asked you normal questions, what you actually liked, not what your PR team wanted people to think you liked, and he laughed, easy and unbothered, when you gave him an answer he didn't expect.
You fell for him slowly and then all at once, the way people always say they do and you never quite believed until it happened to you.
For the first several months, almost nobody knew. You liked it that way, the two of you meeting in the corners of each other's lives where nobody was watching, where you didn't have to perform anything for anyone. He'd come and sit backstage before your shows, half-hidden behind the curtain, mouthing the words to songs he'd learned just from hearing you practice them in your kitchen. You'd sneak onto his sets between takes, and the crew had learned to stop pretending they didn't notice the way his whole face changed when he saw you.
When you finally went public, a single photo, someone's lucky angle outside a restaurant, the internet lost its mind in the way it always did, and for a while it felt almost fun, watching people theorize and gush and build an entire narrative out of your hand on his arm. You tried to keep the actual relationship private even after that. The version people saw was never the real one. The real one was quieter. It was him stealing the last bite of your dessert every single time even though he claimed not to like sweet things. It was you wearing his hoodies until they smelled more like your perfume than his cologne, and him pretending to be annoyed about it while never once asking for them back. It was late nights on his couch with takeout containers balanced on your knees, him complaining that you left your makeup wipes on every surface in his apartment, you complaining that he never refilled the ice tray.
It was easy. For a long time, it was so easy that you forgot easy wasn't guaranteed to last.
Your careers pulled you apart before either of you noticed it happening. You were recording, then promoting, then touring, flights and time zones and hotel rooms that all started to blur together. He was filming on location for months at a stretch, disappearing into characters, coming back changed in small ways you didn't always know how to talk to him about. You told each other you were fine. You believed it, mostly, right up until you weren't.
The fights that came were never about anything real. They were about who forgot to call when they said they would, about him sounding distracted on the phone, about you snapping at something small because you were exhausted in a way that had nothing to do with him and everything to do with the last four cities. You felt like he didn't understand how much pressure you were under. He felt like you were shutting him out, retreating somewhere he couldn't follow. Neither of you was entirely wrong.
After one particular fight, the kind that left both of you saying things you didn't mean, voices raised in a hotel room that suddenly felt too small, you agreed, quietly, exhausted, that maybe you both needed space. No dramatic breakup. No public statement. Just an agreement, soft and sad, to give each other room to breathe.
You told yourself it wasn't the end. You wanted to believe that.
And then the pictures happened.
You'd been in the studio late with your producer, an entirely platonic, entirely professional relationship that had nothing romantic in it whatsoever, and someone had caught the two of you leaving together, his hand briefly on your shoulder as he said goodnight. The angle made it look like something it wasn't. A gossip account posted it within the hour, captioned with something that implied you'd already moved on, and within a single evening the internet built an entire story out of nothing.
You watched it happen in real time, powerless to stop it. People combed through old interviews for evidence you'd been unhappy for months. Clips of you looking tired or overwhelmed, originally posted with no context at all, got reposted with captions insisting they proved you'd been miserable in the relationship the whole time. Every lyric you'd ever written got picked apart as a confession. People who had never met either of you were suddenly certain they understood exactly what had gone wrong between you and Joe, and the story they'd decided on made you the villain of it.
You expected Joe to say something. Not to the press necessarily, just privately, a reassurance, some acknowledgment that none of it was true. Instead, he asked you not to say anything publicly. He didn't want to make things worse, he said. He thought staying quiet was the safer move for both of you.
You agreed, because you still loved him, because you didn't want another fight, because some small hopeful part of you still thought this could all blow over if you just waited it out.
His silence ended up costing you more than you expected.
Every interview he did afterward included a question about the breakup, and every time, he gave some version of the same careful non-answer, that he valued his privacy, that he and you weren't really in touch anymore, that he'd rather not get into it. He never said anything unkind about you. But he never defended you either, and the absence of it started to feel louder than anything he could have said.
You took the full weight of it alone.
People started saying things to your face , outside restaurants, outside venues, shouted from crowds that used to just scream your name and now screamed something else entirely. Fans who'd followed you for years suddenly decided they'd never really liked you. You stopped reading comments. You stopped opening the apps that used to feel like a place you belonged. Every public appearance became a calculation , what could be twisted, what would become tomorrow's headline, what smile might get picked apart as fake.
You didn't tell anyone how badly it was getting to you. You were a popstar. You were supposed to be able to take it, smile through it, keep going. So you did what you always did when you didn't know how to say something out loud.
You wrote.
The new album became the only place you could actually be honest. You wrote about him, yes, you couldn't have avoided that even if you'd wanted to, but you also wrote about what it felt like to become a stranger's villain overnight, to have people who'd never met you decide they understood your life better than you did. You wrote about the specific, lonely cruelty of being hated for loving someone. One song became the emotional core of the record almost without you meaning it to, a slow, aching thing about being punished simply for having fallen in love.
When the tracklist leaked, everyone assumed exactly what you'd known they would: a breakup album, a Joe album, built entirely around resentment. The song became the one everyone talked about before they'd even heard it, theorized about, picked apart in advance.
Joe heard it before it released. You didn't send it to him, someone else must have, but you found out later that he'd sat with it alone, headphones in, expecting something angry.
What he found instead undid him.
He heard you describing the isolation, the way the internet had rewritten your entire relationship without either of you agreeing to it, the specific loneliness of being blamed for something you hadn't done. He recognized details in it that nobody else could have understood, a conversation you'd had one night, exhausted, asking him why everyone seemed to hate you, and him telling you, easily, thoughtlessly, to just ignore it.
He remembered how thin his answer had been. How little comfort it had actually offered.
He knew the truth the whole time. He knew you hadn't cheated. He knew the photos with your producer meant nothing at all. He knew the relationship had been complicated in private long before any of it became public. He knew, better than anyone, that you weren't the person the internet had decided you were.
And he'd let you face all of it by yourself.
He texted you first. You didn't answer. He tried calling, you let it ring out, watching his name on the screen with something that felt less like anger now and more like exhaustion. Eventually, he showed up at your door.
You weren't expecting him. You opened it out of habit more than anything, and there he was, looking like he hadn't slept, hands shoved in his pockets like he didn't know what to do with them.
"Can we talk?" he asked.
You didn't step aside right away.
"I don't need you to fix anything," you told him, arms crossed, voice steadier than you felt. "I never needed you to go fight the entire internet for me, Joe. I just needed you to tell people the truth."
"I know," he said quietly.
"Do you?" The words came out sharper than you meant them to, but you didn't take them back. "Because every single time you dodged a question instead of just saying it wasn't true, I started wondering if you actually believed it. If some part of you thought maybe I had done something wrong."
"I never believed it. Not for a second."
"You couldn't have known that," Joe admitted, and you finally stepped back from the door, letting him in. "You weren't defending me. How was I supposed to know what you actually thought?"
He sat down slowly on the edge of your couch, elbows on his knees, and for a long moment neither of you said anything.
"I was scared," he finally said. "I thought if I said something publicly it would just make everything worse, give people more to talk about, more to dig into. I thought staying quiet was protecting us both."
"It didn't protect me," you said, and your voice cracked slightly on the last word, the first honest crack you'd allowed yourself in weeks. "It left me standing there by myself while everyone decided I was the reason it ended."
He didn't try to argue. He just nodded, slow and miserable, like he was finally hearing it the way you'd needed him to hear it all along.
The conversation that followed wasn't a fight, not really, it was something closer to grief. He told you he was sorry, properly, not the careful non-apology he'd been giving reporters for weeks but something that actually cost him something to say. You told him how it had felt, every part of it, the venues and the comment sections and the strangers screaming things at you like they knew you. He listened. Really listened, in a way he hadn't quite managed to before all of this happened.
A few days later, Joe addressed it publicly. Not a statement about the relationship itself, not private details splashed out for consumption, just a short, plain acknowledgment that much of what had been said about you wasn't true, that he knew what had actually happened, and that you'd never deserved any of the hate you'd gotten. He asked people to stop treating something they weren't part of like it was theirs to pick apart.
The reaction split, the way it always does. Some people apologized. Some doubled down, insisting he was only saying it because of the song. But something in you had already shifted by then, you noticed, almost with surprise, that you didn't need the internet's approval to feel like the version of the story you'd lived through was real.
The album released a few weeks later. The song became the biggest thing you'd ever put out, playing everywhere, sung back to you by thousands of people every night on tour, most of whom had no idea how much of it had actually happened exactly the way you'd written it.
Months after that, an interviewer asked you, gently, whether you regretted the relationship, whether, looking back, you wished it had never happened at all.
You smiled, and you meant it.
"I don't regret loving him," you said. "I regret letting other people make me ashamed of something that used to be really beautiful."
You and Joe didn't get back together right away. There was no dramatic reconciliation, no headline moment. It started small, a text here and there, then coffee, careful and a little awkward, then long conversations about everything that had happened, the kind you'd never quite managed to have while you were actually together. He learned to listen instead of trying to immediately fix things. You learned that you didn't have to perform being okay for him the way you'd learned to perform it for everyone else.
Then, one night after a show, you came off stage still buzzing from the crowd, makeup half-melted under the lights, and found him waiting for you backstage.
No cameras. No fans crowded behind a barricade. Just him, leaning against the wall near your dressing room like he'd been there a while.
"Hey," you said, stopping a few feet away.
"Hey." He pushed off the wall, hands in his pockets again, the same nervous habit as before. "Want to get dinner?"
You raised an eyebrow, fighting a smile you didn't quite let show yet. "You can't just assume I want to go home with you anymore."
He laughed, actually laughed, the sound easing something in your chest you hadn't realized was still tense. "Okay," he said. "Can I ask you properly, then?"
You looked at him for a long moment. The hallway was quiet. Nobody was watching. For the first time in longer than you could remember, it felt like it was just the two of you again, the way it used to be before any of this started.
"Maybe," you said.
And for the first time in a long time, neither of you cared what anyone else thought.
The Life of a Showgirl being released during what may have been the worst situationship of my life only for me to press shuffle on a playlist tonight and get Ruin the Friendship. actually sick. physically ill. my nervous system just remembered things I had worked very hard to forget
