alive without medicine @jasm1nelily - Tumblr Blog

skin tight

pairing : steve harrington x gen-netural!reader

word count : 5.2k

summary : what started as a summer fling has left steve lovesick. little does he know, you’re suffering just the same.

notes : NSFW! there isn’t a lot of detailed, long smut, but certainly some implied explicit scenes and language.

ALSO! requests are open so check out my pinned post for more info on that :)

ALSO also! i just wanted to thank everybody for all the attention my recent eddie fic got. it really surprised me how much everybody seems to love it!!! i hope u guys enjoy this one too <3

music : skin tight by rayvn lenae ft. steve lacy :)

Steve’s not entirely sure why exactly it began. All he remembers seeing you for the first time; not the first time you met, but the first time he actually saw you, saw you for what you were. He remembers thinking that you were beautiful, and he remembers wondering how he never noticed before, after all these years of knowing you. It made him slightly uncomfortable, how gorgeous you were. He just couldn’t look at you in the way he used to—in that brotherly, companion, best friends forever sort of way.

It was at a party. Graduation party, to be exact. Somebody whose name Steve had never heard was hosting it, but it was in the town, so he was okay with going. You tagged along with him because who else would you tag along with; you went almost everywhere together, and that wasn’t changing just because high school had ended. He drove the two of you. He doesn’t recall having any weird thoughts during the drive, and even when you entered the party, which was already raging by the time you arrived. Fashionably late, right?

What happened, in the span of an hour or so, that changed Steve’s perception of you so completely? He couldn’t pinpoint it, no matter how hard he tried. It wasn’t as if he’d had an extraordinary amount to drink; he knew how to handle his liquor, and the alcohol at this particular function wasn’t of especially good quality, anyhow.

You were talking to a girl. He didn’t know the girl’s name, but he had seen you with her once or twice. What the girl looked like is irrelevant; he wasn’t really studying her, anyway. It was you that he looked at, from across the room—you, and the way you laughed, the way your eyes sparkled in the dim lights overhead, the way you were standing, all sure of yourself, leaning against the wall as you watched the girl speak. And you hadn’t even had anything to drink. You were the designated driver.

How could you look so confident sober? Steve sure did not possess that quality. Not at all.

Steve felt an overwhelming desire to walk over there, drag you to the bathroom, and fuck the daylights out of you. And that really scared him, so he swallowed the rest of his drink and wandered off to go chat up someone else. But they weren’t you. And it scared him even more that he was comparing someone he planned to sleep with by the end of the night to you, his best friend since the fourth grade, and that this person... they weren’t measuring up.

Nobody could measure up to you. Nobody.

What Steve doesn’t know is that you have seen him for the entirety of your friendship. You’ve seen him, not just as best friend and partner to always rely on, but as hot, playboy Steve. Dreamy Steve, with those eyes and those pillowy lips, with those strong arms and big hands that you sometimes feel guilty about staring at for a little too long. Thank god he's far too oblivious to notice. Steve has never seen you that way, and he never will. You can’t tell whether or not you should be sad about it.

You don’t know how long you’ve wanted him. You’ve always thought he was attractive, but wanting someone? That’s different. 4 years, maybe? That would be the full ride of your high school years, which seems right. Even through his thing with Nancy, you wanted him. It hurt more than you’d like to admit to pretend like things were just fine, to comfort him when they fought and eventually broke up, and through all the stuff afterward. Because Steve never truly got over her, not in the way he said he did. And that might’ve hurt more than all the other stuff combined.

So, when Steve started coming on to you, it was very hard for you to refuse him.

The first time it happened, you were at a beach party one of your friends was hosting, out of town. You dragged Steve with you because you didn’t want to drive somewhere far alone, and he obliged, but only if you agreed to staying in a hotel for the night, because he did not want to be the designated driver. You were more than happy to say yes, and off you went.

Steve had been acting weird lately. He was always busy, always had an excuse as to why he couldn’t hang out. But when you did hang out, he was just as warm as ever, and maybe even more so—touching you when it wasn’t really necessary, holding your hand to guide you someplace and just not letting go. It wasn’t strange enough to make you say anything, but it was definitely enough for your mind to wander to various improbable conclusions.

Improbable, until 2am that night, when you were struggling to turn the key into the door to your hotel room, and Steve was behind you, giggling like a little boy. His hands were around your waist and he was holding you close, so close you could feel his heart beating rapidly against your back, and his hot breath was fanning over the shell of your ear; all of this, more than the fact that you were a bit drunk, was enough to make your fingers tremble as you again tried to unlock the door.

Suddenly, he stopped laughing, and went quiet for a few moments before he spoke again.

"Y/N,” he had said, voice just above a whisper. “Stop for a sec.”

You stopped, because you weren’t really getting anywhere with the key anyway.

He placed one hand on either side of your waist and spun you slowly to face him. His pupils were blown and his face was flush with that pink most pale people get when they’re inebriated; Steve especially, as you’d realized throughout your time with him. And he was grinning at you in this enigmatic way. You couldn’t tell what he wanted. You could definitely speculate, but any answer you could come up with would be heavily biased by way of your own desires.

Steve stared blankly at you for a moment before his hands released you, and instead found themselves cradling your face.

“You’re so beautiful,” he muttered, like it wasn’t really for you and kinda just for the universe. But you heard it, of course you did, and all you could do was blink twice and try to figure out what to say.

“Thanks, Stevie. You’re beautiful too,” you finally said, smiling softly up at him. Steve paused and you registered the distance between the two of you—rather, the lack thereof, because you were so close that if you twitched or jerked the wrong way you would end up kissing. And somehow, even though you had spent years telling yourself how gross and wrong it would be to even think about kissing Steve, you wanted to. You really, really wanted to.

Steve was gnawing on his bottom lip, his glossy gaze flickering from your eyes to your mouth and back again, and you suddenly got the message that maybe he too really, really wanted to. And so you took the leap and you kissed him. It felt like he was trying to swallow you whole, like a starved python, wrapping himself around you and pressing himself so close you thought your bodies would merge together. You wouldn’t have minded.

You slipped him the key and he managed to get the door open in about two seconds, which would have wounded your ego were you not too entranced by the way he was still trying to kiss you as you fell into the room. It was violent; teeth clashing lips biting tongues swirling, hands roaming, squeezing, legs tangled. Boundaries crossed and shattered under the weight of pure desire.

And it felt good. For the time being.

Steve may not be the smartest guy in the world, let alone in Hawkins, but he knows when he’s doing something he’s not supposed to. That’s like, toddler level intelligence. And that night, and every night with you afterwards, he felt it. That guilt, that shame, because this was something he wanted with every fiber of his being, but it was something he knew he should not be doing. It had the potential to ruin a friendship he had cherished for so many years. It had the potential to make him lose something he wasn’t sure how to live without. You.

But god, if he didn’t think about you, every second of the day. The way you just melted into his hands, like putty, how easy it was to coax those sweet sounds out of your mouth, as if just his touch was enough for you. He could tell you trusted him, so completely. You trusted him to make you feel good. You trusted him to keep you safe, to never hurt you, because he would never, ever hurt you.

You thought about him too. In conversation you would look him right in the eyes, but be thinking about his hands on your torso, his lips on your neck, his eyes that bore into yours and made you feel like the only person he would ever want in the world.

But you weren’t together. You were just fucking.

This was something you had to make yourself remember from time to time. By the end of July, time to time became every time you saw Steve. You had no clue what he thought about the whole situation—you never really had a conversation about it, and you were too scared to bring it up. It might disrupt the very delicate nature of whatever the two of you had going on, and you weren’t ready for it to end just yet.

Steve wasn’t ready either. He liked what you had now, because you were able to act like best friends and treat one another just the same way you had been before, but later, when nobody was around, you kissed and you held him and it felt just like it had the first time. At some point, he started dreaming not just about your body, but just you.

He started thinking about you, and your friendship. The years you had spent together. How he felt when you weren’t around, when he couldn’t call on you. And Steve realized, to his horror, he was in love with you. Maybe it should’ve made him happy, but instead it just filled him with fear. He had gotten the two of you wrapped up by something that was threatening to squeeze the life out of him, but he didn’t want to let go.

“I feel like this is not gonna end well.”

Steve sighs to himself and rubs his hands over his face. The store is empty except for himself and Robin, who has just finally worn him down on whatever the hell has been going on between himself and Y/N. On one hand it feels good to get it off his chest, but on the other he’s not sure if he’s ready to submit himself to the endless barrage of questions he knows will be coming soon.

“Yeah. I don’t think it will either,” he confesses, holding his head in his hands as he leans his elbows onto the cashier counter. “But I just can’t stop.”

Robin scoffs. “I mean, I guess it makes sense. The sexual tension between you guys has been a lot worse these past months.”

"Worse? So there was... tension, in the first place?”

Steve feels like an idiot when he finally looks up to see Robin staring at him incredulously. Usually, they’re stupid together, but at this moment he feels like a kid whose mother is trying to explain some complex science. “Yes, idiot. They’re practically in love with you. You should just tell them how you feel. You guys are making me sick.”

His chest is hurting a bit—every time he’s thought about them this week, he’s felt like his ribs are closing in on his heart. Maybe he should get that checked out. “They aren’t in love with me. We’re just... you know.”

“Fucking?”

Steve winces at the vulgarity of the term. “Yeah. That.”

“That doesn’t mean they’re not in love with you. Maybe they’re not saying anything ‘cause they’re afraid you don’t feel the same way.”

The little bell above the front door rings and in comes some guy and his gaggle of middle school friends. Steve sighs and stands up straight as they begin thumbing through the horror section.

“That would certainly be ironic.”

A week later, you’re on the phone with your older sister, who’s away at college. You’ve been talking about Steve for 15 minutes without actually having said his name—your sister of course knows who he is, because she was forced to witness your shenanigans together before she left. It’s not that you don’t trust her, but you’d rather not have to deal with the questions you know she’ll ask if she knows that this person you’re talking about sleeping with is Steve Harrington.

“Hey, don’t kill me if I’m wrong... but are you talking about Steve? Like Steve, your best friend since elementary school?”

Well, so much for that. Fuck.

You hesitate for a moment, but that’s all she needs as a confirmation. “Oh shit. You’re sleeping with Steve. Jesus, Y/N.”

“Yeah,” you breath, squeezing your eyes shut. “I know. Bad idea.”

She’s quiet for a moment before you hear her take a deep breath. “You’ve been head over heels for this guy for so long. Why would you do that to yourself?”

The way she’s phrasing it makes you feel really stupid and pathetic, but you know she’s right. Why would you do that to yourself? You’re just making yourself suffer, and for what? Because he fucks good? It is really good, and you’ve never had anyone make you feel that way before, but you could probably find someone else. You could’ve found someone else. Yet, you submitted yourself to Steve just like that and now you’re in a mess of shit.

“I don’t know. I guess I just... he initiated, you know? And it felt really good for him to want me the way I’ve wanted him for who knows how fucking long. So I just fell for it. It was dumb, I know. I feel like an idiot already, you don’t have to tell me.”

Your sister hums to herself, as she does often when she’s thinking.

“It was dumb. But I’m sort of glad you went for it, because if you didn’t, you would just be stuck pining after him forever, you know? At least now, you have something to go off of. I say you tell him how you feel. And if he doesn’t feel the same, fuck him. Not literally, of course. You’re already doing that.”

The way she said it, it all seemed so simple. Frankly, it all could be that simple. But she just didn’t get it. How could she? You couldn’t lose Steve, you just couldn’t. He had been by your side so long that imagining life without him made your heart shrivel up and fall to pieces like a dying rose.

“Yeah. You’re right. I’ll tell him.”

“Not very convincing. But you do you, alright? If you need to talk again, I’m always available. Between 3 and 7pm on weekdays. Not at all on the weekends. But, you know. You have mom.”

“Ha ha. Very funny.”

Another week passes and neither of you reach out to the other. You’re beginning to feel like this is it, this is the end of whatever you’ve been doing, possibly the end of your friendship, too. It’s making you so anxious that you can barely sleep at night; all you do is imagine all your memories with him, and wonder if one day when you’re old and grey you’ll forget all about them because you never got to make anymore. You try not to cry about it.

Steve cries about it. At least, he did, just once, but he was sort of high and he was with Robin and just couldn’t stop talking about this one time the two of you skipped school to get ice cream and go see a movie. It was a horror movie, and you held his hand because even though he said he wasn’t afraid, he was afraid, because Steve was still recovering from his second encounter with the Upside Down and the special effects were looking a little too real.

“They were there for me, man. They’ve always been there for me. I can’t fuckin’ lose that, you know?”

Robin inhaled the smoke deeply and blew it out in a ring. She’d been practicing that trick.

“You won’t lose them. They’ll always be there, even if they don’t feel the same way. You can’t just... erase years of friendship. You can’t erase what you guys have.”

Oh yes, you can. Robin knew that, but she didn’t say it, because Steve was already crying and she’s never seen him cry before. It was a little awkward but she managed to keep herself from laughing.

You can’t ignore Steve forever. Spending more than a day without at least seeing him once feels wrong, let alone purposefully avoiding him for seven of them. And then there’s the issue of why he hasn’t called or stopped by or anything. Maybe he’s decided enough is enough. Regardless, you need to tell him how you feel. If it ends badly, oh well. You can always catch the bus out of town. Disappear without a trace, that kind of thing. You’ve kinda always wanted to try it.

On Friday the 13th of August, Steve is standing in the Family Video Store sweating his ass off. The air conditioning broke yesterday; conveniently, this is the second hottest day of the summer, so he’s pretty much miserable at the moment. He’s leaning against the counter waiting for a dad and his daughter to pick between Raiders of the Lost Ark and Wrath of Khan. Personally, he would go for Fast Times, but the customer is always right, anyhow.

The little bell above the front door jingles and he expects it to be Robin coming back from the donut shop with two jelly donuts and an iced coffee, so he doesn’t bother looking. However, when they get close enough, Steve catches a whiff of a very familiar laundry detergent and his heart freezes in his chest.

“Long time no see, Stevie,” you greet, flashing him as genuine a smile as you can. Your stomach is rumbling and you hope he can’t hear it.

When Steve looks up at you, his eyes almost bulge out of their sockets, and your heart drops a little in your chest. He’s really, really not looking happy to see you. You don’t know what you were expecting; you had rationalized his lack of contact with the idea of him being busy, but in truth you should’ve known better. The only time he’s busy is when the town is under attack by paranormal monsters, and as far as you know that’s not the case.

“Y/N, hey. What... um, what’re you doin’ here?” What a fucking stupid thing to say. What are you doing here? Obviously, they’re here to see you, dickweed. Steve does his best to regain his composure and gives you a smile he’s sure looks as awkward as it feels.

“Can we... uh. Can we talk? Outside, maybe? It’s too fucking hot in here.” Not like it’d be any better outside, but you’d rather not be in the store for this. If it goes badly, like you expect it to, at least you’ll have free range to run away.

Steve swallows hard. “Yeah. For sure. Just give me a sec.”

You stand aside and watch as he slides out from behind the cashier counter, approaching the only two customers in the store. He talks to them for a minute or so, clearly weighing two movie options for the man and what looks to be his teenage daughter. The way he smiles at them, you almost forget what you’re here to do, but it’s a little hard to focus when he’s just so... him. Dreamy Steve with the beautiful heart. Your Steve. If you can remember that, maybe you can stop being so anxious.

Steve rings the two up and they exit the store; the minute they do so, the weight of silence is heavy on your shoulders and you slump a little under the pressure. Your attempt at holding a smile has long been forgotten, and now you’re just gnawing on your lip, trying to distract yourself from your frayed nerves.

He’s staring right at you, and you can see his Adam’s Apple bob as he swallows hard. You don’t think you’re gonna make it outside. You decide that you have to do it, right now, or else you’ll never bring yourself to do it again.

“I can’t do this anymore,” you blurt, not really bothering to think carefully about what you want to say. You created a whole script in your head prior, but you’ve gone blank and decide to let your heart take the wheel.

Instead of saying, do what? like you predicted he would, Steve only inhales sharply and says; “Me either.”

He’s looking down at the counter now, and you approach him slowly, so that you’re standing right in front of him.

“It’s not that I don’t... like doing it, with you. I love it. It’s really good. It’s fun. But, fuck, I...” you don’t know how to continue, because he’s brought his eyes up to yours and they’re so brown and glossy and big you think you might just fall into them.

“It’s too weird?” Steve asks, and you feel your heart being chipped away at just a little bit. That’s why he thinks you’re ending it, because it’s too weird? You know that he couldn’t possibly know how you feel, but for some reason it makes you angry, and you feel tears prickling at the corners of your eyes.

“Jesus fuck, Steve. No, it’s not because it’s too weird. It’s because I can’t stand it. I can’t stand that all of the sudden, you’re into me, you think I’m hot, and you wanna kiss me, and fuck me, and do all these things, because I’ve wanted that for so long. So. Long.” You would think the bewildered expression on Steve’s face would hinder you, but it just fuels your ire, and you take a deep breath through your tears.

“And I think the worst part isn’t that you never wanted me the way I always wanted you. The worst part is that even though you might think you do now, you still don’t. So, the reason I can’t do this anymore is because it hurts. It really fucking hurts.”

You’re out of breath now, and you’re sure your face is red. You thank god Robin’s not here because if she suddenly popped out of the break room you probably would’ve passed out on the spot. In fact, you might just do it now. Steve’s shocked expression falls and is replaced by one that makes your heart feel too big in your chest. He looks sad. He rarely looks sad. Your anger is simmering into a quiet aching.

“How... how do you want me? What do you want from me?” Steve’s voice is just above a whisper. You can tell he doesn’t mean it in that way, but you take it that way anyhow. You choke quietly on your own tears and furiously wipe your eyes on your sleeve.

“Fuck, Steve, I don’t want anything from you. I just love you. I have, for so long. And I wish maybe you could love me back in that way, but I know you can’t. So I’m ending this, whatever it was.” I’m ending us. Our friendship. Everything we had, reduced to one tough conversation and a summer fling that felt like it lasted a lifetime.

You don’t say that, but you can see Steve hears it anyway. His eyebrows upturn and he looks a beached whale, so far from home but just in its reach. You want to turn and run, but not because you’re scared, but because you don’t have anything else to say. What else is there to say? You’ve finally fished your deepest secret from the depths of your heart’s ocean, and now you feel empty.

You inhale and turn around.

“Y/N, please, don’t—shit, I.. give me a minute.”

You don’t continue walking, but you don’t face him again.

“Just let me say something, and then you can go if you really want to.”

A few seconds pass and you hug yourself, hoping that if you squeeze tight enough you’ll fold into yourself and escape this horrible, horrible feeling. Escape this moment.

“Can you... you know. Turn around? Please?”

This better be fucking good.

You abide by his request and spin to face him slowly. His face is red; is he blushing, angry, nervous? You can’t tell. His eyebrows are furrowed, so maybe he’s angry, but you feel as if he’s just very focused on what he’s about to say. Rarely does Steve do anything with his eyebrows when he’s mad. That’s the worst thing about it—there’s never an expression on his face.

“Do you remember the first time we.. you know. In that shitty hotel?”

You nod slowly, hoping he has an actual point to this and he’s not just stalling for time.

“When we woke up the next morning, and you were all cuddled up next to me, I got this really bad feeling in my stomach. Like I was not supposed to be doing this, like I had gone off path or something and I was in the wrong neighborhood. But I didn’t wanna wake you up, so I didn’t freak out or anything. I tried to go back to sleep, but not before I looked at you, just to make sure it was actually you, and I wasn’t losing my mind.”

You sniffle and sigh. “How the fuck is this supposed to make me feel better?”

Steve winces. “I’m getting to it, I promise. Just bear with me.”

He moves toward the exit from behind the counter to right in front of you. You try to ignore the proximity, and focus on the wall behind him. It’s a little hard, since you can tell he’s looking you right in the eyes, but you manage.

“When I looked at you, this really weird thing happened. All the bad stuff I was feeling, all the nerves and the fear and all that, went away. And there was just you and me and the sun coming into through the window, and the sound of you breathing. It was... good. It felt really good. It felt like I was in the right place. And that feeling... well, it hasn’t gone away. It’s actually gotten worse.”

Steve pauses. Like he’s waiting for you to say something. You won’t, because you don’t know what the hell he wants you to say, let alone what he’s saying.

“Steve,” you say, finally meeting his gaze. “Why are you telling me this?”

“Because,” he breaths. You're so close you can hear the sound of him swallowing. It’s loud and you bet his mouth is really dry right now. “I don’t know how else to tell you how I feel.”

Your heart stops. “...how you feel?”

“Yeah. How I feel. About you, about us, about everything. I don’t know how else to... to phrase it.”

“Try. I’ll wait,” you say, and a little smile creeps its way onto your face. Hope, instead of fear and anger and sadness, bubbles up into your chest, eradicating all the bad feelings like bug repellent. You watch him as he registers your request, and his eyes never leave yours.

He takes your hands. You can feel that they’re clammy and hope he doesn’t feel how shaky yours are. “I don’t regret what we did. I don’t want to stop. But I don’t want... just that. I want you. I want you in every way. In any way you’ll have me.”

A silence sets over the store. Steve finally breaks eye contact and you can feel his rapid pulse on your finger, which rests on his wrist.

“Does that make sense?” he asks, his voice wavering ever so slightly.

“Yeah,” you smile, and let go of his hand to rest your own on his cheek, to make him look at you again. “I understand.”

Steve smiles back, and then it breaks out into a face-splitting grin, and a little sigh of relief escapes him. He looks so cute, like a child on Christmas morning, staring right at their favorite gift.

“You understand,” he repeats. And then he finally breaks the ice and envelops you in his arms, holding you so tight that you’re sure you’re going to melt into him. You always do.

“I’m sorry.” Steve’s voice is muffled by your skin because he’s shoved his face into your neck. You feel his mouth moving against you.

“I know. I’m sorry too.” You’re not even sure what you’re apologizing for, but it feels right to say it in the moment.

You hold each other like for a while. You’re still crying, but not because you’re really sad or even because you’re really happy—though, the latter still applies. It just keeps coming out. So when Steve finally pulls away from you, he cradles your face in his hands and his thumbs wipe your tears, slightly calloused but still sort of soft. They move slow and you stare into his eyes the whole time, and your cheeks hurt because of how hard you’re smiling.

“Can I kiss you?” Steve asks, timidly, like you’re going to say no.

“Yeah. You can.”

And somehow, even though you’ve kissed many times before, it feels different this time. It’s not violent, it’s not raw, it’s not even that passionate, but it’s real. It makes your stomach fill with warmth and your skin tingle in the places where it meets his. In this kiss, Steve is trying to pour all the words he can’t say, and you hear them. You hear them in the way he chases you when you pull away, in the dreamy look in his eyes as he studies your face.

“So... this means we can keep sleeping together, right?”

Your smile falls and you hit him on the shoulder, but he just laughs and kisses you again, this time more of a peck.

“Kidding. Sorry. Not funny.” Obviously, he thinks it’s funny. And you think it’s a little funny too, but you can’t let him know that.

“Take me out to dinner first. Then we can discuss the... other stuff.” Your heart flutters at the way his grin grows at your words.

“Absolutely. It’s a deal.”

Trending Blogs

Recently Viewed Blogs

alive without medicine