[mcumorningstar]

MASTERLIST

[ all of my fics will be linked on here. do not post without my permission. otherwise, enjoy and my requests are open !! ]

CLARK KENT (smallville & superman 2025)

FROM GOTHAM, WITH LOVE

~ you meet clark when he's on red kryptonite and, even though he's back to his "normal self", you can't stand him and his nice guy act.

THE REWARDS

~ being boy/girl best friends was never complicated until outside opinions have you questioning your judgement.

#SUPERDICK | PART ONE | PART TWO

~ the girls learn about your situationship with clark after snooping through your phone, and a domestic morning forces you to face the truth.

WAIT FOR IT

~ when you outright ask Clark why you haven't had sex yet, he avoids you like the plague, unsure how to deal with that conversation.

KISSING BOOTH

~ In an attempt to get closer to his crush, Clark offers to help with the school carnival… until he is assigned the kissing booth.

MIKE FAIST CHARACTERS

PROVE IT, COWBOY (DODGE MASON)

~ after the player's ball, you find yourself without a bed for the night until dodge offers for you to stay at his, but when his mom and sister catch you sneaking in they get the wrong impression.

BEHIND CLOSED DOORS (OR NOT) (RIFF LORTON)

~ your relationship is a secret so when ice mistakes your kindness for encouragement, riff proves that you're his girl.

BANG BANG (RIFF LORTON)

~ tensions arise when riff brings a gun home.

FRIDAY NIGHTS (RIFF LORTON)

~ After having Riff’s hands all over you at the dance, you can’t help but pull him away into the shadows.

TOMMY SHELBY

A ROSE BY ANY OTHER NAME | PART ONE | PART TWO | PART THREE

~ Resigned to a life as a whore, the infamous Shelby brothers find you in a compromising position and you apprehensively accept their protection.

LARRY DURRELL

DO NOT DISTURB

~ it’s 1935 and you impulsively follow your boyfriend and his family to live in Corfu, however you did not anticipate how little privacy you would get.

HIS MUSE

~ after your relatives forbid you from seeing larry durrell, a series of notes begin to appear

[djoslider-deactivated20230802]

steve harrington outfit rankings (as voted by my followers) ↴

11. “Malewife Blue Buttoned Pullover ” Season 4 - 161 votes

[emziess]

Endless gifs of Steve Harrington - 70/∞

[lesservillain]

Baby, it’s cold outside

Steve Harrington x fem!reader

summary: after being convinced by your best friend, Vickie, to travel to the WSQK station on a snowy Christmas Eve night, you find ways to keep yourself warm in the company of another

cw: smut, big dick Steve, takes place between s4-s5, s5 compliant, one bed trope, drinking

wc: 12K

dividers by @strangergraphics

The sounds of “Please Come Home for Christmas” by the Eagles flow from the speakers of your car as you drive through the snowy streets of Hawkins. Vickie sang along with the slow song while you did your best to see through the flurry of snowflakes that made you look like you were driving at warp speed, when in reality you were probably going 15 under, making the 20 minute drive across town closer to half an hour.

You told Vickie she was crazy for wanting to make the trip to the station during a snow storm, let alone one on Christmas Eve. But she convinced you that she was going to make a move on Robin tonight, and how could you turn your friend down when she was potentially going to be making the move of a lifetime with a girl she’s had a crush on since junior year?

“Do you think she’s going to like the cookies?” Vickie asks, uncertainty in her tone.

”Of course she will,” you say in reassurance, making a turn down the long dirt path that led to the radio station. “Who wouldn’t love home made Christmas cookies from a cutie like you?”

“But do they come across as a loving gesture, or just as a friend?”

”Would any friend risk theirs and their best friends' necks in a snow storm just to bring a “friend” cookies?” You ask with a sly smirk.

”Ugh, but Robin, she’s just so—“

”Clueless?”

”Yeah,” Vickie says with a sigh.

”I think she’s got a lot going on,” you try to explain, “What with the big radio station job and the military breathing down their necks to promote compliance and all.”

”You’re right, you’re right,” she says, slumping back in her seat. “I just—I don’t want to mess anything up. This isn’t like dating Anthony or some other guy. I’m really putting myself out there if I guess this wrong. And even if she doesn’t like me back but she’s cool with me liking girls, I don’t want to ruin our friendship either. Ugh, it’s just so complicated.”

Pulling up next to the WSQK van, illuminated by the glow of the matching sign on the big building, you throw the car in park and turn to look at Vickie.

”Listen, if everything you’ve told me is true, I’m, like, 99% sure that Robin is totally into you and, if you really think about it, probably going through the same mental gymnastics you are.” You put your hand on her shoulder and look her dead in the eye.

“So, tonight, you’re going to go in there, give her your cookies, tell her you made them especially for her, give her a little smile, and watch her melt at the gesture. Then, you’re gonna find an excuse to get the two of you alone, you’re gonna sit her down, look her in the eyes all dreamy like, and—BAM!” Vickie jumps at your sudden outburst and starts to laugh. “You’re gonna lean in and give her a smooch smoochy—“

”God, please don’t call it that!” Vickie groans, throwing her hands up in defeat.

”Awe c’mon! It’s so easy you just gotta—“ You lean in and pretend to kiss the air around Vickie and she busts out laughing, pushing you away from her.

”Well what about you?” She says once the two of you have gotten over your giggle fit and caught your breath.

”I don’t know what you’re talking about,” you say with a look of faux innocence. She squints her eyes at you and you can tell she’s not hearing your shit tonight.

”What about you and Steeeeve?” She draws his name out in an ooey gooey sing songy tone that makes you shake your head at her.

“What about him?” You say, turning away from her and crossing your arms for extra show.

”Oh, don’t act like I haven’t seen you looking at him when we all hang out,” she says, giving you a light, playful shove.

”Well, who am I supposed to be looking at when you and Robin are giving each other goo-goo eyes? I’m just glad they come in a pair so I have someone to entertain me.”

”I’m sure you’d like him to entertain you,” she says with a brow wiggle. “Don’t think I forgot about how upset you were when he started dating Nancy Wheeler sophomore year.”

”Me and half of the Hawkins high school population! Guys included!” You say in defense of yourself.

”Yeah, but you forget that we’re best friends and your feelings for him went way beyond a crush. And I think, deep down, there’s a little something still there for good ol’ King Steve,” she says, poking you in the arm with her finger.

And, hey, maybe she’s on to something. What you once thought was a deeply buried liking towards popular boy Steve Harrington has definitely been resurfacing as of the last couple of months. No thanks to Vickie and Robin’s budding…situation that they have going on. That and the weird codependency that Steve and Robin seem to have that led you to believe they were dating at first, which Robin cleared up by stating they are platonic with a capital ‘P.’

Regardless of all of that, the whole situation has given way to you and Steve spending a lot of time together over the last 9 months. To say he’s changed since high school is an understatement, but the change you’d say was definitely for the better. Sure, his airhead qualities were still there, but he wasn’t the same douchey jock you first fell for at 15 years old. No, he was respectful, more mature, caring, and a bunch of other positive descriptor words you could pull from a thesaurus.

He also looked somehow even hotter than before. More grown, more…manly. (Yeah, you caught those chest hairs peaking out of his shirts over the summer) That swimmer's body has gotten bigger, more muscular, and you certainly were not complaining.

But the thing that was getting you the most was that he was just…kind. Not to mention he can hold a conversation; he listens when you talk. Like, actually listens! And responds appropriately! What man actually does that?

Is he a flirt? Sure, but you don’t mind. It just feeds into your delusion that he might actually like you back. Which, you’re sure he doesn’t. He surely would have made an actual move on you by now if he did, right?

”It’s not like that, Vick,” you say, cutting the engine and effectively forcing the conversation to end before she can grill you any further.

”Oh, come on,” she says as she climbs out of the car, tin of cookies in hand.

”We’re here for you tonight, not me.”

“Ugh, fine. But this conversation isn’t over,” she says, pointing at you.

You trudge through the snow to her side of the car and link arms with her, the two of you stomping in your boots all the way up the stairs of the radio station.

Two two of you quietly make your way into the heart of the building, stopping when the small sound booth comes into sight, the ‘On Air’ light glowing brightly from the outside. Inside the booth you could see Robin talking on the mic while Steve whizzed around playing sound effects for her. It was a sight to behold, those two in their element like this.

“Hopefully that last melody warmed all of you cold folks up on this blustery night. Don’t forget to add another log to your fire, as we’re getting into some low, low temps tonight. Six inches of snow, can you believe it, folks?”

Steve plays a “womp womp” sound effect and you can’t help but giggle at his comedic timing.

”And as you all know, Rockin’ Robin and co will be here to celebrate the holiday with you all well into this evening, making sure you have the holliest, jolliest Christmas Eve while you wait up for Santa tonight. Hopefully he makes it through those military check points—“ Steve follows this up with a classic ‘ho ho ho’ sound. “But even if he can’t make it down your chimney tonight, just know we’ll be here with the gift of music for your listening pleasure.”

Robin looks up from where she was speaking into the mic, finally noticing you and Vickie. Vickie holds up her tin of cookies, and Robin gives you both a thumbs up.

”Speaking of gifts, it looks like two little elves have entered the studio with some very nice gifts for your hosts tonight. So, I’ll be sending you off to some Wham! to start off the hour right…”

”Last Christmas” starts to fade into play and the On Air light turns off, signaling that Robin’s mic was off. Robin and Steve pull off their headphones and hastily exit the booth to greet the two of you.

”Hey, what are you guys doing here?” Robin asks, excitedly.

”Yeah, isn’t there a snow storm going on?” Steve asks, looking out the windows with a squint.

”Yes, but,” you say, looking at Vickie directly, “someone wanted to make sure you guys weren’t lonely on Christmas Eve. Someone who also can’t see well at night and who needed someone to drive her out here.”

Vickie shrugs, “Guilty.” She then presents the tin in her hands to Robin, opening it to reveal the cookies that resided inside. “I made these for you.”

Robin looks at the tin in complete shock, taking it gently from Vickie’s hands and examining its contents carefully. “You made these for me?” She asks, a huge smile on her face. Vickie is cheesing so hard at Robin’s reaction and you can’t help but internally celebrate for your best friend.

”Well, I mean, I made them for us,” Vickie suddenly stutters, backtracking what she said. You want to scream at her, tell her not to take back what she said, but you have to just stand there and watch your best friend lose that little bit of progress she made in that moment.

“Oh,” Robin’s excitement fades when she looks over at you and Steve, and she gives Vickie a tight lipped smile. “Right, of course.”

”She made them because of you though,” you blurt out. Vickie’s eyes go wide at your comment, and Robin looks at you with a shocked look on her face. “Remember, Vickie? You said Robin said Christmas cookies were her favorite cookies and that she wished that she could have Christmas cookies all year round, but that wouldn’t make them Christmas cookies anymore—“

Vickie says your name in a desperate attempt to get you to stop talking, and you instantly shut up as you realize your error. You hear a muffled laugh and look over to Steve, who has his face covered by his hand as he shakes his head, clearly trying to hold it together to not make the situation worse.

Robin, however, is looking at Vickie with a sparkle in her eyes.

”You remembered me saying that?” She says, totally unbothered by your rambling.

”Oh, yeah, I guess I did,” Vickie says shyly, side eyeing you.

Taking a cookie out of the tin, Robin bites into it and instantly melts. “Oh my god, this is, like, so good,” she says while she chews. “It’s the most Christmas tasting Christmas cookie I’ve ever had.”

”Really?” Vickie asks, perking up at the compliment. “They’re my grandma’s recipe.”

”Yes, are you kidding me? So good.” You can see Vickie blushing at Robin’s compliment and you finally feel like you can let out the breath you were holding.

”Well, let me have one,” Steve says, trying to stick his hand into the cookie tin.

”Hold your horses, Harrington, you don’t appreciate Christmas cookies like I do,” Robin says, pulling the tin from his reach.

”What? I never said I didn’t like Christmas cookies?” Steve says, looking at Robin like she’s got 3 heads.

”Oh, can I have one?” You ask, moving to stand next to Steve.

”Of course,” Robin says, placing the tin in front of you. Steve lets out a hey! as you take two cookies out of the tin in front of him, Robin pulling the tin away again once you’ve gotten your spoils.

Just as Steve’s about to throw a fit, you tap his shoulder to get his attention. He turns enough to face you before going wide eyed as you shove a Christmas cookie into his mouth, fully catching him off guard. Robin and Vickie both burst out laughing at the sight of Steve with a Christmas tree shaped sugar cookie sticking out of his mouth.

”There’s your cookie, Stevie,” you say, giving him a teasing grin. He looks at you dumbfounded for a moment, until his demeanor suddenly shifts to a more devious one. He pulls the Christmas tree cookie out of his mouth and looks at you, then looks at the cookie in your other hand.

”Steve,” you say slowly, but he just gives you this devilish look that tells you he’s up to no good. Suddenly, he lunges toward the cookie, but you move out of the way just in time that he misses. You let out a squeal when he goes for it again, almost running into you with his whole body as he trips up his movements. You take this as an opportunity to run, taking off out of the room and into the hallway of the station.

This is perfect, you think to yourself, If you can distract Steve long enough, maybe Vickie will have a chance to make a move on Robin.

You look back to see if Steve was following you and, oh god he’s booking it towards you. “Shit!” You squeal, turning left down the hall and taking off, Steve hot on your heels. “Steve, I’m sorry!” You yell as you make a turn down another hall, not entirely sure where you’re going.

”C’mere, I just wanna share the Christmas spirit!” Steve yells as he slides past the opening of the hall, back tracking to take off after you. Your heart was beating at a million miles a minute and you couldn’t help the little giggles that came with the adrenaline of being chased.

You ran until you got to a dead end, looking around for somewhere to go, but to no avail. Before you could think of another plan, two big arms were wrapping around you and holding you in place.

“Steve, no please, I’m sorry!” You plead desperately, still laughing at the whole situation.

“Awe, but you were so generous with me,” Steve says, his voice right in your ear as he pulls you against him. “I just wanna return the favor!”

”Nooooooo!” You shout, writhing against Steve’s grip on you. Steve suddenly freezes, and you stop your movements as well, unsure of what is happening.

“Alright, alright,” Steve says, letting go and backing away from you. You straighten up your jacket and turn around to face him. He has an unreadable expression on his face, and you worry that you might have offended him somehow.

Steve suddenly clears his throat, and points his thumb over his shoulder, looking at anything but you. “We should, uh, probably get back in there. Gotta check the tapes to make sure everything’s playing like it’s supposed to.”

”Oh, yeah, sure thing you say,” giving him a smile. He nods and moves out of the way, motioning for you to go ahead of him. You oblige and take the lead with him trailing not far behind. It's a bit awkward on the way back to the booth room, neither of you really saying anything as you walk through the halls of the station.

As you make it back to where you left your friends behind, you immediately pump the breaks just outside the doorway upon seeing the sight before you. Just on the other side of the room, underneath a mistletoe, Robin and Vickie are sharing a very passionate kiss. In the moment, you want to jump for joy, excited for your friend for getting the girl. You couldn’t wait to get all the juicy details from her later about how it came to be.

But, in all of your excitement, you forgot that you weren’t alone in the hallway.

”What’s the hold up?” Steve asks, closing in behind you.

”Wait! Steve, I—“ Your hands collide with his chest and stop him from moving any further. He quirks a brow at you in confusion and you wrack your brain for an excuse as to why you cannot allow him to do his job.

”Wine!” You shout, only confusing Steve more. “I left wine out in my car! You should go with me to get it. Y’know, just in case. The buddy system and all that.”

Steve looks at you with skepticism, but eventually nods in agreement, making you sigh with relief. “Let me get my coat,” he says, about to push around you, but you stop him in his tracks.

”Wait, you don’t need it. It’ll be quick!” You try to persuade him.

”There’s a literal snow storm outside,” he says, and you start to panic.

“C’mon,” you say, grabbing his hand and pulling him towards the front of the building. You drag him behind you as he tries to protest, but he doesn’t pull away, letting you guide him all the way to the front doors.

”Just, um, stand close to me,” you say, grabbing his arm and holding him against your side, as if that would keep him warm. If he wants to tell you no, he doesn’t let it be known as he willingly follows you out the doors into the snow.

”Holy shit,” he shivers once his body hits the cold air, and you immediately feel bad for putting him through this. But you can’t risk leaving him inside, so he will just have to suffer with you.

Not wanting to drag it out for too long, you both fast walk to your car where you quickly open the back door and reach down under the seats for the bottles of wine.

“Here this will warm you up,” you say, handing Steve the bottle of moscato. He takes the bottle and looks at it for a moment, eyes darting to you briefly before unscrewing the top of the gas station wine and chugging. “Jesus Christ, Harrington,” you laugh as you watch him down a whole glass worth in front of you. When he pulls the bottle away from his mouth, his lips are stained red where the wine had touched them. “You good?” You ask him, and he nods, offering the bottle to you. You look at the bottle and he shakes it in front of you.

”I don’t have cooties, I promise.”

You take the bottle from him and bring the opening to your lips. You give him one last look before tilting the bottle back, taking a few big gulps before tapping out. You scrunch up your nose at the bitter sweet taste, sticking your tongue out to display your distaste.

”Why’d you get such cheap wine?” Steve asks, taking the other bottle from your hand and looking at the label.

”I stole it from my parents, so I didn’t really get much of a choice.”

”Couldn’t have snagged the good stuff at least?” He says with a tsk.

”Hey they weren’t gonna notice this shit was gone and it was better than nothing,” you shrug, closing the door to your car.

“I guess beggars can’t be choosers,” Steve says, a shiver taking over his body as he spoke. You look at the building and think that surely Robin and Vickie must be done swapping spit by now. And if they weren’t, well, they’d have to be because Steve wasn’t going to survive much longer out here.

”Okay, let’s go before you develop hypothermia,” you say, linking arms with him once more.

The two of you jogged through the snow, giggling as you almost slipped on ice, Steve catching you before you ate shit in front of him.

“Shit, are you okay?” He asks, holding on to you firmly.

You giggle, wrapping your arms around his neck tightly, “Yeah, thanks.”

He slowly pulls you right side up, but doesn’t immediately let go, his arms around your body while yours remain around his.

You can see the pink tint to his cheeks under the lights from the building. Whether that be from the cold, the alcohol, or something else, you can’t really say. As you continue to scan his features, you land on his beautiful hazel eyes as they’re boring down into yours. You can feel heat rising to your cheeks under his intense gaze, your heart beginning to pick up in pace.

After what felt like forever, Steve’s eyes suddenly glance downward, landing on your lips in a movement so quick you’d have missed it if you weren’t paying such close attention to his every move. When his eyes meet yours again, you can sense that he’s trying to speak to you through them, seeking you for permission without speaking the words out loud. So you answer in the same way; by closing your eyes and leaning in, waiting for him to close the gap.

”There you two dingus’s are!”

You don’t think you’ve ever moved so fast in your life than in this very moment. One second you were wrapped in Steve’s tight embrace, the next the two of you were five feet away from each other. The look on Steve’s face must have matched yours, eyes wide and mouth agape in shock.

”Steve, where the hell is your jacket?” Robin asks, “It’s like negative two degrees out here!”

”Yeah, yeah, I’m coming,” he says, eyes lingering on you until the last second before trotting his way to the building.

You hang back for a moment, watching him go through the doors with Robin ushering him inside. ”Did we interrupt something?” Vickie asks, looking at you with a suspicious glint.

”No,” you say quickly, looking at her unconvincingly. “We almost interrupted you two, though.” Vickie’s eyes go wide, and you can see her pale cheeks go red even from the distance between you two.

”You saw?” She asks bashfully, and you confirm it with a nod.

The two of you look at each other for a moment before you take off after her, grabbing her in a hug and jumping up and down excitedly.

“You don’t have to tell me now, but I want all the details later, got it?”

”Yes, of course!” She squeals, and hugs you again, rocking you back and forth.

”Okay, as happy for you as I am, I’m freezing my ass off out here. Can we go inside now?” Vickie lets go of you and pulls the door open for you. You rush inside, whole body shivering as you adjust to the drastic change in temperature.

When the two of you get back to the sound booth, you see Robin and Steve are both inside doing…something you suppose is important. The On Air sign is still off, but you and Vickie remain idle outside the booth just in case. But it doesn’t take long for Robin to notice you, waving for the two of you to come inside. Vickie looks and you and you shrug, the two of you hurrying to join them.

”Welcome to the booth ladies,” Robin says, gesturing around her, “Take a look around, get familiar with the place. I see you’ve brought more gifts.” You look at the wine bottle in your hand and hold it close to your chest.

”Actually, Steve and I already got our germs on this one.” You point to the bottle sitting on the table next to Steve, “That one is all yours.”

”Perfect,” Robin says, giving Steve grabby hands until he passes her the bottle. She unscrews the lid and takes a long swig of the white liquid. When she’s done, she extends the bottle towards Vickie. “Care to share?” She asks with a smirk.

Vickie looks a bit astonished at Robin’s bold gesture, eyes glancing over to Steve to see his reaction to her offer. But when he seems completely unbothered by whatever implications may be made from this situation, Vickie grabs the bottle from Robin and brings the opening to her lips. She hesitates for a moment before tipping the bottle back and taking a long sip of her own.

While this is happening, you sneak a side glance to check Steve’s reaction. But you see that his back is turned to the three of you as he flips through a rack of tapes. You wonder if Robin told Steve about what happened while you were still outside with Vickie. Maybe Steve and Robin have had similar conversations to you in Vickie in regards to this situation. Surely if they’re as close as they seem they’ve talked to each other about their feelings. It makes you think about what Steve has said to Robin about you…

“This is actually pretty good,” Vickie says, joining Robin on her side of the booth and handing the bottle back to her.

”We should have grabbed that one first,” you say, holding up your bottle of moscato. “This one is ass.”

”I’ll drink more of it if you don’t want it,” Steve says, looking at you from over his shoulder, offering his hand to take the bottle from you. You look at it, then at him, before taking the bottle and drinking from it once more. You make sure to maintain eye contact with him while the crimson liquid pours into your mouth, doing your best to keep a straight face.

When you finish, you take the bottle and give it to Steve, using your now free hand to wipe the remaining wine from your lips. Steve scoffs at you, looking you up and down before bringing the bottle to his own mouth. “You’re a brat, you know that?” He says before taking a sip from the bottle and turning back to the tape rack.

The mood felt lighter after that exchange, and the four of you spent the next couple of hours chatting with each other and drinking well into the night. It was nearing midnight by the time any of you thought to check the time. Robin just about knocked Vickie out of her lap when she realized how late it had gotten.

”Shh shh shh,” she said with a slight slur, bringing a finger to her lips and slipping her headphones back on.

Suddenly, you felt hands on your hips that were holding you in place as Steve slid his body behind yours, hand still resting on one hip as he grabbed his own head phones from off the wall next to where you were standing.

You’re not sure if it was meant to be an intimate gesture, but with the good buzz you had going on, the feeling of his touch on your body was electric. The sensation still lingered even when his hand left your hip to do his job.

”Alrighty, folks, we are closing in on the final minutes of Christmas Eve here tonight, which means that we will be wrapping it up at the station for the night. We have a slew of all your holiday faves lined up for those pulling all nighters who want to stay in the holiday spirit tonight. Personally, I’m going to be heading to bed like a good girl so Santa leaves me presents.”

Robin looks up at Vickie with a smirk, “Although, I will say that I have already received one of my presents early.” Vickie covers her face with her hands to hide her embarrassment and you can’t help but smile for your best friend.

”So with that, I’ll send you into the early hours of Christmas Day with some good ol’ Brenda Lee. Until next time, this is Rockin’ Robin wishing you all a very merry Christmas.”

Robin flips a switch to cut her mic as the beginning of Rockin Around the Christmas Tree starts to play. Slipping her headphones off, she wraps her arms around Vickie and pulls her back in the chair, making Vickie squeal at her antics.

“Got anything left in that bottle there, deary?” Robin asks Vickie, to which Vickie shakes her head, turning the bottle completely upside down. Robin lets out a boo and swivels her chair to face you and Steve. “What about you guys? Got any left?”

”I don’t want your backwash in our bottle,” Steve says, making Robin gasp in offense.

”I am not a child, Harrington,” Robin argues, making Vickie giggle in her drunken state. Steve looks at Robin before taking the bottle and tossing it back, bottle going completely up as he chugs the last bit of wine inside. You can’t help but watch the way his throat bobs with every swallow, not even mad that he’s taken the rest of the wine for himself.

Robin looks at him with her jaw on the floor. “Steve, you suck!”

Steve sets the bottle on the table behind you with a loud thud, his arm brushing against your back as he has to reach around you to put it there. You look up at him, his face so close to yours you can smell the wine heavy on his breath. His eyes meet yours briefly before he pulls away, a hand pushing his brown locks back and out of his face.

A loud yawn catches your attention and you look at Vickie, whose whole body shivers in Robin’s lap. “Getting sleepy on me?” Robin asks and Vickie sheepishly nods.

“We can go soon if you want,” you say to Vickie, and that suggestion seems to get everyone’s attention.

”You can’t go yet,” Robin says, panic in her slurred voice.

”Yeah, you’ve been drinking,” Vickie says, looking at you with wide eyes.

”I’ve barely had anything.” You pat your hand against Steve’s arm with a laugh. “Steve here took care of most of that bottle.”

“I think you’re giving me more credit than you think,” Steve chimes in.

”Trust me I’m fine,” you assure them all.

“I think you should wait it out a little longer,” Steve suggests, and Robin nods.

”Yeah, or, or, you guys could stay?” Robin looks at you hopefully. “The roads are probably shit right now anyway. Wouldn’t be able to live with myself if you guys got stuck in the snow all night because we sent you away.”

“What do you mean stay? Where would we sleep?” You ask, confused about what Robin was suggesting.

”We have rooms!” Robin says excitedly. “They’re not anything glorious but they have beds and, and…well what else do you really need to sleep besides a bed, right?”

”Robin, we only have the two rooms,” Steve says, and Robin tilts her head in confusion.

”Yes, and?”

”Well there’s,” Steve gestures around the room, “four of us, if you forgot how to count.”

”So, we’ll double up! Vickie can stay in my bed and you two can—“

”No!” You shout, waving your hands dismissively.

”I’m gonna stop you right there,” Steve says, and Robin throws her hands up in defense. “Look, let’s cut to the chase here. Obviously you two want to spend some time together alone.” You snap to look at Steve, wide eyed that he was the one addressing the elephant in the room. “So the two of you can go back to your room and, ya know,” Steve makes a face that conveys his discomfort in the topic at hand, “do…whatever. She can sleep in my bed and I’ll just stay out here and make sure everything runs okay.”

”Steve, I’m not going to kick you out of your bed,” you say, feeling bad that he would even suggest it. “I can seriously go home. Give me like 30 minutes to sober up and I’ll be fine.”

”No, absolutely not,” Vickie says, “You’re not going out there alone.”

“It’s really not a big deal,” Steve says, “It’s not the first all nighter I’ve spent here.”

”Okay, well, what if I just stay up with you?” You suggest, looking to him to gauge his reaction.

”You don’t have to do that—“

Another yawn from Vickie interrupts the back and forth between you and Steve. Robin rubs Vickie’s back and motions for her to get up.

“Well, you two decide whatever it is you want to do, as long as no one leaves,” she says, looking at you. “I’m gonna take this one back to my room and get some sleep before Santa shows up. Goodnight!”

”Goodnight,” Vickie says quietly, giving you one last look before Robin guides her out of the booth.

“Night!” Steve yells at the two of them as they go. You watch Vickie and Robin disappear into the hall, leaving you alone with Steve. It’s quiet for a few beats, an awkward tension filling the air around you. You search your mind for something to say, but your brain is completely void of thoughts for some reason.

”So,” Steve says, finally breaking the silence. He moves past you to a shelf of records on the other side of the room. “Got any requests? Gotta be Christmas themed, but I can play whatever you want to hear.”

You blink at him, taking a moment to process his words. “Oh, well,” you say, pushing off from the table and sauntering over to Steve, “What about…Sinatra?”

”Mistletoe and Holly?” Steve suggests, pulling out a record from the shelf.

“Actually, I was thinking something like…” You look over the records until you find the record with the song you’re wanting. Plucking it from its spot on the shelf, you hand it to Steve for him to play.

“Ah, good choice,” Steve says with a nod, pulling the record from his sleeve. He sets the disc on the player and moves the needle in place to play the song of choice. He pauses for a moment, listening to the current song playing as it nears its end, preparing to transition into the new song once it’s over. As the song comes to a close, Steve drops the needle and the soft sound of “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” starts to play.

Steve straightens up as Frank Sinatra’s voice fills the air around you, taking his lower lip between his teeth like he’s deep in thought. Suddenly, he turns on his heels until he’s facing you, taking a few steps until he’s directly in front of you.

You’re not sure what you expected to happen, but him taking your hands in his definitely wasn’t on your first guess. Neither was him placing your right hand on his shoulder, leaving his left fall and land on your hip, sliding around until it reached your lower back. With a little push, he closed the remaining distance between you, leaving your fronts flush with one another’s. The whole motion from start to finish was smooth as silk, but still caught you totally off guard, all the air around you feeling like it had been sucked away.

When you dared to look up, you were met with half lidded eyes and a soft smirk above you. Then, you felt yourself being guided gently as Steve began to move your body with his, swaying in time with the soft beat of the music. You wouldn’t call yourself a very good dancer, but Steve seemed like he knew what he was doing, so you just let him take the lead as he danced with you in the small booth.

The two of you stayed like this for the duration of the song, moving in slow circles without a word between you. Not because you didn’t have anything to say. On the contrary, you had a lot of things you wanted to say, and maybe even more that you wanted to ask. But at this moment, you don’t feel like you need all the answers. Instead, you simply rest your head on Steve’s chest, the soft plush of his sweater comforting against your cheek.

But just as quickly as it happened, the song came to an end, leaving you and Steve to listen to the sound of the needle jumping against the end of the record. The two of you come to a stop but don’t immediately part ways, neither of you really wanting the moment to end.

After a minute or so of just enjoying one another’s company, Steve lets out a sigh that moves your head with the heave of his chest. “I should probably fix that,” Steve says, a hint of disappointment in his tone. You take that as your cue to move and take a step back, feeling the slight resistance from Steve’s grip on you before he lets you go.

Steve moves past you to the record player before turning it off and flipping a switch to start the music back up again on the tapes. The upbeat tune of “Run, Run, Rudolph” was such a stark contrast to the previous song that you couldn’t help but laugh at how ridiculous it sounded. ”Might be hard to slow dance to this,” you say, and Steve chuckles along with you.

There’s a quiet beat between the two of you, and all of those thoughts and questions start to bubble up again in your mind. Could Steve like you the way you think he does? What about the feelings for Nancy that Robin has said he still has? Was he just doing all of this as a friend? You’re sure when you were outside he was going to…

“Fuck it.”

Before you could even react to Steve’s words he was striding towards you, closing in on you faster than you could comprehend. Two big, warm hands cup your cheeks, holding you in place where you stand as Steve’s face gets closer, closer, until he’s mere centimeters away. You know you should close your eyes, but you’re almost afraid that if you look away that all of this might not happen.

But it does happen. The press of his nose into your cheek followed directly by the feeling of his chapped lips crashing into yours. It’s rough at first, Steve’s desperation reading loud and clear with the pressure he was pushing into you, like you’d float away if his lips weren’t anchoring you to him.

But when you didn’t pull away Steve seemed to get the hint that you weren’t going anywhere. You could feel as he started to relax, to the point he was almost melting into you, the hot air of his breath escaping from his nose in relief and warming your cheek.

Leaning into him, you slid your arms between his until they were wrapped loosely around his neck. In doing so, you shifted your whole body so it was flush with his once more, electing a little noise of approval from Steve that vibrated against your lips, making you giggle.

Steve pulled back slightly, just enough that he could press his lips against yours with a peck, once, twice, a third time. At the same time, one of his hands slipped away from your face, gripping your side firmly while he simultaneously pressed his hips into you.

“Steve.” His name came out more breathily than you intended, but Steve didn’t seem to mind by the way he moaned your name in return, sending chills down your spine. He kissed you again, this time taking your bottom lip between his teeth and pulling lightly, his way of asking for more. The air shifted then, and you obliged, parting your lips for his tongue to slip inside.

The kiss became heated from that point, all tongue and lips smacking and your hands in his hair and his hand on your ass and moaning. His name escaped from your lips once more when his began to trail away from yours, leaving tingling sensations in their wake as they went lower, lower, until he was taking the tender, sensitive flesh of your neck between them in soft nibbles. Not enough to leave a mark, he was smarter than that, but he wanted you to know he could if he dared to.

Without taking away the attention he had on your neck, he began to press himself into you with a bit of force, and you took that as a signal to move. Shuffling backwards, you felt the table behind you hit your ass and quickly braced against it with one of your hands as Steve pressed his body into you. When you couldn’t move any further, Steve’s lips parted from your neck so he could refocus his attention on what he was about to do next.

You felt him reach around you, big hands gripping the backs of your thighs and pulling you up in one swift motion, plopping your ass onto the surface of the table with a small thump. “Steve!” You squeal, looking at him in shock. “What are you doing?” But he doesn’t respond with words. Instead, he shifts his grip behind your knees and pulls you to the edge of the table, leaving you to open your legs to maintain your balance where you sit.

Which must have been exactly what Steve wanted, because he slotted himself between your thighs until his crotch was pressing against your clothed center. It was this close contact that had you being able to really feel him against you. Steve cursed under his breath as he pressed his hard cock against your heat through his slacks, his brows pinching together like he was pained by the friction.

His lips were on you again in an instant, wasting no time getting right back into the hot and heavy level of intensity in his aroused state. As he kissed you senseless, you felt his hands slide up your denim clad thighs until they disappeared under the hem of your sweater. His hands were cold against your skin compared to the heat that was building up all around you. The bottom of your sweater began to rise as his hands moved up your stomach until they reached your chest, exposing your lace bra to the open air.

Steve broke the kiss, leaving you to chase after him in your dizzy state he worked you up into. You looked up at him through your lashes as he stared at your chest, mesmerized at the sight of you. “Did you wear this for me?” He teases, hooking his finger in the center of your bra and tugging at it playfully.

You give him a sly smile and shrug, “Maybe. So what if I did?”

Steve chuckles lowly, “Well, I guess I would have to thank you for wrapping my gift so nicely for me. With a bow and everything,” he says, flicking the little bow that sits between your breasts.

”What if,” you start, grabbing the collar of his hoodie and pulling him closer to you, “I told you there’s another gift with a matching bow for you?” You look down at your lap and Steve’s eyes follow. He smiles wide at your suggestion, one of his hands dropping from your chest to land at the button of your jeans.

”It is after midnight, so it should be okay for me to open my present now, right?”

This was it. This is what you’ve dreamed about since you first laid eyes on pretty boy Steve back in high school. Only this wasn’t a dream. Steve was actually here, standing over you with blown out pupils and a very hard cock, asking for permission to see your most sensitive parts.

And how could you tell him no on Christmas?

“Well, it’s not gonna open itself, is it?”

Steve’s head dropped with a laugh, eyes trained where he was undoing your pants. You leaned back as he pulled down the zipper, peeling the sides apart until the hem of your panties were visible.

“You weren’t lying,” he says with a smile as he notices the bow that matches the one on your bra.

“Told you,” you say with a smirk.

Looking back up at you, Steve’s eyes search yours for any uncertainty, but you only look back at him with desire, ready for whatever he was going to give you. He then leans in once again, capturing your lips with his, only this time he’s much slower, more intense.

At the same time, his hand pulls at your panties until they slip inside, moving down, down, until his hand is cupping your wet heat. You gasp into him, and he shushes you, whispering reassurances to you as he begins to explore you. “So wet for me, baby,” he breathes, but you can’t form words to respond as he toys with you. You can’t stop the way your hips shift when his fingers brush against your sensitive bud, sending a jolt of electricity through your body.

”There she is,” he coos, pressing a kiss to your cheek. His fingers slide through your heat until one of them stops at your entrance and slowly pushes inside of you, not stopping until it's to the knuckle. He lets you adjust to him only for a brief moment before he starts pumping his finger in and out of you.

At the same time, he lets his thumb press into your clit and move it at the same time as his finger. You brace your hand on his shoulder as he works you open, legs shaking at the sensations shooting from between them.

”S-shit, Steve,” you stutter, brain going blank at the building pleasure he was giving you.

”Does that feel good, sweet girl?” Steve asks, and you nod dumbly in response. “Mmm, you’re taking my finger so well. What if we add one more?” Steve doesn’t wait for you to respond before you feel his second finger entering you, stretching you open for him even more. You let out a moan that has Steve nodding his head lazily, “Oh, yeah, that’s my girl. Gotta get you good and ready for me, yeah?”

”Y-yeah,” you manage to get out, brain barely able to form any thoughts with the way your body is buzzing.

“Gonna let me fuck you so good, aren’t you?” Steve’s eyes were locked on yours as he spoke, watching you as you come undone from his touch.

“Please, S-Steve.” You didn’t know what you were asking for, so close to that your mind was starting to go blank.

”Go ahead, baby girl, cum for me,” Steve says, fingers moving faster inside of you. That was enough for you to be pushed over the edge, vision blurring as you feel yourself cumming around him. You can’t help but moan out as hot pleasure washes over you.

And when your back arches, you accidentally hit the tape stand behind you, knocking a bunch of tapes onto the floor in a loud clatter. Steve jumps back with a curse, hand pulling away from you and leaving you feeling empty. With one hand in the air, the other hand that wasn’t inside you swiftly grabs at the various tapes and messily puts them back onto the table.

“Do-do you need help?” You say, still on the last bit of your high as you watch Steve frantically move around.

”Nope, sorry, you’re good,” Steve says, standing up with the last of the tapes in his hand.

”Wow, what a mood killer,” you laugh, jumping off the table onto shaky legs.

”I, uh, wouldn’t say that,” Steve says, a clean hand running through his hair bashfully.

That’s when you notice the way his cock is pressing against the fabric of his slacks. Your eyes almost bug out of your head at the size of the imprint it was leaving, never seeing anything so big in your life. He really wasn’t kidding when he said he needed to get you ready for him.

The expression on your face must have conveyed your thoughts, because Steve let out a cackle that had his head tilting back. “Steve!” You shout at him with a giggle. You slap his arm and he flinches away, still laughing at your expression.

”Sorry, I’m sorry,” he laughs, “I’ve just never seen someone so offended by looking at my dick before”

”I’m not offended,” you assure him, “I’m just…surprised is all.”

”It’s okay, it’s not the first time I’ve heard that.” Steve stands in front of you again, hands on either hip as he presses his forehead against yours. “But, I think if we’re going to continue, if you want to continue—“

”I do.”

”Good. Then, I think we need to move this party elsewhere. If Robin ever knew about what just happened in here I think she might actually kill me.”

”Lead the way,” you say, stepping away from him and gesturing towards the door. He takes your hand in his and guides you out of the booth, the sound of Christmas music fading as he pulls you through the station until you reach an unmarked room. He pushes the door open and steps inside what is essentially a broom closet. It’s small, has no windows, and is practically empty, say for a small full size bed and a table with a lamp and alarm clock.

”Sorry it’s not much,” Steve says, clicking on the lamp to illuminate the small space.

“It’s okay,” you say, closing the door behind you as you step inside. “Robin said you don’t need much more than a bed, right? Not like you planned on having a girl in here.”

”Definitely not,” Steve says, wrapping his arms around you. “But since I have you here…hey, what are you—?” Steve looks down at you on your knees in front of him, surprised at your new position. When you go to reach for his pants, his hands grab yours to stop you. “You don’t have to do this.”

You take mild offense to this, shaking his hands from yours. “Are you joking? What man turns down a blowjob?”

”A man of my size does,” he says, making you squint up at him.

”That sounds like a challenge, Harrington.”

”Trust me, it’s not. I don’t want you to think you have to do this for my sake.”

”I’m not doing it for your sake,” you say, reaching for his pants again, “I’m doing it because I want to.”

”Okay, fine, just, promise me that if it’s too much you’ll stop. Okay?” Steve looks down at you with genuine concern in his eyes that make you actually reconsider for a moment.

But you’re not backing down now, no way.

You pop open the button of his slacks and the pressure of his cock against the zipper causes it to come undone on its own. You pull at his pants until they fall around Steve’s ankles, leaving the only thing between you and his cock is his boxers. They’re fighting for their life to hold his cock back, a large tent of checkered fabric presented in front of you.

The thought of teasing him a bit is tempting, but you don’t think that you can hold out much longer yourself, your curiosity getting the better of you. So you take the waistband of his boxers and tug on them, shimmying them down over his hips and—oh.

Steve’s cock springs to life once it's freed from the confines of his boxers, almost hitting you in the face once it's released. Upon immediate first impression all you can think is big. Big in length, big in girth, and it’s all Steve. Of course he would be blessed with good looks and a huge cock.

“Having second thoughts?” His voice pulls you from your gawking, but you shake your head at the question, not about to back down now.

You take a hand and wrap it around his cock, finger tips no where near touching with his impressive size. Steve’s face scrunches up as you move your hand up and down his shaft, breath hitching when you roll your thumb over his red, swollen tip. Little noises escape his lips as you stroke him, only egging you on to keep going.

After sufficiently working him up with your hand you decide it's time to test yourself. Grabbing his cock from at the tip you hold it straight up and lean in, letting your tongue land at the base and dragging it upward along the thick vein there. When you reach the tip you take it in your mouth, letting your tongue lick around it before sucking on it gently.

“Shit,” Steve hisses, running a hand through his hair.

You continue taking him into your mouth, going deeper and deeper until you could feel yourself resisting a gag as his head hit the back of your throat. You grab him at the base where you couldn’t take him all the way and begin to slide him out until just the tip remains between your lips.

“That’s too good,” Steve moans, looking down at you as you bob up and down on him. His hand grips the back of your head and moves with the motion of your head, not in a forceful way, but more grounding for him while you’re making him feel good. All his little moans and breathy curses spur you on, only making you want to try harder to keep him going.

“Wait, wait, wait!” Just as you start to get a good groove going, Steve is suddenly pulling himself out of your mouth with a pop. He grabs the head of his cock and squeezes, his whole body tensing up with a slight shake.

“What’s wrong?” You ask, unsure what elicited this reaction out of him.

“Nothing’s wrong,” he says through his teeth, “I just don’t wanna cum yet.”

“I wouldn’t have mind,” you say, looking up at him through your lashes.

Steve huffs out a short laugh. “I’m sure you wouldn’t have. But it takes me a minute to bounce back when I cum and I really, really don’t want to wait any longer.”

“Wait any longer for what?” You ask with faux innocence.

With a smirk, Steve nods his head, acknowledging your game before reaching out for you. He wordlessly takes your hands in his and helps you back up on your feet, maneuvering you around until you’re standing with your legs against the mattress.

With a light shove, you fall back onto the small bed, lightly bouncing from the impact. Steve takes this time to strip his sweat shirt off of him, leaving him bare chested for your viewing pleasure. You hum in approval, eying the thick patch of hair that covers his chest.

“Like what you see?”

”Oh yeah,” you say with an animated nod.

“I feel a bit underdressed now,” he says, bending over you in the bed. “I think we need to change that.”

”I think so,” you say, grabbing your sweater and pulling it up. It takes a second but you get the fabric over your head and toss it to the side to be found later.

“Ah, yes, I still need to unwrap my gifts,” Steve says, staring at your bra covered chest.

”Be my guest.” You lift your back off the bed as Steve slips his hand under you. Only a moment later do you feel the pressure of your strap loosen as Steve expertly unhooks it, freeing you from its confines. You grab the straps and pull them down until you’re completely uncovered. There’s a pleasant look of surprise on Steve’s face as your bra goes flying into the pile with your sweater.

”Jesus Christ. How did you know?” He says enthusiastically. “They’re just what I wanted.”

“Shut up!” You say with a laugh, slapping your hand on his chest.

“This one right here is the real present, though.”

He hooks his fingers into your jeans and panties and gives them a tug. You raise your hips so he could pull them down with more ease, the material sliding down your hips and legs until you’re kicking them off your ankles.

And there you were, bare naked in a radio station storage closet turned makeshift bedroom with Steve Harrington looking down at you like you were a steak dinner and he was a man starved. Never in a million years would you have ever guessed you’d be in this scenario, and you almost felt like you needed to pinch yourself to prove that it was real.

Steve slowly climbed over you in the bed until he was on his knees between your legs, prying them open and exposing your most private parts for him to see. “So pretty,” he cooes, taking in the sight before him. You feel heat in your cheeks from his praise, feeling rather bashful all the sudden.

“Nuh uh, don’t hide from me now, sweet girl,” Steve says as he grabs your hands and pulls them off your face. He leans in until he’s resting his elbows on either side of your head, caging you underneath him, giving you no choice but to look at him with his face mere inches from yours.

His lips land on yours once more, soft pecks that turn into smacking lips and tongues mingling. Any playfulness that was between you has gone out the door as he kisses you until you’re breathless and needy beneath him.

“Steve,” you breathe out, and he hums in response.

”What, is it, baby?”

”Need you.”

Steve pulls back just enough that he can see your whole face, keeping his eyes on yours as he snakes a hand between your bodies. Then you’re feeling it, the head of his cock sliding through the wetness of your folds. It catches on your entrance for a moment and your eyes go wide. Steve lines himself up with you then, and pushes in ever so slightly before stopping.

”It might be a lot at first,” he warns, not taking his eyes off of you. “I’ll go slow for you. Just tell me if it’s too much.” All you can do is nod, but that’s good enough for him.

Then, slowly like he promised, he pushes himself into you, stretching you open wide with his cock. It’s not painful, it’s just…a lot. You’ve never felt so full so quickly from any other guy you’ve been with, and he was still going. It was like it was never going to end, his hips rocking shallowly as he inches himself inside of your tight heat.

Steve’s resolve soon begins to falter though, his brows pinching together and his mouth hanging open the deeper he goes. And after what feels like too long, Steve finally finds himself flush against you. He pauses to let you get adjusted to his size, taking the time to regain some control of himself before moving.

But you didn’t need long before wanting more. You wiggle your hips a bit and that has Steve’s attention back on you immediately. He gives you a quick sorry and you reassure him that it's okay.

Not a moment later Steve starts moving his hips, the slow drag out of you making your back arch at the sensation. Without missing a beat Steve begins to move, starting off easy but building up to a reasonable pace. It felt like your whole body was alight as waves of pleasure washed over you with each thrust.

“Oh my god, Steve,” you moan, eyes screwing shut as you focused on the way he was making you feel.

”That feel good, baby?” He asks, a lit of cockiness in his tone. “You’re taking me so well. Feel so good. Fuck.” His words ring in your ears, turning your brain into mush in your skull. The only thing you could feel was Steve’s thick cock filling you up over and over again, his bulbous tip hitting that sweet spot deep inside you with ease.

Pausing his movements for a moment, Steve pushes himself off the mattress until he’s sitting straight up in front of you. His eyes are fixed where the two of you meet, and you can feel him sliding out of you slowly until just the tip remains. “S-shit,” he stutters, jaw slack as he watches the way his cock glistens with your wetness.

“Can we just…” Steve starts, reaching a hand under your leg and lifting it, folding it over yourself until your body starts to twist. You catch on to what he’s trying to do and shift your body around into the new position he’s going for. Unfortunately his cock does slip out in the process, leaving you feeling empty in a way you’ve never experienced before.

Once you’ve gotten yourself positioned on your stomach, Steve lifts your hips up until your ass is sufficiently in the air. He takes the base of his cock in his hand and taps the tip against your ass with a few wet slaps. You let out a displeased whine and Steve chuckles at your impatience.

Repositioning himself with your entrance again, he pushes his way inside of you. This new angle has you gasping, his cock feeling like it’s going impossibly deeper inside of you. You grip the sheets of the bed below you as he bottoms out once more.

“Oh, fuck me,” Steve groans, his hands pressing your ass against his pelvis. Steve wastes no time picking up where he left off, his pace quickening with each thrust inside of you. The sound of wet slaps mixed with your moans filled the small room, only fueling Steve to fuck you harder.

”God, are you close?” He pants out, hopefulness in his tone.

”Yes, fuck, yes, so close Steve,” you manage to get out. You could feel the pressure building up inside of you, you just needed a little more to get you there. “Don’t stop, Steve, fuck, don’t stop!”

Suddenly you felt a heavy weight against your back pushing you down into the mattress. Steve’s chest was now flush against your back, his arm wrapping around your middle and holding you tight as he began to drill into you.

“Take it, baby,” Steve huffs in your ear, “Take it like a good girl.”

His words could have done you in right there, but when his other hand made its way to your aching clit, you knew you were done for. “Oh, god Steve, fuck, I’m—“

”Yes, fuck, cum for me!”

Everything suddenly goes blurry, little stars appearing in your vision as your whole body tightens. Tremors wrack through you in waves, making you shake underneath Steve’s weight. Steve continues to fuck you through what you’re feeling, but his movements are getting sloppier with each passing second.

”Oh, fuck, shit I’m gonna—“

Steve wraps his arms around you tightly as he bucks wildly, rutting once, twice, three times, before stilling inside of you. Even in your blissed out state you can feel the way his cum fills you up deep inside, making you shutter at the sensation.

Neither of you had talked about where he would cum, let alone about using a condom. And in reality you should probably be mad at him for not bringing it up either, but the way he was making you feel made you not care for the time being.

The two of you were still for a moment, basking in the post orgasm bliss. It wasn’t until Steve started peppering kisses on your shoulder that you finally felt yourself really come back to Earth. You turn your head to get a better look at him, shooting him a smile when he caught you peeking.

”Hey,” he said, leaning in to kiss your cheek.

“Hi, Stevie,” you said back, making him cheese with how you said his name.

“I’m gonna pull out now, okay?” You nod, thankful for the warning beforehand. Your brows pinched together and he slid his softening cock from your warmth, leaving an aching feeling in its wake.

Not a second later Steve was plopping down on his side beside you. One of his arms pulled at you, wordlessly asking you to follow his lead and lay down next to him. So you did, moving your body with more grace than he did, until you were laying chest to chest with him, your head resting between his shoulder and bicep.

You could feel the heat radiating off of his body, but it still wasn’t enough to warm you as the cold air began to hit you. “Here, let me just…” Steve pulls at the thick comforter under the two of you until he’s freed it, throwing it over the top of you both. You gave an approving hum, nestling into him with the blanket pulled all the way up to your neck.

Steve looks down at you, pressing a kiss into the top of your head, letting his lips rest there for a few moments before pulling away. “Can I ask you something?” He asks, voice hushed in your close proximity.

”You can ask me anything after all of that,” you tease, making Steve shake his head.

“Is this…going to be a one time thing?”

You could tell by the tone of his voice that he was worried about what your answer was going to be. So you thought about it. For a good long minute, you did. Long enough that it was making Steve nervous,

”You don’t have to answer now, I just—“

”What do you want, Steve?”

It was Steve’s turn to think. He didn’t say anything for a while, but you let him take his time. You knew he was going through a lot, what with the military presence in Hawkins and the rapid growth of the radio station over the last few months.

If Steve told you right now that he didn’t want anything serious, you would totally understand. As much as you might want something with him, you knew you couldn’t push him into anything. Hell, with the way he still acts around Nancy, you weren’t sure if you wanted to risk just being a rebound for him.

Could you be friends with benefits? Sure. It might be hard, what with the existing feelings you’ve harbored for him all this time. But you also didn’t want to give this up. No one has ever made you feel the way he did, and you were willing to put your heart on the line to chase that feeling, even if it was at your detriment.

”I think,” Steve finally says, breaking the silence between you, “I don’t want this to be all that we have between us. As much as I enjoyed it, and I really enjoyed it, I don’t want…I don’t want something meaningless with you.”

“Okay, so you don’t want this to be, like, a reoccurring thing?” You ask for clarification.

”No, that’s not what I’m saying. I really want to do this again. What I mean is, I want to do things right. I want to take you out, wine and dine you, show you that I’m a good guy.”

You lean back so you can look at him in the eyes, “I already know you’re a good guy, Steve. I’ve been seeing how much you’ve changed since we all started hanging out. You don’t have to prove anything to me.”

Steve’s hand cups your cheek, and he ducks down to kiss you softly. “Then you should have no reason to say no to me taking you, say, to Enzo’s? I can get us a reservation. We can dress nice and I’ll get us a bottle of wine to share. How’s that sound?”

After everything that led you up to this point, you really shouldn’t be surprised that this is happening. But, you can still barely contain your girlish excitement at the idea of your high school crush asking you on a date to the fanciest restaurant in town.

“I think I’d like that,” you say with a smile so big it reaches your eyes.

”Oh, thank god,” Steve says with a heavy sigh. “I was gonna have to kick you out to go sleep with Vickie and Robin if you said no.” You whack his chest and he lets out a bark of a laugh.

The two of you talk a little bit more until the pull of sleep overtakes you both. There wasn’t much room on the small bed, so you two stayed close to each other regardless of how either of you tossed and turned while you slept.

A loud banging on the door is what startled you awake the next morning. Your eyes landed on the clock on the table next to the bed, the red lights glowing to show you that it was 6 am. Steve shot up in bed as the banging continued, looking around like he didn’t know where he was.

”Wake up, dingus!” You heard Robin yell from the other side of the door. “One of the tapes jammed last night while we were asleep and it’s been dead air ever since!”

”Shit!” Steve shouted, climbing over you and jumping out of the bed. He scrambled to put his clothes back on, getting at least his boxers and pants pulled up before he cracked open the door.

”What happened to you staying up?” Robin asks.

”That…didn’t happen,” Steve says, for lack of better explanation. You hear Vickie’s voice from the hall too, asking if he’s seen you at all. “Oh, um yeah, she’s—“

”I’m in here!” You shout from over the covers of the bed. You don’t see their reactions, but you can hear Robin and Vickie gasping and hollering from where you were.

“Alright, alright,” Steve says, turning around to grab his hoodie off the floor, “Let’s go get this taken care of.”

“Take your time in there!” You hear Vickie yell at you, and you roll your eyes at her teasing.

Fine, if she was going to let you take your time, then you were going to get a little more sleep before facing them.

Thanks for reading!

[levanswrites]

only the lightest blues

pairing: steve harrington x reader summary: it’s the age-old fall from grace: high school royalty faceplants into reality, and the burger king crown starts hanging heavy. (sailor hat, in his case.) heir to the hawkins high hierarchy, ruler of keggers and hallways alike, steve harrington used to be untouchable. now? he's shaking under your hands, bleeding from battles no trophy could ever commemorate. you've stitched together plenty of broken people before—but never one that left a scar in you, too. warnings: 18+ mdni, piv sex, oral (m!receiving), touch/praise-starved!steve, hurt/comfort, blood, injury, mutual friends/enemies-ish to lovers, hair washing, massaging, praise kink, body worship, sexual tension, forced proximity of sorts, reader isn’t fond of steve at first, mostly S4 canon but fix-it, angst, domestic fluff, found family, happy ending a/n: another steve harrington character study dressed as a fic, what the hell else is new? | playlist ♬.ᐟ

They don’t take him to the hospital. They bring him to you.

Which is, objectively, stupid.   

But apparently, hospitals ask questions. And you—part-time party medic, occasional dispenser of prescription-only painkillers (for legitimate anxiety and migraines, thank you very much)—you don’t.

You’re halfway through a rerun of M.A.S.H., sucking the soul out of a cherry popsicle. You’re braless. The house is quiet. Peaceful, if a little tragic. Exactly the way Fridays are meant to be.

Until the knocking starts.

Correction: pounding.

Panicked, frenzied, FBI-doesn’t-need-a-warrant kind of pounding.

You groan and peel yourself off the couch, popsicle stick still dangling from your lips. You are not emotionally equipped to accept salvation or Thin Mints right now.

But when you open the door, it’s not a solicitor.

It’s Robin.

Robin Buckley, looking like she just got shot out of a chimney. Her cheek’s streaked with soot and something red that is very much not Kool-Aid.  

You blink. Yank the popsicle out of your mouth with a wet plop.

“Don’t freak out,” she blurts, before you even ask.

Which is Robin Buckley-speak for: Start freaking out immediately. Shit is on fire, metaphorically or otherwise.

The last time she said that, you ended up faking an asthma attack so you could ditch pep band and hit up Denny’s for the $1.99 Grand Slam. The time before that, you drove through three counties to rescue her cousin’s “emotional support ferret” from a petting zoo in Muncie.

This time? She’s brought a car with her.

A sleek maroon BMW, purring at the curb, passenger door flung wide open.

Inside: Limbs. Denim. Blood.

A boy.

Slumped sideways in the front seat, head tilted back at an angle that screams whiplash or maybe already dead. 

You squint.

“Who the fuck is that?” … Steve Harrington.

Steve Harrington is bleeding out in your driveway.

You don’t know him. Not really.

Knew of him, sure. Back in high school, he was all Farrah Fawcett volume and varsity swagger. Heir to the Hawkins High hierarchy, ruling keggers and hallways alike. He had rich parents and a bimmer he didn’t pay for. Threw parties like they were some kind of divine rite.

But then? Senior year hit him like a metaphorical truck. Or maybe a literal one. Hard to say.

Because somewhere between the scorched-earth gossip of graduation and the literal scorched-earth of the mall burning down, Steve Harrington dropped off the map.

Poof. King Steve: dethroned.

Burned out, like the very mall he used to work in.

You missed that whole implosion. Spent that summer in Chicago drowning in vending machine coffee and disaster drills, chasing your EMT cert while trying not to puke during ride-alongs.

You came home to find that Hawkins had gained a mall, lost a mall, and started blaming everything weird on “gas leaks” again.

And Robin Buckley had Steve.     

Her little sidekick from the ice cream wars. Who, allegedly, once confronted a creeper in the food court for harassing her. Ruined his pretty face doing it, too. Walked around with a purple shiner for weeks after that summer ended.

He now stocks tapes with her at Family Video, where helping customers ranks somewhere between abusing the label maker and arguing over who gets to abuse the label maker. 

You ran into him once, alone, in the cereal aisle of Melvald’s.

Dark rings under his eyes. Hair still doing that gravity-defying thing.

He smiled. You didn’t smile back.

You didn’t care.  

It’s the age-old fall from grace: high school royalty faceplants into reality, and the Burger King crown starts hanging heavy. (Well, sailor hat, in his case.)

But now, he’s here.

Dying on your lawn.

Ruining your Friday. … Up close, he looks worse.

Biblically bad.

Like, plague-of-locusts, hail-from-the-heavens, Lamb-of-God-who? kind of bad.

His jeans are shredded, shirt gone entirely. Bright red ligature marks around his throat like someone tried to strangle him with a piano wire. There’s ash in his hair, and something black smeared across his jaw that you’re really, really hoping is just dirt.

His eyes flutter.

Then, absurdly, he smiles.

“H-hey. Heard you know first aid?”

You stare at him for a beat. Then toss your popsicle stick into the grass.

“Yeah. Try not to bleed out on my porch, Harrington.”

He snorts. Gives you a weak thumbs-up.

Then promptly goes limp. … “It’s called compensated shock,” you grunt, dragging six-feet-too-much of unconscious prom royalty into your living room. “He looked okay ‘cause his body was pumping him full of adrenaline. Now it’s wearing off.”

Robin’s on the other end, doing her best to help, which mostly means not helping.

“Oh my god, yeah,” she babbles, smacking his sneakers into the doorframe. “—shit. He got all woozy at Skull Rock earlier.”

You pause mid-haul. “Skull Rock? Like, the makeout spot?”

Robin makes a face. “Yeah, but not for us, gross. That’d be like making out with my brother. Anyway, Steve invented Skull Rock! Took Heather C. there in tenth grade. Remember her? The girl with, like, thirty scrunchies and that creepy obsession with Mr. Connor’s—”

“Robin.”

“Right! Sorry! Panic talking!”

Steve groans from where you’ve deposited him on the couch, more pained by Robin’s volume than the probable internal bleeding.

You ignore him. “Why were you actually at Skull Rock?”

“Uhh walking? You know... trees. Friendship.”

You level her with a look.

She claps her hands. “Anyway! You can fix him, right? You’re, like, certified!”

You glance down at Steve.

His lips are blue at the corners, breath hitching in those tight, silent gulps that mean pain and refusal to show it.

“Yeah,” you say quietly. “Maybe.” … You do fix him.

Because you’re a sucker. Because you trained for this. Because your hands know what to do even when your brain is screaming. 

And maybe, just maybe, because Steve Harrington keeps making these soft, miserable, apologetic noises every time he flinches.

Like he’s sorry.

Sorry for bleeding. For being in pain. For existing.

You hate that.

You also kind of hate how he looks like this—hot, in that tragic, beaten, dog-left-out-in-the-rain kind of way that hits your brain like a chemical imbalance.

You strip off his vest first (Dio patch on the back, which, huh, maybe he has changed) and find a makeshift bandage beneath it, half-dried and crusted with old blood. You peel it off. It comes away with a wet schlorp like opening a bottle of dollar store wine.

And something inside you goes still. 

These are... bite marks.

Not scrapes. Not scratches.

Bites.

His flesh looks shredded, like a rottweiler got bored of chew toys and decided to sample teenage boy instead.

Except: you’ve treated dog bites. This is not a dog bite.

“Jesus christ,” you whisper.

You look up at the boy collapsed on your couch: sweaty, shirtless, and—oh, now he’s got a belt in his mouth.

Robin jams it there. “For the pain,” she says, helpful as ever.

Steve groans around the leather, eyes fluttering. Looks like he wants to die. 

You’re still staring at the worst bite, wondering if it’s actually moving, when you ask, voice low:

“Someone want to tell me what the fuck did this?”

Robin freezes. Eyes the belt like she’d rather choke on it herself than answer.

“Uh… bats?” She offers weakly.  

You blink. “Bats.”

“Like. Big ones? Really big?”

You stare at her. Then at Steve.  

You don’t believe her.

But also… you kind of do.    

Because whatever this thing was, it didn’t just attack.

It fed. … “Okay, but like—” Robin’s pacing like she’s trying to wear a hole in your rug. “He was fine earlier. Like, maybe not fine fine, but, you know, Steve-fine. And then we got out of the Up—uh—the woods, and I was driving him back and he just…”

She makes a dramatic fainting motion. Nearly brains herself on the coffee table.

“So, it could be rabies? Or tetanus? Or maybe one of those parasite things that lay eggs in your stomach? Or—”

“Robin?” you cut in, sharp as the pair of shears in your hand. “There’s towels and vodka in the kitchen. Go.”

“Right. On it.”

She skitters away like a gremlin set on fire, the thud of cabinet doors punctuating her panic.

You turn back to Steve.

His pulse is thin, fluttering weakly under your fingertips, but it’s there.

“Harrington. You with me?”

His hand twitches once, thumb up. … He doesn’t scream.

You wish he would.

Because you know this hurts. You know that when you pour antiseptic into wounds this deep, it’s supposed to rip sound out of a person. A yell. A curse. A sob. Something.

But Steve just… takes it.

His jaw’s locked tight enough to bend steel—no belt, miracle he doesn’t shatter a molar—and his throat works once, twice, swallowing back whatever wants out. His whole body trembles, shoulders twitching, knuckles bone-white, yet his voice stays sealed inside him like it’s chained there.

You kind of hate him for it.

Because you know this type.

Boys who bleed quiet. The beautiful, tragic kind who carry pain like it’s a penance.

You’ve seen them before, at crash sites, in the backs of ambulances.

It’s not bravery. It’s habit.

A mask. 

And Steve Harrington? He’s been wearing his so long, it’s practically fused to the bone.

Still, Robin squeezes his hand like she’s coaching him through labor. Eyes locked on the ceiling, because she’s still pretending she’s never seen boobs or blood or the inside of a human person.

You press gauze to the worst of the bites, just under his ribs, angry and wet and oozing something thick. You have to lean your weight into it.

Steve jolts—full-body, every muscle locking under your palms. His hand lashes out, fast and blind, gripping the leg of your jeans until his knuckles go pale.  

Then, just as quickly, he lets go. Eyes squeezed shut. Shame radiating off him like heat.

“Shit. S-sorry.”

You don’t answer.

You can’t. … It takes two hours.

Three full rolls of gauze. One regrettable vodka break, just to keep your hands from shaking.

It's not pretty. Not even close. But it's enough to keep him breathing, which, all things considered, feels like a decent win for a Friday night.

Now, he’s bandaged. Shirtless under your ex’s old hoodie, the one with the weird bleach stain and the hole in the sleeve, but Steve fills it out like it was made for him.

Of course he does.

In the kitchen, Robin’s hunched over your tiny sink, scrubbing dried blood and whatever else is staining her forearms that awful color.  

As soon as she’s done, you grab her by the sleeve and tug her into the hallway.

“Talk.”

Robin sighs, long and loud. Tries to stall by running a hand through her hair, only to grimace when it sticks up with dried sweat.

“…Demobats.” She mutters.

 “I’m sorry?”

“Demobats,” she repeats, like that’s a word people just know. “From this place called the… Upside Down.”

You wait. There’s no punchline.

“…You’re serious.”

She nods.

And then it all spills out.

Demobats. Some guy named Vecna. Russians. Underground government labs. Scoops Ahoy, for christ’s sake.

You lose the thread somewhere around “telepathic hive mind overlord.”

But you don’t interrupt. Because Robin may be a lot of things—loud, chaotic, deathly allergic to social cues—but she’s not a liar.

And there’s a half-dead boy on your couch with holes the size of teacups to prove it.

“So,” you say slowly, “that job at the mall…”

“Yeah. Secret Russian lab.”

“And you were tortured?”

 “I mean, mostly Steve?” She winces. “But, uh. Yeah.”

“Jesus christ, Robin.”

“I know,” she groans, dragging both hands down her face. “I know it sounds crazy. I didn’t want to drag you into this, okay? But I thought—he looked bad. Worse than before. And I couldn’t exactly walk into the ER and say ‘Hi, my best friend got eaten by mutant bats from another dimension, please ignore the blood trail.’”

She huffs, blowing hair from her eyes, and squints at you. “You don’t believe me.”

You snort. “No. I do. And I think you should’ve called me sooner.”

“Well, I thought he was fine. He was fine. Until we got in the car and he started slurring his words and, like… blinking wrong. Then I panicked.”

You glance back toward the living room. At the boy who didn’t scream. Curled on your couch, twitching in his sleep like he’s stuck in a loop he can’t wake from.

Robin follows your gaze, voice softening. “Look, I know he’s not exactly your favorite person, but… thank you. Really.”

You roll your eyes. “He was bleeding out, Robs.”

She gives you a look. The kind that says she knows you better than you want her to.

You scowl.

“Go. Shower. You smell like a burnt tire.” A beat. “…You want something to eat?”

Robin doesn’t answer. Just throws her arms around you in the tightest, sweatiest, most Robin hug imaginable. All elbows and bones and bloodstained sleeves.

You stiffen. Then sigh.

“Love you,” she mumbles into your shoulder.

You hold her tight for a second. Then let go.

“You owe me, Buckley. Big time.” …   Robin crashes in your bed, dead to the world in ten seconds flat.

You stay on the couch next to Steve.

Not close. Just close enough. So if he does something stupid like stop breathing, you’ll notice.

You keep a cool cloth on his forehead. Check his pulse every half hour. Whisper a soft “motherfucker” every time he twitches, because if he wakes up and asks if you were worried, you want to be able to say no with a straight face.

You stay up.

Because someone has to. … It’s almost 3 a.m. when he stirs.

Your head snaps up, heart launching into your throat like a flare. Your hand goes automatically to the bucket, the cloth, the mental checklist of emergency procedures you’ve memorized so well they’re practically sewn into your DNA.

But then his lips part.

Just a cracked breath through the dryness, small and quiet and impossibly fragile.

“Don’t… don’t let ‘em go back.”

It’s barely a whisper. It slams into you like a freight train.

You don’t know who ‘they’ are, but you know exactly what he means.

You’ve seen this kind of thing before, too. In the shaking hands of people who left something behind where no one could follow. This is what happens when the body survives, but the rest doesn’t.

And goddammit.

Goddammit, you didn’t want this.

Didn’t want some pretty, broken boy bleeding all over your couch. Didn’t want this guilt. This terrifying protectiveness. The quiet, suffocating weight of whatever this is clamping around your ribs like a trap you walked into willingly. 

Didn’t want Steve fucking Harrington, of all people, to break your heart without saying a single word.

But he looks so young like this. Pale cheeks, sweat-damp hair sticking to his forehead. He’s curled in on himself like he’s bracing for another hit, one hand fisted in your throw pillow.  

Without thinking, you lean forward.

Brush his hair back. Cool his skin with your fingers.

“Steve,” you whisper.

No answer. Just a tiny, broken noise. Almost a whimper, almost nothing.

Your throat tightens.

You reach down, and carefully, gently, pry his fingers free from the cushion. Thread yours through the empty spaces.

His grip grows impossibly tight, fingertips paling where they press between your knuckles.

“You’re okay. You’re safe.”

And slowly—like thawing ice, like a held breath finally let go—he stops shaking.

You stay like that, hand in his, until the sun starts bleeding through the curtains. … Robin once told you that you get off on fixing people. She meant hearts. You meant bones. You’re starting to think maybe she was right. … You wake to yelling.

Not normal yelling—whisper-yelling. The kind of frantic, hushed bickering that’s somehow louder than regular voices.

“…can’t just walk out, Steve!”

“It’s not that bad, just—give me a second—”

There’s the unmistakable rustle of struggling. A pained grunt. The telltale shuffle of someone stumbling sideways, seconds away from faceplanting.

“Oh my god, what is wrong with you?!”

“I’m fine,” Steve grits out, in the exact tone people use right before they pass out on you.

“And where exactly are you gonna go, huh? Enlighten me.”

“Just—I’ll go back and change, and then we’ll—”

“Nope. Absolutely not. You can’t even see straight, Harrington.”

“Yes, I can.”

“Really? Okay. How many fingers?”

“Why do you always do that?”

“Because it works!”

You groan loudly, dragging an arm over your face.

“Do I need to put you two in a time-out? Because I swear to god, I will.”

Instant silence.

When you peel your arm back, Steve’s frozen mid‑escape, one shoe on, looking like a kid caught stealing from the cookie jar. He glances your way, sheepish.

“Hey,” he says, like he didn’t just almost eat your tile. “You’re up.”

“Unfortunately.”

Robin flaps a dramatic hand at him. “Please, please talk some sense into this idiot before I duct tape him to the wall.”

You sit up, and immediately regret every decision you’ve ever made. Your spine crackles like bubble wrap. Your skull is pounding. The entire living room looks like a crime scene: blood-crusted towels, empty gauze packets, that one lonely vodka bottle rolling under the coffee table like a sad tumbleweed.

You squint at Steve. “Sit down.”

“I’m good.”

“You’re not.”

“I just need to—”

“Now, Harrington.”

You don’t raise your voice. You don’t have to. It’s the tone you’ve used on half-conscious college boys insisting they can “totally drive, man.”

Steve blinks. Then sighs, slowly lowering himself onto a kitchen chair.

Robin hovers like a human seatbelt, and he bats her away with a feeble flap of his wrist. Still, he grips the edge of the counter like it’s the only thing keeping him vertical.

You scrub a hand over your face. “Coffee? Or are we all just committing to bad decisions today?” … The coffee is yesterday’s.

Bitter, burnt, practically an oil slick in a mug.

You pour three cups anyway.

Steve drinks it black, which tracks. You clock the way his hands tremble as he brings it to his lips and file it away without comment.

Robin’s already rattling off the story again, filling in details she left out the night before. You get more names now. Places. Dates. Vines that slither like snakes. The gate under Lover’s Lake. You get the part where Steve dove in, headfirst, no hesitation.

Well, you already got that part last night, but Robin’s repeating it, and you’re starting to think maybe it’s not for you this time.

Steve just listens, quiet. Winces at certain beats—jaw tic here, hard blink there—but doesn’t interrupt.

You lean against the counter, sip your bitter sludge, and ask, casual as you can:

“So, you just jumped in. No plan? No backup?”

He shrugs, eyes on his mug. “Didn’t really have time to think about it.”

“Clearly.”     

He looks up at you then. Runs a hand through his still-matted hair, blood-sticky at the roots, and releases a quiet breath.

“Thank you. For last night.”

You raise a brow. “Didn’t really have a choice, Harrington. It was either that or explain to the cops why there’s a dead body on my couch.” 

He huffs a weak laugh.

“By the way,” you add, sipping again, “do your parents know about all this monster-hunting extracurricular bullshit?”

Robin makes a sound like a choked squirrel.

“Oh fuck! My parents! Shitshitshit.”

She’s already halfway out of her chair, tripping over her shoes while she scrambles for her jacket.

“Can you—?” she gasps, eyes wide.

“Yeah, yeah. I’ll cover.”

“Thankyouthankyouthankyou!” She barrels over, grabbing your face and planting a comically loud kiss on your forehead. Then she turns and grabs Steve in the same breath.

Gives his face a little shake.

“If I come back and find out you even thought about sneaking out, I will tell everyone you still sleep with a nightlight. Got it?”

You snort into your mug. Steve glares at her. “Robin—"

“Got it?”

He scrubs a hand through his hair, rolling his eyes. “Whatever.”

She releases him, then points at you. “You’re in charge. Don’t let him do anything heroic.”

“Oh no,” you deadpan. “However shall I bear the weight of such responsibility?”

Robin snorts, slaps your shoulder, then bolts, keys jingling like cowbells as she shoots out the door.

“Wait—” Steve squints after her. “Are you—Robin! You can’t just take my car! You’re not even—”

Slam!

“—licensed.”

You both sit in the silence she leaves behind. Steve stares out the window, listening to the screech of his precious bimmer as it peels down the street.

Then he turns back, eyes flicking to the trauma floor that used to be your living room.  

He clears his throat. “Sorry about your, uh… couch. And the carpet.”

You follow his gaze. The stains are bad, probably permanent. It stings a little, looking at them.

It hurts worse looking at him.

Steve Harrington, bruised and bandaged and slouched in your chair like he’s trying to disappear into the seams. His stupidly wide, puppy-dog eyes look like they’re about to apologizing for breathing your air.

You blink.

Then slowly, slowly, lean forward across the island.

“Harrington.”

“Yeah?”

“Stop apologizing for almost dying. It’s weird.”  

He opens his mouth. Closes it. Lands on a sheepish smile instead.

You hate how it softens his face, how it creases the corners of his eyes.

“And for the record,” you mutter, lips concealed behind the rim of your cup, “you’re not the worst thing to stain that couch, so. You’re fine.”  

He blinks, brow furrowing. “What’s… that supposed to mean?”

You shrug. “Wouldn’t you like to know.”

It takes him a second to process it. Then he snorts quietly, eyes flicking to the side.

You take another sip, watching the pink rise in his cheeks as the sun filters in through the window.

And if you’re smiling too—well, he doesn’t have to know. … You try to make pancakes.

Try being the operative word.

There’s flour in your hair, batter on the counter. Somewhere, the smoke alarm is just giggling with anticipation.

Steve’s still in his spot behind the island, watching you glare down a lumpy pile of batter.

It’s distracting.

It’s fucking annoying, is what it is.

Pancakes aren’t hard. Whisking is not rocket science. And yet, it feels impossible with him sitting there, doing that thing with his eyes. All soft and brown and bruised, like you saved his life and now he doesn’t know how to deal with it.   

“How’s it going?” he asks, voice pitched deliberately neutral.

You don’t turn around. “Fine.”

A beat.

“You sure?”

You slam the next pancake into the pan. It looks like something you'd peel off a sidewalk after a hot summer day. You stare at it, furious.

Behind you, there’s the scrape of a chair.

“I said I’m fine,” you warn.

He ignores that.

Limps over to you instead, his gaze finding you like a physical thing. Warm. Curious. You catch him in your periphery as he stops beside you, close enough that the heat from the stove mixes with the heat of his skin. Suddenly, the kitchen feels about fifteen degrees hotter.

“Here,” he murmurs.

Before you can object, his fingers wrap around yours, gentle and coaxing as he eases the spatula from your grip.

Then: flip.

One smooth flick of his wrist. The pancake lands perfect. All golden and fluffy.

You blink at it, betrayed.

“I was handling it.”

“Sure,” he says, lips twitching. “Looked like it.”

He flips another. Doesn’t even look this time.

You narrow your eyes. “Okay. How are you doing that?” 

He shrugs, adjusting the burner dial like he’s lived here his whole life. “Cook for myself a lot.”

You pause. There’s something in the way he says it—off-hand, casual, but quiet enough to leave an echo.

You file that away, too.

“Of course you’re good at pancakes,” you mutter. “Probably make soufflés and like, caviar waffles or some shit.”

“Caviar waffles? That’s a thing?”

“I don’t know. You tell me, rich boy.”

He just snorts quietly at that, eyeing you sideways. “Well, my French toast is pretty solid. Could show you next time, if you want.”

You glance over, arching a brow. “Wow. Is that line always so subtle?”

He meets your gaze, smirk tugging at his split lip.

“I don’t know. You tell me.”

And fuck, it lands.

It lands hard, right in the soft space under your ribs. That warm, twisting feeling that makes your breath hitch and your stomach go stupid.

You turn away before your face can betray you, yanking open a drawer for a fork.

And then, as if the universe decided to throw you a bone, the kitchen landline starts to shriek like it’s being murdered.

You lunge for it like a lifeline.

It’s probably Mrs. Buckley, confirming her daughter crashed at your place, again.

“Hello? …You WHAT?”

Robin groans on the other end. “Yeah. Possibly until college.”

“Robin, you can’t—” You lower your voice, turning away from Steve and cupping the receiver like he’s not standing two feet away. “—you can’t be fucking grounded right now.”

“I know! But my mom saw the blood on my jeans and I totally panicked. I told her it was ketchup. Ketchup, dude. Now she’s got Toby posted outside my room. He’s just sitting there with his Legos, but he will scream if I so much as leave to go to the bathroom. So... yeah. It’s gonna be a while before I can sneak out. Are you… are you okay to stay with him for a bit? He’s trying to pretend he’s fine, but he’s definitely not.”   

You glance back.

Steve’s standing at the stove, peering at his stomach while waiting for the next pancake to bubble. His hand drifts down and starts poking at one of the bandages under his hoodie. Slow and gentle, like it won’t count as touching if he’s polite about it.    

You stretch the phone cord and smack his hand away.

He startles. Blinks at you like, Seriously?

You raise your brows like, Try me.

You sigh into the receiver: “Yeah. I got him.”

“Ugh, you’re the best. Just don’t let him—ohh, crap, I gotta g—"

Click.

Steve doesn’t turn when you pad back into the kitchen.

“She grounded?”

“Yep. Possibly until retirement.” You pause. “You don’t need to call your folks?”

He hesitates, just for a second. Then shakes his head. “They’re out of town.”

Then, with a one-handed spin of the spatula, he flips the pancake onto a plate.

You glance at the growing stack. They look obscene. You’d punch someone for a bite.

In your head, you run through the math.

Ten days. Minimum.

Ten days before the stitches can come out. Before he can walk out of here without ripping something open. Longer if he keeps poking at his bandages like that.

God help you. It’s gonna be a long week. … Breakfast is awkward.

No other word for it.

Steve eats like he’s on a timer. You eat like you’re trying not to notice.

Trying not to notice the way he keeps sneaking glances at you. Little flicks of his eyes over his plate, always quick, always subtle, never quite fast enough.

Trying not to notice the way he winces. Quiet flashes of pain, there and gone, just long enough for that crease to cut across his brow before he smooths it away.

When both your plates are emptied, he clears his throat.

“Hey, do you… you mind if I use your bathroom?” He gestures vaguely to his face. “Just need to clean up a bit.”  

His hair is still matted. There’s soot smeared along his jaw, a faint line of red where the blood’s dried and half-wiped away.

You nod, mid-sip. “Sure. First door on the left. Just don’t get the bandages wet.”

“Got it,” he nods, starts to rise—then stops halfway, jaw flexing tight.

“Actually, uh…” His hand slides to the back of his neck. His eyes shut briefly. “Can you give me a hand with this? I can’t really…”

He doesn’t finish the sentence. Doesn’t need to.

The white-knuckle grip on the hem of his hoodie tells you enough.

You blink, setting your mug down, and push your chair back without a word.   

He doesn’t meet your eyes as you reach for the bottom of the hoodie.

The fabric peels up inch by inch, sticking to where the gauze bled through, catching where raw skin clings to cotton. He winces, raising his arms awkwardly, the stitches along his sides clearly pulling. So you move gently, painstakingly slow.

Your knuckles graze his stomach, and—

Jesus.

He’s warm. Muscle corded tight under skin that flushes easily, even with all the bruises blooming across his ribs like bad watercolors.

You get the hoodie off.

His chest is bare.

And now you’re standing close. Way, way too close.

His breath brushes your cheek when he exhales. You glance up, just on pure instinct, and find his eyes already on you.

You both freeze.

There’s a beat where everything narrows. Where sound drops out.  

Your hands hover midair, still clutching the fabric, close enough to feel the heat radiating off his skin.

Close enough to trace the moles scattered across his chest.   

You don’t.

You look away so fast it nearly gives you whiplash.

“Towels are under the sink," you mumble. "I’ll get you some new clothes.”

Then you take a quick step back. Like distance will save you from whatever the hell that was.

Steve blinks. Once. Twice. Then nods, eyes flicking away. “Thanks.”

He disappears down the hall, barefoot and bruised.

You stand in the silence with his hoodie clenched in your fists, your pulse trying to beat its way out of your throat. … There’s an old joke your friends like to make.

That you’re a sadist.

That you chose the EMT life because you enjoy it. The blood, the pain. The broken bones and the chaos. Things normal people flinch away from.

But in truth, they’ve got it backwards.

You’re not a sadist.

No. What you are is a fucking masochist.

Because there’s no other explanation for why you keep doing this to yourself. Why you let yourself get this close to people you shouldn’t. Why you torture yourself, again and again, with things you know better than to want.

Why you’re standing outside your bathroom door right now, ears tilted, listening to someone who shouldn’t mean anything to you rinse the blood off his skin.

You told yourself you were just finishing the dishes. That the stovetop needed wiping down. That there were chores to do, reasons to move around.

But your feet kept wandering. Back to the hallway. Back to him.

Back to this spot in the hallway, where you can feel the warmth bleeding under the door. Where you can hear the faucet running in short, irregular bursts—on, off, on again.

You picture him hunched over the basin. One hand braced against the counter, the other shaking under the strain of movement. Jaw clenched. Shoulders bowed.

Something twists low in your stomach.

You roll your eyes at yourself—because god, you’re pathetic—and raise a fist.

A light knock.

“You good?”

A pause, then:

“Uh, yeah. Just… hang on.”

There’s a clatter, a quiet shit. Then the door creaks open.

And Steve—

Well.

He’s wet.

And shirtless. And pink.

Flushed from the steam, maybe from embarrassment. Because his hair—The Hair—is half-lathered and sticking up in foamy tufts, like a soggy cat caught mid-bath. A single drop of water slides slow down the hollow of his throat.

Your gaze follows it.

The sweatpants you gave him ride low. Damp at the waistband, pulled snug across his hips in a way you’re absolutely not thinking about.

He gestures toward the sink, sheepish.

“I, uh… can’t really bend right now. Tried to rinse it out, but—” He winces, fingers grazing his sides. “The stitches are kind of a hard no.” 

Your eyes drop, unbidden, to the bruises blooming purple-black across his ribs. The way his chest lifts a little faster when you step closer.

You should walk away. Turn around. Go wipe down the goddamn stove like you told yourself you would.

Instead, you say:

“Sit.” 

He blinks. “…What?”

“On the floor. Back against the tub.”

There’s a pause. His brows draw together like he’s trying to figure out the punchline.  

You don’t blink.

He exhales sharply, jaw flexing. “No, it’s okay, I can—”

“Steve.”

It lands heavy. The weight of it surprises even you.

His first name, in your voice. 

You’ve only said it once before, when he was unconscious, twitching under bloodstained gauze, fists clenched against a nightmare you couldn’t reach.

But now, he hears it. And something inside him goes quiet.

He studies you for a second longer, then sighs, shoulders dropping.

Wordlessly, he lowers himself to the tile.

One hand braced on the edge of the tub, the other on the floor, every movement stiff. His back hits the porcelain with a soft thud.  

You kneel beside him and roll up your sleeves.

“Lean your head back.”

He shifts, uneasy. “Seriously, you don’t have to—”

“I know.” You pick up the cup beside the sink and check the tap, waiting for the water to warm. “Just tilt."

There’s a long pause.

Then he does.

His head tips back against the curve of the tub. With his throat exposed, the worst of the bruising shines a mottled red-black beneath his jaw. His lashes flutter, lips parting just slightly.

The first pass runs slow and gentle down his scalp. He flinches.

“Too hot?”

He blinks, breath shallow. “No. S’fine.”

So you pour again. And again. Slow rivulets trickling through his hair, carrying blood and soap and grime down the drain. His hair start to fall naturally again, dark strands slicking to his forehead. 

It’s just the water at first. Rinsing out grit, loosening stiff knots and matted roots.

Then you lather the shampoo between your palms, and sink your fingers into his hair.

And that’s when it happens.

The shift.

Steve Harrington—king of easy charm, Mr. Everything’s Fine—goes completely still.

Not in a relaxed way. Not in a sleepy way.

No, he goes rigid.

His breath falters. His jaw locks. You can see the muscles in his neck ripple with tension.

And when you sweep a thumb absently behind his ear, chasing a line of foam, he jolts.

A full-body shiver, running shoulder to spine.

You clear your throat, voice catching before you force it steady. “Been a while, huh? Since someone did this for you?”

His response is delayed, a low rasp. “Uh huh. Long time.”

Then, after a beat:

“Used to be my mom’s thing. When I was a kid.”

Your hands still in his hair. He goes stiff the second he says it—jaw clenched, lips pressed tight, hands curling in his lap.

You blink, then resume drawing slow circles over his crown.

“That must’ve been nice,” you say quietly.

He doesn’t answer. Just breathes through his nose and keeps still.

So you keep going.

Rinse. Lather. Repeat.    

And with each pass of your hands, his breathing changes.

His head rests heavier against the porcelain. His lips part around soft, even breaths. His eyes flutter shut.

Then, he leans.

Barely enough to notice. But you feel it, the subtle tilt of his head toward your hands.

Like a plant bending toward light.

You wonder, not for the first time, how long it’s been since someone touched him like this. How long he’s gone without care, without softness.

And maybe that’s why this hurts so much.

Because you’d had him pegged, hadn’t you?

The hair. The charm. Pretty boy, ladies’ man, heartbreaker.

King Steve.

But this? This isn’t him.

This is the After.                                                                                       

The aftermath of Russians and monsters and lakes with no bottoms. The man who throws himself between danger and kids that aren’t his, time and time again. Like he’s got something to prove. Or maybe something to atone for.

The one who apologized for bleeding on your floor.

This is someone who’s forgotten how to be held.

And right now, he’s under your hands. Throat bared. Hair dripping. Leaning into your touch like he’s starved for it.

And that slow, sinking weight in your stomach settles for good. That gut-churn of realization that you barely know anything about the man who nearly bled out on your couch last night.  

You try to swallow the feeling down. Try to keep your focus on softer things: dripping water, steam-soaked light, the silky-smooth slip of his hair between your fingers.

But every time your hands leave him, even for a second, you feel it. The tension in his frame. The hesitation in his breath. Like he’s bracing for it to end.

And each time you return—thumb grazing his temple, palm cradling the back of his neck—he breathes in. Relief, sharp and silent, tucked between the ribs.

You reach for the conditioner next, fingers trembling a little as you work it through. When you tip his head back, he goes easy. Pliant. Trusting.

And then a quiet thought hits you.   

A hunch, really.

You let your fingers drift lower. Past the crown. Down to the nape of his neck. The hair there is softer, damp strands clinging to skin gone tight with tension and bruising.

You trace gently around the worst of it. Avoid the dark, angry lines where something had closed around his throat. 

Strangled. That’s what Robin said.  

You press into the muscle just beneath it, right where the pain likes to live.

Steve shudders. His head lifts from the tub with a breath, caught on something sharp.

But you don’t let up.

You continue pressing in slow, deep circles, growing firmer.

There’s a sound, then. Sharp. Brief. A strangled thing, torn between a groan and a gasp.

He tries to stifle it a second later, clearing his throat.

“Too hard?” you ask quietly.

His voice comes cracked. “N-no. Just—it’s fine. You don’t have to…”

The rest trails off when you move to his shoulders next, thumb kneading into the dense muscle. You’re not a massage therapist, but you know anatomy. You know where pain settles when it’s been left too long. How it tucks itself into the tender parts: the base of the neck, the hollow beneath the collarbone.  

And god, he’s full of it. All the signs. All the tells.

He lets out another shaky breath, lips sealed around a sound he doesn’t let out.

And there, just for a moment, you let yourself look.

At the bruises. The thin cuts just beginning to scab. The water gliding over his collarbone, beading into the curve of his chest.

That thick, molten part of your brain—the masochist, the idiot, the one who says yes when she should absolutely say no—flares hot.

It wants to lean in.

Wants to touch your mouth to his skin, right there, at the slope of his throat.

Just to see if he tastes like lavender and heat. Just to see if he lets you.

To kiss him slow enough to wash the ache from his mouth. Replace every sharp thing he’s swallowed with something soft.

God, you’re losing it.

You drag your thumb again along the base of his neck. His lashes flutter.

Then, from the corner of your eye, you see it—his hands shifting in his lap.

Cross. Adjust.

You glance down without thinking.

And oh.

Oh.

The sweatpants don’t hide much. Not like this. Not with how he’s sitting, loose-limbed and open, the fabric soaked and clinging in ways it wasn’t meant to. They’re pulled taut across the breadth of his thighs, darkened in patches where the water’s seeped through.

And beneath that?

Yeah.

Your breath stutters. Heat rockets up your neck.

You yank your gaze away, fumbling for the faucet and filling another cup. Your hand trembles as you lift it, rinsing out the conditioner.

His hair sticks to his forehead. Without thinking, you smooth it back.

His eyes flutter open.

And the look he gives you…

It’s quiet. Devastating. Tucked somewhere tender and deep, pressed hard against bone.

Softer than longing. Sharper than want.

It's something that aches.

You don’t know what to do with it.

So you just keep your hands in his hair.

And you rinse.   … You rinse long after the conditioner’s gone.

After his breath has evened out and the water’s cooled to a gentle trickle, steam curling around your ankles like fog.

The bathroom smells like lavender and heat and skin that isn’t yours.

When you reach for the towel and bring it up to his head, he leans.

Blot, pat, smooth. The towel’s too soft, your hands too careful. You graze the shell of his ear, the edge of his jaw, feeling the quick flutter of his pulse beneath your thumb.

His eyes are still on you.

“Thanks,” he says, quiet.  

You nod, not trusting your voice.

The steam’s thinning now, but the air still clings.

Too warm. Too full of something unsaid.

His breath brushes your cheek.

You’re too close.

It’s too much.

You could kiss him. 

God help you, you could.

Just one lean forward. That’s all it would take. His mouth is right there—slightly parted, pink and swollen in the middle where he’s been biting down.

And the look on his face isn’t just gratitude. Not just relief.

That’s want.

And worse? It’s yours too. It’s in the pit of your stomach, burning upward. It’s in your hands, your chest, your throat, curling behind your teeth like smoke with nowhere to go.

You pull back abruptly. The towel slips from your hands and lands in his lap with a soft thud.

“Okay,” you say, voice tight. “You’re good.”

Steve blinks, like you just dragged him up from underwater.

His throat bobs. “Cool. Yeah. Thanks.”

You stand too fast. Your knees pop. You don’t look at him when you speak next. “You should lie down for a bit. Keep pressure off the stitches.”

He nods, a little too slow.

You grab the towel again and press it against his chest. Not hard, but firm enough to make a point. Whatever it is.

Then you turn.

And you walk out.

You don’t need to look back to know he’s still watching you go. ... It starts the way summer storms do. 

Not with thunder. Not with rain.

With pressure.

The kind that presses close to the skin, wrapping around like a second layer. That hair-raising, skin-prickling tingle. Right as the birds go quiet and the trees hold still and the sky forgets how to move.

Stillness so absolute your skin buzzes with it.

The moment before it tips. 

It’s here now. In this room.

In the narrow inches of couch cushion between you. In the weight of the blanket tangled over your legs. In the single, unspoken brush of his thigh against yours.

The TV plays to no one. A dull flicker of static and synth beats, some late-afternoon rerun neither of you are really watching. The glow of it pulses dim blue across his skin, the shadows deepening where his jaw tightens every time you move.

The room smells like clean skin and new sweat. Yours. His. Both.

His voice breaks the quiet.

“Hey, how long ‘til the stitches come out again?”

“Ten days.”

“Hm. I like this show.”

“Knight Rider?”

“Yeah. It’s cool.”

“No. It’s dumb.”

“What? C’mon, the car talks.”

“Exactly.” A beat. “How do the stitches feel?”

“Uh, good. Yeah. They’re fine.”

“You hungry?”

“No, you?”

“No.”

And it builds, again. That low, rolling kind of stillness.

Storm pressure.   

It crawls up your spine. Pools hot behind your ears. You fidget with the hem of the blanket, rolling your shoulder back into the cushion like you can shake it loose.

You can’t.

The blanket’s too warm.

He’s too close.

And he’s watching you. You don’t have to look to know.  

“…You’re doing it again.”

“Hm?”

You turn your head. Meet his gaze full-on. “Looking at me like that.”

His lips part. “Like what?”

Your eyes drop to his mouth.

His pinky brushes yours.

And just like that, the storm breaks. … Steve leans in first.

The same way he had in the bathroom, instinctive and unthinking. Like something inside him keeps tipping forward and you’re the only place left to fall.

Only this time, you don’t let him do it alone.

You meet him halfway.

His nose nudges yours. His breath fans hot across your cheek.

And then your lips meet.

A question and an answer, exchanged wordlessly.

There’s no clean edge between want and need, no way to separate gentle from hungry. One second, it’s the cautious warmth of shared breath, the next—

It’s the pull of his hands. The low, wrecked sound he makes in his throat when your fingers slide up his neck, threading into the damp hair at his nape.  

Heat. Ozone. The bright-white zing of electricity rocketing down your spine.

You move forward without thinking. He shifts to catch you, hands spanning your hips, guiding you into his lap. You straddle him, careful to avoid the bruises across his stomach.

His breath is hot. His lips are plush, a little chapped from the way he’s been chewing on them all night.

Wordlessly, you reach for the hem of your shirt, tugging it over your head and letting it fall behind you. Cool air rushes over your skin.

Steve goes still. “God, you’re…” He breathes, throat working around the rest of the words when you take his hand and guide it upwards. Across your stomach, up your ribs. His thumb grazes over your nipple, soft and reverent, and your breath hitches.

You tug him back into a kiss, hips starting to drag across his lap. The hard press of him burns heat through the cotton of your sleep shorts.

“Good?” you breathe against his mouth.  

“Yeah,” he rasps. “Fuck. Yeah. You?”

You nod, catching your breath.

But he doesn’t stop looking at you

And there’s something about the way his gaze lingers—soft, searching—like he’s waiting for more than just an answer to a question. Something he doesn’t know how to say out loud.

But you know.

You just… know.

The same way you knew when your hands were in his hair earlier. That quiet ache. That silent pull in him, desperate and soft.

So you give him what he doesn’t know how to ask for.

Your hand slides up to his chest, pressing over his heart. It’s pounding. So is yours.

“You feel so good, Steve,” you whisper, close enough for him to taste the words off your lips. “You’re so good. So fucking good.”

He shudders, pulling you in tighter, groaning with his lips buried against your neck like he needs to hide the sound somewhere safe.

Still, you don’t stop. 

You reach for his hand and slide it lower, under the waistband of your shorts. His fingers slip through your slick heat and go still.

“Jesus,” he breathes. 

You kiss his temple, then his cheek. Frame his jaw with both hands and lift his gaze to yours.

“Feel that?” you murmur. “That’s for you. All for you.”

He lets out a strangled sound, nearly pained, and surges up to kiss you again. His fingers start to stroke through your heat, finding the rhythm, learning you. When his thumb grazes your clit and starts to circle, you gasp, hips jerking into his touch.

“Shit, baby…” he breathes.   

And that word—

It’s soft. Unconscious. Slipped out before he knew it was there.

You don’t think he even realizes he said it. His eyes are blown wide, focused only on you: the way your hips grind, the way you cling to him when his fingers push deeper.

Still, there’s that tremble in his voice.

Like that word came from somewhere deeper than he meant to reach. Like it cracked off the part of him that’s always waiting to be turned away but still dares to offer softness first.

You roll your hips again, chasing friction, but your focus has shifted now. You’re watching him instead—flushed and open beneath you, mouth parted, eyes locked to your face like you’re something he’s trying to memorize.

And it guts you. The honesty of it.

How easy it is to see now.     

That this is someone who aches for closeness. Reaches for it before he even realizes he’s doing it. Who says baby like it’s the only word he knows for want. 

Your chest grows tight. The heat in your stomach twists into something unbearably tender.

You roll your hips one last time, savoring the drag of him against you, then shift off his lap. His hand slips from your shorts, reluctant, trailing warmth up your stomach.

His eyes follow you as you slide to the floor. Your knees sinking into the carpet, fingers hooking in the waistband of his pants. He lifts his hips and—

You blink. Your mouth goes dry.

Because he’s—

Wow. Okay.

Noted.

It’s not just the size—though, yeah, that’s definitely part of it. It’s the weight of him. The flushed color, the dusky warmth. Velvety skin stretched tight over thick veins. The way he sits heavy against his thigh, curved just slightly, leaking at the tip and twitching under your gaze.

You swallow hard.

“What?” He stirs, uncertain. “Is something…?”

You look up at him, eyes wide.   

“Jesus, Steve…” you breathe. “Just. Holy shit.”

His brows pinch together, concern flickering across his face—until he sees your expression.

And there it is.

That grin. That stupid, boyish, shit-eating grin.

“Oh,” he says, trying to play it off. “Yeah?”

You narrow your eyes, desperately trying to hide your smile. “Don’t get cocky.”

He raises a brow.  

You realize your mistake immediately. Your cheeks flare hot.

He laughs, breathless. Looks down at you all soft and pleased and fond. It makes you want to bite him until he forgets how to smirk entirely. Kiss him stupid and never let him go.

“Shut up,” you mutter.

“Didn’t say anything,” he says, still smiling.

You roll your eyes and yank his pants the rest of the way down.

He quiets instantly.

Because your hands are on him now.

You stroke his thighs first, warming up the sensitive skin there. Pressing soft kisses along the inside, inching higher and higher until he’s twitching under your mouth.

“You’re so pretty like this,” you whisper. “You don’t even know, do you?”

He makes a strangled sound, part laugh, part disbelieving groan. His hands flex where they rest against his thighs.

You reach up and guide one to your hair, eyes still on his.

“You can touch me,” you murmur.      

His fingers curl, tentative. “You sure?”

You nod. “I want you to. Want you to feel this.”

Then, without looking away, you lower your mouth to him.

Slow. Wet. Base to tip, dragging your tongue along the underside. He jerks, whole body going taut.  

“Jesus,” he hisses. “Okay. Okay.”

You take your time. Because no one ever has, it seems. Not like this.  

Your fingers wrap around the base, tongue gliding along the ridge, licking the salt beading at the tip. Every twitch, every shudder, every wrecked baby whispered from above becomes something you file away silently, cataloguing the way he unravels.

And Steve unravels beautifully.

You glance up through your lashes, watching the way his stomach trembles, how his throat works. All the control he’s trying so hard to hold on to.

Then finally, you wrap your lips around him.

Just the head at first, sucking slow and sweet. You circle your tongue around the crown and let out a soft hum.

“Fuck,” he whispers. “Baby, your mouth—shit—”

His voice keeps catching like he doesn’t quite believe it. You get the sense he hasn’t been cherished in this way, either. Adored. Worshipped.

So you double down.

You ease off for a breath, kissing the flushed tip, thumb gliding over the sensitive skin there. Then you sink deeper, lips sliding lower, jaw loosening, tongue tracing the underside as you stretch around the thickest part of him.  

You keep going until he’s pressed up against your palate, brushing the back of your throat. You breathe into it. Let the weight of him sit there, hot and thick and yours.

“Shit, shit—” he pants. “I’m not—not gonna last if you keep—"

You pull off with a soft pop, lips slick and swollen. A line of spit follows you from the flushed head of his cock.

“It’s okay,” you smile, breath warm against his skin. “Don’t have to. Just want you to feel good.”

He stares down at you, cheeks flushed, eyes glassy.

Then, suddenly, breathless and earnest:

“Wait, can I—can I get you off first?” 

You pause, stunned.  

You blink up at him, hand still wrapped around the base of his cock. “You don’t have to—”

“I want to,” he says, quick and pleading. He cups your jaw, stroking your cheek. “Please. Let me?”

You hold his gaze a moment longer, drowning in that quiet, unspoken vulnerability he carries, one you’re learning to name without words.

Then, finally, you nod.

“Okay.”

You crawl back into his lap, shorts discarded somewhere behind you, it doesn’t matter where.

What matters is the way his hands settle on you again, calloused palms sliding around your hips, drawing you closer. You feel the thick heat of him pressed between your thighs, sticky and flushed and aching.

You roll your hips teasingly, gliding against him before reaching down to line him up. The head of his cock nudges, presses, catches. Then slowly, inch by inch, you sink down.

The stretch is immediate. Hot and all-consuming. You clutch at his shoulders, mouth falling open as you let your weight sink deeper, not pausing until he’s fully seated.

Your thighs tremble where you straddle him.

Steve groans low, one arm tight around your waist, the other gripping your hip.

“Shit, are you—?”

“I’m okay,” you breathe, laughing softly into his skin. “Just… gimme a sec. You’re kind of a lot, Harrington.”  

He kisses you, rubbing circles into your back while you adjust. The burn softens. The fullness remains.

And when you start to move—lifting your hips, rolling them back down—you feel him everywhere.

“God,” you pant, “you feel so good.”

You kiss his jaw, his throat, burying whispers between breaths.

“Can feel you so deep—fuck—”  

The rhythm builds slowly. Wide circles, deep grinds, savoring the way his cock hits just right.

And the more you give him—You feel so good, Fucking me so well, Low how you feel inside me—he melts a little more beneath you.

“Shit, right there—” you gasp, hips stuttering when his hand slides between your bodies, pressing into your clit.

“Come for me,” he whispers, voice rough. “Please. Want to feel you.”

His fingers circle faster.  

And your body breaks.

You cry out, nails digging into his shoulders, every muscle clenched and trembling as the orgasm crashes through you. You collapse against his chest, shaking, gasping his name, everything hot and white and so much.     

He holds you through it, breathing hard against your temple.

“That’s it,” he pants. “That’s it, baby, I’ve got you—fuck—”

You’re still trembling in his lap when you feel him thrust up into you once, twice. He pulls out with a sudden gasp, groaning your name, spilling hot and thick across your stomach, shuddering with the force of it.

You kiss him through the haze of your own come-down, legs still trembling, fingers tangled in the sweat-damp hair at his nape.

“Just like that,” you whisper. “You’re perfect like this, Steve. So good.”

His breath stutters against your cheek. His body, still pulsing with aftershocks, presses into yours like he can’t stand the space between.

And even after the world goes still, after the stuttered breaths give way to silence and the hum of the TV creeps back in, you keep touching him. Stroking his hair, brushing sweat from his brow, pressing soft, open-mouthed kisses anywhere your mouth can reach.

And in the hush that follows, you murmur things you’ve never said aloud. Not to anyone.

Things too raw for daylight.

Things meant only for him. … You never ask him to stay.

Not when he wakes beside you the next morning, bare-chested, sleep-warm, hair sticking up in a dozen directions. Not when he wanders into your kitchen wearing nothing but rumpled boxers, whisking eggs for French toast like it’s an inside joke you’ve shared forever.

Not when you start leaving the sugar bowl out because that’s how he takes his coffee: one teaspoon, no milk. Not when you slip a second toothbrush into the cup by the sink, bristles leaning together like they’ve been kissing too.  

He never asks. You never offer. … You learn the little things first.

That he hums when he cooks, usually something dumb from the radio, sometimes dumber jingles from the worst commercials. That he wipes down your counters when he thinks you’re not looking. That he folds your laundry better than you do, big hands careful with worn-out cotton and delicate lace. It gets to you, the way he touches your things like they matter.

And sometimes, you catch him staring again.

Only now, you don’t look away.  

You’ll be across the room, pretending to read, eyes dragging over the same sentence for the fifth time because you can feel his gaze on you. He’ll be leaning in the doorway with his arms crossed, wearing that stupid smug expression he pulls when he knows exactly what he’s doing.

“Seriously, Harrington,” you mutter, eyes on the page. “Take a picture.”

He doesn’t blink. “I’m good. Like this view better."

You roll your eyes and throw a sock at his face. He catches it one-handed, smug.

Then he moves.

Three steps. That’s all it takes.

Three steps until your back’s against the mattress, his weight pressing you down, mouth dragging hot across your collarbone. His hands sneak under your shirt, warm palms sliding up your ribs. His lips chase yours like it’s a promise he’s been dying to keep.

“You’re annoying,” you whisper, breath hitching as he nips at your neck.

He grins into your skin. “Yeah? You gonna kick me out, then?”

You don’t.

You kind of never do. … The days bleed together after that.  

A quick stop at his house to grab spare clothes turns into a silent pause in front of his dresser. His fingers hover over a framed photo: faces you don’t know, smiles frozen mid-laugh.

He doesn’t explain. You don’t ask. You just wait by the door until he turns and threads his fingers through yours.

He doesn’t let go the whole ride back.

A grocery run on day three turns into a dumb argument in the pasta aisle. You’re ranting about canned tomatoes; he’s trailing behind you like a sulking toddler, forearms slung across the cart handle, sneaking cookies into the basket when you’re not looking.

You scowl at checkout. He grins.

“You’re gonna thank me later,” he says.

You do.

First with a mouthful of chocolate and a grudging laugh.

Then again, ten minutes later, when your 'thank-you's come in the shape of his name and a fistful of his hair between your thighs. … Eventually, the domestic stops feeling borrowed.

It starts to feel owned.  

You vacuum, he sweeps. You cook, he washes up. He steals bites of dinner while it’s still sizzling and you smack him with a spatula, pretending to be mad.

He says, “Ow,” even when it doesn’t hurt. You say, “Asshole,” even when it’s not true.

On the fourth night, you both sit cross-legged on the living room floor, scrubbing blood out of the couch cushions with baking soda and half-assed prayers.

He’s watching you. Again.   

You glance up. "What?"

He shrugs, smiling a little. “Nothing.”

“Steve.”

“I just…” He hesitates. Looks down. “I like this.”

You raise a brow. “Cleaning your blood out of my furniture?”

He shuffles forward, bringing his cushion closer to yours.

“Yeah,” he says.

But it’s not what he means.

You both know that. … The sex changes, too.

In the mornings, it’s quiet. Slow. All languid stretches and sleep-warm skin, coaxing sighs from your lips as the sun peeks through the blinds.

But at night? He’s something else entirely.

He fucks you like he needs it to survive. Like you’re his last breath. Gripping your thighs, your hips—holding you open, holding you still, driving into you like he’s trying to memorize the shape of you forever.

And as the bruises fade, so does his hesitation. 

He knows you now.

Knows what makes you beg, what makes you break. Where to bite, where to suck, where to press until your voice is raw and your nails leave crescent moons down his spine.

One night, he pins your wrists above your head, breath ragged.

“Say it,” he murmurs, grinding deep. “Tell me who makes you feel like this.”

You break on his name.

He swallows the sound with his mouth and doesn’t stop until your thighs are shaking.

And afterward, he stays.

Inside you. Around you.

He never pulls away first. … Not all nights are easy.

Some nights, you wake alone.

You find him in the kitchen, framed by the glow of the open fridge. The light catches the tired slope of his shoulders, the untouched glass of water going warm in his hand.    

You don’t ask. Just step in behind him, press your cheek between his shoulder blades, and wrap your arms tight around his waist.

He breathes out. Sets the glass down. Closes the fridge.

When he turns, he doesn’t speak. Just lets you hold him.

Lets you guide him back to bed. … Your mornings are different now.  

You wake in shirts that smell like him. Brush your teeth while he showers, fog curling across the mirror. He laughs at something stupid from behind the curtain, and you laugh back, still half-asleep.

It all happens so slowly you almost miss it.

The toothbrush that isn’t yours. The second pillow with its permanent dent. The pair of shoes you stop tripping over by the door because you’ve learned to walk around them.

He’s etched himself into your life in the smallest of ways. Fit through the cracks with warm hands and boyish grins and quiet looks in the daylight.

Like maybe he was meant to be here all along. … Somewhere between day seven and eight, you stop keeping count. 

Because every morning, you tell yourself he’ll probably leave soon.

And every night, he gives you another reason to believe he won’t. … Like tonight.

You’re wrapped around each other, skin still damp with heat, covers shoved somewhere near the foot of the bed. His hand rests on your back, fingers splayed. Yours curls against his chest, cheek pressed to the slow, steady rhythm behind his ribs.

It would be so easy to stay here.

To let the quiet stretch. To pretend the heaviness in your chest is just exhaustion, not the weight you've been carrying since the night you dragged his bleeding body across your living room. Since you sat awake beside him, watching every shallow breath, waiting for the next one to come.

But the question’s been sitting on your chest for days now. And with the weight of him beside you, it presses too hard to ignore.

“Why’d you do it?”

He doesn’t answer right away, and you wonder if he’s already fallen asleep. But then his chest rises under your cheek—a careful, deliberate breath.

“…Do what?”  

“The lake,” you murmur. “You jumped in first. Why?”

He’s quiet for a beat too long. You glance up to find the tight underside of his jaw, his eyes fixed on the ceiling.

“I don’t know,” he sighs, dragging a hand through his hair. “Someone had to go. And I was the best swimmer, so. Didn’t really have to think about it.”

And you believe him. It’s the part that hurts the most.

That he didn’t have to think. That throwing himself in came as naturally as breathing.

Because somewhere along the way, Steve Harrington decided that his pain was worth less than everyone else's.

You shift closer, hooking your chin on his shoulder. His thumb draws slow, thoughtful circles against your spine.

“Steve,” you say quietly. “You know it’s not about being a hero, right? You don’t have to keep throwing yourself in front of everything just to prove yourself.”

His hand stills.

“I’m not.”  

“Not what?”

“A hero. I’m not.” He lets out a bitter huff, eyes looking at something past the ceiling. “I was… just kind of a selfish asshole for a long time. Didn’t care about much. Or anyone. And even after I tried to fix it, it just—it never felt like enough. Still doesn’t.”

You watch him, the weight of his words like pressing down on a bruise.

“So what, you jump into lakes now to make up for it?”

He almost smiles. “Kinda. Yeah.”

Then, quieter:

“I don’t know, it’s like, if I’m not the one stepping up, then… what’s the point, you know? What the hell am I even good for?”

Your heart aches. Because god, how long has he carried that? How many times has he thrown himself in just to keep from drowning?

You see it then, the fracture that runs through him. Spiderwebbed across everything he is, everything he was. A wound so old it’s fused to him. Clotted over, never cleaned.  

The weight he carries isn’t something he puts on; it’s something that grew with him.

Years of being told he wasn’t enough. Not smart enough. Not serious enough. Just the boy with the car, the smile, the house too big for how small it made him feel. 

That kind of doubt doesn’t heal. It burrows deep.

Sinks its teeth in. Festers.   

Until guilt turns into remorse,

Remorse turns into habit,

And habit drags on as penance.

So he made himself useful.

Built his worth out of protection. Of stepping up, stepping in, taking the hit before anyone else could.

Diving first. Bleeding first.

Hurt first. Hurt worst. Hurt instead.

That’s where his value lives. Not in being loved, but in being needed.

You lift yourself up until you're eye to eye, cupping his face, thumbs brushing the tops of his cheeks.  

“You’re for you, Steve.” 

He blinks, brows knitting.

“You don’t have to earn it. Being loved. Being cared for. That’s not something you have to prove.”

His eyes search yours, like he’s trying to make sense of the words.

Then, slowly, his shoulders ease. He cups the back of your neck, drawing you in. His exhale against your lips sounds like a weight being untethered.

You stay like that for a while, breathing together, fingers laced at his chest.

Eventually, he sleeps.

You don’t.

You stay awake, tracing the lines of his face in the dark. The peace that sleep gives him. The stillness that never lasts.   

You watch as his brow smooths. As his lips part. As his lashes flutter once, then settle into stillness.

You stay up.  

Because someone has to. … You get used to the quiet.

Used to Steve padding around the house in socks, humming half a tune under his breath.

To the way he opens every cupboard before finding the cereal that’s been in the same spot for days.

To the way he claims half your couch, half your bed, half your toothpaste.

You get used to someone else’s heartbeat in your space.

So when the knocking starts—three sharp raps that rattle the wood—it takes you both by surprise.

Steve’s already halfway to the door when you follow, tugging your sweatshirt over your head.

You’ve barely turned the knob before the door bursts open.

“Guess who’s officially un-grounded and here to collect her idiot boy? Oh, and look—I brought backup!”

Robin barrels in first, followed by two figures: a curly-haired kid drowning in a bright yellow baseball cap, and behind him, a taller shape in black denim and leather. Eddie Munson, wearing that same smug grin you remember vaguely from high school.

You’ve heard about them, of course—Steve’s strange little apocalypse crew—but hearing about it is one thing, seeing it is another.

“He’s alive!” Robin crows, flinging her arms around Steve.

“Took you long enough,” he mutters into her shoulder.

“Uh, excuse me. Your fault,” she shoots back, jabbing a finger in his chest. “Grounded, remember?” Then she turns to you, eyes sharp with curiosity. “So? How much trouble was he?”   

You glance over at Steve. He’s already looking back, mouth tugging at the corner like he’s daring you to say something first. There’s a kaleidoscope of memory that flashes between you in the space of a blink.

You look back at Robin and shrug, casual as ever. “Not much. He folds my laundry now.”

Robin gasps. Eddie lets out a low whistle.

“Well, shit,” he drawls. “Steve Harrington, domesticated. Didn’t think I’d live to see the day.”

Steve rolls his eyes. “You guys are hilarious.”

But his ears are pink by the time you close the door. …

After a round of burnt grilled cheeses, the kitchen’s a mess of crumbs and chatter.

Robin perches on a stool, slurping tomato soup straight from the pot. Eddie’s straddling a chair backwards, drumming on the counter. Dustin paces, orchestrating what sounds like a full-scale military operation using a butter knife and a salt shaker. 

“—I’m saying if we shift the rendezvous point closer to the treeline, we can cut our response time in half. Minimum.”

Steve leans against the fridge, nodding like he’s catching every third word.

You’re at the sink, rinsing dishes, the voices behind you fading into a comfortable hum—until Dustin steps in beside you, tone low and careful.

“So… he’s okay to come back now, right?

You glance over your shoulder.

Steve’s got his shirt hiked up for Robin and Eddie to see, scars catching the kitchen light—pale and raised, still tender from where you pulled out the last stitch two days ago. Robin wrinkles her nose, groaning about how she's lost her appetite.

You turn back to Dustin. “I mean, no fever, no infection. Doesn’t seem to be actively dying. So yeah, I’d say he’s good.”

Dustin beams. “Awesome.”

You hesitate. Then, before you can stop yourself:

“Actually… I was thinking I could come with you guys this time.”

The room goes still.

Robin lowers her spoon. Eddie looks up. Even the sink seems to hush.

Steve’s voice breaks the quiet.

“No.”

You turn, incredulous. “Excuse me?”

“No way,” he says, pushing off the fridge, crossing the kitchen with that particular brand of determined worry you’ve come to recognize. “You’re not going.”

You blink at him like, Seriously?

He raises his brows like, Try me. 

You sigh, turning off the water. “I wouldn’t be going in. Just close enough to help. You know, in case someone ends up bleeding to death again?” You shoot him a pointed look.

He ignores it, jaw working like he’s gearing up to argue again. But Dustin cuts in.

“Wait, that’s actually kind of genius,” he mutters thoughtfully. “You could be our medic. Like—Eddie, dude, she could be like our cleric!”

You frown. “Our what now?”

“D&D thing,” Eddie smirks. “Healing spells. Keeps the rest of us idiots alive.”

You laugh softly. “Sure. Okay. Cleric.”

But Steve isn’t laughing.

“Wait, just—hang on,” he steps forward, catching your wrist. “Can I talk to you for a second?” … The hallway is narrow and dim, lit only by the slant of light spilling in from the kitchen.

You lean against the wall, arms crossed, watching him pace three slow steps before stopping, running both hands through his hair.      

He doesn’t look at you. Doesn’t speak.

You wait.

Finally, quietly: “You can’t come with us.”

You narrow your eyes. “You’re not the boss of me.”

“I mean it.” His voice is low. Firm. But it’s not angry. Not that sharp, flinty tone you remember from high school, when he used to wield confidence like armor. No, this is something else.

Fear.

You tilt your head, voice softening. “Steve…”

He exhales through his nose, more of a tremor than a breath. “You heard what it’s like down there. You saw what happened last time.”

“I did. That’s why I’ve decided to go.”

His eyes snap to yours, incredulous. “And you didn’t think to talk to me about it before?”

“Why? So you could freak out and tell me no?”

“I’m not—” He cuts himself off, jaw flexing. “I just can’t ask you to risk that. It’s not fair.”

“You’re not asking,” you say quietly. “I’m offering.” 

For a moment, neither of you moves. He stares at you like he’s searching for something—some argument, some loophole that’ll make you stay here while he walks back into hell. Like if he keep fighting back, maybe he won’t have to admit what this really is.

But when he speaks, his voice isn’t tense anymore. It just trembles.  

“I can’t—I can’t lose you in there. You get that? I can’t. I just…” His eyes flicker away, toward the shadowed doorway behind you. He swallows hard.

“...I just got you.”

The quiet stretches. You gaze at him, heart heavy.

His shoulders are tense when you reach for his hand. His fingers twitch in yours, like he’s ready to pull away—but he doesn’t. He never does.

“Steve,” you start gently. “I know you’re scared. I am too. But I can’t just sit here and wait while you...” you take a breath, squeezing his hand. “If there’s a chance I can help, I’m taking it.”   

He looks down at your joined hands, your fingers laced tight. His thumb drags slow, absent circles against your skin—once, twice, like he’s trying to memorize the feel of it. The fight drains out of him with a sigh that sounds too big for his chest.

He steps forward wordlessly, and pulls you into his arms. His chin drops to the top of your head. You press your cheek to his chest, feeling the wild rhythm of his heart start to slow.

“Fine,” he murmurs. “But you’re staying up here. Radio only. And you’re not going anywhere near the gate, you hear me?”

You smile into his shirt. “Deal.” … It’s almost 3 p.m. when he stirs.

The sunlight’s lazy this time of day, all thick and golden, caught in the slow spin of dust motes above the coffee table. The air smells like coffee and the lavender candle you lit this morning. You’re curled sideways on the couch, a book open but long forgotten on your chest.

“Jesus,” comes a voice beside you, rough with sleep. “How long was I out?”

You smile, already watching. “Couple hours.”  

He squints at the light. “You let me nap that long?”

“You needed it.”

Steve rolls up from where he was buried in the couch, a soft pillow line stamped across his cheek. His hair’s flattened on one side and sticking up in the back. You reach out and comb your fingers through the mess. It fluffs up worse for it, but he sighs and leans into your hand anyway.

He trades the throw pillow for your stomach, draping a heavy arm across your waist. You rest your palm on his shoulder, thumb tracing the ridge of his collarbone.

The house hums around you: the low buzz of the fridge, the steady tick of the clock, the soft creak of settling wood. It’s a silence that no longer feels hollow.

You let it breathe.  

It’s been three weeks.

Three weeks since you stood on the other side of a collapsing gate, heart in your throat, waiting for their silhouettes to break through the mist. 

Three weeks since the air finally stilled, the ground stopped shaking, and the last portal sealed itself shut behind Eddie, behind Robin, behind all of them.

Three weeks since you checked every pulse, cleaned every wound, counted every head, and realized, miraculously, that no one was missing.

That everyone made it out. Alive. Together.

Three weeks since Steve stumbled out of the wreckage and into your arms and didn’t let go.

The bruises have faded since then. The stitches dissolved. The nightmares are fewer now, further between.   

And Steve hasn’t left. Not once.

You're not sure when it stopped being temporary. When duffel bags became dresser drawers, when his shaving cream started living on your bathroom counter, next to the ceramic dish that holds your rings. When the dent in your couch, the dip in your pillow, stopped feeling like borrowed space and started feeling like home.

He still has his edges, the instinct to fix, to shield, to throw himself in front of the next disaster before it happens. But you’ve learned how to slow him down. To be the hand that pulls him back before he burns himself out.

And he’s learning to let you.

You’re halfway lost in that thought when he pokes your side.

“Hey,” he murmurs. “You okay?”

You hum. “Just thinking.”

“Uh oh,” he teases, voice still scratchy with sleep.

You smile, ruffling his hair. He groans and nips playfully at your stomach. When your laughter settles, you say it, quietly:

“I was just… thinking about what you said.”

He stills, blinking up at you. “Yeah? What’d I say now?”

“At the gate.”

That’s all you have to say. You both remember.

The roar, the smoke, the sting of blood and dirt. The ground giving out beneath you when he finally made it out—only to tell you he had to go back. One last time. To help the others out. To step into the jaws of a place that wanted to claim him for good.

I know! I know! Just—I need to tell you something. No, I know, just listen—

You remember the chaos closing in, the sky fractured by fire and screaming metal, and his hands—steady, impossibly steady—as he caught your face. His voice cracking on the words:

I love you. I need you to know that, okay? I love you.

You stare at the book laying on your chest, swallowing hard. “I never said it back.”

Steve looks at you for a long moment.

Then, softly: “Yeah, you did.”

“When?”

He smiles, tracing a quiet pattern along your waist.

“Not out loud. But you did.”

You think back.

To the tremor in your hands as you let his fingers slip away. The hitch in your breath when the walkie crackled with his voice. To how tightly you held on when he staggered out with the others, bruised and shaking and breathing, and realized you could finally breathe too.

Every heartbeat since has felt like a promise.

Maybe words would’ve failed then. Maybe he heard it in all the ways you refused to let go.

Your fingers find his jaw.

“Still,” you whisper. “I want to say it now.”

He tilts his head, waiting.

And you do.

Softly, firmly, the words falling easy like they’d been waiting inside you all along.

And when he says it back, you feel it in your chest long before you hear it. … The house is still too small. The front door still sticks when it rains. The couch still carries the faint stain from that first night.

But it’s home.

More than it ever was. More than it ever could’ve been without him.

The proof is everywhere: his Ray-Bans next to your keys, a battered boombox on your plant windowsill, the Polaroid Robin took where he’s smiling at you instead of the camera.

Some nights still weigh heavy on him. When even rest won’t stay kind.

But on those nights, he finds you. He always will.

And somewhere between the grocery runs and movie marathons, between loud songs in the kitchen and quiet kisses before bed, it stopped feeling like borrowed time.

It’s just time, now.

Yours.

Together. … Robin once told you that you get off on fixing people.

She meant hearts. You meant bones.

Maybe she was right.  

But maybe that’s not such a bad thing.

You've named it something else now, anyway. …

epilogue

You stretch, set the book aside, and head for the kitchen.

You’ve got prep to do for night.

Steve moves in behind you, hair still rumpled, sleeves pushed to his elbows. He leans his hip against the counter, flipping through the Player’s Handbook Dustin left last week, brow furrowed like he’s cramming for a test.

“I swear,” he mutters, squinting, “you need a math degree to play this game.”

You laugh, laying a neat row of apple slices beside a bowl of pretzel sticks and M&Ms—fuel for the chaos to come. “You’ll live.”

“Not if Eddie's dragon eats me.”

“Well, maybe you should listen to your cleric tonight, then.”

He grins, stealing a slice from the tray, then slides closer until he’s flush against you. His hips trap you against the counter, chest warm against your back. He leans into the crook of your neck, lips grazing your ear.

“You know it's kinda hot when you boss me around, right?”

Before you can roll your eyes, he catches you by the hips and spins you around, grin breaking wide and easy. You love how it softens his face, how it creases the corners of his eyes.

Soon, the party will be here—arms full of sodas, dice clattering in boxes, voices overlapping in familiar chaos. The house will fill with laughter, with the easy rhythm of shared lives.

But for now, it’s just him.

Rumpled hair. Soft smile. Apple-sweet kisses and the honey-gold hush of afternoon light. And the sun keeps pouring in.   

[yoyokslut]

i miss superman summer

i miss watching superman for the first time

i miss superman

[maiamore]

Something feels right about Clark Kent loosing his virginity on the Kent Farm when he just got back from his first internship in the city, in the fall — slipping out and fucking you right in the middle of his family's cornfield.

Quiet corner between the tall, privacy of swaying greens, he'd have his pants shoved barely halfway down his thick thighs, wincing bullying his cock into your impossibly tight cunt.

G—osh sweet girl…open up f'me — e-easy…

He swears he sees stars at the very first time you pulse around him, raw — feeling every sensation, velvety tight walls as he humps you silly & uncoordinated on the softer patch of hays in the secluded corner.

What's probably made it one of the best moments and memories of his life was how you'd let him cum in you, hard and throbbing. Of course, he's apologetic about finishing far too quickly, so he spends the next few hours folding your knees to your chest to fuck you.

By the end of it, he'd be a blubbering mess, tears pricking the corner of his eyes from overstimulation. You're too fucked out to notice how loud and obscene the snap of his pelvis into your sticky thighs were with how fast he was going.

M-My gosh, y're…so…so pretty. Wanna c-cum in you…f'rever.

All while he's pounding into you, hips a mind of its own, even when he's so damn spent — he'd die a happy man, with your pussy milking his cock dry.

[mulderscully]

SUPERMAN 🍑 (2025) dir. James Gunn

[clarkdavid2025]

DAVID CORENSWET as SCOTT TWISTERS (2024)

[mcumorningstar]

18+ p in v sex, infidelity

jack castello is on my mind today....

being the vixen that tempts married men and scandalises their wives, the sex symbol that shakes up the studio and rattles snooty film critics. it being all fun and games until jack stepped onto the lot.

jack castello, the studio's latest scouted talent, making his way through the lot for his initial fittings. a process you were all too familiar with, the tape measures and minimal clothing mocking every minor blemish and extra helping of dessert.

jack, having leading man written all over his 6'4 and devastating handsome self, following you from hallway to set to cafeteria with the unending questions of an energetic five year old. aware of your reputation but focusing on your success.

he doesn't care about the rumours, even the truth of your salacious lifestyle. he cares about movies. cares enough that he accepts a party invitation from icky henry wilson.

the bounding puppy act continues even after he lands the role of his dreams, but he's still only second on the call sheet. second only to you, his femme fatale counterpart.

and so when he spots you at henry wilson's party, he raises an eager, slightly desperate wave. his wide eyes and polite smile assessing the debauchery of a wilson party.

lines of cocaine on the coffee table, fizzing pills in cocktail glasses, popped bottles of champagne spraying onto the carpet, cigarette smoke pilfering to the ceiling, half-naked waiters doubling as escort entertainment

grinning when you come to his rescue. dragging him away from a very forward older woman, maybe a wife of a studio big wig, with her hand around his tie. taking him to a balcony overlooking the party and shooing the half-naked couple locking lips

talking all night as the party grows bigger and bigger. staying in your own world on that barricaded balcony. throwing back glasses of champagne and whiskey.

"is it true you fucked avis amberg?" smoke pilfered from your lips, rouge staining the filter of your cigarette as ash flittered to the flagstones. jack floundered with lifted brows and parted lips, trembling for a diplomatic response. anything other than 'yes, she hired my escorting services when i was a nobody.'

"you can lie all you want jack but i know all about that little dreamland schtick."

you lifted your cigarette as a peace offering and jack accepted it with a soft scoff. his chest inflated with the deep drag of the cigarette, the smoke exhaling through his nose.

"she didn't do this for me if that's what you're thinking."

"she's married to the head of the studio."

"who's surrounded by naked women right now" jack nodded over the balcony. the studio head drunk and menage-ing openly with multiple hired women. dropping the finished cigarette to his feet, squashing it out with the toe of his oxfords, "she got me in front of the casting director, that's all."

"that's all?" your years in hollywood pulled a cynical laugh from you, "you don't know the first thing about this industry, do ya jack?"

his expression twisted at your skepticism.

"nothing is for free, jack. must've been one hell of a fuck."

you were lounging on a cushioned sun-bed. your clutch and gloves abandoned on the white cloth table, heels kicked to the wayside.

"and you'd know all about that?"

you smirked over your shoulder. "a lady never tells.. but you know i'm no lady, right?"

jack castello, wearing a wedding band but never talking about his wife. and nothing in hollywood is free. the cost of long days and night shoots, of scripted kisses and unscripted flirting, of casual touches and newfound nicknames baring down.

"am i a good actor, angel?" jack was a few glasses of champagne deep, a smoking cigarette wagging between his fingers as his hands fly. angel was an affectionately twisted nickname for your seductress reputation.

his cheeks are rosy and a solitary curl falls from its perfectly slick back style. champagne sloshing up the sleeve of his white suit jacket.

"you're the leading man in a hollywood picture, jack. your face is on billboards."

"but am i good?" he stopped on the spot, puppy eyes pleading.

"you really think avis amberg would stick her neck on the line for an am-dram prostitute? even if it was one hell of a fuck?"

jack blinked at you. your legs crossed on the edge of the table, your dress riding up your thighs.

standing and striding towards him until you're chest to chest. "you're starring opposite me, jack. of course you're good."

a giddy smile spreads across his cheeks, dimples popping and perfect teeth flashing. avis amberg was just a woman and jack was pure man.

"that means a lot. coming from you."

"i bet it does."

the cold stone of the balcony wall sent a chill down your spine, your back scraping up and down against it. your backless dress pooled around your waist.

jack's large palm cupping your neck, the cold sting of his wedding ring egging you on. his hips fucking up into you with practiced ease. his mouth muffling your moans even more than the jazz music inside. the party raged on inside, the balcony doors barred only by a deck chair.

sweat beaded at your temples. soft slaps of skin masked by your unshed clothes. your fingers clawed at his perfectly combed hair, your other hand gripping his bulging bicep. thick arms holding you up like a marionette.

jack grunted and groaned, his brows knitted, pistoning his hips into your wet warm hole. "ah jack baby please, need it." he liked when you said his name, his hands pawing at your naked skin. his face buried in your collarbone.

open mouthed kisses wetting your skin. his cock hitting deep sensitive spots inside you. your rouge lipstick staining the collar of his shirt, tainting his skin and the ruining his jacket.

the flash of cameras is nothing new to you, the vixen of hollywood. but jack conceals you with his body. paps hanging out of windows above you, crashing the party for the latest scoop.

thank god for avis amberg. jack is one hell of an actor and one hell of a fuck. too bad the world had to find out on the front page but scandal was nothing new to you.

[mcumorningstar]

i'm trying to write front page spread part three and no matter how many times i edit and rewrite ALL the smut is reading like... his cock blah blah blah your pussy blah blah blah sex sex sexy sex blah-dy blah cum WHO HEXED ME I CAN'T POST THIS SHIT

[mcumorningstar]

heyy i know last time it took you three weeks and im not here to pressure you or anything BUT i was wondering if you had time to write for another part of front page spread?

lotsss of luv and thanks again for this piece of art!

first of all thank you its such a compliment that you’re asking for it!! i’m chipping away at it but i’m so busy at the moment idk when it will be done !

i can tag you when i post it if you’re not already on the taglist so you don’t miss it 💞

[masongooning]

DAVID CORENSWET as “Jack Castello” in Hollywood (1x04)

[mcumorningstar]

are you taking tom welling Clark Kent recs… I have an idea heh.

i’m slowly getting through some of my drafts so it might take a hot sec but yes give me ideas!!!!!

[llillacwine]

It's hard to be at a party when I feel like an open wound.

Chapter II. series masterlist

summary: It'd been three weeks since you slept with Clark, and it wasn't lost on anyone at the Daily Planet that there was a certain kind of tension in the bullpen now. An obvious break in pattern of Clark's endearing routine of bringing you a coffee every morning, and an even more palpable absence of Clark himself around the office. It was whispered through the grapevine that he told Perry he'd finish off his last articles of the season at home, citing some lame excuse of a bout of flu. But, you knew better—everyone, in fact, knew better: Clark Kent didn't get sick (lovesick, maybe, Cat crooned, still rather unwavering in her intuition). Whatever. You didn't have the stomach to think too much on it, not with how much it had been tangled up in knots recently. It all came to a miserable, nauseating head at Cat Grant's New Year's Eve party: a gnawing hollowness where Clark should be and a certain, mortifying nausea in your belly, before Lois Lane (sensible, level-headed, never misses a trick) asked the question of the hour: when the fuck was your last period?

word count: 5.1k (a shorter one this time, lol, but very important!)

chapter warnings: emetophobia (mentions of throwing up), talks of condoms/the pill, strong language, pregnancy, discussions of abortions, etc.

Cat Grant’s apartment was exactly how you expected Cat Grant’s apartment to look. The penthouse of a high-rise allotment building in the nicer part of Metropolis—floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the city’s impressive skyline, a faux-leopard chaise longue (where two of her college friends were currently exchanging spit), and a drinks trolley that looked like it was taken directly from the set of a Bond film (circa Sean Connery, duh). A thin fog of cigarette smoke was wafting from the corner where a few of the more cliché reporters from the Planet were existentially debating the ‘time-is-a-construct’ parley of whether or not we should even celebrate New Year’s. Cat’s speakers were blaring shitty early 2000s music. The whole place smelled of Farah Fawcett hairspray. 

And you felt sick to your stomach.

“Are you sure it’s not something you ate?” Lois nursed a glass of Malbec and a furrowed expression. “Like, bad turkey over Christmas or something.”

“Lois, I’m single and pushing thirty. I ate noodles for Christmas,” you said dryly.

Just talking about food lurched your stomach, nausea pulsing against your temples, sternum, and your churning stomach. Against your better judgement, you took a shallow sig of the Metropolitan Cat had excitedly handed you upon entry to her gaudy place.

Lois wrinkled her nose. “Right, well, maybe you’re just hungover. Or…” she eyed a kitsch, satirical poster of James Dean in a bedazzled cowboy hat, “allergic to Cat’s decor.”

“Entirely possible,” you muttered bitterly, gaze flitting over to where your hostess was posing for a selfie with Jimmy, her cranberry-red lips smacking against his rosy cheek. 

“It’s like a 90s porno in here,” Lois added, gently jabbing in the ribs—a lighthearted attempt at cheering you up, maybe, and distracting you from the horrible knots in your belly.

You tried to laugh, but your insides turned again, an almost sucker-punching ache that made your free hand preemptively cover your mouth. Feeling suddenly flushed-hot and unwell, you exhaled shakily through your sensitive nose. Maybe it was the sweet vermouth, or the brandy. Maybe it was the sushi platter next to your jutted hip on the refreshment’s table—ammonia-like and briney. Maybe it was just you—an overwhelming amount of noise, people, and life for someone who’d spent the last three weeks doing everything possible to avoid feeling any of it.

“Hey,” Lois said, tone softening, fingers splaying over the small of your back, “you okay, Penny?” 

You nodded, despite the sweat gathering at your hairline. “Yeah. Yeah, m’just—hot. S’all. Cat’s parties are like the ninth circle of hell.”

“More like the third,” she snorted into her wine glass. 

Managing a weak smile—because of course Lois Lane had read Dante’s Inferno—you stared miserably at the olive bobbing in your drink. The lights blurred in your periphery and the news coverage on Cat’s glitzy, flatscreen television felt adrift in a blur of laughter, heavy bass, and the couple who had been making-out on the loveseat now arguing. 

You should’ve stayed home. 

“He’s not here, you know,” hummed Lois pointedly.

Delirious, you blinked at her sluggishly. “Huh?”

“Clark. If he’s why you’re so on edge, he’s not here. Not for a lack of Cat trying, but—”

“That’s not why—I wasn’t—” Flustered, you felt your nausea clash belligerently with your own shame, exacting it onto Lois with a heated glare.

You knew Clark wasn’t here. Clark hadn’t been here since that night three weeks ago. He had barely shown his face for work, reportedly telling Perry that he’d work on his final article of the year from home after coming down with a bout of flu. Which, you and everyone else at the bullpen knew, was a load of bollocks. Clark didn’t get sick. (Lovesick, maybe, Cat mused after a third day of stark absence). He may as well have had lungs of steel the way he never seemed to catch whatever strain of nasty cough, tickly throat, or chills were cascading its virulent way through the office. No, Clark didn’t come into work because of you. So, it hadn’t been very farfetched when you reluctantly agreed to Cat’s insistence of you attending her New Year’s Eve party under your credible assumption that Clark wouldn’t be there. 

“Well,” you mumbled sullenly at your drink, “why would he be? It’s not like he drinks.”

Lois slanted you an almost motherly look of disapproval. “You don’t have to drink to go to parties, and Clark never misses a party. He’s like a golden retriever.”

“Well,” you said after a beat of staring at the flickering skyline—an unfathomable stretch of premature fireworks and glittery silhouettes heading into nightclubs, “I guess even golden retrievers learn to stay put eventually.”

After all, there weren't many half-lovers that you didn’t kick just to see if they’d come crawling back. You supposed all men were all doglike in nature. 

“You’re really going to do this, huh? You’re really going to pretend it doesn’t bother you?” 

You raised an aloof shoulder. “It doesn’t.”

But you felt his absence profoundly in your bones. A sore lack of perfect coffee in the morning, hand-delivered to the rattan coaster on your desk by Clark routinely. A hollowness in your ribs put there by a lack of his laughter and polite awkwardness, the gentlemanly gestures of pulling out chairs and reaching mugs from the highest shelf in the breakroom. It rang palpably in the spaces that Clark Kent used to easily fill. 

Metropolis felt lonelier without him in it.

Lois’s expression didn’t falter. “You do realise that you really hurt him, don’t you? And I’m not saying this to be cruel or to pick sides—I’ll always defend you, no matter what. But Clark…”

You couldn’t stomach it. You wouldn’t hear another person waxing poetry about Clark Kent’s pure of heart nature or how badly he was into you before you fucked everything up. Jimmy had done that enough—Hell, even Steve gave you shit for it, likening you to some seductive Grinch that lured Clark to your apartment and ruined Christmas for him (of course, you didn’t let that one upset you half as much as Jimmy’s heartfelt tirades).

You knew Clark was a good guy. Of course, you knew. You wouldn’t have slept with him otherwise. It wasn’t exactly a habit you had a penchant for—sleeping with coworkers. Something about not shitting where you eat always sprung to mind whenever the opportunity arose. Clark was different, though, and you knew that as well as anyone else at the Planet. But, that night, he had been some kind of low-hanging fruit that you couldn’t deny yourself. And maybe you were ill-fated, maybe you were completely cruel and entirely selfish, but you wanted him, and you had him, and you were sick of being told about how differently you should’ve handled things—handled him. If one more person lectured you about the tenderness of Clark Kent’s heart, or how sensitive of a guy he was, you might scream in their faces.

Didn’t they realise you were guilty enough about it as it was?

Just the thought of succumbing to another ritual of shame made your guts churn again, and before you knew it, you were sprinting to Cat Grant’s bathroom and knelt on a fuzzy-pink mat in front of her toilet, cradling your abdomen. You barely made it there before you were retching, the temples of your skull throbbing at the garish pink of the tiles.

All you could think about was Clark as your insides seemed to reject your own guilt. 

“Oh, honey,” Cat. A hand on your curved spine. The sound of a running faucet, a glass underneath it—Lois, maybe? “That was an Olympic-level sprint. Have you ever considered competing professionally?”

“Please,” you croaked, “don’t try and make me laugh. I might throw up my spleen.”

Lois knelt next to you a breath later, handing you a glass of water remorsefully. “You’re really selling the ‘I’m fine’ thing, by the way.” 

“Shut up.”

Cat was at your other side, caressing circles on your back with a surprising tenderness for a woman whose toilet you just maimed. “Is it alcohol poisoning, babe? I’m not exactly the best at measuring out cocktails.”

“I had one glass,” you murmured forlornly.

“Barely,” scoffed Lois, draping her arm over her bent knees, “you had one sip.”

“Food poisoning, then?” suggested Cat, her fresh manicure raking against the sweaty nape of your neck.

“I haven’t really had much appetite,” you admitted weakly.

The three of you lingered in the glaring misery of it all. The thud of bass pulsing under your bruised knees, the strangling smell of Cat’s perfume and your own stomach acid, a quiet judgement settling in the very marrow of you.

And then, Lois said it.

“When was your last period?”

Cat hiccuped. “Oh!”

You blanched, suddenly defensive. “What? No. Don’t even—”

Lois raised the hand that wasn’t checking your temperature in surrender. “Just asking.”

“Lois.”

“What?” she said a little too innocently. “It’s a valid question. You’re nauseous, you’ve had no appetite, and you haven’t asked me for a pad in ages, even though you always forget to have one on you.”

“That’s a gross exaggeration.”

“Is it?”

It wasn’t. “I hate you, Lane.”

“Answer the question, babe,” said Cat sympathetically.

You wracked your brain—tracing the weeks through deadlines, takeout boxes, and way too many sleepless nights in the run up to holidays. Until your mind finally snagged on a date—a hot water-bottle cradled to your bloated, achy stomach; the outbreak of hard, almost cystic spots over your forehead and chin—and you felt like you could’ve rejected your heart into Cat’s toilet, too.

“Hey…” Lois’s hand went from your forehead to the curve of your jaw, a thumb on your cheekbone, “what is it? When…?” 

“November 20th.” 

Cat blinked at you behind her cat-eye glasses. “As in—the 20th of November?”

“Yes, Cat,” you seethed witheringly, “as in, the 20th of November, that November 20th. Oh my God.”

“Well,” she said to the hollow of her lap, “shit.”

Lois was softer, more level-headed—you genuinely thought she deserved to be canonised. “You should probably take a test, Penny.”

Panic clawed at your throat like bile. “No. No, it’s…It could be stress. Hormones. All of that. Right? Hey, maybe I’m menopausal!”

“Honey, you’re not even thirty,” said Lois sensibly. Okay, you take back what you said about canonisation. Saints weren’t venerated for imparting such sickening sense, were there?

“Hey, no, let’s…” Cat looked positively dishevelled, somehow even panicking more outwardly than you were, “you could be right. Stress—I read about that. Yeah! And, plus, aren’t you on the pill?”

“Of course, I’m on the pill,” you said, too-quick.

She nodded enthusiastically, dangling earrings scintillating in the overhead light of her pink bathroom. “Okay, so, it’s probably nothing! Those little things are magic. Unless you skipped any?” 

“I mean, I don’t think so?” 

Lois’s owlish stare raked between the two of you, painstakingly wary in a way only a woman with a Pulitzer could be. “They’re not 100%, you know that. You do know that, right? Both of you.”

“Well, they for sure are when you use a condom,” Cat retorted.

A beat of silence stretched between the two of you that felt human-like and physical in its scrutinising judgement. It manifested itself into tiny knives, making these hundreds of prickly wounds, scabbing over, reopening—a haemorrhage of shame. 

Cat’s doelike gaze slipped to Lois’s, mortified, then back to you. “Oh.” A whisper—but heavy. “Oh.” 

“You did use a condom, right?” Lois was looking at you as if your friendship relied on this answer. “Right, Penny?” 

You wanted the fuchsia tiles of Cat’s bathroom to swallow up, allowing you into the pinkish marble, melding into the garish décor. 

“Can we please—”

“Babe,” Cat knelt closer, perfume thick, ribbonning around your lungs, nails raking against your spine, “please tell me he at least—”

“Don’t,” you said scathingly, burying your face into your hands.

“Okay, yeah. No, you’re right. Not our business. Except,” she said haughtily, “it is, because I’m your friend, and I love you—and Clark should know better than to—”  

“I’m going to be sick again.”

Cat startled, hand leaving you. “Really?”

“No. Yes. I don’t know,” you groaned, head thudding against the wall behind you. They both frowned at you like you were the most pitiful thing they’d ever seen. It only made you feel worse. “Please, don’t look at me like that. I’m not pregnant. I can’t be…I…It’s one missed period and some bad noodles. Perry had us all working to the bone these last few weeks—you know how the end of year run gets. This all just—” you stared at your trembling hands in agony, “a huge, shitty coincidence.” 

“Oh, my love,” Cat pouted forlornly, stroking your ankle.

Lois didn’t say anything. She kept looking at you like that—as if she could already imagine you with sweat beading your forehead, a child attached to you symbiotically, careworn and stretched apart in all directions. You wanted to cry so badly that you felt it in your skin.

“It’s fine,” you insisted, wobbly, unconvincing, smearing your dewy, sniffling nose against the inside of your wrist. “I’m fine. It’s fine. Can I—” you glanced sparingly at the door, “I’ll be out in a sec, I just…need to—you know.”

“Of course, babe. Oh. I’ll make you some ginger tea, hm? And, as soon as it strikes midnight, I’m kicking the rest of this lot out. Yeah?” Cat smacked a glossy kiss against your temple, manicured fingers squeezing lovingly at your shoulder. “We love you, Penny. We’ll figure this out. You’re not alone, yeah?” 

She rushed out, tottering on incredibly high heels, and you could faintly hear her voice caterwauling over the music and the chatter telling people that the bathroom was ‘absolutely off-limits!’ Her kindness, though touching, did nothing for the feeling of being like a flayed animal that had taken over you since figuring out you were six-weeks-late. Your ribs felt splayed open and raw. As if Lois could see every, visceral inch of you. She stayed knelt, even still.

“Cat’s right, you know. You’re not alone, if you are…” Lois didn’t utter the word—she granted you that mercy. But it was palpable, and it was there, and it existed now. It couldn’t be squashed; it wasn’t some jittery black fly on your windowsill. Then, her hand touched one of your knees. “And, I know this definitely isn’t what you want to hear, but out of all the guys in the world, Clark is the best one this could possibly happen with. He’s…well, I’m sure you don’t need me to say it.”

You didn’t. You really didn’t.

“We really do love you, Pen.”

And she left you alone. Breathing through the remnants of panic, bile still tangy in your mouth, praying to whatever was out there: please, please, let this be anything else.

࿐ྂ

Snow clung to your lashes like nettling stars. The whole city was alive with love and celebrations—the air smelt distinctly like gunpowder and smoke, but you knew it was only the sulfur of scattering fireworks—but you had never felt so alone. Kitten heels clicking on the uneven, gritted pavement, each fawn-like step sending a fresh ripple of nerves along the curved arch of your spine as you kept embryonic and hunchbacked, ironically cradling your stomach. 

The white paper-bag in your coat pocket felt like a fucking slap in the face, sucker-punching you every time it rustled in the snowdrift. You’d shoved it in there as soon as you left the 24HR chemist, the sign of it glowing obscenely in your face—it felt biblically shameful. The words I have a Clear Results Pregnancy Test inside of my fur coat! may as well’ve been etched into the blotchy skin of your forehead. The white-coated pharmacist hadn’t been much help, either—plucked brow arched at you, voice cloyingly polite as she rang up your purchase.

Good luck, she told you, saccharine. Enough to give you cavities. And, from the way your teeth were desperately chattering against the bristling cold, she might as well have stripped all your enamel and left you with a mouth of rot. 

You didn’t really know what you were doing, or where you were going. You could’ve gone home, locked yourself in the private humility of your own bathroom, and stared at the stick alone. You could’ve returned to Cat’s, taken the test there with her and Lois, companionably huddled around you. But you didn’t do any of that.

You walked fifteen blocks through wet snow on New Year’s Eve to him.

Clark Kent’s apartment was a posh high-rise with floor-to-ceiling windows, not dissimilar to the layout of Cat’s. And the lights were still on. The faint glow of a flatscreen telly. A fragile sinew in your heart threaded at the thought of him sitting there alone, watching the New Year’s broadcast. Because, of course Clark Kent would watch the Times Square ball drop by himself—as the rest of you from the Planet partied away in hedonism and blissful ignorance at Cat’s penthouse. You tried to will away the image in your mind—the natural, easy smile on his face, the perfect gentleman even in the comfort of his home; not a drop of resentment in him at you all, at you, for having fun in his absence; or even a smidge of nihilism about the anxieties of a new year.

Somehow, next thing you knew, you were on his floor—outside his door. You hesitated on the welcome mat—an endearing little thing, unsurprisingly. You almost turned back twice. A lingering ache of his hands on you arrived in the dim-light of the corridor; gentle, reverent, desperate. The girls’ eyes on you in that bathroom earlier. November 20th. The way Clark looked at you like he couldn’t believe he was even allowed to. The test, now back in your hands. Is that really what you think of me? 

You knocked.

A beat. Your heart pulsed. Do you even know what you’re doing to me right now? Footfall, the lock turning—your lungs bloating. 

Clark blinked at you through the doorway, his curls mussed in the sweetest of ways, plaid pyjama-top wrinkled, glasses naturally askew. His eyes softened as if on instinct—even through the fluttering of surprise and the haunting of rejection that tinged in the slow confusion of his mouth (should he smile, should he not?). He looked—fuck, he looked exactly how you imagined he might, when you were on the pavement, considering whether this was all worth the trek. Beautiful, and vulnerable, and you tried to convince yourself that he hadn’t been thinking about you—but the immediate easing of his shoulders made you second-guess yourself.

“Hi,” Clark said quietly.

You swallowed threadily. “Hey, Clark.”

Neither of you moved. The air seemed to thicken—everything suspended, like the glittering, colourful fireworks outside his tall windows. His gaze hungrily consumed you (not a greedy kind of hunger, a starved one). He politely moved on from the tantalising shortness of your sequined dress fast, to your fur coat, to the dewiness of your lashes from the snow, and finally to the paper bag, knuckled firm in your gasp. 

You couldn’t exactly tell if it was intuition or if the paper was thin enough for him to read the label through it, but you did manage to catch the exact moment Clark realised what this was. The folding of his face, as if origami, the kind of expression that didn’t have a name or an exact emotion. Just enough to weaken your knees at the tendons, to make you spin even more than you already were.

“Can I—” your voice caught, and this all felt so humiliating and human, “can I come in?”

“Of course.” Clark stepped aside almost too-quickly, his shoulder knocking against a coat-rack. He bumbled with it, trying to catch a cascading array of herringbone and tartan, muttering apologies as you swept in like the snow outside. The warmth of his apartment engulfed you in a way you wished it didn’t. The smell of candles—achingly similar to the notes of your perfume—intermingling with an aroma of burned coffee-beans and something unmistakably Clark that got stronger after he finally finished his battle with the coat-rack (you were pretty sure it won) and sidled behind you to beckon you in further.

Your eyes were just as jumpy as you, flitting from thing to thing. The television was the most glaring, and you had been right—Clark’d been watching the New Year’s coverage, some glitzy anchor teethily grinning with a sea of people in the background.

“You were waiting for the ball to drop,” you stated.

Clark rubbed the back of his neck. “Oh, uh, yeah. ‘Couldn’t sleep.” 

You nodded, staring at the telly instead of him. “Big night for news. Perry will be buzzing.”

“Yeah,” he murmured, thoughtful, “guess it’s better with company, though.” 

That almost shattered you. Because it was so earnestly Clark. And the nasty parts of you desperately tried to convince yourself that it was manipulative—that he wanted you to feel guilty and small. But that wasn’t the kind of guy that Clark Kent was.

“I shouldn’t have come here,” you blurted out.

His brow furrowed. “You can always come here.”

“Don’t—” Too sharp. You recovered, fragile, “Don’t say things like that.” 

Clark didn’t flinch, he only nodded obediently. “All right. Then just tell me why you are here.”

Your throat swelled uncomfortably. Everything you wanted to say—everything you probably should say—felt stuck. Your mouth aggressively tasted like the peppermint mint you snagged at the chemist. But, really, what could you say? I think I’m pregnant, and I’m terrified. Or, seam-splittingly honest, You broke something open in me that night, that I don’t know how to fix. No, none of that would do. Not with Clark. Instead, you set the bag down on his granite countertop and stepped away from it, as if it were atomic. 

The two of you stared at it together. It’s the first thing you had done together since you had sex in your living room. Everything felt like it was rapidly unravelling and you couldn’t keep up.

“Okay,” he said calmly, wetting his lips as he looked at it, then you, then it. “If it’s what I think it is—”

“It is.” Desperation trembled at you—a frantic sort.”

“Okay,” he said again. Clark exhaled shakily, but you needed him to be steady now—he was always so steady; this great oak, even in his clumsiness. There for you, for anyone. That was who Clark was. He pushed a twitchy hand through his hair, and then, beautiful boy he was, he inched closer to you, all sincerity, “Do you…would you like me to—be there?” 

You hesitated, his eyes were as huge as this moment behind his glasses, blinking at you like some woodland animal, tender and not-yours. “Yes. Please.”

“Okay.” 

You wished he’d stop saying that, because nothing about this was okay. Rationally, you tried telling yourself that this was happening to him, too. Maybe he was convincing himself just as much as he was trying to convince you. But, it all felt flat. He was far too restless for it to be ‘okay.’ Then, Clark was grabbing the paper bag, splaying the fingers of his other hand against the small of your back, and he was leading you both to his bathroom. You ignored the undone roll of gauze next to the basin. The light was almost greenish in its mutedness; it swallowed the two of you as he set the bag down on the surface below his mirror. 

It was only then, as you silently thought about if you even had enough pee in your bladder to do this, that Clark seemed to remember what needed to happen. “Oh, erm…” His blown eyes jumped between you, the toilet, and the door, “I can, uh—I can, do you want me to…”

“I don’t want to be alone,” you admitted, small.

Small, in your voice. Small, next to him. Small, in every sense of it.

Clark seemed to weaken a bit at your fragile confession; the way his chest deflated and his shoulders lost their apprehensive tension, the faintest tremor in the column of his throat. 

“You’re not alone,” he whispered. And you believed him. Cat and Lois, they’d both said it—but it felt empty. Not with Clark (nothing felt hollow with Clark).

He stayed where he was, but respectfully turned his back, facing the closed door.

The sound of the test’s wrapper tearing was excruciatingly loud, enough for you to grimace at it. Your eyes travelled over the small-print instructions, but it was all fairly self-explanatory. Thankfully, the glass of water Lois handed you earlier left you with just another to do what needed to be done. The silence stretched impossibly long and heady as you flushed the toilet, trying not to sob at the thought of Clark Kent now knowing what the stream of your pee sounded like. Even more fireworks were going off outside—the world somehow still turning, even now. It made you feel smaller. You felt like you were narrowing into this infinitesimal creature that would be left behind by time and everyone you loved in a year that you weren’t there to herald in the beginning of.

You stared at his broad shoulders, the stubborn line of his muscular back. “Two minutes.”

Clark didn’t reply.

Heart taking root in every rotten crevice of your body, you set the test face-down on the counter and lifted yourself up to sit next to it. The bare skin of your underthighs touched the cool marble and you shivered against it.

“Done?” Clark asked breathily. 

Airy, “Yeah.” 

A gentle deliberation to him, Clark moved to stand between your knees—not touching; approaching you as if you were a bathing creature. His pyjama shirt tickled the goosebumps on your flesh.

“Two minutes,” he repeated, thumbing a timer into his smartwatch. Then, after a prolonged pause, he said almost sheepishly, “Feels longer, doesn’t it?”

You huffed out something that could either be a laugh or sob. “Oh, forever.”

He smiled faintly—you missed the big nature of his smiles, his grins (boyish, charming, him), you missed the big nature of Clark.

“I thought you might be coming. Well, Lois said you were at Cat’s,” he elaborated, trying for conversation but struggling with his footing, “that you ran out of there like…I don’t know. She said that she thought you might, well.”

That all disarmed you. “Did she…” you glimpsed at the test, “did she say anything about…?”

“No. No.” Clark’s thumb imperceptibly brushed off your knee. “I don’t think she’d do that.” Neither did you, you were just paranoid. Clark seemed to know that, because he smiled at you tentatively, “She was worried, s’all. I don’t think she liked the idea of you running around the city alone on New Year’s. I should probably text her, actually, to let her know—” 

“Clark.”

“Right. Sorry,” he mumbled. He was rambling. This was entirely unchartered territory. “Hey, we’ve survived tougher deadlines, right? What’s a stick compared to Perry White?” 

You laughed wetly. “Stop it.”

“Whatever it says—” His sincerity, that’s what killed you. Brutal and beautiful, nestling closer to you, hips crowding the space between your thighs, “we’ll figure it out together. Okay? The other week, it—that’s gone. Yeah? Forgotten. All that matters right now is you.” 

“Don’t be nice to me. I don’t deserve it.” This wasn’t you. You were unapologetic and stronger than this. You were brittle, and good at what you do, and you liked that. He really had broken something in you. The plea, still, rolled off your tongue as you flattened your sweating palms against the counter as if you were bracing yourself. “Don’t say sweet things.”  

“But I am nice,” he said lightheartedly. When you slanted him a severe look, Clark swept his thumb over your kneecap again, more meaningfully this time. Quietly, “You said you didn’t want to be alone.”

“I don’t,” you bit.

“Then, let me be here. I’m trying to—” His watch buzzed against his wrist, tiny vibrations that you felt against your thigh—in your ribs, in fact. “Oh.” 

Somewhere outside, a smattering of hissing fireworks began to wail over the city, and thousands of voices began counting down a new year that didn’t belong in this room, in this moment.

“Shall I—” Clark’s voice barely held together against the weight of it, “do you want me to—”

“We should probably do it together,” you breathed.

Clark swallowed. “Right.” 

The sound of his sleeve brushing against the counter, reaching around your stiffened body, was deafening, even amongst the fireworks—cacaphonous bangs, unfurling crackles, the kind that whistled and sputtered stars. A faint trace of his cologne tickled at your sensitive nose when he leaned in (cedar, again…his hands on you, his mouth—the hard, aching length of him inside you). The violent flutter in your stomach this time wasn’t as sickening. 

Clark’s fingers hovered over the test, then drew back, as if touching a hot oven-tray. The sigh in his lungs sounded like a prayer.

“Together,” reverent, “okay.” 

You nodded, a hand of your own moving from its limp place at your side. You reached out, touching his arm. Clark looked at you like you were sunshine itself. The final beats of the countdown outside—three, two, one…It was something out of a film, fireworks erupting as he turned the stick over between the two of you. 

The noise swallowed everything. 

Clark had a tiny window in his bathroom, high on the back wall. Light spliced through it like bleeding wounds, fragments of red and blue and gold.

Breath snagged in your throat. As the new year dawned, all you could see was that light. Those spectacular colours. And then, the lines came into focus—twins, parallel: two.

It was positive.

Everywhere across the city, couples were embracing each other in passionate kisses, friends in the most loving of embraces. Love smeared itself all over the world. You felt stuck in the past—three weeks ago, to be precise. The velvet of your couch. The sweetness of Clark’s devotion. Maroon satin and his mouth.

“Clark?” Neither of you could translate the language of your voice; a whisper, a sob. A plea, most likely, with the desperation there. 

He was staring between the test and you like he couldn’t really decide which was more miraculous, the reflection of fireworks strobing across his glasses in the most brilliant of red and blues. Then, another prayer for which nothing else could really be said, “You’re pregnant.”

The world was ending.

“We’re—” Clark’s throat worked painfully, “you’re…going to have a baby.”

Fuck.

Taglist: @owlishalien @forallmyfictionalbfs @timidquindim @eureka-its-zico @alexandritte80 @mixedfandxms @colonyofpotatoes @ushygushybaby @pinkpantheris @girlwhoonlyexistsonline @rosierose134 @sweet-rush @alanahlovesryan @bambibbam @tooflef @user15137118382789 @corenslut @purple-1995 @jam1esl0v4 @melancholyruqs @yiiiikesmish @fandomscombine @thychuvaluswife @peacefrogloverr @pinksplace @appledressing @eightiestrash @helalokithor @timidquindim @kookie02 @serenityrjd @nayasxo @madskelly7 @stupendousmusiclistener @annananamin @jarnesbames108 @ggyuslovie @cassiecasluciluce @bitchy-bi-trash

(sorry if i missed anyone im rly new to this)

[llillacwine]

And how the blood rushed into my cheeks, so scarlet, it was maroon.

Chapter I. series masterlist.

summary: The bullpen was rosy and festive; scintillating fairy-lights, laurel wreaths, a tacky but endearing Christmas tree glittering with kitsch baubles, the strategically-placed sprig of mistletoe sellotaped above the elevator. Cat Grant and Steve Lombard were holding court at the refreshments table, ruffling a Santa's hat full of wrinkled cash, whispering conspiratorially about the office sweep: will Clark Kent pluck up the courage to ask out the office's resident bitch? The odds weren't exactly stacked in his favour—not when you showed up in a satiny slip the colour of blood, looking like you ate guys like Clark for breakfast. Still, the Planet buzzed with excitement and holiday cheer, and you certainly didn't seem repulsed by Clark's askew tie that matched your dress, or the way he had ditched his blazer and rolled the sleeves of his shirt up to his elbows. What are the holidays for, after all, if not too much champagne, bad decisions, and dragging the guy who's been pining after you for years to the elevator by that godforsaken tie of his? (What was it that Hugh Grant said again...?)

word count: 11.8k (unedited).

chapter warnings: smut, piv, allusions to exhibitionism (they get hot & heavy in the Daily Planet's elevator), reader is tipsy when she initiates things with Clark but she's definitely sobered up by the time they actually have sex, oral (fem!receiving), size kink (I guess?), Clark's down bad, poor decisions, angst, post-nut clarity, strong language, unintentional baby-making (idk), meddlesome co-workers, reader's nickname is 'Penny' (because she's a journalist), also she's a bit of a bitch and definitely has some issues to work through but we love her anyways.

track i: Maroon by Taylor Swift.

By the intricate workings of Cat Grant’s hands, the Daily Planet bullpen had taken the form of a snowglobe—surely, a health-and-safety violation waiting to happen, with every single one of the mains’ occupied by some plug or other. Fairy-lights twined around filing cabinets and Lois’s precious coffee machine, laurel garlands were draped over cubicle walls, and a fake tree was lopsidedly limped to the left under the weight of the gaudy baubles. Perry was even dressed in half of a Santa costume. But, most obnoxiously of all, Steve Lombard thought it would be funny to slap a bit of Scotch-tape onto a branch of mistle and stick it above the elevators.

Clark, as he often found himself at office festivities, stood awkwardly on the edge of it all with a plastic cup of custardy eggnog sweating against his too-big palm. It wasn’t a feeling he often felt, but he admittedly was almost hoping for some kind of catastrophic alien-invasion to take place downtown that would tear him away from all of this. He was a sore thumb with a rumpled collar and a crooked tie, foot anxiously tapping along to the haphazard pulse of his heart rather than whatever cheesy Christmas song was blaring from Perry’s crackling, transportable radio.

“She’s so looking at you, dude.”

Clark startled. Jimmy was jabbing him in the ribs—not that Clark had registered his relentless elbow until now—and nursing a bottle of lukewarm beer. He had the kind of glint in his eyes that made Clark reckon that his friend probably should knock the candy-canes he’d been gnawing on the head for the night.

“Who?”

Jimmy slanted him a flat glare. “Who? Penny, obviously.”

Across the bullpen, you were a vision in sateen red. Laughing at something Lois was saying to you, head tipped back, exposing the sinews in the column of your neck, silk slip catching the glow of the fairy-lights as prettily as the kitsch baubles. Cat’s glossy lips ghosted the shell of your other ear, murmuring something to you that made your eyes roll fondly and mouth curve into a smirk that made Clark’s throat swell.

“She’s not,” he denied profusely. “She’s talking to Lois and Cat.”

Jimmy rolled his eyes. “Well, she was just. Or at least at your arms with this rolled-up sleeves thing you’ve got going on. Nice touch, by the way.”

“It’s just,” Clark shuffled uncomfortably, “hot in here. S’all.”

“Uh-huh. Okay, bud.” Jimmy clapped him on the back hard enough for eggnog to capsize Clark’s cup and slosh onto his fingers, drying tacky and fast against his sweat-slick skin. “Not like it’s snowing or anything outside?” Clark blinked abashedly at the tall windows of the office and outside to where snowfall, indeed, was glimmering in the street-lamps. “Anyway! Tonight’s the night, Clark. As your best friend—”

“Doesn’t feel like it right now,” he muttered bitterly into his eggnog.

“—you’ve been making eyes at her for months. You have to actually talk to her if you ever want to sleep with her.”

“I don’t—that’s—I do talk to her,” said Clark, appalled at both the suggestion that he wanted to sleep with you (he did, but Jimmy made it sound so unromantic) and how his friend was implying he didn’t talk to you.

“About work, sure. But what’s sexy about that?” 

Kill him now. Seriously.

“Jimmy, I appreciate your trying to help, but…” Clark stared helplessly at his loafers, willing the marble floor to swallow him whole.

“Oh, c’mon, Clark!” Jimmy’s hand rested heavy on his shoulder, squeezing brotherly. “Last time you spoke to Penny, it was about…what was it again?”

“The new article she’s working on. It’s really interesting, actually. It’s about Gotham’s mayor and the conspiracy that he’s possibly linked to the arrest of Salvatore Maroni—”

Jimmy suddenly made the derisive sound of an incorrect buzzer. “Eeegh! Boring! Clark, our Penny writes about men like Don Mitchell Jr. all the time. Do you seriously think that’s the way to get into her—” he faltered when Clark sent him a droll look of, watch it, “heart?” 

“Maybe I’m not trying to get into her heart, Jimmy,” sighed Clark. “Maybe I admire Penny’s work. Maybe I appreciate her as a journalist, and as a colleague, and a—”

“You’re a disappointment to me,” Jimmy said dryly. 

Forlornly, Clark frowned and stared deplorably at his leather shoes. They were so squeaky-clean he could see his miserable reflection, staring up at him with all the resemblance of a kicked puppy. Oh, man, he thought wretchedly, I can be such an idiot sometimes.

“Shit—she’s coming over!”

Clark blanched. “What? What do you mean she’s—“

“I mean, she’s coming over!” Jimmy seethed in a frantic whisper, turning his back completely so he and Clark were still stood side-by-side, but only Clark was facing the silhouette of silk maroon that was (as Jimmy Olsen had so subtly declared) approaching them. “Act natural. Compliment her dress—wait, no. Too obvious. Her smile. Her hair. Shit—good luck, buddy!”

And Jimmy was gone.

Clark lingered in some torturous purgatory between two extremes. One, his lungs blueing at the strain of withholding a boyish gasp at how much prettier you were getting with every step closed you took (the tinkering of your heels against marble resounding like a taunting funeral march to Clark’s very own gallows). The second, you seemed to introduce a whole different kind of meaning to air—his ribcage ballooning to accommodate this swelling of oxygen, your pervading perfume, and the sweetened breath of your presence. You’re all tonka bean and rich cocoa—dress as red as a foliage of holly berries. 

Back in high school, Clark was in the theatre group’s production of Romeo and Juliet—as the titular male protagonist, of course, embarrassing himself in tights and a frilly ruff as he recited Shakespearean soliloquies. He was pretty sure until this moment that he had forgotten the words to Romeo’s monologue on the balcony, but suddenly he felt like he could start comparing you to the sun. His throat worked threadily around the ache in it, glasses slipping lower on the sweat-beaded bridge of his nose as his palms got clammier around his pathetic cup of too-sweet eggnog.

“Hey, Clark.”

Literally—anything else. Clark would rather be doing anything else. Preventing the second-coming of the Chicxulub impactor. Fighting a sentient army of aliens. Anything.

“Oh, uh,” Clark hated himself, “hi, Penny.” 

Clark might be one of the only people at the Daily Planet who remembered why and when they all started calling you ‘Penny.’ It had been Perry White’s doing, of course—back when you were still relatively new at the paper and published your first issue, a merciless and sensational editorial on Amanda Waller’s Task Force X right after her own daughter outed her in a press conference. Perry stormed out of his office with everything about him that suggested belligerence, and you had been terrified, straightening up at your desk, almost preparing yourself for a humiliating sacking and stripping of your lanyard. Instead, Perry waved the still-hot-from-the-press paper around for the whole bullpen to see, glossy and scathing, and sung your praises. A ‘penny dreadful,’ he called it. For whatever reason, it stuck. So did the smell of Perry’s cigar on the blazer you wore that day, after he swept you up in a fatherly hug and called you a bluestocking, and other glowing retorts. 

If Clark hadn’t already been hung up on your pretty smile or the lilt of your laugh by then (which, embarrassingly, he was), that might’ve been the moment he fell for you. You truly cared about your work—it hadn’t been a flimsy lie when he defensively told Jimmy that he admired you as a journalist. Clark admired everything about you. The way you wrote, your poorly-hidden caffeine addiction, the seemingly endless collection of funky heels you’d show up to work in—the glow in your skin after Perry congratulated you on such a spectacular debut. 

All of that counted to Clark still longing for you now, almost two years later. To him aching to have you near, his head spinning at the smell of your perfume, pupils dilating at the subtle tilt of your head as your own eyes raked over him indiscreetly.

“You clean up nice,” you complimented, fingers cradling the skinny stem of a flute glass. The champagne bubbles in it glittered like stars, and the rim was smeared with your favourite lipstick.

“Oh, hah, it’s just—” Clark blinked at the back of his desk chair nearby, pointing at his blazer slung over it, “just my usual work clothes.”

Your eye twitched the slightest bit. Was he always this oblivious? 

Regardless, Clark Kent was stupidly handsome. Sickeningly. In a crisp white shirt, sleek sleeves rolled up to elbows, allowing you to moon over muscles kept modestly hidden under twill blazers and humble charm, top button popped open, exposing another slither of skin (and the slightest tufts of hair peeking from behind his loose, askew tie). The rest of its buttons were straining just enough across his broad chest that you felt dizzy, and couldn’t even chalk it up to the champagne. His onyx curls were damp at the temples, like snowflakes had melted into them on his rush back to the office from…well, wherever it is that Clark disappeared to throughout the workday. Most preciously of all, Clark Kent had this stubborn lock of hair that would curl just over the rim of his dorky glasses. You thought that you found that curl even more attractive than how ridiculously tall he was—tall enough, even, for you to tip your chin to earn that boyish smile of his and the dimples that were sheepishly puncturing his ruddy cheeks.

“Well,” you said, hoping for more of an obvious attempt this time, “they suit you. Especially the whole…rolled-up sleeves thing.” 

Clark stiffened, panicking. That was what Jimmy had said. Were you messing with him? Had you rehearsed this with Jimmy, and the others, maybe? Was this a cruel prank—?

“Thanks,” he stammered, then apparently forgot how to talk altogether. Silent words trapped in his throat, Clark just managed to show you his teeth in a gawky grin.

You, meanwhile, found yourself getting a bit impatient. Sure, okay, you found Clark’s bumbling, midwestern charm disgustingly endearing most of the time. And it was pretty clear to everyone in the office, including yourself, that Clark had a thing for you—which you always admittedly found flattering, enough so that you shrugged it off as nothing more than puppy love and excused his sweetness as a reason to never pursue anything more than harmless flirting. 

But, God. He couldn’t linger by the refreshments table with his arms looking like that, all vein and sinew and self-effacing strength, without you feeling your self-preservation wither on the other side of the room. It took far too much encouragement from a lovelorn Cat, and a different kind of pragmatism from Lois, to get you to stalk over here for Clark to not pick up on any of the hints you were throwing at him. You took a swig of your champagne, swallowing hollowly, as though you could drown how humiliatingly attracted you were to him in bubbly carbonation and a subtle grapefruit aftertaste.

“So, Smallville,” you said at last, tilting the glass toward him, “tell me.” Clark looked at you eagerly—enough so that you could imagine him panting all doglike and saying, needily, Anything, yes! You felt dizzy. “Are you always this oblivious, or is this just for me?” 

His brows pinched earnestly, frowning down at you and even considerately setting his eggnog down at the table beside the two of you, as if to make a demonstration of giving you his full attention.

“Oblivious?” he parroted. “I mean, I must be,” Clark chuckled goodnaturedly, “because I don’t really know what you—” 

“Jesus.” You really weren’t trying to be mean or anything, but you found yourself interjecting him with a droll eye-roll and a certain impatience lilting your voice that made his smile falter. “You know, most guys would’ve said something about my dress by now. Or at least come up with a line about mistletoe.” 

Aloofly, you gestured for the offending, limp sprig taped above the elevator, garish in Cat’s lights.

Clark’s gaze obediently followed your motion, a hotness gathering at the nape of his neck. “That’s actually not even mistletoe. I did try telling Steve, but, yeah, no—that’s…” he squinted, “that’s holly.”

Before you could stop yourself, a sharp, delighted laugh choked out of you, just as bubbly and bright as your champagne. “Wow, Clark! Only you will correct a girl throwing herself at you about plants.”

“Sorry,” he mumbled, ducking his head abashedly, curls following. But then, Clark seemed to actually catch onto what you said—‘a girl throwing herself at you…’—and short-circuited. He glanced up, his pretty blues experiencing some kind of malfunction between widened and a sweet flutter of realisation. Then, emboldened by your laugh and his belated catching-on, Clark let his easiest smile all day grace you and said, earnestly, “For what it’s worth, you don’t need mistletoe.” 

What the fuck? 

He wasn’t supposed to say that. Not with his voice sinking to a low timbre, smooth like honey-whiskey, not with that hesitant smile carving dimples into his cheeks.

Did he even know how hot he was? 

You tipped your glass back again, hoping to hide how flustered you felt. “Careful, Clark. I might think you’re flirting with me.”

The prettiest of blushes crept up his neck. Then, with a small cough to empty his throat, Clark straightened a little, as if he had finally found the confidence to assume that strong, tall build of his and own it. Squared shoulders, unignorably broad and brawny as skin and sinews strained against starched cotton.

“Maybe I am,” he said softly—not the usual softness, though, you mused. Not the polite, almost squirmish, way he usually spoke to you. A steady softness, like he knew he didn’t have to raise his voice or make it unnaturally husky to impress you.

The newfound confidence earned him your undivided attention now, as you returned his earlier gesture of absently placing your glass—still sparkling with at least two more swigs of champagne—on the table next to your hip. All the while, Clark watched you with a respectful attentiveness that was just as steady as his voice had him, Maybe I am. The hum of the bullpen dulled then, finally. No doubt, your friends were somewhere watching this all unfold, Cat thinking about the new pair of heels she’d purchase with her winnings when you and Clark inevitably leave the party together. The fairy-lights that you swore were humming with the dull buzz of crackling electricity and Mariah Carey’s faint warbling through Perry’s radio—all of it, gone.

Suddenly, all you could think about—all you wanted to think about—was Clark Kent, and his forearms, and his shoulders, the oakmoss and cedarwood of his cologne, the steadiness. And you couldn’t help but wonder how else he could prove himself steady—he had the voice, honey and whiskey, wading through sweet molasses, and the gaze that made you feel like something to be consumed. But now you were thinking about his hands…big and bear-like and kind. You were thinking about the way he tripped over his feet last month when you wore a dress to work for the first time since summer—how he acted like you just reintroduced sunshine into his life after months of rainfall and leaves of marmalade orange. Remembering the time he called you ‘honey’ once, when you scalded your hand with piping-hot coffee in a blind, mad rush to finish an article, and he swept over to rush you to the breakroom to keep your blistery hand under cold water. 

Clark, Clark, Clark, and Maybe I am.

“Then prove it,” you challenged airily. 

You were cursing yourself right away for the desperation in your voice, the breathiness that Clark definitely caught onto (he wouldn’t dare miss a single thing, now). For a long, frightening moment, you thought you fucked it. Maybe Clark’s whole thing of you was suspended in some cliché ache of wanting-what-he-couldn’t-have, the low-hanging forbidden fruit, the office bitch dangled just out of reach in pencil skirts (or, tonight, red silk). Maybe, now, you had given him just enough for him to get you out of his system, massaged his small-town ego, and—And your spiralling stopped there.

Because, in the middle of your catastrophising and your self-flaggelation, Clark moved. Not a lot. Not enough (God, not near enough). He was devouring you with his eyes—the panicky hitch in your breath, the defiant tilt of your chin to stare back at him, the almost imperceptible smudge of lipstick on your cupid’s bow. And he was taking a step closer. Only one. But he was suddenly so close that the heat from his body seemed to seep through the silk fibres of your slip. Close enough to appreciate the brilliant blue of his eyes, breathe in the smell of fresh-snow melted in his curls and the cedar clinging to the sinews of his neck.

“Prove it, how?” 

Unspoken, but there—Tell me, and I will.

And you were throwing all sense of integrity, self-restraint, and workplace proprietary to the wind. It didn’t even occur to you that your boss was halfway across the room, gauche in a Santa Claus costume, smoking a cigar and hotheadedly denying Cat’s enthusing that you’re totally into his other star-reporter. 

You were snatching Clark’s tie and frogmarching him right toward the elevator, the maroon silk of it—uncannily similar to your dress—hot against your palm. Clark made a small, startled noise in the back of his throat that was almost whimper-like as you yanked him along. If you had more wits about you, you might’ve found it funny how a guy who weighed more than two hundred and thirty pounds, and could probably snap you in half, was letting himself be manhandled like a reprimanded schoolboy. But, alas, you didn’t. All you could think about as the sweet, airy challenge in his voice—Prove it, how?—and how good he looked with his sleeves rolled up.

Everything else: white noise. The elevator dinging. Mechanical doors parting like the Red Sea at your hasty feet. Someone wolf-whistling—Jimmy, maybe. You didn’t care. Pulse rabbitting against your throat, champagne on your tongue, and Clark tracing after you like a lovelorn dog.

He stumbled in after you, gangly limbs, flustered heavy-breathing, and oh, God, this is really happening all over his pretty, rosy face as you shove him against the steel railing that surrounded the small elevator-cab. The door slid shut behind you. The rest of the world dropped dead. Just you, and him, and the hydraulics of the hoistway, and your hand still clenching his tie, keeping him level with you—the long rosary of his spine no doubt aching the slightest bit, but he didn’t show an inch of wanting to be anywhere else. 

“You’re—golly—you’re going to have to help me out here,” Clark murmured, rough and whiny all at once. “Because if this means what I think it means—”

You severed his sentence with a sharp tug of his tie, his sternum against yours. “Stop talking, Clark.”

“Yes, ma’am. Okay. Stopping.” A nervous half-smile, dimpled, and shit. Did you fancy Clark Kent? 

You kissed him. 

No mistletoe/holly—whatever that lame, limp twig was. Just the hot press of your mouth on his, spit-slick and hungry, your lipstick smearing against him, teeth dragging his lower lip to give him something to gasp out, to grant you access to slide your tongue against his. He tasted like eggnog; nutmeg, the richness of brandy, cinnamon. And Clark, Clark groaned. Low and guttural, the kind of noise you’d expect if you were sinking onto him—not from a mere kiss. You enjoyed it all the same. Almost as much as you enjoyed his hands moving, one bracing against the small of your back to haul your smaller body impossibly closer, the other cradling the curve of your jaw, thumb sweeping the entire expanse of your cheek. Lips on yours, hands on your back, your face, but you somehow felt him everywhere.

“Can I—” a sweet plea, broken against our mouth, his still damp curls brushing against your temple, “gosh, can I—”

“Anything,” you breathed into him.

He whined at the permission. And then he was back to kissing you, like he was starving—you’d think that Clark never indulged in sins of the flesh; in anything at all. That you had unlocked something unbridled and debauched in an otherwise innocent man. He stayed bent to your height, chest flush against yours—hot and heavy, breaths exchanged, air shared—but his hands didn’t linger anywhere for too long. His body seemed to engulf you in its largeness, silk slip bunching under his rough, reverent palms as he tried to hold onto too much of you at once. Until he found satisfaction, using one hand to grab a fistful of the excess material that swam against your waist and the other to paw at the now exposed skin of your thigh. And that, apparently, was all Clark needed to lift you up from the floor as if you were featherlight. 

You squeaked into his mouth. Clark swallowed it, thanking you for the sweet noise with a gratuitous squeeze to that very thigh. Before you could think, your back hit the elevator wall with a muffled thunk, the mirror behind you rattling enough to return Clark to clarity.

“Sorry—m’sorry, Penny,” he mumbled, pulling back what might’ve only been an inch, but it felt like an amputation—you mourned him like a limb as your hooded eyes raked over his swollen lips and the heaviness in his chest. “I didn’t mean to…”

“Clark.”

His name rolled off your tongue like a chastising ‘tsk,’ only needier, and punctuated with your canines raking gently against his bottom lip. You still had purchase of his tie and you’d keep using that to your advantage until it slackened, even now maintaining eye-contact as he kept you hoisted against the wall with a single hand on your thigh, the knuckles on his other tracing the line of your spine.

Clark shuddered at you saying his name. His forehead touched yours again, penitently. “I, gosh, I don’t wanna hurt you.” 

You smirked. “I’m gonna start thinking you don’t know what to do with me.”

“Believe me,” he said hoarsely, undone, thumb trembling as it swept your thigh, “I know exactly what I want to do with you.”

Your ego seeped into something raw and wanting. “Then do it.” 

Clark’s grip tightened at the challenge, the long, sturdy line of his thigh pressing against between both of yours, propping you higher against the mirrored wall. You wondered if he could see himself in that reflection—the blown state of his pupils and the ruddiness in his cheeks, how dishevelled his hair was—and if he could finally see just how handsome he was. (Though, of course, Clark had barely registered the mirror’s existence at all since your tailbone rattled against it. All he could see was your glossy lips, the hardening of your nipples against the silk slip, that smirk of yours…) 

For your every gasp, Clark seized it like an opportunity with ravenous enthusiasm, tongue sidling against yours until it evoked another whimper, another mewl of his name, more, more, more—and Clark had never felt so hungry. Groaning at every sound, his whole body so tightly wound and unravelling—his tie felt like an extension of himself, undone and in the palm of your hand. 

The hand on your spine pressed lower, splaying wide and greedy against the hollow small of your back until spanned the swell of your ass through thin silk. Then, he held you there. He didn’t grope for more. He just held you, and kissed you, and breathed your air, and felt.

“You’re so pretty,” he slurred, so drunkenly that you’d think he had spent the night drinking something other than the same cup of eggnog. “Don’t think I’ve ever actually told you…” His mouth, messy and sloppy, smeared against yours in a lazy kiss then traced languidly against the line of your jaw, as if granting you a moment to breathe, “... ‘Thought it. So many times…” An open-mouthed kiss to the sensitive spot under your ear, somehow finding it first-try, as if it was put there for him, “I think you’re so darn pretty, honey.”

Honey.

Fuck. Was this seriously the same Clark who just abashedly corrected you on the difference between holly and mistletoe upstairs? The very same Clark Kent who fumbled his pen caps and once forgot to take his lunch-break because he promised to proofread your assignment? The sugared, ‘aw-shucks,’ Kansan farmboy who always seemed like he didn’t fit in his own body—now pressing it up against you like it was the most natural thing in the world? 

Because this Clark—the one burying his curls into the crook of your neck, mouthing slovenly at your throat, voice soaked in want and reverence, hands touching you in all the right place—this one had to be some kind of symbiotic parasite that had attached itself to the neediness part of him. It surely must be feeding off his desires and deficiencies, pervading the sweet marrow of him, sinking into the sweet marrow of you. He wasn’t fumbling now. He was unshakeably steady—even as he kissed you like he wanted to invert you, or himself; to butcher his own ribs and bury you in them.

Honey. Suddenly, he had your hipbones against the granite countertop of the breakroom again, his long fingers wrapped around your wrist as he held your hand unflinchingly under the smooth, cold stream of the faucet. Saying, that’s it, honey, in the lowest and prettiest of voices as you grimaced at the feeling of freezing water against your blistered skin and swore to yourself you’d never dabble with too-hot coffee again—thinking honey burned worse.

“Want you,” you panted then, tilting your head back against the mirror to allow him access to the column of your throat. He mapped it insatiably. “I want you so bad, Clark.”

“Yeah?” He pressed his fingertips into the flesh of your thigh. “Aw, shucks…” At least your-Clark still lingered under all of this salaciousness and appetite, “I think I’m dreaming. Did Jimmy put something in the eggnog?”

“If he did,” you said, the hand that wasn’t still gripping his tie moving to yank at the curls on the nape of his neck, “I owe him.”

Ding! 

The elevator tinkered. Doors sputtered open. The jaws to the world opened wide and almost as hungry as the two of you. The Daily Planet’s foyer twinkled into life just over Clark’s shoulder as you peered miserably at it—all marble and columns, the snowfall just outside of the revolving doors.

When you blinked back to Clark, reality returning to you like a haemorrhage, he was watching you with a raw, careful look—an almost wounded pinch to it, as if he feared that this sudden glimpse of clarity might flood you with regret. Maybe you’d shove him away, disgusted with him, appalled by your bad judgement, and hasten off into the snow. 

Clark slowly set you back down on the floor, and you felt unfamiliarly fawnlike on your heels, almost swaying. His hands rested imperceptibly light on your hips, bunching the silk of your dress in his fists, but not daring to grip at the meat of you again—not yet.

“We can stop,” he croaked, an uneven tenderness to him that made you melt, “if you want.”

“I don’t want to stop,” you whispered heatedly.

Clark’s eyes softened, those precious dimples of his returning as his thumb brushed along your hip. “Are you sure?”

“Yes,” you said, tugging on his tie again for good measure.

You hoped that the slight pressure to his neck might convince him.

He nodded, as if committing something to memory—the taste of you, maybe; the heady desire in your eyes; even the holiness of you telling him you want him, too. Then, he was stepping back, hands falling from you for a mere breath before he was offering one out for you to take, to hold, to lead you out to the foyer of your workplace. You stepped out under the glittering chandelier together and stared in similar awe at the thickening snowfall, blotting out streetlights into a soft, golden blur. The floodlights of cars winked through the crystallised flakes and it all felt too-real. 

Then, Clark was looking back down at you, admiring you as if you were prettier than the snow and the lights and everything. “I’ll hail us a cab…Your place or mine?”

࿐ྂ

“Do you want this?” Clark either had the worst-hidden praise kink of all time or was sorely lacking in his ability to read signals, because he found himself asking for reassurance again before cursing himself—willing his teeth to just sink into his tongue and tear it out. ‘Cause, dagnabbit, that was such an unsexy thing to say when he had the girl of his dreams sprawled out on your kitchen table, your thighs dangling around his waist like he was worthy of this.

It definitely killed the mood because your eyes were suddenly readjusting to the glowing overhead lights of your kitsch kitchen—that was so you and rosy and candlelit that it hurt—blinking up at him all dewy and fawn-like and pretty, breaths coming out in soft puffs of air through your kiss-swollen lips. Then, you pushed yourself up onto your elbows (Clark, gentlemanly, ignored the dull ache in his slacks as the action jostled your tits together so perfectly through the skimpy, askew material of that gosh-darn dress), and tilted your head to the side so innocently that his fingers pressed inadvertently deeper into the plush flesh of your thighs.

“Are you being serious?” you said finally. Your ankles hooked tighter around his waist, the bones of them digging into the two hollow dips at the small of his spine that had him stumbling just slightly into the edge of the farmhouse table until the mahogany jutted his groin. “Do I want this, Kent?” Do you want this? You had just spent the last twenty minutes in the back of some poor guy’s cab, engaged in the filthiest make-out session of your life with Clark Kent, his hand supporting the back of your head so you didn’t throw it back against the condensation-slick window—pawing at his chest like a hormonal teenager. “Do I fucking—” 

Then, you did something fucking spectacular (if you were to ask Clark, anyway). You snatched his wrist, all mean and desperate, blunt-bitten nails biting against skin, and yanked it between your legs. Clumsily, his knuckles grazed the cheap lace of your panties—a matching maroon to your dress, to his tie, to the blood rushed into his cheeks. He muttered something akin to Holy moly, almost flinched, because this felt like some kind of dream he didn’t belong in—someone else’s fantasy that he needed to wake up from, one he was surely a sick voyeur to. But you’re so wet, and warm, and as soon as the pad of his thumb lingered over where he was now sure your clit was, you were whimpering and careening into him like he wasn’t some kind of bumbling, perverted loser you work with who’d been having wet dreams about you for months and yearning after you for longer.

“Yeah, Clark,” you get out barely, all breathy and a bit cruel, “I fucking want it.” 

Okay, yeah.

Clark took it back.

Thanks to you, and all your prettiness, that desperation, all your natural, oozing charm, it might’ve been the sexiest possible thing he could’ve said.

Well done, me! He thought wryly as he let his thumb press just a tiny bit harder against that spot that made you tremble. You whined again, but this time you sank your canines into the crook of his neck and Clark seethed out your name—your real name, not Penny, not honey, but something so surprisingly intimate you almost sob.

“Shucks, honey—” there it was, “you’re…” He was laughing to himself, gaze all hooded and lustful as it stared at where your dress was bunched up at your hips and the damp patch on your panties was growing, “you’re really something, aren’t you?”

You melted back into the mahogany of your table, almost gracelessly, but golly, if Clark didn’t love it. Next, you were sinking your heels back into those dimples in his back like they belonged there. Your hands, blindly, scrambled for purchase on his tie again and the sudden jolt would’ve startled him if he hadn’t been so engrossed in the gentle ghosting of his knuckles over her slick, lace-covered folds.

“Clark,” you managed, pitchy and threaded. “Please?”

“Gosh, aren’t you the politest thing in Metropolis?” Clark almost giggled.

Pissed, you snapped your legs viciously shut around his wrist, clamping it there, shocking him the slightest bit. But, if Clark wanted his hand stuck anywhere, it was between your thighs, and after a quick recovery of a muttered jeez and a breathy laugh, he was using this as leverage to tuck your panties to the side just a slither, finally touching soft hairs and wet skin.

“Shit, shit, shit,” you panted, arching your back off the kitchen table that you don’t think you’ll ever be able to eat at again.

“What do you want?” Clark sounded gutted; hoarse and splintery. He traced a single digit through the wetness gathering between your sensitive folds, placed his other hand keenly on your hip, his thumb and forefinger kneading at the flesh there when you tried to thrash. “Tell me what you want and I’ll give it to you. Anything, just tell me—”

“How many times do I have to say it, Clark?” you almost wept, trying to grind your heat down to seek more friction. The featherlight ghosting of his finger through your arousal was sweet, was good—was so impossibly Clark you were trembling—but it wasn’t enough. “I want you.”

The way he looked at you, then, would’ve terrified you if you weren’t so desperate for him. Still, even in your lust, you didn’t miss it. How could you, when Clark’s eyes were sweeping over you with all the devotion of a dog dangling from a leash of belonging and longing? This wasn’t how this was supposed to go—you didn’t know what you expected…you knew he was into you, you knew he had these feelings…Had you thought that giving parts of yourself over to him would lessen that? Were your really so naïve to think that this—once, and fragile, your flesh, your hands, telling him you want him—would be enough for Clark?

There wasn’t much more time to think about it, because Clark was on his knees. You weren’t really sure when it happened; mid-existential-crisis, maybe? Whatever. Clark Kent was on his knees, and still somehow wonderfully tall, and beautiful, and that devotion was still there—as was his finger, expertly massaging your tender, sensitive clit. Within the worship in his eyes was this quiet sort of concentration as his gaze narrowed in between your thighs, like he was trying to figure out what to do with you, how best to undo you. This should’ve scared you more than the more-than-religious way he was staring at you. But, as you were quickly learning, Clark didn’t really allow much room for space.

Not much room for anything, really—thanks to the largeness of his frame, his heart twice the size. He was suddenly withdrawing the touch from your bundle of nerves, soothing your forlorn whimper with a soft squeeze to the meat on your hips.

“It’s okay, honey,” he murmured, but with the way his eyes never once left your heat, you’d think he was talking to that, instead of you. 

Clark’s fingers hooked into the hem of your lacy underwear, sensually dragging them your legs—mouthing at the inside of your thigh, kissing the tender skin under your left knee, and sweetly pecking your anklebone as he let your panties fling unceremoniously onto the tiled floor of your kitchen. Next thing you knew, he was lifting your legs over his broad shoulders, palms back on your hips, and he was nestling himself snug between your thighs, eye-level with your cunt.

“Hi,” Clark said boyishly with an almost innocent smile of twin dimples and adoration.

Too turned on to even overthink about his tenderness, you rested your weight onto your elbows, propping yourself up lazily to send him a slovenly smile.

“Are you talking to me, or her?” you giggled.

Clark softened at the sound of your laugh. “Can I say both?”

“Hm…I don’t know. Feels like cheating, to me,” you teased.

In all your life, you don’t think you’d ever felt so comfortable in this kind of position—bare and exposed for Clark waist-down, the silk of your slip bunched in a pool of blood-like maroon around your hips, his hands just underneath. You should feel vulnerable—the tiniest bit insecure and self-conscious, at the least…but you didn’t. How could you, with Clark Kent smiling at you like you were the prettiest thing he’d ever seen? 

“Well,” he said easily, “we can’t have that, can we, ma’am?”

You laughed, a bit apprehensive. “What do you mean by—oh, fuck!”

Clark was on you. His mouth. His hands. That prayer-like reverence translated not through parables, but his lips attaching themselves to your clit, suckling, through the quick, tasting flick of his tongue against it. A deepening, next—an unravelling of you, as he laved at your wetness from the fluttering of your entrance and back up to the delicate bundle of nerves he seemed rather intent on attacking. 

Ritualistic, almost. That was how you’d describe the fashion in how Clark Kent ate you out—if you had the words. Certainly, you didn’t then, elbows slipping and your body flattening out onto the table. And, shit, if there wasn’t something laughably metaphorical there—you splayed out, all pretty in red, like a piece of bleeding meat, Clark lapping at you carnivorously with all the ravenousness of a starved, carnal man. The sounds were lewd, and his hands continued to knead you just right at your hips, and his tongue was nothing short of fucking masterful. You felt almost jealous about the women that came before you, because surely this was an art Clark was well-versed at, to unravel you so quickly, to have you writhing on your own kitchen table and almost crying.

Since your legs couldn’t thrash against the sensitivity—his hands wouldn’t let you; Clark had you exactly where he needed you—your arms moved feverishly instead. One hand flung down to seize his curls (a brilliant decision on your part, you thought, as Clark groaned into you at the gentle tug to his roots—the noise creating the sweetest of vibrations against your skin). The other touched over your tits, neglected and moving heavily with your heaving breaths, fingers teasing yourself through the silk as Clark seemingly made it his singular goal to have you finishing quicker than you ever had in your life.

“Can you take m’fingers, honey?” he asked you charmingly, mouth still on you, glossy and swollen. 

Your head spun. “Can I…?”

Clark smiled at you, not cruelly, not with an ounce of patronising mocking at your empty-headedness. He couldn’t. One of his hands slipped out from under your slip, caressing at your thighs—giving a hedonistic squeeze to the fat there—and then one of his fingers was teasing at your fluttering entrance, testing.

“Gonna have to ask that you say it, Penny,” he told you, not unkindly. 

It was all so intimate…the way he touched you, his mouth on you, the pet-names, those eyes of his, his constant seeking for consent and reassurance…it made you dizzy.

“Yes,” you croaked, almost sobbing, “please, Clark. I can. Please, I—”

“I know, baby. Gosh, you’re so—” His index finger sunk into you, thick and long, only to the first knuckle at first, but enough to earn a moan from you, “you’re so beautiful. The smartest woman I know, and…” Did you mention his mouth was still on you? Sloppy kisses to your folds, messily making-out with your clit, laving at the warmth—a trail of tickling, delicious vibrations as he babbled against you. “...And so talented, and good, and—I really liked that article you did last month, Penny.” A second finger breached you, and they were both curling to find that sweet-spot inside of you that made you choke on his name, all threadily and desperate. “You know the one? About the corruption of the Boravian government, and—”

“Clark,” you wheezed, “you’re two-fingers-deep in me. Do you really wanna talk about an apartheid right now?”

He blinked up at you from between your thighs, fingers stilling inside of you, mouth finally letting-up from your tenderness. “Oh…” The sullen tinge of guilt in his voice shouldn’t have turned you on as much as it did, but you felt yourself clench around his fingers anyway at it—and at the soft little pout on his dewy lips, glistening with you, “...you’re right. Sorry, Penny.”

Your heart ached. You let go of your firm-grip on his curls to instead card your fingers through it comfortingly, even raking your nails against his scalp. He nuzzled into the touch, ruddy-cheeked and grinning.

“That’s okay, Clark,” you purred in what you hoped was your sultriest voice. His lips, wet with you, peppered the inside of your palms with precious kisses. You kind of hated him. “Make me come? So I can return the favour?”

Clark faltered, and it was only then you noticed the fogginess in his glasses, and how dangerously close they were to slipping off his nose entirely. 

“Oh, erm…You don’t have to—this isn’t, like…transactional—you really—”

You fancied him. You fancied him a lot now, actually. He was ridiculously attractive, and apparently an oral god. But Clark was really starting to test your patience.

“Clark.”

“I’m gonna make you come,” he said adamantly, and that was that.

He worked at you with a kind of singlemindedness that made the experience all the more overwhelming. He was mouth returned, like a belonging, like home. You couldn’t believe this was your first time being with him—he seemed to know your body better than you did. Instinct, maybe? Whatever it was, Clark was coaxing the most vulgar sounds of you—your mouth, your cunt—fingers stimulating at a part of you that felt so deep, and so intense, and so good. And not once, not for a single second of wanting weakness, did his other hand let-up on his strict hold on your waist to take care of himself.

A third finger. A subtle sting that didn’t exist for long, not with the way he quickly massaged at that swelling pleasure inside of you—the soft coo of your name when you let out a quiet hiss at the fullness. He was nursing the building orgasm reverently, mouth tasting you, kissing your clit, sucking it to get another sob out of you, rewarding each needy sound with ensuing, tender licks—the way a dog might lap their rough tongue against a wound. It was too much. Too good. Too Clark. He was everywhere.

“That’s it, isn’t it?” 

God, his voice. Elongating his vowels, a tilt of honeyed tease to his voice this time—still not rude; it was almost…loving? 

You couldn’t believe this was your coworker—the one so absentminded to his own stature and good-looks, the one who almost walked into the corner of your desk when he accidentally caught a glimpse of your bra as he dropped off your morning coffee.

“C’mon, honey,” he coaxed, “let me have it. Let me see you. ‘Wanted this for so long. ‘Wanted you.” Clark’s tongue swirled your clit delicately and you shuddered under him. “Please, honey.”

And, apparently, all you needed was that. That please.

He worked you through it with the most gentle of kisses and sweetest of nothings. A blinding, unrelenting worship of his fingers and lips, your body trembling with the aftershocks of it. Clark’s mouth, drenched in his own saliva and your finish, moved—sloppy and messy as it kissed at your hipbone, your thighs, until he lolled his cheek lazily against it, satisfied.

It took almost a minute for you to get your wits about you enough to sit up against your elbows, feeling so dishevelled and undone. You blinked at Clark and he smiled back at you, prettily, almost drunken on you. Again, you scratched at his scalp, almost rewardingly. It made him nestle further into your thigh, curls tickling at you; the puckered corner of his mouth pecked at the sweat-slick skin there.

“Was that…” Clark’s tongue peeked out the taste at his lips, at your sweetness, “okay? For you?” 

Yeah, you hated him.

“My couch.” 

Clark’s brows furrowed, lost. “Huh?” 

“The couch—go sit on it.” You jutted your chin towards your candlelit living room, through the open doorway.

Clark hesitated in his confusion, both of his hands lingering flightily on your knees. He looked adorably disconcerted by your order.

“Well?” 

“Right.” Sweetly obedient, Clark was on his feet. Briefly, the hard tent in his slacks was directly eye-level with you, and you swallowed thickly in anticipation—it looked big, and impressive, like every other part of Clark. It was difficult to get caught up in the promise of it though, because he was scurrying to the next room with the mindless obedience of a dog and you lost sight of him.

You sat there for a beat, processing, regaining composure. You were slowly feeling yourself lose grasp of the situation—too embroiled in the charms of Clark Kent, in the talent of his mouth, in the piety of his touches. You couldn’t let that happen. You knew what this was going to be the very moment you made the decision to cross that bullpen and approach him in this dress. 

Clark liked you. You knew that. He probably liked you a lot, mistakenly. But, as you kept rationalising yourself—tonight, and many sleepless nights leading up to now—he didn’t know you. Not really. He knew your writing, he knew that he liked how you looked in pencil skirts, he knew your coffee order. He couldn’t like you meaningfully. And this couldn’t happen again, else he might know you. This was supposed to be a one-time-thing—a matter of getting him out of your system, getting you out of his; biting the bullet of curiosity (admittedly, you had thought about him with your hands between your thighs a few times). 

In order to ensure that this went to plan, you needed to reassert some kind of dominance on the situation—needed to be clear in your desires (and, most importantly, your deficiencies). You couldn’t be a girlfriend. Especially not to Clark. Maybe to some simple-minded sleaze who didn’t really understand the role of a girlfriend—someone who wouldn’t treat you sweetly, wouldn’t call you sweet things—maybe you could stomach that. You couldn’t stomach Clark.

You needed control. You needed him, too. Despite the afterglow of your orgasm still simmering low in your belly, it was tangled up with something far more morbid—insatiability. If you had unlocked something debauched in Clark, he had done the same to you. A ouroboros of hunger, maybe.

“Fuck it,” you muttered, slipping down off the kitchen table. 

You didn’t glance back at it—couldn’t face your shame, the inevitable mess you’d left. Rather, you haphazardly tugged at your slip until it settled lopsidedly over the swell of your thighs, and stared pathetically at the trembled weakness in your knees. You felt him, still. You felt yourself, wet and almost uncomfortable. You were aching for him, even in this state—spent and messy. 

He was waiting for you on the couch, as you told him to. Prettily. A vision on the maroon velvet of your couch—and this night would forever ruin the colour for you. You might pitch every single red item of clothing out of your bedroom window tomorrow morning out onto the street, leave them rot and unravel in the gutter. Tonight, though, you walked into the soft glow of candlelight, under Clark’s heavy, admiring gaze. He dwarfed your couch, really—a perfectly suitable bit of furniture you had been really proud of when you first moved in, but now looking ridiculous with him in the middle of it; thick thighs smushed against the plushness of it, shoulders crowding the cushions, hands patiently wringing in his lap. He was smiling at you warmly, even in his nervousness. The apprehension in his body was so obvious, but that smile—it was almost endearing.

You hated him, you hated him, you—

You lifted the hem of your slip and removed it as easily as if the silk were liquid. It pooled on the floor as obscene as a massacre—bloody and sinful. Stood between his manspreading thighs, naked, hoping to assume some kind of control, despite the obvious imbalance of being entirely bare as he sat in front of you, still completely clothed. 

“You…” Clark’s hands twitched, like he meant to reach out and touch you. His pupils were so big, it was hard to believe there was ever any blue there at all. “You’re…”

“Take off your trousers, Clark.”

Clark blinked, startled. “Right. Yes.” He fumbled with the bottom of his slacks, far clumsier with himself than he had been with you. “Sorry, I—”

You watched, absently tonguing your cheek, as Clark angled his hips from the couch enough to drag his trousers off them and down his legs. It might’ve been an easier task for him if he would stop glancing at you every half-second, as if he was double-checking that he hadn’t imagined you. You don’t even let him tug the material off his ankles. Instead, you knelt one leg onto the couch next to the left of him, swinging the next over to the right, straddling him and letting your heat linger just over his clothed bulge. If the candlelight was a bit brighter, you might’ve seen the damp spot against the cotton of his snug boxers.

“M’sorry,” he said again, lamely, hands hovering over your bare hips but not touching—just as your core didn’t touch him, “I’ve never…” Clark’s cheeks were kissed by the prettiest, embarrassed flush of blood, “Never done this before.”

You singled a brow at him. “Had sex?”

“No,” Clark almost giggled, your taunt giving him enough confidence to let his thumb stroke your hipbone. “I’ve had sex. I mean…I don’t know…” 

You thought you did. But you didn’t say it.

Didn’t give it a name.

There was that boyishness again, that impossible innocence, the shallow ducking of his chin to his chest, and how angelically his curls tousled onto his forehead. Enough to make the sinews of your heart yank. 

“I want you to fuck me, Clark,” you told him bluntly. His breath hitched. “Is that okay?”

“More than—” his voice broke, catching threadily. He looked miserable, humiliated. Recovering, he let his lips tug into a self-effacing smile, “More than okay.”

Against your better judgement, a smile of your own found its place on your face. Fond. To counter it, you grinded yourself against his bulge, almost as a punishment to the both of you—to Clark, for being so fucking cute, and to you, for falling for it. 

He whimpered, grabbing at both of your hips now. Hard. “O-oh.” 

As if testing the sensation, he rocked you down a little more, closer. The delicious grind made you lean down, shakily, and bury your face into the crook of his neck—cedarwood, still; musky, and warm, and Clark. It was just the right amount of pressure to make you drape your arms around his shoulders, delicately splaying your fingers on the nape of his neck as you rolled your hips, too.

“Golly,” laughed Clark airily,  “this is…thank you…”

Did he seriously just—thank you? For humping against his clothed dick?

“Just—” you pressed your face closer into his neck, kissing his jugular, “put it in me, Clark. Fuck me.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

He didn’t pull his underwear down any further than his mid-thigh. The material bit uncomfortably into his skin, but he didn’t care. He needed you, just as much as you needed him—if not more. 

At least, you thought so. But, then, for a long, agonising moment, he didn’t move at all. The dull ache in your core made you reluctantly draw away from the crook of his shoulder, blinking deplorably at him. Clark’s expression was drawn, maybe even a little concerned.

“What’s wrong?” you asked him, twirling one of his curls around your finger. “Why’d you stop—oh?” 

You hadn’t even meant to glance down, but fuck. Of course, you expected him to be big. Look at him. Everything about him was. But—fuck. It felt unfair, wrong almost, to try and put a measurement to it, so you didn’t even bother. You just stared at it, blankly, salivating, Pavlovian. It was heavy against his stomach and thick.

Have you mentioned you hate this guy?

“It’s a little, uh—”

“Nothing about that is little, Clark,” you snapped.

He blushed. “I, oh, jeez. I’m sorry. I should’ve said, I don’t…” He nibbled at his bottom lip. “Do you still want to…?”

“Yes.” What the fuck were you doing? Were you seriously going to let this ridiculously hung, ridiculously beautiful, ridiculously into-you man fuck you with that thing? “Just—” you finally looked away from his dick, up to him, to Clark’s soft eyes, “slow. At first,” you added hastily. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.” Clark nodded enthusiastically. “Anything you want.” He raised you the slightest bit, the tip of him grazing your sensitive folds, clumsily slipping through the wetness. You yelped. “Sorry, I, give me…” Uncut, pinkish, and leaking pre-cum, it caught at your entrance, and even she seemed terrified. Clark wrenched his eyes shut. “Talk to me.”

“Talk to you?” you squawked. 

“Yes,” he panted, sinking in an inch. Even that was a stretch. Slick and stinging and sweet. You mewled as Clark moaned, and he sounded too good, you had to kiss him—your hand searing against the nape of his neck you stroked your tongue into his mouth in tandem to him bracing deeper into you. The kiss was wet and filthy, until Clark babbled against you, “Talk to me, please.” 

Was this some weird, pseudo-romantic kink of his? Did he get off on well-meaning conversation during sex? Was that why he tried talking to you about Boravia mid-eating-you-out?

“About what?” You decided to entertain him, anyway, pressing your cheeks together as you cradled his head against yours.

“Anything,” he begged, hips jerking underneath you. 

Fucked out, you languidly looked down. He was barely halfway in, and you felt full.

“Please, I don’t want to…” Cheeks hot and red, Clark looked almost dejected as he kept his eyes squeezed, hands squeezing at your hips still. Suddenly, you understood him—he wanted you to talk to him to distract him. He didn’t want to finish too-soon.

In retrospect, you probably should’ve just slammed right down onto him, taking all of him. Buried yourself to the hilt on his dick, torturing him, and riding yourself to an inch of both of your lives. Maybe if he came embarrassingly quick inside of you, that would’ve been the best thing—you would’ve deflated in disappointment, slid off him, and sat hollowly with that aching emptiness for the rest of the night. But it would’ve been over and you would’ve at least had an excuse to never mention this night ever again—premature ejaculation surely was a reason to never bring up a hook-up with a coworker, right?

Regardless. You didn’t do that. You couldn’t think that responsibly with the brutal stretch of him inside you, with the way he was shaking under you.

No, you indulged the motherfucker.

“Cat’s gonna have a field day when she finds out,” you moaned, lips hot and heavy against his cheekbone.

Another inch. He choked on a groan.

“Yeah?” Clark managed, eyes still unseeing, glasses endearingly low on his sweat-beaded nose. You wished it was appropriate to take a photo of him like this—something to remember him by, you thought morbidly. “Why’s…” Deeper; this time you couldn’t help but clench around him, and the sounds the two of you made were nothing short of broken, “why’s that, honey?”

“C’mon. Don’t act like you don’t know,” you chastised, quivering. “About the sweep. The bet. They’ve all been talking about this for m-months.”

Clark’s fingers were massaging your clit again and the overstimulation made you jolt so hard that it thrust him up into you, accidentally bottoming out. Seething, your lips needily captured him in a filthier kiss than before, open-mouthed, breathing in him. Clark drank up your wanton moan like it was holy water, letting it consecrate him, but he didn’t move. Neither of you moved. Your knees chafed against the velvet of your couch as you stayed there, full of him. You swore that you felt him in your guts. You wondered, satirically, if he could fuck his way into your heart.

“Jimmy was…” Clark let himself sit for a breath, just feeling you—your warmth, your slickness, the tightness of you around him, your bare chest flush against his shirt. He had been dreaming about this, dreaming of you. “Before you come over—hnn…golly—Jimmy, he…he was giving me crud for how I am with you.” 

You whined, lifting yourself a few inches off him, before sinking back down with an airy, shameless sigh of contentment. “How are you with me, Clark?”

“Don’t act like you don’t know,” Clark laughed weakly, repeating your previous words to him—though, in your opinion, with way more charm. 

All the while, he kept circling the most careful of caresses around your clit—measuredly, like he knew just the right amount of pressure as not to overwhelm you, but to keep you relaxed and pleasured.

“Open your eyes, Clark,” you pleaded then against his mouth, forgetting all of your objectives.

He stubbornly shook his head, using his leverage on your hips to rock you again, the tip of him so snug and dangerous against the treacherous part of you that threatened to wreck all of this—wreck you.

“Can’t.”

You clenched around him in protest, almost whining out, “Why?” 

“Don’t wanna—I’ll…” 

He didn’t finish his sentence, fucking up into you shallowly and slowly, a sensuality that was so unfair and good. Still, the implication was enough for you. Was he suggesting that if he looked at you, he’d unravel?

“Please, Clark.” Your twitch fingers touched the frames of his glasses, nudging them desperately up his nose. “I wanna see you. Don’t you wanna see me?” 

The neediness in your voice made Clark’s nails bite into your hips.

“I always wanna see you,” he said breathlessly.

Fuck. You were losing it.

“Then open your eyes, Clark.”

He did. Eyelashes fluttering. Pupils blown—you mourned the startling blue, but you remember reading once that pupils dilate when you look at someone you’re attracted to, and the memory of that was enough to coax the petulant yearning for his pretty blues away. You could even swear there was a sparkle in his eyes; one put there by you, even. They raked over you frantically, like they wanted to look at everything at once but couldn’t, and it pained him.

“You’re so beautiful,” Clark told you tenderly, gently lifting you up-and-down on his cock, never all the way out, but always returning to that spot, that ache. 

“You mentioned,” you laughed weakly, faces mere centimetres apart. 

Warmth and breath intermingling between you—the smell of sex and waxy candles, your perfume tangled with his cologne.

“Not enough,” he swore feverishly, shaking his head.

“I’d say that—”

“Never enough.” Clark rested his forehead against yours. “You’re beautiful,” he called by your real name again—intimacy strangling you. “I want you to know that.”

You blinked at him, eyes feeling hooded. He was so gorgeous. It felt bizarre that he kept revelling you in these compliments, rocking up into you, pleasuring you, when he might’ve been the most attractive person you’d ever met. Even more so that he was underneath you, here, and seemingly besotted—as Cat had exaggerated one afternoon to you. 

“Harder.”

“What?” 

“Fuck me harder, Clark.”

He wavered. “Are you…” his fingers stalled against your clit, cock heavy inside of you, unsure, “are you sure? I don’t want to—”

“I want it.”

“All right, then.” Clark started to fuck you—unbridled, hard, not faster (you didn’t ask for faster, you asked for harder, and it made you dizzy that he listened so attentively, that he didn’t mistake one for the other). He had you practically bouncing on his cock, tits moving violently against him. He hoped he’d have another chance with you, that he’d get to give them more love next time, give you more love. “Whatever you want, honey. Tell me and I’ll give it ya’.” 

Fuck him. Screw Clark Kent. Fucking bastard.

Your couch creaked under the weight of you both. It felt like Clark was rearranging your guts. His fingers made obscene, wet sounds as they moved against your clit. And it was there again—white-hot, throbbing, visceral. In your skin. Clark was in your fucking bones.

You kissed him viciously, swearing against him—corrupting him again with your own dirty mouth. If he wouldn’t swear, you’d give him yours. You’d make him swallow your guilt and your cruelty. You bit his lip, hard enough to bleed—but you didn’t taste blood, didn’t even hear hurt. Just a pretty whimper against you as he kissed you back, just as enthusiastically, but absent of the meanness. 

“This…” you panted against him, riding him filthy, matching his thrusts with shallow, hard bounces of your own, “this can’t happen again, Clark.” 

He moaned so lovely against you that he couldn’t have possibly heard your ragged promise. Maybe the other sounds—the slickness of your combined arousal, the slapping of skin, the threadiness in your voice. He was so fucked-out, your words were lost on him. The belligerent intent of your canines against his bottom lip, too.

You could feel every twitch of him inside of you and it made you grind down crueller.

“Did you hear me, Clark?” You licked into his mouth. “We can’t…This is it.” 

Clark looked like he was struggling to keep his open—like you had asked of him—never mind listen to your heartlessness. Instead of replying, or even registering you, he just stared at you with hazy, wet eyes, and let your name roll off his tongue, onto yours. 

Fine, you thought bitterly—you’d twist the knife later.

“Are you gonna come, Clark?” 

That clicked with him. He nodded, eager and desperate, his cock nestled against the sweetest part of you, mouth hot against the nastiest as he kissed you so innocently.

“Are you?” he asked softly, pressing down the tiniest bit more onto your clit.

You nodded then smiled for him, because God knows when you were next going to be able to without it being forced and awkward, a polite gesture slanted across the bullpen. You hoped it was pretty for him. Real enough.

Clark seemed to think so, eyes crinkling at it, returning the gesture with dimples and pearly teeth and devotion. He kissed it—your smile—murmuring something against you incoherently, but it was for the better. You didn’t want to know whatever rosy, lovely shit Clark Kent babbled when he finished.

You rode him through it instead. He had stopped fucking into you almost a minute ago, leaving you to do all the work with this blissed-out, drunken glaze to his eyes that massaged the tired ache in your thighs. His hips jerked underneath you—his release so much, and heavy, and maybe you should’ve expected this. He filled you up, all over again. Twitching and whispering sweet nothings against you as his arms came to wrap around your back, cradling your smaller body to his.

Fortunately, you weren’t far behind. More intense than your last, jittery and consuming—you blame it on him still being inside you, his cum trickling out of you, onto your laps. But it felt hungrier. A weep wracked its way through you viciously, and you folded into him, arms snaking around his shoulders again as you tucked yourself into his shoulder, grinding slowly to keep the tip of him against the delicate inside of you for as long as you could before this all unravelled. 

Quiet.

It was all quiet. 

He was still inside of you. Still deep. A faint, lingering twitch against your walls. You weakly clenched against the sensation and felt his heart stutter against yours. Ribs melting together. Clark reached up, fingers gently carding a few sweaty strands of your hair behind your ear, pecking the opposite temple. 

It was everything. It was perfect.

Clark’s hands traced the rosary of your spine sacredly. “That was…”

Now.

“So stupid, right?” you laughed weakly.

“Wha…?”

Using your knees as leverage, you swung your other leg over him, slowly rising off his softening length. You ignored the mournful absence between your legs, the mess you left on him, and most of all, the forlorn frown that downturned his lips, and gathered the thick comforter you kept thrown over the back of your couch. You bundled your naked form in it, but it did little to protect yourself from the soft confusion Clark turned to you with, the wounded expression that did the nastiest thing to your heart. 

You swallowed it down and tucked yourself into the corner of the sofa, bringing your legs up against your sternum underneath the blanket, and busied yourself by fiddling with a threadbare strand of wool.

“Erm.” Clark stared wretchedly at his lap, at his cock that was now limp and drenched against his thigh, then at you. And when you didn’t meet his eyes (when Clark realised you wouldn’t again for the rest of the night), he shamefully tugged his boxers back up, tucking himself away. “I…” 

He stammered, doleful. He kept glancing at you, half-expecting you to unfurl, to break, to gather him up in your arms and shower him with kisses. Maybe even take him back to your bed—and it was probably settling in now for him the significance of you telling him to go to your couch and not your bedroom; a level of intimacy he didn’t deserve, maybe. Clark’s bottom lip wobbled and he sunk his teeth into it. You thought he might cry.

“The others are probably all at Rosie’s,” you said lightheartedly, trying to act casual. Clark stared at you, destroyed. You continued, mulish, “There’s no way Jimmy let the night end early. He probably grabbed your blazer for you, too. You forgot it, right?” 

Clark blinked once, twice, and it gutted you—because he looked so upset and out of sorts, like you had pulled the rug out from underneath him. The blue had returned to his eyes.

“Penny,” he rasped, tentative.

You defensively pulled the blanket tighter around yourself. “Don’t, Clark.”

His hands flexed pathetically against his bent knees. “Don’t, what? Don’t talk to you? I…I don’t understand. I thought—”

“You thought wrong, then.” 

Clark snapped his head forward, away from you. He did it so fast you worried it stung his neck. Not that you would be able to distinguish between that ache and the one you’d scarred into his features, anyway. His face seemed to be experiencing some kind of terrible fracture, unspooling all sorts of earnest warmth into your living room—an unflinching, raw hurt.

“Penny, I…” 

You laughed, hollow and mean. “Oh, come on, Kent. Don’t do this.”

He looked at you, ravaged. “Do what?” 

“I mean. It was good. I had a nice time, but…” The words were tumbling fast, too-defensive, senseless, “I mean, c’mon? I know you think that you’ve got this thing for me, but that’s all it is. You know, it’s a workplace crush. Close proximity. I show up in tight skirts sometimes. And now…now we’ve had sex, but—”

“Is that really what you think of me?” Clark flinched as if you’d struck him. “That…that I like you because you wear tight skirts? That this was all because of close proximity, because we work together, and—” 

“Clark, let’s not—” 

“You probably think I’m so stupid,” he laughed humourlessly, wet and sad. He stood up then, and you tore your eyes away, allowing him his dignity to hastily pull up his slacks. You felt all apart, but you couldn’t imagine how Clark felt. 

In the swelling silence of your living room, all there was to keep the moment startlingly real was the rustle of fabric and the clink of his belt. Finally, you chanced a regretful glance, lungs hurting. Clark wasn’t looking at you. You worried, awfully, that he never would again after this. His throat was working against the thick gathering of tears. 

“Why?” he asked roughly, to cover up the pitchiness in his voice, maybe, the desperation. “Why…this, if you don’t…”

The blanket suddenly felt scratchy against your naked skin.

“Don’t make me say it, Clark.” 

“Say what? That you used me? That you know how I feel but still—” he smeared the glossiness on his kiss-swollen mouth against his shaking hand. “Gosh, I knew you could be mean sometimes, but I didn’t know you could be cruel. Do you even know what you’re doing to me right now?” 

Your brittle nails plucked at a worn seam. “It was just a thing, Clark. I don’t know what to tell you, I'm sorry.” 

Clark stood there in the middle of your living room, candlelight softening the contours of his devastation, arms limp and helpless at his sides. You hated yourself for this. What were you thinking, initiating it? You weren’t thinking, that was it—you weren’t thinking at all. You just saw Clark there in the bullpen, his sleeves rolled up, hair in those messy ringlets of his, tie all endearingly crooked, and he kept looking at you. All you knew was that you had to have him, at least once—to put the nagging in your head, in the office, to bed. You thought, maybe, it might uncomplicate things. How fucking stupid that was. Now, you sat in your blanket, almost embryonic with part of Clark still inside of you, cursing yourself. 

“You should go,” you mumbled. 

Clark swallowed loud enough for you to hear it. He didn’t come here with anything—nothing but himself and a bone-deep yearning he thought he was nursing with soft kisses and softer touches—but he felt emptier than when he arrived. Hollowed. At least before, from that safe, measured distance he kept, he could quietly tell himself that it was for the better that you were at an arm’s length—sweeter, that way. Now, it was all mangled and unruly. He couldn’t even blame you. Not really. In typical Clark Kent fashion, he was already spiralling in self-flagellation and deprecation, kicking himself for even thinking that he could have this—have you. 

“Okay,” he said softly, to his feet, to the room. To you. “Merry Christmas, Penny.” 

The click of your door was lethal. 

You buried your head between your knees, against the scratchiness of your blanket.

“Fuck.”

[kents-clark]

"I'm, uhm... Clark Kent? K... Kent." TOM WELLING as CLARK KENT | 6x20 - Noir