I miss when ads were a single click and then theyāre gone. Now every ad has a minimum of three phases where you watch a video, exit the still frame of fake gameplay, and then exit the app download. That doesnāt even touch on the ones that forcibly take you to another app after opening a tab in safari without you ever touching the screen.
I hate advertising. I hate that you canāt do anything without companies jumping down your throat with mostly bullshit ads. I hate that billboards exist. I hate that every company unanimously decided to make their ads longer and longer. I hate that ad blockers try to charge you money and there are in app purchases to remove ads. I hate that my attention has become commodified. I hate that thereās nothing I can do about it.
Arranged marriage prince! Steve who sneaks into his betrothedās room to tell her he doesnāt want to get married, as there are rumors she feels the same. Why must he settle down as he has so much of the world he wants to see?? He hasnāt even been introduced to her yet but his family expects them to wed tomorrow!!!
When he walks in, the princessā youā is trying to run away out the window by tying bedsheets together. You are dangling frantically and grunting because you made it too short and even if you jump, youād hurt yourself. Steve is smiling, leaning out the window looking at this maiden who is, oh so foolish.
āShall I fetch a laundress for your plan or do you want me to use your own clothes? Perchance your wedding gown will do the trick, ā He calls down to you, cheekily.
Albeit, when you look up, the moonlight dances across your features and your eyes pierce his soul in a way no woman heās ever known has done. And heās known quite a bit of maidens. He is a young prince that has traveled a lot in his time, after all.
Hence, the reason his parents persistence for him to be married, as theyāve had enough of his immaturity (and the fear of a bastard child).
And Prince Harrington has always thought he has seen true beauty before. He believed he always knew what it meant to be a fair maiden, but that changed the second he laid eyes on you. Even when youāre looking up at him as if heās the ugliest thing in the world.
You were more beautiful than any flower heās laid eyes on. Any painting his mother spent a fortune on. Your skin looks like silk and your eyes look like stars.
And perhaps there is such thing as love at first sight. Maybe itās because he fell in love with you that he uses his strength to lower the makeshift rope so you can land safely. You give him one last look, your face still unsure of what to make of him.
He flashes you a toothy smile and a wink before you turn around and sprint off. He perches his elbow on the windowsill. His hand under his chin as he watches your figure disappear into the night. He chuckles to himself because he forgot to warn you that Sir Edward, one of his fatherās knights, was patrolling this wing because your parents warned your parents you might attempt at something like this.
And perhaps marriage isnāt so bad when he can wake up to the world lying right next to him.
steve harrington x reader fanfiction | fratboy!steve | platonic!stobin (i promise) | mentions of cheating (but it's not real cheating) | mean!steve, playboy!steve | sort of friends to enemies to fwb to lovers | slowish burn | angst | hurt ... eventual comfort
warnings: mentions of sex, fingering, heavy making out, underaged drinking, erectile dysfunction (not for hot shot tho AYEEEE š¼), angst, figuring out feelings!!, steve's pov, this is from chapter 12 so you might see similar actions :)
words: 5.4k
summary: When you find out your college roommate/friend robin buckley's boyfriend, steve harringtonā who you thought beat all stereotypical frat boy oddsā is cheating on her, you find it hard to understand why she still wants to be with him. But there is more than meets the eye. You aren't sure if you want to be roped into it.
a/n: oh wow... hello friends... it's been awhile. this was meant to be a tiny little blurb about the first kiss between hot shot and steve, but then dkat steve was like, BLAIZE LET ME DEFEND MY CASE HERE!!!! so, low and behold the drabble turned into a small bonus chapter and it seems that's where the others are heading too. is anyone... complaining? also please be nice... i'm a little rusty with writing and writing for dkat.
masterlist | Rules/Playlist
Broken.
That's all Steve can call himself the past few weeks. Hellā¦ the past few months. Ever since Valentineās Day, everything was different for him. Heās really tried hard not to think about it. To think about you. But to think about it was a whole new plethora of implications: his vulnerability laid bare, his feelings metastasizing into something he can no longer pretend are manageable.
He couldnāt talk to Eddie or Robin about it. He knew Eddie would clap Steve on the shoulder and tell him to āfollow his heart.āĀ Eddie never hid the fact he was rooting for you and Steveā well he hid his comments from Robin that is. Robin, who now had Nancy. Who now had something real and fragile and worth protecting. Steve made promises to her. He might be a dick the majority of the time, but he's loyal. He has always been loyal. Who was he to make it harder for them?
He tried to distract himself. Amanda on Monday. Mary on Tuesday. Both futile. He felt disgusted with himself, guilty in a way that didn't make logical sense. You two weren't together, had never been together. But the guilt sat in his chest regardless, heavy and persistent andā fuck.
Another secret he's been carrying for two months: he's been faking it with everyone else.
He slips the condom off before they can notice, drops it at the bottom of the bathroom trash, and waits in there until he's sure they've left. He never finishes himself off afterward. He knows the only way he can is if he thinks about you, and that knowledge sits in him like something radioactive. Itās too dangerous to acknowledge directly and too present to ignore.
He canāt sleep. He tosses and turns, wondering what youāre doing, if youāre in your dorm with Robin or if that meathead is feeling you upā nope. He canāt be jealous. Itās not fair to you if heās jealous of you messing around with other people too. Even if itās a fucking Alpha Tau.Ā
He doesnāt know what is wrong with him.Ā
On Wednesday you were walking out of the library when he caught sight of you, and his entire body responded before his brain could intervene. You looked so pretty in the moonlight. He watched you laugh when you caught his eyes, your breath a small cloud in the cold air, warm and there and real. Your hand squeezed his arm when he held the door open, and then your mouth was on his neck and his hands were moving under your blouseā butter yellow, soft against his palms, genuinely so pretty on you. It drove him mad.
He always hated when the other girls left marks on him. But yours were different. Yours he'd flaunt, wearing shirts that wouldn't cover them, pretending in some parallel life that he was allowed to show off that he was yours. People assumed it was Robin. He let them assume.
Neither of you had the patience to undress properly. He'd hiked your skirt up, your legs hooking around his waist, pulling him deeper. His chain had swung against your collarbone with each thrust. His jeans bunched at his thighs. Both of you loud and breathless, the car rocking with the rhythm of it, your skin against his a sound he'd been replaying ever since.
He'd looked down at youā eyes clenched, fingers digging into his shoulders, neck archedā and dragged his tongue up the column of your throat. When he spat into your mouth and watched you swallow, the moan that tore out of him was completely beyond his control.
Sex had always come easily to him. But with you there's a challenge he keeps wanting to solve. He loves being the reason for your sounds, loves finding the specific combination of things that makes you cry out, loves the places in you that he finds and you didn't know existed. He loves how he fits inside you, the way you stretch and clench around him perfectly. He thinks about what it would feel like without a condomā like the first time. He thinks about it too often.
With you he doesn't hold back. He never has to muffle himself or perform. He just is. And that, more than anything else, is the thing that terrifies him.
He knows what anyone would tell him if he described this out loud. End it with the others. Or if he can't do that: think of you when he's with them. He's tried the second option. He's ashamed to admit it, more ashamed to admit what happens when he does.
He doesn't think of you in those moments. His mind doesn't go to anything compromising. It goes, instead, to conversations. The way you make him laugh. The particular sharpness of your wit, the patience you extend to Robin andā somehow, inexplicablyā to him. More patience than he deserves and you both know it.
He thinks about how people are drawn to you and you have no idea. How they gravitate toward you at parties, on the sidewalk, in line at the library, and you move through it all like it's ordinary. He thinks about the line between your brows when you're irritable, and how badly he wants to press his thumb there and smooth it out. He thinks about how when you get mean, you're ferociousā certain and passionate and immovableā and how hours later you always go back and apologize to whoever it was. You always know what to say. He has never once known what to say.
Thursday, he tried to write off everything as stress and a bad week. This time of year is always hard for him. Nightmares. Headaches. The insomnia that arrives like a seasonal houseguest who doesn't know when to leave. He guesses he can add ejaculation issues to the list too.The anniversary of the accident, seeps in, coloring everything gray, his scars aching before his brain has caught up to what day it is.
He'd skipped his classes and gone out once for air. He told himself it was coincidental that he wandered toward the building where your class meets. That he hadn't, over the course of the past several weeks, memorized the rough shape of your schedule. That he didn't sometimes take routes that would put you at the edges of his vision, even from a distance.
Purely coincidental.
He wasn't even sure he'd say anything if he saw you. He could ask if you wanted to get lunch, take a walkā two friends, only two friends, who happened to be sleeping together. He ignored the small sharp pain in his chest at the phrasing.
When he rounded the corner and found you kissing Sammy, the guy's hands on you and yours on him, Steve stopped walking. He stood there for five full seconds. Then he turned around and went back to Pike.
He'd like to say he did the honorable thing after that. Moved on, let it go, focused on something else. He can't stop thinking about it. It's his own ruleā the one he made, the one that's supposed to protect both of themā and it's eating him alive.
Which is why he snapped at Robin when she started in about Nancy. He knows it's different for them. He does. But a selfish, rotting part of him was jealousā not that he'd ever say soā jealous that at least she got to be with someone she loved without everything being underwater. He felt guilty about it almost immediately. It wasn't that he wasn't happy for them. He was. He is.
He's also drowning.
He didn't even register you asking to come in when you appeared in his doorway later. He was too busy being struck dumb by the sight of youā hair up, pink sweater he loves tucked into your light wash jeans, fresh manicure you'd probably done in your dorm with Robin. He watched you cross the room and felt his chest do that thing it does. Tighten first. Then soften, like something rigid giving way.
You touched his knee. You gave him the look that meant it was okay.
He felt safe. He always feels safe, and that is the most dangerous thing about you.
His rules dissolved and he put his head in your lap because it was the only context in which he was allowed to do that. He went limp and hoped you couldn't see his eyes going wet. He breathed you inā clean laundry, something faint and warm underneath, the specific scent he's started associating with a future he wants and can't have. He asked you to talk about your day because he could sit for hours inside the sound of your voice. You made the mundane parts of your life sound like somewhere he wanted to be.
Broken, he told you. He feels broken. He didn't tell you he wasn't sure how to fix it. Or that he suspected he knew exactly how, and was terrified of what it would cost.
After you left, the thought of you kissing Sammy returned and wouldn't stop. It moved through him in different frequencies. He wondered what your lips would feel like against hisā not his neck, not the geography of his shoulders and chest, but his mouth. He wondered if the rhythm would be the same as everything else between you, that strange melodic fit, the way your bodies always seemed to find the same tempo without trying.
On the night of Mardi Tau, he'd told Robin three times he wasn't going. He couldn't. Couldn't watch you across a crowded room, couldn't watch you dance with Sammy, couldn't see your mouth on someone else's again and pretend the sight wasn't carving something out of him.
He watched from his window when your car pulled up and Eddie climbed in. It was dark outside andhe couldn't see you. His heart thumped anyway.
The car pulled away.
His heart sank.
It should be him.
.-.-.-.
Katrina was always a sweet girl. Her hair was a bit much sometimesā reminded him of when Tammy Thompson got her first perm and he couldn't see the board in Mrs. Click's class until he finally moved seats.Ā
But she didn't deserve tonight.
Everything was going well. He did everything he normally did, and by her sounds, Katrina was enjoying herself. All while his mind kept drifting to Sig Tau. To you. His heart racing because the rumors had been circulating through Greek life all weekā that Sammy really likes you.Ā
It was all dirty touches and heat between them until he got Katrina over the edge.
But when it was his turn and she went to touch himā nothing.
He laughed it off awkwardly and told her to give him a second, spitting in his hand, trying to coax any reaction from his body. The redness crept up the back of his neck and deepened in his cheeks, not from the sex but from something worse. He kept trying. But even looking at Katrina sprawled naked on his bed, cheeks flushed, watching him with patient eyes, he still couldn't think properly.
He kept thinking about what an asshole he was. What an utter prick, to be here with a nice girl who deserved better than this. All because he couldn't fucking admit what he'd been running from all this time.
His shoulders drooped. He deflated.
"Oh my god," Katrina whispered.
Steve opened his mouth, a lump rising in his throat. "Iā" Nothing came. No excuse worth saying out loud. "It's not you. I swearā"
"Oh my fucking god." She stood up from his bed. He could tell she wasn't happy by the way she movedā quick and stiff, snatching up her clothes. He saw the tears rolling down her face before she turned away.
"Katrinaā"
"I am missing the biggest party of the year for this," she said, voice unraveling as she pulled her shirt over her head.
Steve stood there, still holding his limp dick, unsure whether he should wait until she left. He didn't know the proper etiquette for this situation. He'd never had anyone leave in the middle of a hookup before. Never because he couldn't get hard. He rubbed his face with one hand, trying to think.
"I'm sorry. I'm really stressed outā"
She turned around, lip quivering. "This," she hissed, motioning between them, "is what's supposed to relieve you of stress."
Steve picked up his boxers and slipped them on, feeling her watch him. Then his jeans. He looked at the floor, then up into her eyes, hoping and praying her memory of the last half hour might somehow evaporate.
It was in that humiliating moment he realized it wasn't only hating the fact you were with someone else tonight. He was too. Even though his hookups with other girls had become rare. Even with the lie he'd told you from the startā that he had a once-a-week ruleā it still sent pain radiating through his chest, the particular kind that comes from knowing you're doing something wrong.
"I don't think we should keep seeing each other," he said, trailing off because he was a coward.
Katrina ticked her jaw. She sniffled once, sharply, through the hurt. He watched her shrink into herself, arms crossing over her chest, trying to make sense of something that didn't make any sense. She didn't have feelings for himā he knew that. But he could almost see the trust between them severing, clean and quiet as a cut. Without another word she picked up her handbag and walked out.
He wished he were man enough to sit with it or run after her to tell herā¦ anything that would make her feel better. To feel the full weight of hurting someone he hadn't meant to hurt. To reckon with the ways his selfishness was splitting him apart from the inside.
Instead he got dressed quickly and put on his glasses. He needed to see you.
Not needed. Wanted. Both. He couldn't untangle them anymore.
His adrenaline was high and he ignored the beaming DON'T DO IT sign glowing right in front of him. Rules be damned. There were never really rules with you to begin with.
He smoked two cigarettes on the walk to Sig Tau without realizing it, and hadn't noticed he'd arrived until he was already pushing through the crowd outside and through the doors. He stood in the middle of the main gathering space, chest heaving, eyes scanning the room.
The scary thing was he always knew when you were there before he found you. Some magnetic pull in his chest that swung toward you like a compass finding northā maybe it was your perfume, the one you only wore when you went out. He found you before his brain caught up to the fact that he was looking.
You were alone. Relief moved through him so fast it embarrassed him.
Except you were scanning the room the same way he had been, searching for someoneā Sammy, probably. Then you stopped. Hair framing your face, lip gloss catching the colored lights. He watched your expression shift. Watched your lips flicker upward. You looked exactly as relieved to see him as he felt seeing you.
He crossed the room toward you, taking you in the whole way. Gold crop top. Your purple skirt and white pumps. The line of your collarbone. But he kept returning to your eyes. He drowned in them every time and he did it willingly, like a man who had made peace with the water.
You were the most beautiful person he'd ever met. It drove him absolutely crazy.
He was so close but he needed more, and if there weren't people watching he'd have pulled you into him right there. Instead he motioned toward the bathroom tucked out of the way, the one nobody else seemed to know about.
He pulled you inside and crowded you against the counter.
"Touch me," he said. The words came out wrecked. A plea, not a request.
You started to say something and he shook his head. He said please. Said it again. Please.
And you did. You touched him exactly where he knew you'd touch him first, and he twitched and let out a breath that was equal parts relief and pleasure. His skin knew you. Reacted to you the way muscle reacts to memoryā without instruction, without hesitation. He whimpered when your fingers traced along his scars and brushed through the trail of hair on his stomach.
He pressed his hips against you involuntarily. Already hard against your bare thigh.
Both of you were asking for more without saying it. You pulled his hand and pressed it against the damp cotton of your panties. His knees buckled, his weight nearly crushing you as he started working slow circles against your clit. His mouth found your cheek, breath short and ragged.
Then you were up on the counter and he was fucking you with his fingers, his cock aching against his zipper, completely engulfed in your wetness and the sounds falling from your mouth. You clutched at him. He still wasn't close enough. It wasn't enough anymore. It hadn't been enough for a long time.
He worked faster, stretching you with another finger, curling to find that spot that made your whole body shift. He could feel you shaking. He could hear the pitch of your whimpers climbing.
He rutted against your leg, moaning into your neck, until you made a sound he'd never heard from you before. He pulled back to look at youā half-lidded, mouth openā and his eyes dropped to your lips. Parted and pretty, lip gloss still sticky.
Before he could think longer he grabbed you by the head, fingers fisting your hair, and kissed you.
Then froze immediately.
"Fuck. I'm sorry. I'm sorryā"
You smirked at him. Hunger in your eyes. One finger hooked into his chain necklace, pulling him back.
Your lips crashed against his.
He grunted when you bucked your hips, grinding on his hand still inside you. The kiss was messy and filthy and open-mouthed and unforgiving, and it rearranged everything inside him. His skin felt like it was burning, the heat moving straight to his cock. But underneath all of itā underneath the want and the noise and the desperate frictionā his heart was beating against his ribs in a rhythm he recognized from somewhere he'd been trying not to visit.
He couldn't ignore it this time. Didn't want to.
All he wanted to do was smile. Because he was kissing his girl. His Hot Shot. Finally.
He felt you getting close and threw himself into itā fingers moving faster, palm pressing harder. His tongue licked into your mouth because if this was the only time he got to do this, he refused to forget what you tasted like. Sweet and warm and everything kissing was supposed to feel like and never had before. Feeling you kiss him back with the same urgency, the same hunger, he whined against your lips.
You nipped his bottom lip between your teeth and let it go.
In the fraction of a second it took, he thought about your first time together. How he'd wanted to kiss you then. How he'd wanted to kiss you every single time since. He thought about how swollen your lips were nowā wet from him, undone.
That was all it took. He came, pressing against your leg, letting you feel it. Letting you know it was all you.
But he doesn't stop kissing you.
Can't.
And the thing isā he knows, standing here with his hand leaving your thighs and both arms pulling you in insteadā that this has nothing to do with sex anymore. It stopped being about sex somewhere between the first time your mouth found his and right now, in this dim bathroom at a party neither of you particularly wanted to attend. What he wants is not the thing bodies want. It's something older and quieter and much more frightening.
He wants to keep kissing you in the morning. He wants to know what you look like when you're half-asleep and grumpy. He wants to sit across a table from you and argue about something stupid and be wrong and have you tell him so. He doesnāt want to say goodnight, because then that means leaving. And heās so tired of leaving.
Your fingers tighten in his hair, pulling hard enough to sting, and the groan that comes out of him is helpless. Itās not because of the pain but because of the wanting underneath it, the sheer volume of it. He wraps both arms around you, one hand wide and flat across your lower back, the other cradling the back of your head, and he holds on.
You clutch at him with the same desperation and something in him cracks open. He moves his mouth to your jaw, your throat, pressing kisses into the warm skin there. He needs to touch every part of you he can reach, needs you to know he's here, he's here, he's been here this whole time.
His hands won't stop moving. One slides up your side, thumb grazing the underside of your tit through your top, and the other grips your hip hard enough to mark. He's not sorry. He wants to mark you. He wants there to be proof.
You pull his face back to yours and he comes back willingly and gratefully. If he's honest, every second his mouth isn't on yours feels like something wasted now. The kiss shifts, messier, all tongue and teeth and two people running out of ways to say something neither of them has said yet.
You slide your hands under his shirt, palms flat against his stomach, and every muscle in his body contracts under the touch. Your nails drag up his sides and across his ribs and he shudders. Itās not even from sensation but from the specific tenderness of being known. You know exactly where to touch him. You've always known.
He pulls you impossibly closer, hands roaming across your bare back, until there's no space left between you. Chest to chest. He can feel your heartbeat against his own and he doesn't know which is which. Doesn't care.
He kisses you slower this time. Still wanting, still urgent, but slower. His tongue slides against yours and he thinks: this is the problem. This has always been the problem. There is no casual version of this. There never was.
Your fingers find his belt loops and pull his hips flush against yours. He can feel the wet warmth in his jeans against your inner thigh. He makes a sound into your mouth. Itās broken and wanting and almost pained, like something has been held under pressure for a very long time and is only now, in increments, being allowed to surface.
He brings his hand up to cup your face. His thumb strokes your cheekbone with a tenderness he has no business feeling, and he knows it, and he does it anyway. You tilt your head and deepen the kiss and he thinks: I would do anything. I would blow up every rule I've ever made. I would stop being careful entirely.
The kisses slow. Gentle now. Each one landing separately, softly. Just lips resting against lips. Just breathing the same air. Just staying.
He draws your bottom lip carefully between his teeth one last time. His tongue soothing the place, and then he pulls back.
Steps away.
He looks at the floor. Then at you.
Something moves across his face that he can't stop in time. Something guilty and sad and full of all the things he hasn't said and should have, all the moments he's walked away from and chosen rules and Robin over this, over you.
He opens the bathroom door.
He leaves.
The click of the latch behind him sounds, in the silence that follows, like the loneliest thing he's ever heard.
.-.-.-.
Steve walked into the empty Pike house and the silence swallowed him whole.
His eyes were still blown wide, hair wrecked, clothes wrinkled and askewā every detail of him a confession he hadn't meant to make or even think. He trudged inside and let out a heavy breath, both hands dragging down his face like he could physically rearrange what had happened tonight into something he could live with.
He knew he'd fucked up. The only thing he could do to avoid thinking about it was sleep, which meant he was going to lie awake staring at the ceiling and think about nothing else.
He made it to his room and threw himself backward onto his bed, depleted and spent. His fingers drifted to his lips without him meaning for them toā still buzzing faintly, still warm from where your mouth had been.
A smile crept onto his face before he could stop it.
Then, as fast as it arrivedā¦ gone.
His phone rang.
He launched himself off the bed. He looked at his watch and wondered who the hell was calling at this hour. Eddie? Robin? His heart lurched sideways at the thought that it might be you. Could it be you calling to come over, to talk, to say something that would either fix everything or make it completely irreparable?
He picked up. "Hello?"
"Steveee," a voice slurred.
Steve pulled the receiver away from his ear, stared at it, put it back. "Uh..."
"Were you asleep?"
His eyes went wide. "Max? Why are you calling this late? Are you okay?"
"Stevee, I'm more than okaaay." She hiccupped.
"Are you drunk?" His voice came out protective before he could temper it. He knew he'd gotten into things he shouldn't have at her age, but he was an idiot. Max was not. He bit at the skin around his thumbnail. "Are you safe?"
"I'm at Wheeler's." The line crackled and her voice dropped to a hushed whisper. "We got into a bottle of Mrs. Wheeler's wine playing truth or dare."
Steve laughed, the coiled tension in his chest easing slightly. "Right, and are you doing a dare right now?"
"Yuuuup," Max sang.
"What is it? You supposed to prank call me or something?"
"Nope. Got dared to tell someone I love them. Dustin, the shithead he is, wanted me to probably say it to Lucas in front of everyone, because apparently I kind of suck at telling people that shit..."
Max's words drifted off.
Steve went completely still. He replayed the sentence. Made sure he'd heard it correctly. Because it was trueāMax had never said that to him. Not once. Not directly. Not without enough sarcasm layered on top to make it deniable.
"Steveee, oh my god, did you die over there? Hellloooo?"
"Yeah." He swallowed hard. "I'm here. Sorry."
"Oh god, don't tell me it cut out and I have to say it again," she groaned.
He smiled at the ceiling, something loosening in his chest. "No. I heard you."
A beat of silence.
"I love you too, kid."
Max made an immediate and theatrical gagging noise. But he could still hear her smiling on the other end. "Gross, dude. You didn't have to say it back."
The quiet that followed wasn't really quiet at all. It was the specific kind of silence that exists between two people who both meant exactly what they said and know the other one did too.
"Now it's my turn to dare you to do it," Max giggled.
He rolled his eyes. "That's not how the game works and you know it."
"Maybeee. Or maybee you're scared."
"Maxā"
"Steveeee," she mocked.
"I'm going to hang up now. Go be a pain to Wheeler or something." He shook his head when he heard her cackling.
She went quiet for a moment. Then: "You never called this week."
His throat went dry. He sighed, picking up the base of the phone and moving to sit at the edge of his bed. She couldn't see him, but he looked down anyway. "Yeah. I know. I got busy. I'm sorry."
Another wave of silence settled between themā the weighted kind, the kind that carries whole seasons inside it.
Steve raked his fingers through his hair.
"I don't miss him, y'know?" Max mumbled, her words soft and slurred but perfectly clear.
"Maxā"
"And I know you still feel guilty, and we haven't really talked about it. But I needed you to know that."
She was right. They hadn't talked about the accident. That was probably mostly his faultāhe never wanted to drag her back into bad water. He wasn't sure what to say.
"Drink water before bed. Okay?"
"Steve." His name was soft on the receiver, careful with him in a way she rarely was out loud.
"Yeah?"
"I dare you to tell me if you love her."
"Robin? Of course I love her, you know it's not like that thouā"
"No, not Robin." Max said your name.
It moved through the phone line and landed somewhere behind his sternum.
He froze. His face fell. Something cold and certain moved through his blood all at once. "Max, you know that'sāI can'tāwhy would youāshe's a friend. A friend, okay?"
"Do you?" she asked again. Steady and almost sober-minded. Almost like she already knew the answer long before he ever did.
And Steve felt all the weeks of careful avoidance collapse at once.
He thought about you. He let himself, fully, for the first time in monthsā didn't redirect the thought, didn't shut the door on it before it could open. He let it open.
It wasnāt like a lightbulb, or a lightning bolt striking him. That was the thing about it that undid him. It didn't arrive the way he'd always assumed love would arrive. He had always imagine it to be loud and obvious and impossible to miss. It had crept in the way warmth does in a room you've been sitting in for a long time. Slow. Pervasive. Already everywhere before you think to notice.
The specific moment for him was all on Valentineās when he saw you lying on his chest fast asleep. It overwhelmed him. It excited him. He knew it then, there was no one else. But he stayed in denial, tormented by thoughts of what itād be like to go steady with you.
It felt like something that had always been true and was only now, under the specific pressure of Max saying your name through a crackling phone line at midnight, being acknowledged.
He carried it the way you carry an injury you've decided not to mentionā working around it, adjusting your movement, telling yourself it wasn't that bad. But it had been pressing into him constantly. Heavy and specific and shaped like everything about you: the way you looked at him when he wasn't performing anything, the particular patience you extended to him that he hadn't earned, the sound of your laugh when something caught you off guard, the way the room organized itself differently when you were in it.
It felt like something that was equally killing him inside but also the thing that was keeping him alive.Ā
He wanted things he hadn't let himself want in years. Simple things. Quiet things. He wanted to call you for no reason. He wanted to make you breakfast. He wanted, god help him, to introduce you to people and have a word for what you were to him that was true.
Instead he had rules. He had arrangements. He had you hidden away in a bathroom, holding a kiss that rearranged everything and a door he'd closed behind him anyway.
The wanting sat inside him like a lit match in a closed room. It illuminated everything, consuming itself, running out of air.
"Yeah," he whispered. "I do."
The words landed in the quiet of his empty room and he didn't take them back.
When he finally got off the phone and lay down in the dark, Steve stared at the ceiling and wondered if this was what it was like in every version of things. Every alternate arrangement of choices and timing and circumstanceā did they all wind up here? Something in him said yes. Something in him had been saying yes for a while now, quietly, in a register he'd been working very hard not to hear.
No matter what he built around it. No matter how many rules he made or broke or pretended still applied. No matter the timing, no matter the cost.
Holy shit. Youāve done it again. My heart aches because I am feeling his longing for her. It hurts worse when I think about how much he loves her. He sees all of her, learned all of her, and he fucking loves her. Not just the pretty or the extravagant, but the ugly and the mundane. UGHHHH I forgot how bad this series fucked with my feelings. I love you and I hate you because I am sad now but also that was so good
laying my head in steveās lap so he can scratch my head with his big hands
waaaahhhhh.... Yeah. steve's the ultimate snuggle bug and dotes on you like it's his full time job
there's some movie playing on the TV that neither of you are paying particular attention to. the volume is low and it's late and you're just enjoying each other's company after spending most of the day apart. you're curled up together on the couch, all tangled with limbs lazy and you feel like you could melt into him. so you do. you let yourself reposition to where your head is in steve's lap and your arm is dangling down to do something stupid like stick your fingers underneath the elastic of his sock to stay warm
and steve thinks this is the most normal thing in the world. he doesn't even think twice about bringing a hand up to your head and smoothing over your hair. he's using his calloused fingers to sweep some of it out of your face and to gently tuck some hair behind your ear. and then he's lacing those fingers into your hair that's been freshly shampooed and is still a little damp and just mindlessly moving along your scalp, applying a little pressure here and there in small circles. the short edges of his nails press in every so often as he moves his hand up and down and around the crown of your head. he's twirling strands up into his fingers before letting them fall back down and smoothing over your hair again. he's practically brushing through your hair and pretending to find tangles just so he can keep running his fingers through it from the base of your skull. your eyes are getting tired and you feel sort of weightless and steve looooves the small hums of approval you give him when he applies some sweet pressure near your temples and behind your ears
and yeah definitely do not think about how large his hands are. how they're bigger than your face and practically envelope the back of your head. how the other hand that's not giving you a full on scalp massage is rubbing up and down your side soothingly, is curling around your hip, is tucking underneath the waistband of your sweatpants to swipe his thumb over your skin for comfort and nothing more. definitely do not think about that
explicit content
Leon experiences a moral shock when he realises just how badly he loves teaching you to touch him. In bed and outside of itāevery woman heās ever been entangled with knew more than him, and he learned how to touch women through their hands. How to pet their hair back, how to kiss too-sensitive places. How to coax a woman into his lap, and nip her throat, and make her shudder.
You know nothing. Heās your first boyfriend, lover, partner. Youāve never been touched, which is his own private agony, and a delight at all hours of the day as he gets to be your first kiss, your first fuck, and your first cuddle. He teaches you how to open your mouth and use your tongue, how to take what you need from him and anything else you want, too. He teaches you how to relax when youāre against someone, and how to draw shapes down their back. He shouldnāt find it so achy. Heās never been like this before. The hesitant way you tuck hair behind his ear as you lean up to kiss his cheek has him stirred and quickly useless, your hand tumbling down his back to tickle him like a damn slap. He shivers when you scratch his scalp and says, Thatās perfect, bub, with enough condescension to hide his sincerity. Heād love you if you knew everything there was to know, want you without introductions, but he loves being trusted so deeply by you, and he loves the way you smile when his patience exceeds your expectation. He doesnāt get mad. Doesnāt ever laugh at your shy questions. Heās putty in the palm of your trembly hands.
The worst of it is that you know. Not that you like it, being led and taught and told, commanded around with a gentleness he canāt fake, no. The worst part is when you wait to be told what to do, after a hundred kisses and hours upon hours boiling up in his lap. Like this? you ask into his neck, your teeth dull at his pulse and your tongue hot.
Leon grabs you by the thighs and yanks you against his front every time, a poor picture of restraint, praising his baby through gritted teeth. Yeah, honey. You listen so well.
