I'm too old for this @palmtreesx3 - Tumblr Blog

Strange Magic - Steve's POV

Before reading Steve's POV, read the Prologue here!

Modern!Steve x Reader

Summary: Steve Harrington is turning thirty, which would be significantly less alarming if his life looked anything like the one he imagined at sixteen. Instead, he's balancing baseball practices, bartending shifts, a teaching certification program, and a best friend whose latest obsession involves an Etsy witch and a neighborhood cat. When Robin's newest hyper-fixation introduces him to a listing that claims it can draw the face of your future soulmate, Steve does what any rational person would do: he laughs at it. Then he keeps thinking about it. Then he makes several increasingly questionable decisions that are nobody's business. What follows is a year-long spiral involving existential crises, terrible self-control, internet detective work, Robin Buckley being insufferably right, and one very inconvenient portrait that refuses to stay in the background.

OR - Steve Harrington accidentally becomes the main character in the exact kind of story he'd normally make fun of.

—

Steve's POV Warnings: 18+ sexual content, baby-making jokes, adult language, male masturbation, internet psychics, Etsy witchcraft, soulmate discussions, online stalking-adjacent behavior (the romantic comedy variety), existential life crises, emotional idiocy, pining, and one extremely judgmental cat.

The thing about coaching ten-year-olds was that they had absolutely no respect for the concept of mortality. Not actual mortality. Steve wasn't talking about death, here.

He was talking about knees.

And backs.

And the mysterious ache that had settled permanently between his shoulder blades sometime around the age of twenty-six and apparently intended to stay there forever.

Children operated under the assumption that adults existed in a constant state of physical readiness. They expected demonstrations. Repetitions. Enthusiasm. They expected you to crouch behind home plate for twenty minutes and then stand back up again like your joints weren't negotiating terms and conditions. By the end of practice, Steve was pretty sure half his skeleton hated him.

The late April sticky humid heat that settled over the baseball field wasn't helping. The air hung thick over the grass, turning his t-shirt damp beneath his coaching jersey and baking the metal bleachers until they practically shimmered.

Across the diamond, three of the kids were arguing over a butterfly. Not a metaphorical butterfly…an actual butterfly.

A small yellow one that had apparently landed on a baseball during a drill and somehow become the subject of an increasingly heated debate.

"It touched the ball."

"It doesn't count."

"It absolutely counts."

"It was a butterfly."

"It was still on the field."

Steve stood with his hands on his hips and stared at them for a moment. Then toward the sky before looking back at the children.

Nobody had warned him that coaching required this much conflict resolution. Not the actual baseball stuff. The baseball stuff was easy. Teaching a ten-year-old how to square up to a pitch? Easy. Explaining why they shouldn't swing at a ball that bounced twice before reaching home plate? Easy.

Convincing three fourth graders that insects could not, in fact, interfere with gameplay? Apparently much harder.

Somewhere behind him another kid yelled, "Coach Steve!"

He turned. "What?"

The child held up a glove. "My glove smells weird."

Steve blinked.

The kid blinked back.

For reasons that remained completely unclear, this seemed like information he was expected to do something with.

By the time he finally escaped the field nearly twenty minutes later, the sun had already started its slow descent toward the horizon. Everything had taken on that golden late-summer glow that made the chain link fences look softer than they actually were. The parking lot shimmered with trapped heat. Cicadas buzzed from somewhere beyond the tree line and the smell of cut grass lingered in the evening air while parents gathered equipment, folded chairs, and attempted to herd children toward minivans.

Steve tossed his equipment bag into the passenger seat and climbed into the car with a groan. His entire body protested. His shoulders ached. His lower back ached. One knee made a noise he'd decided to stop investigating.

Ordinarily, Steve liked this part of the day. He enjoyed the quiet ride with the music low, tapping his fingers to the drums of whatever song was playing. He appreciated the decompression. The beautiful twenty-minute stretch between obligations where nobody needed anything from him.

Lately, though, his thoughts had developed an annoying tendency to wander. Specifically toward the fact that he was turning thirty.

Not even particularly soon, and yet somehow the number had attached itself to everything. Thirty wasn't even here yet and somehow it already felt like it was lurking around corners waiting to jump out and attack him. The thought had become annoyingly persistent over the last few months. Just frequent enough to be irritating.

The number itself shouldn't have mattered. Objectively, Steve knew that. People turned thirty every day.

People turned forty.

Fifty.

Sixty.

Life continued.

The thing was, Steve wasn't unhappy. That was what made it difficult to explain. People talked about milestone birthdays like they arrived with a crisis attached. A sports car, a tattoo, some desperate attempt to reclaim youth. Steve didn't want any of that…his problem was simpler.

At sixteen, he'd assumed thirty-year-old Steve would have figured more things out. Not everything - mostly the important things. He didn't even expect to be wildly successful. Just...settled. When he pictured adulthood back then, it always looked remarkably ordinary: a house and family. Kids running through a backyard, somebody else's shoes by the front door and the smell of dinner cooking when he got home from work.

Nothing dramatic or even extraordinary. Just a life that felt full.

Instead, he was driving home alone with a bag of baseball equipment rattling around in the passenger seat, a discussion board assignment waiting for him on a laptop he'd been avoiding for three days and a weekend full of shifts at the bar ahead. Which sounded significantly less impressive whenever he was forced to say any of that out loud.

He spent his mornings in class or completing observation hours for a teaching certification program, his afternoons coaching baseball, his evenings four nights a week bartending to help pay for the classes required to eventually stop bartending. It wasn't a bad life. Objectively, it was a pretty good life, but lately it felt like everybody else had moved forward while he'd somehow gotten stuck at a red light. Depending on the day he happened to see somebody from high school posting engagement photos, pregnancy announcements, or family Christmas cards featuring matching sweaters and suspiciously happy golden retrievers and he had to actively fight an eye roll.

The apartment greeted him with silence when he finally unlocked the door. It wasn't even a peaceful silence. It was the empty kind of silence that immediately reminded you that nobody else lived there.

Steve dropped his keys into the bowl by the door and kicked off his shoes. The place was clean enough. He was organized, liked to keep things somewhat tidy but mostly his place felt lived-in. A coffee mug sat abandoned beside the couch from the night before. A pile of coursework occupied one end of the dining table. Laundry he'd folded two days ago still waited patiently to be put away. Somewhat organized.

For a moment he simply stood there.

Then his phone buzzed.

Robin.

Of course.

Steve didn't even have to open the message to know it was going to be about the cat.

Three weeks had passed since the cat report. The fact that there was still a cat report remained deeply upsetting, but unfortunately, Robin hadn't moved on. If anything, she'd become more invested. The original psychic analysis had somehow led to follow-up consultations. Which led to recommendations. Which led to offerings. Which led to what Robin had described last week as "active relationship repair."

With a cat.

A cat she did not own.

A cat who, as far as Steve could tell, remained entirely unaware that any conflict existed.

The text preview appeared across the screen.

💬 THE WITCH SAYS WE'RE MAKING PROGRESS.

Steve stared at it, then set the phone face down.

It buzzed again almost immediately.

💬 THE TUNA WAS A BREAKTHROUGH.

Another buzz.

💬 YOU AREN'T APPRECIATING THE GRAVITY OF THIS SITUATION.

Steve laughed despite himself. Because this was his life. His best friend was conducting diplomatic negotiations with an apartment cat and somehow she remained the most functional person he knew.

The phone buzzed again.

💬 SHE RECOMMENDED A CORD CUTTING.

💬 DO YOU THINK CATS CAN PARTICIPATE IN CORD CUTTINGS?

Steve closed his eyes. For a brief moment he considered throwing the phone across the room.

Instead he typed:

🗨️ Please leave the cat alone.

The typing bubble appeared instantly.

💬 YOU SOUND JEALOUS.

The apartment fell quiet again. Outside, daylight continued slipping toward evening. Inside, his laptop waited patiently on the coffee table alongside his coursework. So did the discussion post he'd been avoiding. A responsible adult would have opened the class portal. A responsible adult would have completed the assignment.

Instead, almost without thinking, Steve opened a browser and three clicks later, he was staring at the listing again. The same black background. The same gold lettering. The same handful of sample portraits.

For a long moment, he simply looked. Not for a second because he believed it. That would be ridiculous. Not because he was considering it. That would be worse. And yet the page remained open. Weeks later, still there like a splinter he couldn't stop pressing on just to see if it still hurt.

He should have closed it. He knew that.

There was no logical reason to keep staring at a listing he had already decided was bullshit. Several times, actually. Repeatedly. With conviction. Steve Harrington did not believe in soulmates being pulled from the ether by a woman with an Etsy storefront and a suspiciously professional logo. He did not believe in psychics. He did not believe in destiny. He barely believed in the weather app on his phone, and that at least had satellites.

Still, his thumb moved before the rest of him could intervene.

He scrolled.

The reviews were the worst part. Not because they were convincing, exactly, but because they were sincere in a way that made him uncomfortable. People had written paragraphs. Long ones. Messy ones. The kind of reviews people only wrote when they were either extremely committed to the bit or genuinely shaken by something. Some attached photos of the portraits beside real people they claimed to have met later, and Steve hated those most of all because even when the resemblance was questionable, even when he could clearly see where somebody was forcing the comparison, there were enough similarities to make his stomach do something stupid.

He hated that too.

The stomach thing. The quiet little twist of possibility.

Steve shifted on the couch, the fabric sticking faintly to the back of his shirt. His hair was damp from a shower and curling slightly at the ends, and the apartment around him had settled into early evening dimness. The laptop screen lit his face while the rest of the room went soft and blue around the edges.

He clicked through the sample portraits again. A man with tired eyes and a crooked smile. A woman with short curls and a nose ring. Another woman laughing, head tilted slightly, the artist somehow catching the suggestion of movement in a still image.

That was the thing that bothered him. They looked like people. Real people, instead of made up fantasy people. Not perfect people or even the kind of people drawn to sell a dream to lonely idiots at midnight. They looked ordinary enough to be real, and that made the whole thing worse because Steve could dismiss a fantasy. He had gotten pretty good at that. But ordinary was dangerous. Ordinary was exactly what he wanted.

Steve closed the laptop.

Then opened it again almost immediately because apparently he had no self-respect.

The bar always smelled vaguely like citrus and regret by nine o'clock on a Saturday. Steve wasn't entirely sure where one scent ended and the other began anymore.

By now he knew the rhythm of the place as well as he knew the rhythm of baseball practice. The early crowd arrived for dinner and a couple drinks. The middle crowd arrived because they didn't want to cook. The late crowd arrived because they didn't want to go home yet. Every shift felt slightly different but somehow exactly the same.

The glasses clinked. The television above the bar played a game nobody was really watching. Somebody fed dollar bills into the jukebox near the back and immediately got into an argument about song choices.

Normal. Predictable. Comfortably familiar. Steve liked that about bartending, even if he had no intention of doing it forever. The bar never asked him where he saw himself in five years. The bar didn't care about certification exams, his middle school spring placement or the lesson plan he’ll never actually use that's worth 20% of his class grade. The bar didn't care that he'd spent most of the week quietly spiraling about a birthday that was still months away.

The bar just needed him to pour drinks. That, at least, he could do.

He was wiping down a section of counter when the front door opened and Robin appeared. Steve didn't even look up immediately. He didn't have to. After fifteen years of friendship he'd evolved to possess the ability to identify Robin's mood based entirely on the way she entered a room. Tonight's entrance involved a dramatic sigh, an aggressively dropped purse, and enough theatrical disappointment to suggest she'd either experienced a minor inconvenience or survived a maritime disaster.

Steve continued wiping down the counter. "How bad was it?"

Robin slid onto her usual stool. Not a stool. Her stool. At this point half the staff probably thought she worked there. "It wasn't bad."

Steve hummed. The sound carried exactly as much belief as intended.

Robin narrowed her eyes. "It wasn't."

"Mm."

"It wasn't."

"Mm."

She looked personally offended, which was impressive considering she'd only been in the building for thirty seconds.

Around them the crowd surged and shifted. A group near the windows burst into laughter. Somebody called for another round. The kitchen doors swung open and released a wave of fried food and garlic into the air.

Robin watched him work for a moment before finally giving up. "It was fine."

"There it is."

"It was."

"Robin."

"It was."

Steve laughed. He wasn't trying to be a dick. He believed her

..it was just that “fine” was Robin's least favorite outcome. A terrible date became a story. A fantastic date became something with potential. Fine just became...nothing.

Robin picked at the cocktail napkin in front of her. "I think we've officially reached the point where every lesbian in a fifty-mile radius has dated every other lesbian."

Steve set a glass on the shelf behind him. "I feel like you've said that before."

"I have."

"Several times."

"Because it keeps being true."

He smiled despite himself. Robin had spent years assuring him that dating women would be easier. Then she'd spent the following years discovering that small-town dating was terrible regardless of gender. Tonight's grievance seemed to involve a woman she'd apparently matched with on two separate apps, forgotten about, rematched with later, and then discovered shared three mutual exes and one extremely specific opinion about oat milk.

Steve stopped paying attention somewhere around the second ex-girlfriend. Not because he didn't care. Robin told stories the same way she experienced life - every detail arrived at full speed, all the winding tangents demanded equal consideration. By the time she reached the oat milk portion of the narrative, she was gesturing so enthusiastically that the ice in her drink sloshed against the glass.

"You know what the real problem is?" she asked.

Steve immediately answered. "No."

"The dating pool isn't even a pool anymore."

There was a beat of silence. Robin leaned forward. "It's a puddle."

Steve snorted. "A puddle?"

"A haunted puddle."

"There it is."

"What?"

"The thing you've been working toward for six minutes."

Robin pointed at him. "You're just mad because I'm right."

Steve wasn't. At least not about that. Truthfully, he found most of Robin's dating stories comforting. He didn't relish in them because they were disasters…because they weren't. Robin dated. Robin tried. Robin got disappointed. Robin got back up and tried again.

There was something admirable about that. Something brave. Lately, Steve wasn't sure he possessed that particular skill anymore.

Robin took another sip of her drink, then, with the alarming efficiency of a bloodhound catching a scent, her attention shifted. "Oh."

Steve immediately recognized the tone. "What."

"The cat."

Of course.

The cat had become a permanent resident in their friendship. Not physically. Spiritually. Every conversation eventually arrived there.

Robin brightened instantly, "You'll be happy to know we're making progress."

Steve closed his eyes. Somewhere deep inside himself, he found the strength to keep polishing glasses. "I will not."

"We are."

"You aren't."

"We are."

"The cat doesn't know you're having a relationship."

Robin gasped. An actual gasp. Across the bar, a customer looked over. Steve immediately pointed at Robin. "See? This is what I'm dealing with."

The customer wisely chose not to get involved.

Robin lowered her voice. "The witch thinks we've moved into a healing phase."

Steve nearly dropped the glass in his hand. "A healing phase."

"Yes."

"You and the cat."

"Yes."

"The cat."

"Steve."

"The cat."

Robin rolled her eyes so hard he thought she might actually injure herself. And despite everything, despite the exhaustion and the bartending and the classes and the fact that his best friend was apparently spending real money on feline spiritual mediation, Steve found himself laughing, and the sound came easier than it had all week.

Because of that genuine laughter, Steve hadn't seen Tommy and Carol walk through the door at first. Saturday nights had a way of blurring together when the bar got busy. Faces came and went. Orders stacked up. Credit cards accumulated beside the register in uneven piles.

It wasn't until Robin's attention drifted somewhere over his shoulder that he noticed. "Well that's annoying."

Steve glanced up. Tommy was holding the door open while Carol stepped inside ahead of him. Neither of them had changed all that much and that was probably the most annoying part. Tommy's hair was a little shorter now. Carol wore it longer than she had in high school. There were a few extra years around their eyes. A little more confidence, a little less effort. The strange thing was how natural they looked together. They weren't particularly passionate, but they were clearly comfortable. Like they'd spent years reaching for each other without thinking about it.

Carol said something Steve couldn't hear and Tommy laughed immediately. Not the loud laugh he used to weaponize in high school. A quieter one. Familiar. Automatic.

Robin made a face. Steve didn't know whether she was reacting to Tommy and Carol or simply continuing her thoughts about the cat. Honestly, with Robin, it could have gone either way.

"Remember when those two broke up every six weeks?" she asked. Steve barked out a laugh. Because he did…everybody did. Half of Hawkins did. There had been entire months where the status of Tommy and Carol's relationship seemed more heavily monitored than local weather patterns.

"Remember when Carol threw his varsity jacket at his head?"

"Remember when Tommy dated Beth Franklin for like nine days?"

"Remember when Carol keyed his car?"

Robin looked delighted. "God, they were terrible."

"They were."

They watched Tommy guide Carol toward a table near the windows. The hostess already knew them. Of course she did. The hostess smiled. Tommy smiled. Carol smiled. Everybody seemed irritatingly happy.

Robin took a sip of her drink. "You know they have three kids now?"

Steve frowned. "Three?"

"Three."

"How did that happen?"

Robin laughed. "The normal way, Steve."

"I know how kids happen."

"Do you?"

"Robin."

"I'm just saying. You looked genuinely surprised."

The truth was that he was. Not about the kids. About time. Because somehow Tommy Hagan still occupied a permanent space in Steve's brain as an eighteen-year-old asshole leaning against a locker, not as somebody's husband. Definitely not as somebody's father. Not as a man who probably spent portions of his weekend arguing about play dates and pediatrician appointments.

Yet there he was. Living proof. Time moved whether people paid attention or not.

Steve turned away and reached for a stack of glasses. The cool weight of them grounded him. One after another, he lined them up along the bar before reaching for a towel. Around him the noise continued uninterrupted. Ice rattled into metal shakers. Somebody cheered at the television. A server squeezed past carrying a tray overloaded with appetizers.

Normal.

Ordinary.

For some reason that made it worse. Because Tommy and Carol weren't extraordinary. They weren't some impossible fairy tale. They weren't special. They were just...people. People who had somehow built the exact sort of life Steve used to assume would eventually happen to him too. The realization settled somewhere uncomfortable in his chest. It felt a little like jealousy, but it wasn't that. At least not exactly. Something quieter than that. It was the feeling you get when you miss a turn and suddenly find yourself wondering how long you've been driving in the wrong direction.

Robin had been watching him. She noticed things other people missed with Steve. Tiny shifts in tone. The difference between irritated Steve and defensive Steve. The specific way he cleaned glasses when he was avoiding a conversation.

"You're doing it again."

Steve didn't look up. "Doing what?"

"The thing."

Not this shit again.

"What thing?"

"The existential thing."

Steve rolled his eyes.

Robin ignored him. "You're thinking about your birthday again.".

That got his attention, because unfortunately she was right. Unfortunately she knew it, and there was no one on earth who enjoyed being right more than Robin Buckley. Steve reached for another pint glass. "I'm literally at work."

"That's not a denial."

"It wasn't supposed to be."

Robin smiled into her drink, the expression immediately made him nervous, because it wasn't quite mean or cunning like she can so often be…it was knowing.

There were very few people left in the world who remembered every version of Steve Harrington. The stupid teenager. The version that thought popularity meant something. The version that thought Nancy Wheeler was the beginning and end of his life. The version who spent months driving everyone insane over a girl. The version who swore he was over it. The version who absolutely wasn't.

Robin had known all of the versions of Steve Harrington, which meant she was uniquely qualified to be annoying. "You know," she said casually, "I told you this already. You just haven't listened, you asshole. Your problem is that you're romantic."

Steve groaned immediately. "There it is."

"What?"

"The thing you always do."

Robin laughed. "No, seriously."

"I don't want to hear this."

"You absolutely don't."

"Then stop."

"I'm helping."

"You never are."

She ignored him, as usual.

The crowd around them continued shifting and moving. A birthday group had taken over two tables near the back. Somebody fed more money into the jukebox. The kitchen doors swung open and released another wave of garlic and fryer oil into the room. The whole place felt warm, loud and alive, and somehow Steve found himself wishing the conversation would die.

Robin rested her chin on her hand. "You always wanted that stuff."

"What stuff?"

"The stuff."

"Robin."

"The family stuff."

Steve looked away. Immediately. Which was apparently answer enough, because when he glanced back she wasn't smiling anymore.

"You did."

It wasn't a question. Steve focused on restocking bottles behind the bar. He lined them up. Adjusted labels that didn't need adjustment. Did literally anything besides answer. Robin let the silence stretch for a few seconds, then she sighed. "See? That's exactly what I'm talking about."

"What?"

"You act like wanting things is embarrassing."

The words landed harder than he wanted them to, mostly because they felt uncomfortably true. Across the room, Tommy reached across the table and stole a fry from Carol's plate. She slapped his hand away without even looking up from whatever she was saying. Tommy grinned. Carol rolled her eyes. The exchange lasted maybe three seconds. Three completely ordinary seconds, and Steve couldn't stop looking at it.

Robin followed his gaze. Then, because God clearly hated him, she said the worst possible thing. "You know..."

"No."

"I haven't said anything."

"You were going to."

"I was."

Steve pointed a bottle opener at her. "Don't."

Robin's grin returned slowly. Dangerously. "Speaking of wanting things..."

Steve closed his eyes. "Robin."

"I'm just saying."

"Don't."

"That soulmate portrait is still available."

His eyes snapped open instinctively and far bigger than they should have been. Robin saw it. For one horrible second neither of them said anything and then her eyebrows lifted just slightly.

Interesting. Very interesting.

Steve immediately looked away, which was a mistake. The kind of mistake that only made a guilty person look more guilty. Robin sat up straighter. "Oh my God."

"No."

"Oh my God."

"No."

"You looked."

"I did not."

"You looked."

"I didn't."

"You absolutely looked."

Steve hated how hot his face suddenly felt. He hated Robin. He hated Tommy and Carol. He hated Etsy. Most of all, he hated the fact that Robin had somehow managed to hit the exact nerve he'd spent weeks pretending didn't exist. "I was proving it was a scam."

Robin burst out laughing. The sound echoed across the bar. Customers looked over again. Steve considered quitting his job and moving to another state.

"You researched it."

"I did not."

"You absolutely researched it."

"It came up."

"How?"

Steve opened his mouth…except nothing came out. Robin's smile widened. "Oh my God."

"Stop saying that."

"You've been looking at the listing."

"I have not."

"Steven."

Robin only used his full name when she already had the answer. The worst part was that she didn't push any further. She didn't need to, so instead she picked up her drink, took a long sip, and looked entirely too pleased with herself. Like she'd just solved a puzzle. Like Sherlock Holmes who discovered groundbreaking evidence. She'd filed the information away for future use, which was, frankly, much more terrifying than the prospect of her continuing roasting him now.

By the time Robin finally headed home an hour later, Steve had convinced himself the conversation was over. Unfortunately, as he locked up after closing and stepped out into the cool night air, he found himself thinking about it again.

About Tommy and Carol.

About turning thirty.

About wanting things.

And about a stupid Etsy listing he absolutely should have forgotten weeks ago.

The drive should have cleared his head. Instead it had somehow made things worse. Robin's voice had followed him all the way home. You act like wanting things is embarrassing.

He hated when she did that. Not the talking part. She always did that. It was the being right part that pissed him off.

The apartment greeted him the same way it always did. Quiet. Predictable. The overhead light in the kitchen cast a warm yellow glow across the countertops while the rest of the place disappeared into soft shadows. His keys landed in the bowl by the door. His wallet followed a second later.

For a while he wandered, because he didn't have anything to do. He opened the refrigerator. Stared into it. Closed it. Opened it again ten minutes later as though a completely different selection of food might have materialized during the interim. Eventually he settled for leftover lo mein and stood at the kitchen counter eating it straight from the carton while the microwave clock blinked 2:41 in green digital numbers.

The apartment remained stubbornly silent. No television. No music. Just the hum of the refrigerator and the occasional rattle of ice from the freezer. The kind of silence that felt fine right up until it didn't.

Steve leaned against the counter and rubbed a hand across the back of his neck. His shoulders still ached from practice.His feet hurt. His coursework was waiting on the dining room table..again. Tomorrow he'd need to finish a reflection paper about classroom management strategies. Next week he had observation hours. The week after that was another assessment.

None of it was hard. Just endless. One thing after another. Another step toward a life that still somehow felt perpetually five years away.

His eyes drifted toward the dark living room and the couch. Toward absolutely nothing. And, completely uninvited, he found himself thinking about Tommy.

Not high school Tommy.

Tonight's Tommy. The version who reached across a table without looking and stole a fry from his wife's plate. The version who probably knew exactly what Carol would order before she said it. The version who would go home tonight and step over toys in the hallway and complain about soccer schedules and probably fall asleep halfway through a movie.

Ordinary.

God, it had looked ordinary.

Steve dropped the empty carton into the trash.

That was the problem. He wasn't jealous of some extraordinary life. He was jealous of something painfully normal.

The realization followed him while he brushed his teeth. It followed him while he locked the front door. It followed him while he changed into an old t-shirt and sweatpants.

By 3:30 in the morning he was lying in bed staring at the ceiling fan spinning lazily overhead, still awake. Still thinking. Still replaying the conversation. The family stuff. You always wanted that stuff. The embarrassing part wasn't that Robin had said it. The embarrassing part was how quickly he'd looked away.

Because she wasn't wrong. She'd never been wrong. Not about that.

At sixteen he had imagined a future that felt so obvious he never questioned whether it would happen. At twenty-two he assumed there was still plenty of time. At twenty-six he figured life was just taking a slightly different route. Now he was almost thirty and sleeping diagonally across a queen-sized bed because there was nobody else occupying the other half.

Steve rolled over and reached for his phone.

Bad idea. He knew it immediately.

The screen lit the room blue. A text from Robin. Nothing new.

Just a picture she'd apparently sent forty minutes earlier.

The cat.

The fucking cat curled in a flowerpot.

💬 HE ACCEPTED MY OFFERING.

Steve laughed despite himself. Then sighed. Then opened the browser. Because apparently tonight every bad decision was arriving in pairs.

The Etsy page loaded instantly. Of course it did. The universe clearly had a sense of humor.

For a long moment he just looked at it. The portraits. The reviews. The ridiculous description promising insight into future connections and soulmate energies and whatever other nonsense the woman was selling.

Bullshit.

Absolute bullshit.

Steve knew that. But then his eyes caught on a review he'd never noticed before. A man. Middle-aged. Profile picture included.

His review wasn't dramatic nor was it particularly emotional. Didn't mention destiny or use any of the romantic flowery language the young women praising and gushing over the witches results did.

It simply said: "Bought this because my daughter thought it would be funny. The portrait looked nothing like anyone I knew. Met my wife eleven months later. We're celebrating our first anniversary next month." That was it.

No sales pitch. Curiously missing exclamation points. Just an ordinary life.

Steve stared at the words longer than he should have…somewhere deep inside his chest, something shifted. Was it belief? No, not really. Maybe something smaller and more subtle. Something more dangerous.

Curiosity. The possibility of possibility.

The thought arrived quietly. What if the portrait wasn't real? Fine. It probably wasn't. But what if it was fun? What if it gave him something to laugh about? What if Robin never had to know? What if eighty-three dollars was just eighty-three dollars?

The order button sat at the bottom of the page.

Patient.

Unmoving.

Waiting.

Steve stared at it like they were in a standoff. Then reached for the wallet on his nightstand.

Halfway through entering his card number, he started laughing. The sound bounced around the empty room. "Jesus Christ," he muttered to nobody. “This is robbery.”

The confirmation email arrived before he could change his mind. And for the first time all night, his brain finally went quiet.

The portrait arrived eleven days later.

Steve only knew that because he'd accidentally memorized the shipping timeline. Not on purpose. Obviously. Just incidentally. In the same way someone might incidentally check a tracking number every morning while drinking coffee. Or incidentally reopen Etsy every few hours. Or incidentally know that the package had arrived in Indianapolis at 3:17 a.m. before crossing state lines.

Completely normal behavior.

The point was, he wasn't expecting it to arrive until later today. Which meant he wasn't expecting the notification that appeared halfway through a Saturday morning study session at the coffee shop.

For no reason in particular, Robin was there. Steve had made the mistake of mentioning he needed to finish coursework. Robin had interpreted that as an invitation. Now she occupied the chair across from him, her laptop open but largely ignored while she talked her way through what had apparently become a truly astonishing amount of personal drama for someone whose primary relationship currently involved a cat.

The coffee shop buzzed with quiet conversation around them. Milk steamed somewhere behind the counter. A playlist of acoustic covers drifted through the speakers overhead. Outside, people wandered past the windows carrying shopping bags and iced drinks while late-summer sunlight spilled across the sidewalk.

Steve was trying to finish a reflection paper.

Trying being the important word.

Across from him, Robin was explaining why her latest date had failed. Again. "...and then she said she wasn't really into movies."

Steve looked up from his laptop. "Movies."

"Movies."

"Any movies?"

"Apparently."

"That's not real."

"THANK YOU."

A woman at the next table glanced over. Robin lowered her voice approximately half an inch. "I asked what her favorite movie was."

Steve already knew this wasn't going anywhere good. "What'd she say?"

Robin looked personally offended by the memory. "'I don't really watch movies.'"

Steve sat back in his chair. "See, that's a red flag."

"Right?"

"A huge red flag."

"Thank you."

"What does she do when she's sick?"

"I DON'T KNOW."

"What about airplanes?"

"EXACTLY." Robin slapped the table.

Two students looked up. Steve laughed despite himself and for a moment she looked pleased…then suspicious. Then pleased again. Which usually meant she'd remembered something.

"The cat sat next to me Thursday."

Steve groaned.

"I'm serious."

"You always are."

"No, like...sat next to me."

"Robin."

"It chose me."

"It wanted food."

"It did not."

"It absolutely wanted food."

Robin narrowed her eyes. "The witch disagrees."

"The witch is benefiting financially from your delusion."

"The witch says we're entering a period of mutual trust."

Steve opened his mouth. Closed it, opened it again rhen stopped. Because honestly? There wasn't a single response available that would improve the situation.

Robin smiled triumphantly. Then Steve's phone buzzed. The sound was small. Insignificant…but somehow his stomach dropped immediately.

Robin noticed. Of course she did. "What was that?"

"Nothing."

"You looked weird."

"I did not."

"You absolutely did."

Steve pulled the phone from his pocket and there it was. The order has been delivered. His stomach dropped again and across the table, Robin's eyes narrowed like she was watching a nature documentary and had just spotted movement in the bushes.

"No." Steve immediately locked the screen.

"Steve."

"No."

"STEVE."

"It isn't anything."

"Oh my God."

Several nearby customers glanced over a second time. Robin lowered her voice into an awfully loud version of a whisper. "You did it."

"I didn't."

"You did."

"I didn't."

"You bought the soulmate portrait."

Steve stared at her. Robin stared back. The silence lasted exactly three seconds before she screamed a strangled, triumphant noise that caused three separate people to look up from their laptops. "I KNEW IT."

Steve dropped his forehead onto the table. "I hate you."

"I knew it."

"I genuinely hate you."

"I told you."

"You told me lots of things."

"I specifically told you this."

Robin looked delighted. Absolutely radiant. The kind of delighted that should have been illegal. Steve wanted to leave. Unfortunately, he'd made a critical mistake, because now Robin knew the portrait existed and there wasn't a force on earth powerful enough to stop what happened next.

"Open it."

"No."

"Open it."

"No."

"Open it."

"Robin. I don't have it yet anyway. It's at my apartment…in the mailbox."

"Let's go open it.” she deadpans.

Steve closed his eyes. Across the coffee shop, milk hissed from an espresso machine, aomeone laughed near the counter, outside, traffic drifted lazily past the windows. Meanwhile Robin Buckley vibrated with barely contained excitement - just like a child on Christmas morning. Or a shark smelling blood. Possibly both. And Steve suddenly realized there was absolutely no chance he was making it out of this nightmare without opening the package in front of her.

By the time they left the coffee shop, Steve was already regretting every decision that had led him to this moment.

Outside, late afternoon sunlight spilled across the sidewalk. The air still carried that lingering September warmth that managed to survive even as summer started loosening its grip. Cars rolled lazily through downtown. People wandered in and out of storefronts carrying iced coffees and shopping bags. It should have felt like an ordinary Saturday.

Instead, Steve felt vaguely like he was being escorted to his own execution.

Robin was unbearable.

Not loudly unbearable. Worse.

Quietly unbearable. She kept smiling to herself. Every few minutes Steve would glance over and catch the corner of her mouth twitching upward again like she'd remembered something funny. The entire drive back to his apartment became an exercise in endurance.

Robin talked about her date. Then the cat. Then the date again. Then a podcast she'd listened to. Then the cat again. Somehow every road led back to the cat. Steve wasn't sure whether he should be impressed or concerned.

The portrait sat between them the entire time. Not in the physical sense…yet. Mentally. An invisible third passenger occupying all available space.

Neither of them mentioned it directly after leaving the coffee shop, but its presence lingered anyway. Steve could feel it every time Robin looked at him. Every time she smiled. Every time she failed to make a comment she was very clearly thinking. The anticipation itself was starting to get annoying, because now that the package actually existed, curiosity had begun elbowing its way past skepticism.

For weeks the portrait had been theoretical. An abstract bad decision. A joke.

Now it was sitting on his porch. Real. Waiting.

The closer they got to his apartment, the less funny it felt, which was fucking ridiculous. It was a drawing - nothing more than a stranger's face on a piece of paper - except every time Steve tried telling himself that, he found himself thinking about the reviews again. The ordinary people. The photographs. The stories. The possibility. That stupid, dangerous little word.

By the time he parked, his stomach had developed an irritating habit of tightening every few minutes. The apartment complex looked exactly the same as it always had. The same brick buildings. The same uneven sidewalks. The same flower beds that somebody's grandmother clearly cared about far more than the management company did.

Nothing about the place suggested it was currently housing a crisis, yet Steve found himself slowing as they climbed the stairs. The package was visible immediately. A plain rigid mailer leaning against his door. Small. Unremarkable. Entirely too powerful for an object made mostly of cardboard.

Robin spotted it at the same time. Neither of them said anything…for once.

Steve stared at it. The package stared back. Somewhere in the distance a dog barked. A lawn mower droned from another building. Wind rattled leaves through a nearby tree. The world continued as normal, which somehow felt rude.

Robin folded her arms, still silent, which was exactly how Steve knew she was enjoying herself. Any other person would have filled the moment. Robin understood suspense.

The asshole.

He bent down and picked up the envelope. It weighed almost nothing. A few sheets of paper..That's all. Nothing magical. Nothing important. Just paper.

The lock clicked as he opened the door. The familiar scent of his apartment greeted him immediately. Coffee. Laundry detergent. The faint citrus cleaner he'd used on the kitchen counters that morning.

Home.

Safe.

Predictable..

The envelope remained tucked beneath his arm while Robin made herself comfortable with the confidence of somebody who hadn't been invited but fully intended to stay anyway. She dropped onto the couch and kicked off her shoes haphazardly. One fell to the left of the couch. The other somehow landed on the other side of the coffee table. She reached for the remote and then looked at him expectantly.

The package suddenly felt heavier. Steve set it on the kitchen counter and walked away, opening the refrigerator instead. Closed it again. Walked back. Robin watched the entire performance with such visible delight that he could practically hear her thoughts. The man who mocked psychic cat readings for a month was currently pacing around his own kitchen because he was afraid of opening an envelope.

The reason he was stalling had nothing to do with believing it. It had everything to do with wanting it to matter. Not magic. Hope. Hope was infinitely more embarrassing.

For a long moment he stood there looking down at the envelope, rhen finally, before he could talk himself out of it again, he slid a finger beneath the seal and tore it open.

The tear along the edge of the envelope sounded absurdly loud. Steve immediately hated that. It was cardboard. Paper. A purchase he'd made at nearly three o'clock in the morning while suffering from a temporary lapse in judgment and an unfortunate conversation with Robin Buckley. It shouldn't feel important..

Across the room, Robin had somehow gone completely silent. Which was honestly more unnerving than the commentary would have been. She sat cross-legged on the couch watching him with the focused attention of somebody waiting for a scientific experiment to either succeed spectacularly or explode.

Steve slid the contents from the envelope. Several sheets of paper emerged first. A typed letter. Some kind of explanation. A certificate-looking thing that immediately made him suspicious. Then the portrait.

The paper caught slightly against the edge of the mailer before slipping free. For a second he only saw pieces of it.

The lines of hair.

A shoulder..

The edge of a smile.

And then the entire image settled into his hands..

The apartment disappeared. Not literally, of course. The refrigerator still hummed, a car still passed outside, Robin was unfortunately still sitting ten feet away perched on the couch like a preening bird, but for one strange moment all of it faded into the background.

Steve stared. The first thing he noticed was that the woman in the portrait wasn't extraordinary. She wasn't impossibly beautiful. She wasn't drawn like some fantasy version of a person. There were no dramatic features. No movie-star perfection. No attempt to manufacture attractiveness through symmetry and wish fulfillment.

She looked real.

The artist had somehow captured the small imperfections that made people look like themselves, like the slight asymmetry of her smile and softness around her eyes. The way a few loose strands of hair seemed determined to escape whatever had attempted to contain them. She looked familiar because she looked like somebody he could have seen before. Someone standing in line at a grocery store. Someone laughing across a restaurant. Someone dropping a kid off at school.

The same dangerous word returned immediately. Ordinary.

God.

He'd paid eighty dollars for a pencil drawing of ordinary.

His thumb brushed the edge of the paper. The artist had drawn her smiling like she'd been caught in the middle of something. For reasons Steve couldn't explain, that detail lodged itself somewhere beneath his ribs.

The room remained quiet. Eventually Robin stood. Slowly, without theatrics and without commentary. Without making his life difficult. She crossed the room and stopped beside him. Steve handed her the portrait without looking away from it first and Robin studied it.

A second passed.

Then another.

The silence stretched long enough that Steve finally glanced up. For the first time since he'd known her, Robin Buckley looked genuinely thrown.

Robin would never be speechless, so it wasn't that …But close.

"Huh."

Steve frowned. "Huh?".

Robin looked between him and the portrait..The expression on her face was impossible to read. "That's...not what I expected."

Something tightened in Steve's chest.."What does that mean?"

"I don't know."

Somehow that answer felt more unsettling than any reaction she could have given. Robin looked at the portrait one more time before handing it back..Then she squinted at him as a slow smile spread across her face.

Steve immediately groaned. There she was. Whatever moment of sincerity had existed was officially over.

"Oh no."

"Oh yes."

"Robin."

"Steve."

"Don't."

Robin pointed directly at the portrait, then directly at him. "You are absolutely going to fall in love with a woman you've never met.” Steve grabbed the nearest throw pillow and launched it at her head.

Robin stayed for another forty-five minutes purely because she was enjoying herself.

Steve had known that woman long enough to recognize the signs. The occasional glance toward the portrait. The smug little smile she kept unsuccessfully trying to hide behind her coffee cup. The fact that every conversation somehow found its way back to the drawing sitting on the kitchen counter.

She was trying to be subtle. Unfortunately, subtle had never been one of Robin's strengths.

By the third time Steve caught her looking at it, he pointed across the room without even turning around. "Stop that."

Robin didn't bother pretending ignorance. "Stop what?"

"The staring."

"I'm not staring."

"Robin."

"I'm observing."

Steve rolled his eyes. "The difference being?"

"Intent."

"There is no difference."

"There absolutely is." The smile in her voice was immediate.

Steve hated that smile. It was the same smile she'd worn when she correctly predicted he'd fail chemistry. The same smile she'd worn when she correctly predicted he'd call Becky back even after she stood him up last month. It's the smile she's wearing because she correctly predicted he'd buy a soulmate portrait after spending a month mocking soulmate portraits.

A deeply irritating smile.

Robin followed his gaze toward the kitchen counter again. "You know..."

"No."

"I haven't said anything."

"You were about to."

"I was."

Steve groaned.

Robin laughed. The sound bounced easily around the apartment in the most normal, comfortable way. The kind of laugh that had lived in the background of most of his life.

Eventually she gathered her things and headed toward the door, still grinning like she'd just witnessed something tremendously entertaining but at the threshold she paused, turned and looked directly at him. Then looked at the portrait. "Oh, you're screwed."

"Goodnight, Robin."

"I mean it."

"Goodnight, Robin."

She pointed dramatically - first at the portrait, then at him, then back at the portrait again with a raised eyebrow and a smile, then slipped out the door before he could throw anything at her.

The apartment settled back into that silence almost immediately. But it was infinitely more quiet now because of the strange vacuum that appeared whenever Robin left a room. One moment everything felt loud and crowded and alive while the next he was back to only the soft hum of appliances and the occasional sound of traffic filtering through the windows.

Steve stood in the kitchen for a second before looking toward the counter..The portrait was still there and for reasons he couldn't explain, he crossed the room and picked it up again.

The paper felt heavier now. The initial shock had faded enough that he could actually look at it. Really look.

He carried the portrait into the living room and dropped onto the couch. The accompanying paperwork slid free.

A typed explanation.

Several paragraphs about intuitive impressions and energetic connections and other things that sounded vaguely ridiculous. Steve started reading anyway, mostly to prove how ridiculous it was. Halfway through the second page he realized he'd stopped making fun of it and that annoyed him even more. The woman who'd created the portrait described warmth. Patience. Humor. Somebody who collected people rather than things. Somebody deeply devoted to family. Somebody who carried responsibility easily but worried more than she let others see.

Generic.

Obviously generic. Broad enough to apply to half the population and yet his eyes drifted back toward the drawing.

The smile.

There was something about the smile. Not the shape of it. The fact that it looked comfortable. Like she knew exactly who she was and like she belonged somewhere. Like she had purpose.

Steve immediately looked away because the entire thing was starting to feel a little too personal. "Jesus Christ."

The words disappeared into the empty apartment. No response came back. Just that stupid fucking refrigerator humming in the next room. Steve set the portrait down on the coffee table and stood.

Enough. He needed sleep. Needed to finish coursework tomorrow. Needed to stop behaving like a lunatic.

The drawing stayed where it was while he brushed his teeth. It stayed there while he locked the front door. It stayed there while he turned off lights one room at a time.

Eventually only the lamp beside the couch remained with the portrait leaned against its base, illuminated in warm amber light. Waiting.

Steve paused halfway down the hallway, then kept walking. Made it three more steps. Stopped. Closed his eyes. Turned around. "Ridiculous."

A minute later he found himself back in the living room for just one more look. That was all. One more.

The portrait hadn't changed, the woman still smiled, the room remained quiet. Steve stood there longer than he intended before finally switching off the lamp and heading toward bed, and despite leaving it behind, image followed him anyway.

The first thing Robin asked three weeks later was whether he'd named her yet.

Steve nearly dropped a pint glass. The glass slipped against his fingers just enough to send a splash of beer across the bar top before he caught it. Years of bartending prevented a full disaster, but not quickly enough to stop Robin from noticing.

"What?" The question came out sharper than intended.

Across the bar, somebody cheered at a football game playing on the television overhead. A server squeezed between tables carrying a tray full of burgers. Ice rattled into a metal shaker somewhere behind him. Saturday night churned around them in its usual predictable rhythm.

Robin sat on her stool looking entirely too pleased with herself. "You heard me."

Steve grabbed a towel and wiped down the counter. "No, I didn't."

"You absolutely did."

"I absolutely didn't."

Robin took a sip of her drink.

The smile never left her face.

It had become significantly more dangerous over the last few weeks because they'd learned nothing new. The portrait remained exactly as mysterious as the day it arrived

No names.

No location.

No clues.

No helpful psychic breadcrumbs from the Etsy witch. Despite Robin’s incessant begging, Steve refused to pump any more money into that scam for follow up questions or hokey “spells.”

Nothing.

Which should have been reassuring. Instead it was somehow making everything worse.

Robin rested her chin in her hand. "The woman."

"There is no woman."

"The portrait woman."

Steve reached for another glass. "There is no portrait woman."

"Interesting."

"There isn't."

Robin nodded thoughtfully in the kind of way people nodded when they were about to become unbearable. "Then why'd you move her?"

Steve froze for a second. A tiny second - but it was enough. Robin's smile widened.

Asshole.

Three weeks ago the portrait had been sitting on the coffee table. Now it lived on a bookshelf near the television. Steve hadn't intentionally relocated it, at least not consciously. The coffee table had been temporary! The bookshelf simply made more sense.

A better location. More practical.

Less likely to get bent. Less likely to collect coffee rings. Less likely to—

"Ohhhhhh.”

Steve immediately groaned. "What now?"

"You've thought about this."

"I haven't."

"You absolutely have."

Robin looked delighted. Genuinely delighted llke she'd just spotted an endangered species in the wild. "You have reasons."

"I don't."

"You have categories."

Steve pointed at her with the bottle opener. "Don't."

Robin laughed and the sound disappeared into the noise of the bar. For a moment Steve considered defending himself, then immediately abandoned the idea because the problem wasn't that Robin was wrong. The problem was that she was alarmingly right.

The portrait had moved. Twice, actually. Three times if he counted the week it spent leaning against the lamp.

Not because he was obsessed. Because...

Because..

Steve frowned. The thought trailed off before it reached a conclusion. Because what? Because it looked nice there? Because he paid eighty dollars for it? Because he kept looking at it every time he walked through the room? None of those answers felt particularly safe. Or sane for that matter.

Across the bar, Robin was watching him think, which was never good. The dangerous thing about Robin wasn't that she talked, it was that occasionally she stopped, and when Robin Buckley stopped talking, it usually meant she'd figured something out.

Steve immediately disliked the expression spreading across her face. "No."

"You always do this to me. I haven't said anything."

"You're about to."

"I am."

"Robin."

She ignored him, as usual. Then she reached into her purse and pulled out her phone.

Steve felt a sudden, inexplicable sense of dread. "What are you doing?"

Robin's thumbs moved rapidly across the screen. Nothing good ever followed that. A second later his own phone buzzed in his pocket.

Then again.

Steve stared at her. Robin stared right back. Smiling. "Check your messages."

"No. I'm working."

"Steven."

"I hate that tone."

"You should check your messages."

Against his better judgment, Steve pulled out his phone. Three new texts. All from Robin.

The first was a screenshot. The second was another screenshot. The third was a zoomed-in crop of the portrait woman's face.

Beneath it, Robin had typed:

💬 FOUND HER YET, DETECTIVE?

Steve closed his eyes. Across the room, somebody ordered another round while the football game continued. Meanwhile, Robin Buckley had somehow turned his private humiliation into a recurring bit. And the worst part? The absolute worst part? A tiny, traitorous corner of his brain immediately wondered if she'd noticed something in the portrait that he hadn't.

Steve stared at the texts.

The cropped image looked somehow worse on his phone screen. More incriminating. Like evidence presented during a trial.

He hated that she had a copy. More importantly, he hated that he had absolutely no memory of sending it to her. "How did you even get this?"

Robin blinked. Slowly. Deliberately. The way one might look at a person who had just suffered a head injury. "You sent it to me."

Steve frowned. "No, I didn't."

"You absolutely did."

"I absolutely did not."

Robin was already reaching for her phone. A few seconds later she spun the screen around. There it was.

A text chain.

His text chain.

Three nights earlier. At 12:47 in the morning. A cropped photograph of the portrait.

Steve felt his stomach drop. "Oh."

Robin's grin became feral. "Oh?"

"I forgot about that."

"You forgot about that?"

Robin sat up straighter. Interested. Dangerously interested. "You forgot you sent me a close-up photograph of your future wife's face?"

"It wasn't a close-up."

"It was only her face."

“Wh - wait….She's not my future wife, Robin!”

Steve closed his eyes. The memory returned all at once. Three nights ago. It started with a beer (maybe two) and a debate about whether the artist had changed something around the eyes. He'd zoomed in, taken a screenshot and sent it, then immediately become distracted by something else. At the time it had seemed completely reasonable. Now it sounded insane.

Robin watched realization spread across his face.

"Oh my God."

"Stop saying that."

"You've crossed over."

"What does that mean?"

"It means you've become me."

Steve barked out a laugh. "No."

"Steve."

"No."

"Steve."

The problem was that Robin wasn't even joking anymore, she looked genuinely delighted - like she'd finally found proof of a long-standing theory. For a moment she simply watched him before she took a slow sip of her drink. "You've got tabs open, don't you?"

Steve kept polishing the same glass. The glass had been clean for several minutes. Neither of them acknowledged this. "What tabs?"

Robin's eyes narrowed. The same way they narrowed whenever the cat did something suspicious."

Steve focused very hard on the bar. On the glasses. On literally anything except the conversation.

"Oh my God."

"Robin."

"You have tabs."

"I do not."

"You have investigative tabs."

Steve immediately hated the phrase. Investigative tabs sounded criminal. Or obsessive - maybe both - which was unfair. He wasn't investigating…not really. He'd just…looked.

A little.

Here and there.

Sometimes.

Occasionally.

Robin was staring at him now with the expression of a person slowly assembling a puzzle. The problem wasn't that she lacked information, instead it was that she had enough. "You've reverse image searched it."

"No."

"You've zoomed in."

Steve didn't answer.

Robin gasped."You've zoomed in."

"It was right there."

"OH MY GOD."

"Will you stop-"

"You've zoomed in."

A customer at the opposite end of the bar looked over and back to the big screen again quickly. He was a regular, so Robin's squawking was nothing new.

"What are we looking for?"

"We?"

"We."

"There is no we."

Robin ignored him. Again. Like always. "What. Are we looking for?"

Steve sighed.

Long and defeated.

The embarrassing part wasn't that he'd looked, the embarrassing part was that he'd had theories. Terrible theories. Theories that made perfect sense at one in the morning and absolutely no sense in daylight.

Maybe the necklace meant something.

Maybe the background meant something.

Maybe the artist had picked up on a location.

Maybe—

"Steve."

He looked up to see Robin staring at him wide-eyed and for the first time all evening, she wasn't laughing. "You don't actually care if it's real…"

Steve frowned. "What?"

Robin set her drink down. "...but you want her to be."

The words landed somewhere deep and for a second neither of them said anything.

"Welcome to the haunted puddle, dingus."

The thing nobody tells you about obsessions is that they rarely announce themselves when they arrive. Nobody wakes up one morning and says, "Today seems like a great day to become emotionally invested in a complete stranger."

If they do, they're probably Robin.

For Steve, it happened slowly enough that he didn't notice it at first. The portrait simply became another object in the apartment. It sat on the bookshelf while he paid bills. It watched him from across the room while he half-finished lesson plans and discussion posts. It existed in the same casual way as the lamp in the corner or the stack of baseball equipment by the door. Just another thing occupying space.

Except it wasn't.

The first sign should have been the fact that he kept moving it.

Not consciously. Not because he was thinking about it. If anyone had asked, Steve would've said he was reorganizing. Cleaning. Straightening up. The same excuse he'd used every other time he'd found himself carrying the frame from one room to another without entirely understanding why. One week it sat on the bookshelf in the living room. The next it appeared on the desk beside his laptop. A few days later it somehow migrated to the dresser in his bedroom where it remained for nearly a month before Robin noticed and made his life significantly worse.

Which, in fairness, was how Robin expressed affection.

"Interesting."

Steve had been folding laundry when she said it. Just one word tossed casually into the room while she wandered through his apartment looking for something to drink.

Whenever Robin said interesting, it was never interesting.

Steve didn't even look up. "What."

"Nothing."

The immediate answer guaranteed it was absolutely something.

A minute later she reappeared in the bedroom doorway holding a bottle of water and wearing the expression of somebody who had just stumbled across state secrets.

"What."

Robin took a drink, then nodded toward the dresser toward the portrait. Toward the frame Steve had purchased three weeks earlier after spending an embarrassing amount of time standing in the aisle pretending to compare options.

The realization hit him all at once. "Oh, fuck off."

"Your wife moved."

"She's not my wife."

"Mmhm."

"Robin."

"Interesting that she's in the bedroom now."

Steve considered throwing a t-shirt at her. Instead he resumed folding laundry with significantly more aggression than the task required. The truly infuriating part was that he didn't actually have an explanation.

Not a good one.

At some point the portrait had stopped feeling like decoration and started feeling familiar. The same way a photograph became familiar. The same way a favorite coffee mug became familiar. He didn't think about it every second of every day. Most of the time he forgot it was there. Until he didn't.

Until he'd come home from a long shift at the bar and catch sight of it while kicking off his shoes. Until he'd spend three hours writing a lesson plan and glance up from his laptop. Or when he'd be brushing his teeth before bed and find himself staring at the reflection of the frame in the bathroom mirror.

Little things.

Tiny things.

The sort of things that would've been completely harmless if his brain had possessed even a shred of self-preservation. But lucky for Steve, it didn't. Because somewhere along the line Steve had stopped wondering whether the woman existed and started wondering what she was like.

It was the necklace that bothered him.

Not because it was unusual. If anything, the opposite was true. It was so aggressively ordinary that Steve couldn't understand why his eyes kept drifting back to it.

The artist had only suggested it rather than fully rendering it. A few careful pencil strokes. A thin chain disappearing beneath the collar of her shirt. A small pendant resting at the base of her throat. Nothing distinctive enough to identify. Nothing useful. Certainly nothing worth spending ten minutes staring at while a half-finished lesson plan sat open, Learning Objectives abandoned on his laptop screen.

The cursor blinked patiently inside a section about differentiated instruction while Steve leaned back in his chair and squinted at the frame sitting beside the monitor. The only light in the apartment came from the desk lamp and the blue glow of his computer screen, casting long shadows across stacks of papers and baseball schedules he'd promised himself he'd organize eventually.

He should have been working. Instead he found himself wondering whether the necklace meant something. Not in a clue way. In a person way.

People wore things for reasons. Maybe it had been a gift, or she'd bought it herself on a trip. Maybe she'd worn it every day for ten years without thinking about it. She reached for it automatically each morning the same way Steve reached for his watch. Or it held some sentimental value. Maybe it didn't mean anything at all. Maybe it was costume jewelry she'd picked up at a craft fair for twelve dollars and forgotten about immediately afterward.

The problem wasn't that he had questions. The problem was that every question generated another.

By the time Steve finally looked back at the computer, he'd somehow wandered so far down the mental path that the woman in the portrait had acquired opinions about coffee.

He actually stopped and laughed at himself. A sharp, disbelieving bark of a laugh that startled him in the silence of the apartment. "Jesus Christ."

This was insane. He didn't know whether she drank coffee. For all he knew she hated coffee. Maybe she was one of those tea people. The thought bothered him more than it should have. Not because tea was bad. Robin drank tea. Plenty of normal people drank tea. It was just that he'd already decided she was a coffee person. Somewhere along the line he'd made the decision without consulting reality, and reality, unfortunately, had never actually been invited to participate in any of this.

The background became another problem entirely. One Saturday morning Steve found himself sitting on the couch with the portrait balanced on his knees while a baseball game played unwatched on television.

Outside, rain slid lazily down the windows. The entire apartment smelled like coffee and the cinnamon rolls he'd bought from the bakery down the street. He'd intended to spend the morning catching up on coursework. Instead he was staring at trees - or what might have been trees.

The artist had suggested some kind of blurred landscape behind her. A few soft lines. Shapes rather than details. Enough to imply a place without actually creating one.

Steve tilted the frame as if a different viewing angle might suddenly reveal hidden information.

His imagination was going haywire again. His first thought was that it was a park. Maybe a backyard. Could be absolutely nothing because the artist could have invented the whole thing and that distinct possibility should have ended the conversation he was currently having with himself. Instead it somehow started another one.

Because if it was a backyard, that implied a house. And if it implied a house, then his brain immediately began constructing an entire life around it.

A dog appeared first..Not a specific dog. Just...a dog.

Then a garden.

Then a child.

Steve lowered the portrait into his lap and stared at the ceiling. At some point during the previous fifteen minutes he had apparently invented a family and the realization was horrifying. More horrifying was the fact that Robin would absolutely love this.

The portrait wasn't the thing he'd become attached to. It was the possibility of the life attached to it, just like Robin said it was, and that realization followed him around for weeks afterward like a song stuck in his head.

The investigation lasted long enough to become embarrassing.

Not immediately embarrassing. Steve had crossed that threshold weeks earlier. This was a different kind of embarrassment. The sort that only arrived after enough time had passed for perspective to settle in. In retrospect, the timeline was probably where things had gone wrong.

He still maintained it wasn't actually a timeline. It had started as notes. Observations. A couple of thoughts scribbled in the margins of a notebook while he sat through an online lecture that should have been significantly shorter than it was. Then it became a list. Then several lists. Then categories.

The categories were admittedly harder to defend.

Robin discovered them on a rainy Tuesday afternoon while he was making grilled cheese. One minute she'd been looking for a phone charger. The next she'd gone suspiciously quiet. By the time he returned to the living room, she'd somehow spread three legal pads across his coffee table and was laughing hard enough that tears were running down her face. The worst part was that she couldn't even speak. Every time she tried, another laugh escaped instead.

Steve stood there holding a spatula while she pointed helplessly at a page labeled POSSIBLE PROFESSIONS.

"Robin."

More laughter.

"Robin."

She wheezed.

"You made a cat report."

"It is not a cat report."

"It has categories."

"It has organization."

"It has color coding."

That one was harder to argue.

Robin laughed for nearly twenty straight minutes. Then she took pictures. Then she threatened to frame one. Then she spent the next four weeks referring to every mention of the portrait as an update to The Investigation.

Eventually Steve gave up. Life simply reclaimed its territory. Student teaching became all-consuming. Baseball season rolled into tournaments. The bar lost another employee and suddenly everyone was picking up extra shifts. Entire weeks disappeared before Steve realized they were gone.

The searches stopped. The theories stopped and the late-night rabbit holes stopped.

The portrait remained, mostly because getting rid of it felt ridiculous. He paid eight-fucking-three dollars for it, after all…But continuing to care about it felt even more ridiculous. So it stayed where it eventually landed, tucked among a collection of ordinary things that gradually crowded around it. A photograph from college. A baseball signed by one of his first teams. A couple books he kept meaning to read. Mail he should probably throw away. Dust gathered and time passed.

Robin still brought it up occasionally because she was fundamentally incapable of leaving anything alone.

The Etsy witch became one of those stories. One of those things friends referenced years later while everybody groaned.

Soulmates weren't real, any of those portraits that “worked” were a coincidence. The woman was a stranger. The witch was running a scam. Case closed. Or at least that was what Steve told people. And eventually, after saying it enough times, he almost believed it.

Thirty arrived sometime after that.

No fireworks or revelations or any of the things movies promised. Just a Wednesday.

A long day. A good day, actually. The kind of day filled with enough people that Steve barely had room to think. His students had surprised him with donuts that morning. One of the kids from his fall ball team handed him a handmade birthday card featuring a stick figure with suspiciously gray hair. Tommy and Carol stopped by the bar later that night with their youngest asleep in a stroller and their oldest arguing about math homework. Robin had appeared carrying a birthday pin the size of a dinner plate and somehow convinced half the staff to sing.

It was nice. Genuinely, nice.

Which somehow made the quiet afterward feel louder. By the time Steve got home, the apartment building had settled into that strange middle ground between night and morning. The parking lot sat mostly empty beneath the amber glow of the streetlights. Crickets hummed somewhere beyond the buildings. The air carried that first hint of autumn coolness that arrived long before the leaves changed.

His keys hit the bowl by the door and his shoes landed somewhere behind him. The apartment greeted him with familiar silence. The kind that belonged to one person.

Steve wandered through the dark living room offloading the remnants of the day. A card here. A gift bag there. Somebody had given him a coffee mug that said WORLD'S OKAYEST TEACHER. Robin had somehow signed the bottom of it.

Of course she had.

Shaking his head, he crossed toward the bookshelf. One of the envelopes slipped from his grip and disappeared behind a stack of books. "Perfect."

The muttered complaint echoed softly through the room. Steve crouched down and reached behind the shelf and his fingers brushed cardboard.

Paper.

Dust.

Then wood.

The frame shifted, only slightly. The movement exposed a familiar corner. Dark hair. The curve of a smile. And suddenly there she was again. Not hidden or forgotten. Waiting exactly where he'd left her.

For a long moment Steve simply stared.

Months. It had been months since he'd really looked. Steve remained kneeling beside the bookshelf. Thirty. The number drifted through his head again.

Thirty years old.

Student teacher.

Bartender.

Baseball coach.

Good friend.

Good son to a shit dad.

Reasonably functioning adult.

A life that looked perfectly fine from the outside. A life that actually was fine.

He thought about what “fine” actually meant. In Robin-speak fine is a death sentence because fine means…nothing.

In no time the anger came sharp. Sudden. Directed nowhere. Everywhere. At the portrait. At the stupid witch. At himself. At the fact that he'd wanted it to be true badly enough to build timelines and theories and entire fictional biographies around a stupid fucking pencil drawing he didn't want in the first place.

He was angry at the fact that Tommy went home with Carol..At the fact that Robin would eventually find somebody because Robin always threw herself toward life with both hands. He was most angry at the fact that he was standing in an empty apartment well past midnight staring at a woman who didn't fucking exist.

"You aren't even real." The words left before he realized he'd spoken. The frame offered no response. Only that smile.

God. That smile.

Steve hated that smile.

Hated the ease of it - the familiarity. Hated how quickly irritation gave way to something else entirely. Something warmer. Something lower. Something he'd spent months successfully ignoring.

Because the truth was that he hadn't forgotten her, he'd just gotten better at looking away. And standing there in the half-dark of his apartment, freshly thirty, a little tired, a little lonely and a little angry at the shape his life hadn't taken yet, Steve found himself looking again.

For a few moments longer, Steve allowed himself to feel that anger because it felt easier than everything else..Anger was clean. Simple. Anger didn't ask questions. Anger didn't force him to admit that he'd spent months hoping for something he knew better than to expect.

The frame remained balanced in his hands while he sat back against the couch. The apartment was quiet enough that he could hear the faint ticking of the clock in the kitchen. Outside, a car passed beneath the window, its headlights briefly painting moving shadows across the wall before disappearing again.

The artist had captured something annoyingly human about her. Not beauty, although she was beautiful in a way that felt effortless. Not perfection. Steve had dated enough people to know perfection wasn't real. It was the feeling that if she walked into a room, he'd recognize her immediately. The feeling that she'd laugh at the right moments. The feeling that she existed just outside his reach. His thumb brushed absentmindedly against the edge of the frame.

The anger softened as he did. Just lost some of its sharpness and in its place came something quieter filled the void it created - a longing he'd spent most of the year pretending wasn't there. He found himself studying details he'd long since memorized. The curve of her smile. The way loose strands of hair had been sketched around her face. The warmth in her expression.

Warmth. The sense that she would look at somebody and actually see them. The sense that she would know things and that coming home wouldn't feel quite so empty if she were there when he did.

Steve leaned back into the couch cushions and closed his eyes. The portrait had stopped being a stranger months ago, and when he opened his eyes again, his gaze found hers almost immediately. The room seemed smaller suddenly. The loneliness that had been sitting heavily on his shoulders all evening shifted into something warmer. A pull he recognized immediately and wished he didn't.

Because now he was no longer angry at the portrait. Now he was remembering that she was beautiful and that was significantly more complicated.

Steve should have put the portrait back on the shelf.

The thought occurred to him more than once over the next several minutes. Every time it surfaced, he ignored it. The frame remained balanced against his knee while he sat on the couch with his tie loosened, sleeves pushed up, and the remnants of a perfectly good birthday scattered around the apartment like fragments of a person.

And maybe that wasn't fair. The evening had been good. Really good, actually. People had remembered. People had shown up. There wasn't a single logical reason for him to be sitting here feeling this restless.

And yet the feeling remained. Not sadness exactly, or even loneliness, it was something harder to pin down than that. His eyes drifted back to the portrait before he could stop them. The artist had somehow managed to capture an expression that felt unfinished, as though she'd been interrupted in the middle of laughing. The longer he looked at it, the more he found himself trying to fill in the missing pieces. What had been funny? Who had she been looking at? What happened immediately afterward?

Questions he'd asked himself a hundred times before, but he'd stopped asking weeks ago. Questions that apparently hadn't gone anywhere. He hadn't forgotten about her. He'd just gotten busy. There was a difference. The searches had stopped. The theories had stopped. The embarrassing late-night internet deep dives had stopped. But every now and then he'd still glance at the frame while walking through the apartment. Every now and then he'd catch himself wondering. Every now and then he'd hear a laugh somewhere and think, irrationally, that it sounded like the one she'd probably have.

Stupid. It was stupid because he knew nothing except the things he'd invented. The things he'd decided. The things he'd quietly assigned to her over months of staring at the same drawing. Like that she spent Saturday mornings reading on a porch somewhere. Maybe she couldn't sit still long enough to finish a chapter. He thought that she was probably stubborn, but he was sure she would've taken one look at Robin Buckley and immediately understood why Steve was constantly exhausted.

The corner of his mouth twitched despite himself.

The portrait. The woman - the one Robin teasingly would just call “the wife” just...turned into someone. Someone to tell about the baseball card from the kid on his team. Someone to roll their eyes at Robin's birthday texts. Someone to come home to after nights like this when the apartment felt a little too quiet and the future felt a little too uncertain.

He spied the whiskey on the bar cart in the corner. The whiskey wasn't even good whiskey. It was the bottle he'd been slowly working through for the better part of a year. The one reserved for nights when he wanted a drink but didn't feel like thinking about what he was drinking. The label was peeling at one corner. There couldn't have been more than three fingers left in it. Still, it felt appropriate.

Thirty deserved whiskey. Or maybe surviving thirty deserved whiskey.

The apartment remained dark except for the lamp beside the couch and the faint glow filtering through the blinds from the parking lot outside. The kitchen light stayed off as he crossed barefoot across the cool tile, sleeves already rolled halfway up his forearms from work. The top three buttons of his shirt had given up somewhere around hour six of the evening.

He grabbed the bottle, a glass and poured.

Then added a little more whiskey than he'd originally intended. The amber liquid caught the low light as it settled into the bottom of the glass. For a moment he simply stood there staring at it before he carried the drink back toward the living room.

The portrait was still sitting where he'd left it halfway between being displayed and being discarded.

He sank back into the couch and stretched one arm across the cushions. The springs shifted beneath his weight. Ice clicked softly against the side of the glass. Somewhere outside, a car door slammed and then silence settled over the building once more. For a long moment he didn't look directly at the portrait. His gaze wandered around it instead.

And suddenly it felt impossible to remember why he'd spent months pretending it didn't matter. It's not like he'd started believing in soulmates again - or that he ever did in the first place. If anything, he believed in them less.

The Etsy witch was still a scam. Robin was still insane. The timeline had still been the most embarrassing thing he'd ever produced outside of high school. None of that had changed. The only thing that had changed was him.

Steve took another sip of whiskey and leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. The portrait sat close enough now that he could see the faint texture of the paper beneath the drawing.

Months ago he'd been looking for clues. Tonight he found himself thinking about entirely different things. Not where she lived. Not what her name was. Not whether the artist had somehow hidden some microscopic breadcrumb he'd missed. In this moment the hypothetical “she” became …you.

So he found himself wondering what you smelled like. Whether you talked with your hands. Whether you painted your nails and what color they were right now. How that hand might look wrapped around his - no absolutely not..

The thoughts arrived dangerously easily as though they'd been waiting for an opportunity. Steve shook his head and laughed softly into his glass.

"God, you're not even real."

He sipped the whiskey as a distraction while his other hand seemed to find a mind of its own. It slid across the soft middle of his stomach, fingers gliding under the waistband of his jeans, thumb working just so to pop the button loose. He bit his lip as he slipped his whole hand into his briefs, gently grazing his own cock with his fingers and his eyes flutter open to lock with the ones in the portrait

He blushes. Blushes at the touch of his own fucking hand, but he's too far down this path to stop now.

He throws back the rest of the whiskey in the glass and slams it down on the coffee table before he starts stroking himself. He imagined you’d start off light and gentle, so he tries to be light and gentle himself. He thinks about how you seem confident - like you might take charge and pull him free from the confines of his clothes so you can see what you do to him while you work, so he pulls himself free. He imagines you're…experienced, and know just when you need more to work with, so he leans forward and spits on his own length, pretending for a second it's your saliva making his dick wet.

It's pathetic how fast he starts whimpering. Jaw slack and lips raw from chewing on them through the building pleasure. He gasps, breath stuttering as he exhales, followed by a low growl as he keeps working himself through it.

He’s imagining things again - like how your hair would smell and how soft it would feel as he ran his fingers through it, tugging at the roots as you moved your lips up and down his length. And speaking of those lips... Did your lips leave sticky cherry chapstick around it as they drag up and down him? Or did you wear lipstick? Leaving a crimson ring around the base of his thick shaft as you take him.

Oh my God he was going to lose it right here, right now over a photograph drawn by a bullshit witch.

He fists the couch cushion, hand speeding up, grip tightening on each upstroke. “O-oh Jesus fucking Christ that's it. That's it baby….d-don’t stop -”

He's begging no one but the graphite lines on the paper staring back at him when he opens his eyes one last time and looks at the drawing. And that's what does him in.

He spills all over his hand, onto his stomach, matting the hair of his happy trail down along the subtle softness that emerges from his otherwise thin frame. He strokes himself softly a few more times, working himself through it before he flops back on the couch boneless and satisfied. Picking up the portrait frame he lifts it and takes it in one last time.

For several seconds, Steve couldn't do anything except stare. The portrait stared back. The apartment remained exactly the same. The world continued with absolutely no respect for the life-altering humiliation that had just occurred in his living room.

His chest still rose and fell a little harder than normal. His skin felt too warm. His entire body had that strange loose heaviness that arrived afterward, when every muscle suddenly remembered it had been working. For a moment he considered dying. Not dramatically. Just quietly. Maybe dissolving into the upholstery? That seemed reasonable. Anything felt preferable to acknowledging what had just happened.

Because now that the haze had started clearing, now that his brain was slowly rejoining the conversation, the facts of the situation were becoming increasingly difficult to ignore. The woman wasn't real. The witch was probably running her business from a spare bedroom somewhere. And Steve Harrington had spent his thirtieth birthday emotionally unraveling and coming harder than he has on any one night stand in months…all over a pencil sketch.

That memory needed to go directly into a vault and stay there forever.

He adjusted the frame back on the shelf - set it upright again and looked at it. "You're a problem."

The smile remained infuriatingly unchanged. Steve sighed. Because somehow, against all logic, the drawing had won. Not the soulmate thing or even the stupid scam witch thing.

The woman thing.

The possibility thing.

And as he finally pushed himself off the couch and headed toward bed, he found himself carrying the same thought that had haunted him for months. Not who are you. Not even where are you.

Just...I really wish you existed.

Another thing about turning thirty, Steve discovered, was that your body immediately began punishing you for decisions that would've barely registered at twenty-two.

The headache had settled behind his eyes before he'd even gotten out of bed. It wasn't a debilitating headache, but it was an irritating one. The sort that sat directly between his eyebrows and refused to leave. Add in four hours of sleep, lingering whiskey, and the emotional equivalent of being hit by a truck the night before, and Steve was functioning at approximately sixty percent capacity.

Maybe fifty.

Forty if Robin kept talking.

Unfortunately, Robin was absolutely determined to keep talking. "I still don't understand why you're so grumpy."

Steve squinted at the baseball field. The sun seemed significantly brighter than necessary. "Because it's nine in the morning."

"It's nine-thirty."

"Exactly."

Robin looked entirely too refreshed for somebody who had also been at the bar the night before. She sat sprawled across the bleachers beside him with a giant iced coffee and sunglasses pushed into her hair scrolling through her Instagram feed liking and saving things at rapid pace.

"I didn't even think you drank that much."

Steve's stomach performed an alarming little flip. "Can we not?"

"You had what? Three drinks after tour shift?"

"Robin."

"Four?"

"Robin."

The grin spread slowly across her face. "I knew it."

"You know nothing."

"Oh, I know something."

Steve groaned. The sound emerged from somewhere deep within his soul. Robin brightened immediately.

"What."

"That."

The field slowly filled around them. Parents unfolded camping chairs. Kids chased one another through the grass. Equipment bags hit the ground with dull thuds. Somewhere a cooler lid slammed shut.

Normal.

Ordinary.

Exactly what Steve needed - normal baseball practice. No soulmates. No Etsy witches. Absolutely no whiskey. No conversations. Just baseball.

Robin continued watching him, which was unfortunate. Because Robin had spent fifteen years developing an almost supernatural ability to identify when Steve was hiding something.

"You seem weird."

"I'm tired."

"You seem guilty."

"I'm tired."

"You seem suspiciously tired."

Steve turned slowly. "Have you considered leaving me alone?"

"No."

"Interesting."

"I care about you."

"You are actively making my life worse."

Robin laughed far too loudly. A few moms who have an awfully full face of makeup for Saturday morning little league look over in her direction and glare.

The sound followed Steve all the way onto the field as he walked away waving his arm at her in dismissal and practice started. Mercifully.

Children, unlike Robin, could usually be redirected. Mostly.

At one point Steve spent seven minutes mediating a disagreement about whether sunflower seeds counted as lunch. At another, somebody informed him a squirrel had been watching them for twenty minutes.

By comparison, baseball felt easy.

The familiar rhythm gradually pulled him out of his own head. Ground balls. Batting practice. Fielding drills. The steady repetition of instruction and correction. It helped.

And then there was Luke. The kid had joined the team a few weeks earlier and immediately became the sort of player coaches noticed. A lefty. Fast. Ridiculously natural swing. The kind of talent that couldn't really be taught. Steve had spent most of practice watching him launch line drives into the outfield while trying not to look too excited about it.

By the end of the session, he'd already decided he wanted to talk to Luke's parents. Private lessons maybe. Definitely Travel Ball eventually. The kid had potential.

The thought returned as practice wound down and parents began filtering back toward the field. Kids collected water bottles and their equipment slowly disappeared, replaced by empty water bottles and gum wrappers. The usual chaos.

Steve spotted Luke stuffing a glove into his bag and called him over. "Hey, buddy."

Luke jogged over immediately. "What's up Coach?"

Steve nodded toward the parking lot. "I need to talk to your mom for a minute before you leave. Is she here?"

Luke froze, only briefly. Then a strange little smile appeared. "Oh."

Steve frowned. "Oh?"

Luke shrugged. "Yeah."

The kid adjusted his backpack. Then said, "She'll know who you are."

Steve blinked. "Well...yeah."

"I'm serious." The smile widened. "She'll recognize you."

The statement made absolutely no sense. He hasn't met any adult that belongs to Luke yet, but before he could ask what the hell that was supposed to mean, Luke was already heading toward the parking lot.

"Come on."

Steve followed, distracted and still mildly hungover. Still wondering what the kid had meant.

The parking lot shimmered beneath the afternoon sun. Rows of cars stretched across the asphalt. Parents loaded equipment and called goodbyes through open windows. Luke walked with complete confidence straight toward a dark SUV parked near the far end of the lot, then he stopped, turned and waved. "Mom!"

The driver's door opened. Steve looked up and every thought in his head disappeared. Gone. Completely. Poof! As though somebody had reached into his brain and unplugged it. Because standing beside the SUV was a woman he'd never met. A woman he'd never seen. A woman who absolutely, unquestionably should have been a stranger.

Instead, Steve recognized you instantly.

Not from life. Not from Hawkins. Not from anywhere real.

From graphite.

From paper.

From months of wondering.

From a frame sitting on a bookshelf in his apartment.

For one impossible second the entire world seemed to tilt sideways. The parking lot vanished and he felt honestly a little queasy. Even Robin's voice somewhere behind him vanished. All that remained was you, and the horrifying realization that the Etsy witch might have been right.

Steve thinks that he forgot how to breathe. The reaction was immediate. Physical. Brutal. Like missing a step in the dark. For one impossible minute his brain refused to process what his eyes were seeing. It simply stalled out somewhere between recognition and denial.

No.

Absolutely not. People looked like other people all the time. Faces were faces. Features repeated. Haircuts existed. The human population was large. Rational explanations existed. His brain offered all of these arguments in rapid succession, unfortunately, none of them survived first contact. The woman standing beside the SUV wasn't identical to the portrait. This was worse.

Real always was.

The artist had gotten the shape of your face right. The smile. The eyes, but reality added all the things graphite couldn't. Movement. Expression. Life. The way a loose strand of hair caught in the breeze as you stepped around the open car door. The distracted look of someone halfway through three separate thoughts at once. The phone balanced against your shoulder and up against your ear. The coffee cup in one hand.

Busy. That was the first thing Steve thought.

Forget that you were beautiful. This girl is busy. Like somebody with too much to do and not enough hours to do it.

Luke waved dramatically. "Hey Mom! Coach wants to talk to you about first base I think!"

You looked up, still distracted and not quite paying attention. Still reaching into the backseat for something before your eyes landed on Steve. There was the smallest pause imaginable. A hitch in movement so subtle Steve might have missed it if he wasn't already staring. The hand reaching into the car froze and your distracted expression disappeared and for the first time since he'd seen you, you looked directly at him …the same way he was looking at you - as if you'd seen a ghost. That look on your face wasn't even confusion. Confusion Steve could explain. Recognition was much harder.

Neither of them moved. Around them, the parking lot continued normally. Parents loaded equipment. Engines started. Kids shouted goodbyes across the asphalt. Meanwhile Steve felt like he'd been hit in the head with a baseball bat full of nails.

Luke looked between them with a shit eating grin only 10 year old boys can muster. The little butthead actually smiled. "Oh good." Steve blinked. Luke adjusted his backpack. "I told her you were my coach."

The words barely registered. Because the woman was still staring with the unmistakable look of someone trying very hard to reconcile two pieces of information that absolutely should not fit together. For the first time in months, Steve Harrington had absolutely nothing to say and that was the thing that finally convinced him it was real.

----

🏷 @eller41 @dreamerjj @micheledawn1975 @gothicxbarbie @turtlamour

Trending Blogs

Recently Viewed Blogs

I'm too old for this