ren, come on

she/her, 20, libra

[rensfairygarden]

oh my god, i still can’t fully embrace the fact that my steve x disappeared reader got so much attention and love :( i didn’t expect that anyone would want part 2, so i need to dwell on it for a bit to figure out how to structure it, since for now i only have lots of things and ideas that need to be pulled together. so yes, the story is definitely in progress </3

thank you so much for your support and kind words !!!

[vilecousin]

stranger things | 1.01 — the vanishing of will byers

[rensfairygarden]

in another universe s1 steve harrington has never gone after nancy wheeler. he keeps fooling around, dating pretty and popular girls who fit into his picture-perfect world that he’s artificially created around himself to be just like all those cool kids. and he was so young when these stereotypes started messing with his head that he doesn’t even understand what he actually likes, and whether he even likes his friends and this lifestyle in general… but everyone seem to love him and the way he acts, and it’s so addicting to him that he doesn’t even think about changing.

and when something doesn’t fit in the picture, steve just keeps it out of it — not really throwing it away, but rather putting it on the back of the frame. steve knows that many of his friends have multiple skeletons in their closets, so it’s okay for him to have just one.

so there’s that girl. she lives next door to the byers, and they always pick her up on their way to school, because she doesn’t have a car — steve’s acquired a habit to look away from her before anyone can notice him staring. because, well, jonathan is such a freak, she’s probably a loser too if she’s around him, and she’s also so friendly with these weird kids from the radio club… that’s what tommy once told him when she was passing by, and Carol added something awfully mean, leaving Steve feeling bitter when he tried to imagine what they would say about him if they knew that he’d kissed her mouth so many times the night before that he could still taste her ‘ugly lipstick’ on his tongue.

he doesn’t tell her that she is a secret, but she knows that by the mere fact that he never talks to her at school, and his best friends know nothing about that thing that they have… one night she was falling asleep in his bed — his parents were out of town again, so she didn’t have to sneak out unnoticed; steve offered her to stay the night without a second thought — and he told her that it was only a matter of time. “we’re good, aren’t we? don’t want them ruining what we have”. did he even know what they had? steve was like a little kid who found a cookie jar hidden in a cupboard, and the sugar rush was making him dizzy. but would she ever fit in his world? of course not. if steve wasn’t such a coward, he would admit that he was ashamed of her, even though he liked kissing her, and she was making him laugh and smile so much that it was hard to stay quiet. it wasn’t stronger than him, and he wasn’t stronger than everything that told him to keep his distance from her.

steve was drunk on the thrill, and her fingers unbuttoning his jeans, and her eyes getting soft and hazy when they smoke together after sex in the backseat of his car. but months were passing by, and her eyes were only getting softer and sadder when he kept walking past her in school without looking her way; she started asking too many questions, and steve had no answers, because he wasn’t made for it — he was made for leaving, breaking girls’ heart like it was nothing; but her heart was stronger than that, it was a stone that he cradled in the palm of his hand before throwing it away.

and then the byers’ kid disappeared, and you kept slipping out of steve’s grasp; you were supporting the family along with your parents practically all the time, having no time for fooling around. when you finally did have spare time to answer steve’s calls, you told him that you were scared. steve was caught of guard by the new kind of vulnerability, and didn’t know what to say; so he acted the only way he could. “listen, you just need to get out of there for a while, yeah? i can pick you up tonight, you know. i miss you”

and she probably only wanted someone to talk, someone to have her back — she wanted Steve like a boyfriend, but it was too big of a word for him, even when he squeezed her hand at the soft look of her watercolor eyes in the dim lighting of the streetlights behind the windows of his car. “do you even like me, Steve?” and he didn’t know what to say, because he was taught to have someone as long as it was easy and cool. but she wasn’t cool, and he couldn’t understand why he still wanted to keep her around like a dirty little secret in the darkness of the streets. “i’ve already told you, give me some time”. but she didn’t have time anymore. he’d rather have her screaming and fighting with him, but she was looking at him like he was the biggest disappointment of her life.

when she stormed out of the car, he didn’t even try to stop her; he watched her walking down the pitch dark street, just because she didn’t even want him to drive her home, and steve had never felt more angry. not at her, he realized once she was gone. it was a strange sensation, and he was too wound up and exhausted to figure it out. i’ll just let her cool down for a while, he thought. not a big deal.

he spent the weekends partying like crazy — king steve at his greatest, tommy called it — and didn’t even try to call her. falling asleep on Sunday with the ceiling spinning from too many beers, he thought about what he would say when he meet her in the hallway the next day. “i even dreamt of you, you know? it’s like you’re haunting me, or whatever”

but the next morning she didn’t show up for school; he saw Jonathan walking across the parking lot alone. Steve’s head was pounding from that awful hungover, making it difficult to think clearly. he snapped out of it only when he heard carol’s squeaky voice ringing in his ears.

“no traces of her, just like with the byers’ kid… i dunno, they say she didn’t come home on Friday… cops are on everyone’s ass now… are you even listening, steve?”

no, it can’t be her. what a nonsense she was talking about. Steve’s eyes moved frantically from one side of the hallway to another, searching for her in the blur of faces. she was somewhere near, she absolutely hated him for being stupid and careless, and he will try his hardest to win her affection back when he’ll corner her behind the gym. because i really like you, you know that. you’re like… the coolest girl i’ve ever met.

but he never did it. the sheriff wandered from one classroom to another, trying to catch a glimpse of her life to find a thread to cling to. but none of these kids knew her, most of them barely even recognize the black and white face on the flyers, and steve witnessed it like it was an explosion in slow motion. because it was his fault, he let it happen, and it was impossible to deny it in the stifling pounding of his heartbeat in his ears.

steve harrington was the last person to see her alive, and nobody did even know.

not even a day later, papers with her face and description were already plastered all over the town next to the byers' son’s ones. a curfew was imposed, streets went empty, and search parties with dozens of flashlights were illuminating every corner of the endless forest in futile attempts to discover something new. it's as if she’d vanished into thin air, that’s what they say. hopper is on edge, trying to keep this town from falling apart in the madness of the past week — he isn’t looking for any more troubles than there already are, but there he’s. steve’s in front of him, so pale as if he’s just seen a ghost.

“harrington, what are you waiting for, a formal order?”

“no, no, listen…”

“no, i won’t listen to you now. it’s past curfew already, get back home before i…”

“it’s because of me,” Steve cut him off, and he sounded like he was on the verge of tears; angry, angry tears, the desperation of a criminal who committed a crime in a rush of emotions, and now he only wished to be punished, because it’d be so much easier than living like this any longer.

his shaky hand brushed the disheveled hair away from his face, crumbling under the sharpened gaze of Hopper; people and their flashlights were moving further away from them, oblivious of the moment of the confession. steve was rattling on, and it increasingly became hard to breathe when the tears were forming a lump in his throat. he let her down, and now she is gone, maybe even dead, while he’s sobbing here like a pathetic loser — because he’s a loser, and you’ve never been one. was it worth fighting to be one of these cool kids, if he ended up losing? and you were the price of that fall.

and then there was a heavy, strong grip on his shoulder; almost comforting, even though Steve expected it to feel like a sentence. he realized that there were tears on his cheeks only with the heavy weight of hopper’s eyes on his face.

“slow down, son, and tell everything from the very beginning”

[wesgibbins]

- I missed you. - It's been like an hour. - Tell me about it.

STRANGER THINGS 2.01 "MADMAX" Stancy Week Day 4: favorite kiss

[blondestintheroom]

The only 80’s boyfriend ever.

[snoopyharrington]

the boy next door

this was supposed to be a blurb and it ended up becoming a full-on one-shot........turns out i'm in love with neighbor!steve <3

summary: steve harrington has lived in the house next to yours for years, and his latest favorite past-time is flirting with you every opportunity he gets. when he doesn't come home for a few days, you start to worry about your boy next door. cws: steve being a flirty lil shit, mentions of blood, allusions to trauma, things get a little emotional at the end but happy ending ofc, not proofread! word count: 1.6k

steve harrington, your next door neighbor, who always insists on flirting with you and trying to wiggle his way into your life. when you're out walking your dog in the morning, inky hues of night still lingering in near-glacial temperatures, and you're still wearing pajamas because you were woken out of a deep sleep for a potty break, steve's peering out his window, undoing the hatches to wolf whistle at you.

"lookin' good, sweetheart!" you'll hear, and when you twist your body, eyes still blurry from your slumber, you'll roll your eyes at his cute bedhead and bare torso.

"you stalking me or something?" you ask, tightening your grip on your dog's leash when you stop to flirt back.

"nah, just had a feeling an angel was near."

you laugh and throw a middle finger his way, making his sleepy eyes crinkle with a grin.

another time, your parents are throwing their annual holiday party, and you've been tasked with taking the trash out midway through the evening. it's no surprise that steve is hot on your trail the moment you leave through the basement door, a maroon dress fit tight around your curves.

"i think you forgot to invite me to your party," he'll greet, snatching the garbage bag from your grasp. it jangles with the sound of empty liquor and wine bottles.

you snort. "not mine, my parents. trust me, this is not how i want to be spending my saturday night."

you don't question it as steve dumps the bag in the recycling bin, your teeth nearly chattering from leaving the warmth of your home without a jacket.

steve flashes you a compassionate glance, reaching to shrug off his jacket. you shake your head, knowing you're right outside your house, but he wordlessly insists. you accept it, instantly comforted by the scent of his cologne lingering along the collar.

"you look beautiful." he says, and your eyebrows raise involuntarily. quickly, he clears his throat. "stay warm, killer."

and before you have a chance to thank him or to return his jacket, his back is to you, walking in the direction of his own house, where the only light on glows from his bedroom window.

the most recent time it happens, it's on your own accord.

you haven't seen steve in days, the burgundy beemer you've grown used to looking for missing from its assigned parking spot in his parents' driveway. you wonder if he's on some sort of holiday vacation, or maybe he's had a girlfriend all this time and he's spending all his time with her. regardless, you swallow down the lump of realization that steve has officially squirmed his way into your brain.

after four days of walking past your bedroom window, pretending not to look across the way for the golden gleam of his own room, pretending not to wait for his car to return home, he's finally back.

a wave of relief washes over you. you don't give it a second thought as you're grabbing his jacket — the same one he gave you a week ago, the same one you've been waiting for the perfect moment to return so you had an excuse to cross your yard into his. you knock on the large wooden door, nibbling on your bottom lip as you wait for him to answer.

and at first, he doesn't.

you rock back on your feet awkwardly, wondering if maybe you should just run back to the safety on your own home, chancing one more knock before you decide to do just that. only then do you hear a man faintly grumbling, your eyes wide when he swings open the door.

"henderson, i told you, just walkie me— oh."

steve is standing across from you with a black eye, bloodied cuts decorating his face. immediately, the annoyed expression on his face falls, replaced with something more akin to... embarrassment, maybe? shame? you don't know.

you're also not sure what to say.

"sorry," he finally says, clearing his throat. "i thought you were... someone else."

"that's okay," you rush out, "i know i've never come over here before, but i, um, wanted to give you your jacket back."

steve nods, glancing down at the brown suede jacket in your grasp. as if you just remembered you're holding it, you quickly extend your arm. he takes it.

"thanks."

you nod. "are you okay?"

the question comes out before you have a chance to stop it. you're not a nosy person, never one to press for details in other people's lives, but the tired, defeated boy before you isn't one you recognize.

steve shrugs. unsure. distracted.

"it's complicated," he says, his voice somewhat broken. you get that. you understand complicated.

"do you need help?"

he shuffles from one foot to the other, allowing his lips to part. you watch as his throat bobs.

"will you ask questions?" steve asks, and you can tell by his fractured tone that he doesn't want to talk or explain why his face looks the way it does. you'd be lying to yourself if you said you didn't want to ask him a million questions. but you know there's no one else home in that empty house — there never is — and you can't bare the thought of steve cleaning himself up alone.

so, you shake your head.

silently, he steps aside and you enter, toeing your shoes off by the doormat. you remember coming to the harrington residence once when you were a kid. you didn't interact with steve much, though you remember him wearing a stuffy suit that no 7-year-old should ever be subjected to. they were hosting a housewarming party after recently moving to the neighborhood. your mom made them a bundt cake, and you remember passing by the kitchen towards the end of the party and watching steve's mom throw it in the garbage, mumbling something about useless calories and sugar.

the sound of steve clicking the door shut breaks you from your memory and you turn to face him. "where's your bathroom? i'll patch you up."

he nods curtly and juts his chin up towards the stairs. you follow him up to his bedroom and ensuite bathroom, where he had already started the process of cleaning his wounds. you swallow at the sight of damp, bloodied tissues surrounding the sink.

"sit down." you command softly. he does. you reach for the first aid kid already out on the countertop, most of its contains splayed across the marble.

"you're running low on band-aids," you notice, opting for a small hand towel. you turn the sink on and wait for the water to run lukewarm. steve hums in acknowledgement. "let me know if anything hurts, alright?"

he nods as you start the slow, calculated process of cleaning dried blood from his skin. you don't allow yourself to think much or wonder where — or who — any of it came from.

"close your eyes," you murmur, moving up to the cuts along his eyebrow. he does as he's told, his eyelashes fluttering closed. slowly, you watch as he starts to decompress, leaning into your touch with slow, even breath.

"that's better." you whisper once the blood is gone. you toss the bloodied rag into the sink, then grab a band-aid. when you return to your work — a hurt, beautiful boy with purpled bruises that decorate the expanse of his skin — his eyes are open again. you swallow, getting down on your knees, gently placing the band-aid to his upper cheekbone.

you let your fingertips linger, brushing a thumb over his jaw. he shudders quietly.

"close your eyes again," you say, your voice barely above a whisper. when he does, you slowly lean forward, ghosting a barely-there kiss to his cheek. "does that hurt at all?"

steve swallows, stretching his hand over his knee. "no. 's good."

you nod, even if he doesn't see it. you place another light kiss to his chin, then his jaw.

"okay?" you ask.

his eyes bat open and you worry if you've crossed a boundary. instead, he reaches to you, a wide-fingered grip to your side. gently, he helps you off your knees, then tugs you into his lap.

"i don't wanna hurt you—"

"you're not," he says. gentle. soft. not the flirtatious pain in the ass you've come to know, but a subdued, delicate version of that same boy. immediately, you know you adore both sides. "seeing you around the neighborhood is the highlight of my day sometimes."

it's a confession that's professed so quietly, you're not sure you even heard him correctly. but when he looks down at you, all bruises and wide eyes, you know you didn't imagine it.

"i was worried about you. when i didn't see you for a few days."

"'m sorry," he mumbles, nudging his nose against yours. "like i said, it's... complicated."

"that's okay."

he nods, just a sway or two of his head, before he's inching closer, his lips impossibly close to yours. you ball your hand into the fabric of his worn tee-shirt and he smiles, tenderly, then closes the gap between you.

it's not the heated makeout session that steve had been dreaming about for the past year, but it's sweeter this way; cluing you into the tiniest puzzle piece of his admittedly fucked up life. he holds you close and you're all but clawing at his shirt, desperate to press his chest even tighter to yours, before you're breaking apart, strings of spit snapping between kiss-swollen lips.

"stay," steve murmurs against your mouth, kissing you again — quicker this time, a million ways to convince you behind his lips, "my parents are gone and i've been waiting for this, for you, for so long."

you nod, quickly and fervently.

"yeah," you say, smoothing out the wrinkles of his shirt from your grip. "i'll stay. as long as you need me to."

for the first time in a week, it feels like steve can finally release the breath he's been holding.

[snoopyharrington]

hi loveliest!! what abouuuut r who doesn’t want to go to school/work/anywhere really! sooo our lovely stevie coaxes her to getting out of bed by joining her in the shower and just being her little helper whilst getting ready! love u

— @kisspotion, xo!!!

this is so cute to think about 🥺🥺🥺 here's a blurb for you! thanks for requesting :)

summary: getting out of bed is hard when you exist in a warm, loving bubble with steve, but he’s always there to help you get ready.

content/warnings: fluffy caretaker bf steve :) sleepy reader, lots of love, and non-sexual intimacy <3

word count: wrote this on my phone so idk! maybe 1k or less than?

You used to struggle with sleeping.

Most nights, you stayed up until the early hours of the morning, watching out the window as Hawkins steadily descended into an inky blue. Always impossibly silent until the sprinklers kicked on to water lawns across suburban streets, you'd spend your time reading or writing in your journal, or watching the latest movies you rented from Family Video.

That was before Steve.

You don't know how he managed it, but something about your cozy, comforting boyfriend got you into the best sleeping routine of your life. At the end of the day, when you curled into his side, you finally felt complete. As if, for your entire life, you'd been searching for this very sensation — one that exuded kindness and safety and so much love. Sometimes, he was incredibly warm (usually when he, too, was exhausted from a long day of work, babysitting, and taking care of you), and the feeling of his body heat was enough to lull you into a long slumber. Other nights, all it took was his fingertips gently scratching at your scalp or the heat of his hand at the small of your back.

Either way, it didn't matter. All you know is that your best sleep has only happened in the company of Steve Harrington.

It's why you happened to be so annoyed by him getting out of bed this morning. The blaring of his alarm on his nightstand, followed by a rustling across his mattress and finally, cold sheets that were no longer occupied by him. Even with your eyes closed and a thick veil of sleep cloaked over your senses, you knew you were dangerously close to your own wake-up time.

Still, you grab his pillow, smush your face into it, inhale, and force yourself to fall back asleep.

You're not sure how much longer you snooze before you're woken up again — this time by the sweet cooing of your boyfriend, who's gently trying to get you up.

"Baby, y'gotta get in the shower. Gotta head to work soon."

You grunt. Steve laughs.

You feel his hand brush over your hair, pushing it back against the soft jersey pillowcase.

"You told me to do this," he says. "Said — and I quote — 'Stevie, force me into the shower tomorrow morning. My hair is disgusting and I can't go in looking like a greaseball.'"

"Don't care," you mumble with your eyes still closed. "S'warm."

"I know, sweetheart. But you'll feel so much better with a shower, I promise."

You shake your head. Slowly, you peel your eyes open, a sliver of a sleepy Steve coming into your vision. You can't help as you smile softly at the sight of his messy bedhead, a worn sweatshirt and flannel pajama pants hung around his hips.

"You shower?" You ask.

"No. I showered last night."

Your lips pull down in a pout. "Shower with me."

"Is that gonna get you out of bed?"

"Maybe."

He chuckles. "I'll go start it. Don't fall back asleep while I'm gone."

Surprisingly, you don't. Maybe it's because showering with Steve is one of your favorite things. You appreciate the intimacy of it, even if it's not inherently sexual. Skin-on-skin contact, plush kisses, pumping body wash into your hand so you can wash his back and chest — it's a practice that always makes you feel closer.

When Steve returns, he leans down to extend his hands. "C'mon," he murmurs. Even with your blurry, sleep-soaked vision, you accept his help to get up, allowing him to drag you into the warm steam of his ensuite bathroom.

The warmth already feels nice. It was warm in Steve's bed, but a toasty shower always feels better, especially in the thick of the winter season. Without having to ask him, Steve pulls your sleep shirt over your torso, followed by your sweatpants. He doesn't comment on your lack of undergarments, keeping a solid hand to your hip as he gently pulls you into the stream of water.

"Good?" he asks. You nod. Perfect, you think.

Slowly, the water starts to wake you up. Whether it be from Steve's minty body wash or the soothing pelt of the shower, you don’t know, but you certainly don’t spend time questioning it.

“Want me to wash you?”

You nod, mumbling out a “yes please”, and he smiles boyishly, like he already knew what your answer would be before you said it. He takes your body wash and squeezes some into his hand before gently shuffling you under the water. He takes his time rubbing it into your skin, moving across your back and down to your chest and arms, over your legs and hips. Gratitude blooms deeply into your chest — for all of the hot and heavy moments between you and Steve, there are just as many soft and sweet ones.

He rinses you, then shampoos and conditions your hair. When you first started dating, you weren’t convinced Steve could learn your hair care routine, but you should’ve known better. He spends most of his morning styling his own hair, anyway.

When he’s finished, he gently pats your bum, making you smile cheekily. He wraps his arms around you and presses you into his chest, and you swear, you’ve never felt so whole before.

“I love you,” you murmur with your lips against the base of his throat. “Thank you.”

“Always,” Steve says, and you know he means it. “Love y’more, angel.”

[lovebugism]

hi! not sure if you’re still taking requests but if u are may i request the prompt “it’s okay to cry in front of me, you know. you don’t have to carry this alone.” with reader comforting steve? tysm <3

bug's blurb sleepover (⁎˃ᴗ˂⁎)!

Steve tends to feel things really, really deeply.

When Nancy called him bullshit at a Halloween party and ran off with the weird kid from chemistry class a day later, he felt like it was the end of the world. His world, at least. 

He thought it was going to stick with him for the rest of his life — that she was right, that he really was bullshit, and that that truth would haunt him forever. It did. It does. It lurks over his shoulder sometimes, like a shadow or a sleeping dragon.

And when Robin’s mad at him, like mad mad, it makes him feel like dying. 

One time he overestimated how tired he was after a shift and forgot to pick Robin up after band practice. He was startled awake from his nap out of nowhere, like his brain knew he’d done something wrong, and realized he was supposed to drive her home over an hour ago. 

He found her standing with her trumpet case under the awning in a futile attempt to hide from the pouring rain. She didn’t talk to him for days — not during the drive, not at work the next day, not until he was milliseconds from groveling at her feet for her forgiveness.

But it’s different when he’s happy. He’s got you and he’s got Dustin, and he loves the two of you so much it feels like he might burst sometimes. Adoration spills from his pores like so many little rays of sunshine, leaves him a grinning and gushing thing in the place of a teenage boy. 

It’s so much worse with you, though. Because sometimes he feels like his heart beats only for you — that it follows the rhythm of your pulse, that it will stop when yours does. 

He can taste every word that spills from your mouth, the one’s coated in venom and honey alike. He can hear every sound of your soul, too. It’s the crackles of an old record player when you’re content, autumn leaves crunching when you’re angry, and the sounds of a deep, deep ocean when you’re sad.

You’re embedded into every fiber of his being. You’ve entwined yourself with him without even realizing it, tucked yourself into the outer regions of his bleeding heart with a fuzzy blanket and a good book — no sign of leaving any time soon.

He loves you hard, too hard. So hard there’s no breath without you.

So when Vecna almost kills you, it feels a little like his life is ending.

He watches you float in midair, his feet still stuck on the ground, totally helpless. 

Tears spill from your glazed-over eyes and glitter beneath streams of moonlight. Your body is slack, but your fingers tremble and your brows twitch and your chin quivers. You’re not all there, but you can feel every ounce of fear like an ice-cold bath, painful and numbing all at once. Because you know that you’re going to die. And that there’s nothing anyone else can do to stop it.

Dustin shouts for help into his supercomm, begs for Max to bring her walkman or steal the nearest boombox they see and bring it with them to Lover’s Lake. They’re too far away, though, on the other side of town in Nancy’s too slow Station Wagon picking up more hunting supplies to kill the son of a bitch trying to kill you. He knows they won’t make it in time.

Steve shakes your shoulders and shouts in your face, but you still don’t wake. He keeps a hold of you until you’re out of his reach entirely — rising and rising and rising until you’re six feet off the ground. Then he’s just begging, shouting pleas up at you, at god, at Vecna — the shriveled skin creep doing this to you. 

“Please,” he shouts to everyone and no one all at once. “Please, just— you gotta wake up, okay? I’ll be better, I’ll be so much better, I promise. I’ll listen to all the music you like, watch all the movies you want — even the ones that suck — I’ll be a better boyfriend, okay? You just— You need to wake up!”

You don’t. 

You just keep on crying, like you can hear him in whatever world Vecna’s sucked you into. Eyes fluttering, neck jerking, lips trembling. You succumb completely to the monster’s curse.

It’s Eddie that saves you.

He rushes to the stolen R.V. for his guitar, the one Steve said made him look like he was overcompensating for something, the one that’s about to save your life. “What’s her favorite song?” the boy urges as he slips the strap over his head with pale and trembling fingers.

Steve looks over at his shoulder at him. It’s hard to see through the stinging tears. “Wh— What—” He can’t form words. Or thoughts, really. The only thing going through his head is that you’re about to die, that he’s about to lose you forever. It clouds his mind like thick black smoke.

“Her favorite song?” Eddie snaps. “What is it?”

He scrambles to answer. “Uh, it’s uh— it’s Take— Take On Me… Do you know that one?”

“No,” the boy answers honestly. “But I can try.”

That’s all they can do for now. Try. Hope.

He puts his fingers to the strings, trying to find the right placements, but it’s hard when you don’t know how to play the song and you’re shaking that you’re fucking freezing. Eddie’s forced to play it by ear and tells Steve that it won’t sound exactly right and that it won’t be loud without his amp. 

It takes him a moment to find the melody, but Steve hears it the second it comes — the synth-y da-da-da-dum, da-da-dah, da-da-da-da-dum’s that were practically engrained in his psyche after he heard it on the radio the millionth time.

You weren’t as afflicted by the earworm as he was. You loved it. 

The song came out the year the two of you started dating, so all he heard for months was that catchy beat and even catchier falsetto. You played it on the jukebox when you went to the diner, popped the tape into your radio whenever he was over at your place, requested for it to be played virtually wherever you went.

You hear the song from where you’re stuck in your own head. The strums of the guitar are quiet and a little out of tune, but the uncanny notes make sense when you’re trapped in a world that isn’t really your world. Suddenly you don’t see Vecna or his claw in your face — just Steve, Steve, Steve.

He’s with you at the diner with whipped cream on his chin, making fun of you for singing to the song so off-key. He’s with you in your childhood bedroom, spinning you around and singing all the high notes with you. He’s with you at Enzo’s, the fanciest place in Hawkins for your anniversary, and slips the mini-orchestra a hundred-dollar bill to play the song for you.

Suddenly, you’re on the ground again — back in Hawkins — and gasping for breath in his arms. You can’t see him from where he’s got his face tucked into your neck, but you can feel the scarily rapid beat of his heart and the way it matches your own.

Steve sobs into you, uncaring about how loud he is or how his snot and tears stain your t-shirt. Because he almost fucking lost you. And, for a split second, he tried to think of what a life without you would look like. He quickly came up short. There was nothing — no light, no sound, no music — just darkness. A void. 

Sometimes, he thinks he would’ve died with you that night.

Vecna is dead within the next twenty-four hours after the fact. You and Nancy take turns shooting bullets in the pale patchy skin of his chest where his heart’s supposed to be while Steve and Robin throw hand-made bombs in his direction. He trips and stumbles out the window while the rotting basement erupts into flames. There’s nothing left but ashes.

Steve doesn’t feel a thing for a little while after that, just the acute urge to protect the group of you even though the boogeyman is long gone. 

He doesn’t let go of you for days, always holding onto some part of you, because he’s terrified of you slipping away again. 

He lets Dustin sleep at his place when the boy asks, but it’s for his own peace of mind more than anything else. He doesn’t let the boy out of his sight until his mom gets concerned about him. 

He drives forty-five minutes to the hospital every day for two weeks with you so you can visit Max and Lucas, always with two peanut butter jelly sandwiches for them — just in case.

He’s on auto-pilot for a while. He just keeps on taking care of everyone else because it distracts him from himself — from his own inner turmoil, from the horrors he saw that night, from the boogeyman still in his closet.

It takes you a month for you to tell him what you saw. You were a lot like him in that way, still trying to hide from it all. You would’ve been more than happy if you could squish your great big problem into a tiny little ball that you could stomp underneath your feet and forget about completely. 

But that’s not how life works. 

The thing just swells and swells and swells until it takes everything in you to stay sane.

You sit Steve down on his bed and curl into his lap — knees to your chest, head tucked beneath his chin. And you tell him about it. Everything.

You tell him that Vecna showed you Brad, the boyfriend you had before Steve. It was a replay of the last night you saw him parked at Lover’s Lake, the very same place you had been when Vecna almost took you. You’re sitting in his passenger seat and he’s trying to feel you up. “Billy’s girlfriend lets him fuck her all the time,” he gripes when you swat his hand from your thigh.

“Then maybe go fuck Billy’s girlfriend,” you shoot back. 

It’s the last thing you’d ever said to him before storming off and catching the late bus back home. He went missing the next day; his car still there, but no sign of the boy himself.

Vecna shows you everything you’d been making yourself sick over for years, tells you exactly what happened to him that night.

A demogorgon appears in thin air and snatches the boy, takes him to the Upside Down like he’s some kind of light night snack. The thing doesn’t eat him, though, just plays with its food for a while until it gets bored and lets him rot. Brad was down there, for days, beggingfor someone to save him. Help never came, though. Just the slow, slow hand of death. 

“You never even looked for him…” you recite the words Vecna said to you, voice much softer than his cruel baritone one. “You let him rot down there while you threw yourself at a boy that didn’t even want you…”

Steve eyes squeeze shut then, like he’s trying to hide from your words. It’s about as effective as those idiots in horror movies who try to hide under their bedsheets from demons.

You sought refuge in Steve that night and many others, when Brad was acting especially douchebag-y. It was innocent at first. He was your friend. But somewhere down the line, you realized that you had bigger feelings for him than you ever did for your boyfriend. Steve, meanwhile, was still caught in the web of his complicated feelings for Nancy.

It wasn’t until you got kidnapped by Russian soldiers that he realized how much he loved you.

There’s just something about the end of the world that makes a person see clearly again.

Everything seems to hit him exactly a week later. 

He’d done a pretty good job at hiding it all — the nightmares, the panic attacks, the sleepless nights. He hid that all from you because you were recovering too. He didn’t think it was fair to dump all his hurt on you while you were still trying to get back to normal.

You noticed it very quickly, though, that Steve didn’t seem to be very affected by any of it. 

He was so nonchalant about everything, the kind of casual only a person who was aching could pull off. 

And he’d get real reserved at times, uncharacteristically quiet, and you’d ask him if he was okay. He’d scoffed and say he was fine —of course I’m okay, what do you mean? — while his cheek speckled with red and he blinked back glassy tears. 

You’d try to hug him and he’d let you, but kept shrugging off your concern — I’m fine, babe. I promise. I’m not the one who almost died.

Steve did that a lot. Made it seem like his problems didn’t mean as much because they weren’t as big as yours or Max’s or Eddie’s. He convinced himself that they didn’t. Why should he be upset when he didn’t have to meet the monster face to face or live through something traumatic all over again? What does he have to cry about?

But when he sleeps all he sees in you — in that spot at Lover’s Lake, succumbing to Vecna’s curse, while the rest of them try like hell to bring you back. In his nightmares, they never do. He watches your bones break one by one, piercing cracks in the quiet night that he can feel in his chest, before you fall limply to the ground again.

He wakes with a gasping breath, the same way you had all the time ago. You’re sleeping peacefully beside him, hair wild and face smushed into your pillow, but he can’t seem to get the vision out of his head — of your mangled body and sucked-out sockets. He stumbles off to the bathroom on tired and trembling legs.

You wake to the door slamming shut and stir at the sound of the faucet turning on. 

Light spills from the crack underneath the door, bright in the darkness of your bedroom. You watch Steve’s shadow with bleary eyes, how it stands in one place for a moment and then paces back and forth.

Wiping sleep from your eyes, you tiptoe to the door, but don’t do anything when you reach it. You just wait, listen. 

Steve mumbles something to himself that you can’t quite make out — you’re okay, stop being such a baby, jesus… is all you can hear. He sniffles as his feet pad the length of the tiled bathroom floor. It doesn’t take a genius to know that he’s crying.

Your knock upon the door is a soft one. You don’t want to startle him. The second he realizes you’re outside the door, he freezes.

“Stevie…” you call gently out for him. “Are you okay?”

He clears his throat. “Yeah—” Then again. “Yeah, I’m fine… Go back to bed.”

“Are you sure?” you press. “Do you want me to get anything for you?”

The boy has to take a deep breath in to stop himself from snapping at you. He’s angry at himself more than anything — for hiding, for failing at hiding. He runs two anxious hands through his hair and plants himself along the ceramic edge of the bathtub. 

“I’m sure. Just… Just go back to bed, okay?”

You don’t listen. You just slide along the door frame until you’re sat on the carpeted floor of your bedroom. Steve can hear your shuffling outside.

“It’s okay if you’re not okay. You know that, right?” you ask him through the door.

Steve puts his face in his hands before he can catch his scrunching face in the mirror. Just when he thought he wasn’t going to cry, here you come, pulling this shit. 

“I know,” he answers tightly, muffled through his palms. He rubs them up and down his face once, twice, and then a third time before throwing his hands into his lap. “But I’m fine, okay? Seriously.”

“You can cry in front of me, Steve. It’s okay. You don’t have to— You don’t have to go through this shit alone, you know? I’m here. I’m right here, okay? Let me help you.”

It’s that reminder that does him in; the assurance that you’re here and not a disfigured mess in the tall grass of Lover’s Lake. A sob spills from his mouth too abruptly for him to stop it.

“Steve…” you call for him again, heartbreaking on the other side of the door.

“I’m almost lost you,” he cries, more than himself than to you, then sniffles. “I’m almost fucking lost you.”

“But you didn’t. I’m still here. And I’m not going anywhere, Steve Harrington. The universe is gonna have to try a whole lot harder to keep me away from you.”

He manages a laugh through his tears. “It’s not funny.”

“I’m not joking,” you quip. “If Vecna couldn’t stop me from being with you, nothing will.”

The thought of that warms him. He realizes it’s not the universe keeping the two of you together, not fate or some higher power in the clouds. It’s love. It’s all the love the two of you have got for each other, stronger than any demogorgon or Russian soldier or dark wizard. And it’s love that’s gonna hold the two of you together for the next several decades, until you’re old and wrinkly and ugly. 

But Steve won’t think you’re ugly. He’ll think you’re as beautiful as the first moment he saw you — throwing up in the bushes outside Tina’s house after your first high school party.

You rise quickly when the door opens. Steve stands in front of you, eyes puffy and face red and smiling gently down at you anyway. “I love the shit outta you, you know that?” is all he can think to say. Because that’s all that he feels in that moment.

“Of course, I know that,” you grin up at him. Your hands rise to cup his jaw, thumbs swiping at his tear-stained cheeks. Your browns pinch in concern. “You okay?”

For the first time, he’s honest.

“No…” he murmurs with the soft shake of his head. His eyes dart away from yours and to the floor where his and your twenty toes stand, still on the ground, not floating in thin air.

“No— I… I don’t think I am,” he confesses softly. His tired, sad, and heavy honey eyes flit back up to yours again. “But I will be.”

You nod until your words catch up to you. “Yeah. Yeah, you will.”

“If only out of pure spite of all the monsters to all the monsters trying to destroy our lives.”

“They’re gone now,” you promise, like a parent who’s checked under their child’s bed for shadows and ghosts. It works well enough. Here, with his face in your hands and standing in your shared bedroom, he’s never felt safer.

“Can you… Can you hold me?” he wonders, a little meekly because he feels like an idiot saying them. Then he feels even more like an idiot for feeling like an idiot. You’re his girlfriend, after all, cuddles sort of came with the package.

“Of course,” you answer without thinking twice. You grab his hand and tug him back to the bed almost immediately. “I’ll hold you for the rest of our fucking lives, Harrington, you know that.”

The two of you settle into the mattress. Steve uses you like a pillow, wraps all of his limbs around you and tucks his face into your neck. Your scent is a familiar one, warm and comforting, like home. “I like the sound of that,” he mumbles into your shoulder after a moment of quiet.

“Well, buckle in, baby. ‘Cause I got you for the next, like, six decades.”

You feel his smile form against your skin as Steve tucks himself inside your soul.

[mariasont]

Catastrophic Curiosity - S.H

you couldn't stop thinking about robin's comment. and well... curiosity killed the cat. or, more accurately, demolished your cat in a storage closet

bet u wanna read my masterlist! ── .✦ °❀⋆.ೃ࿔*:･

pairing: steven harrington x fem!reader warnings: fem!reader, smut, p in v, dick-induced psychosis, public-ish sex, closet sex, pwp with feelings, oral thoughts no action, dirty talk, blasphemy in the name of science praise kink, fingering, penetrative sex, no condom usage (DONTTTTTTTTT), twinkie (i refuse to say creampie), humiliation kink but it’s just reader embarrassing herself, reader gets high on hypothetical dick, robin haunts this fic like a ghost of horny instigation prompt: here! wc: 4.3k (maria shut the fuck up challenge)

“Steve hears that all the time and he goes in anyway, don’t ya Steve?”

You wish there were a drug (prescription, over-the-counter, homemade in a bathtub, you’re not picky) that could hose the last twenty-four hours clean out of your brain. Like a mental Clorox bomb. Rip the wallpaper off. Burn the couch. Scrub the inside of your skull until you couldn’t recall your own name, let alone that sentence.

The one currently rerouting every single one of your thoughts back to Steve Fucking Harrington and the inadvisable fixation on whatever situation he’s got going on in his Levi’s.

Incredible. Gold-star behavior. You should be on a watchlist.

You splash cold water on your face as if it’s holy, hoping it’ll scald the thoughts right out of you if you’re devout enough about it.

It doesn’t. If anything, now you’re just damp and distracted. 

You scrape your hair into a ponytail with trembling hands, snaring your fingers on knots you don’t have the patience to untangle. Your reflection meets you in the mirror with narrowed eyes and a contempt so sharp it could peel paint.

Maybe it’s fine. This is just textbook human behavior.

Curiosity kept the species alive, didn’t it? Curiosity made fire, built tools, landed on the moon. You just… redirected it. A little. Preoccupation plus sleep deprivation equals temporary psychosis.

And Steve Harrington’s size is just an equation you haven’t solved yet. That’s all. 

However, your brain doesn’t want the excuses you’re giving yourself. It wants contact. And the second you try to intellectualize it, it slips the leash, teeth bared, wrecking itself on imagery and impulse and the sheer kinetic force of your own dumb, dumb hunger.

You know what he was like in high school. Or what he was supposed to be like, if the teenage hivemind was to be believed. House parties every Friday. Cheap beer on his breath. Pretty girls folded into the backseat of his car.

You barely spoke, back then. Might never have, if not for the apocalypse flattening the social hierarchy and parking you two side-by-side in survival’s waiting room. 

There’s something kind of poetic about that, if you squint.

And yeah, with a reputation like that, it’s not exactly shocking to imagine he’s got... experience. The rumors made sure of it. Especially the ones that got real creative below the belt.

You open the bathroom door too fast. Before your heartbeat has settled, before your mind has purged even a fraction of the things you just let yourself picture. 

Terrible, wonderful things involving you and him and way less clothing.

You step out with heat still coiled under your skin, eyes unfocused, and crash straight into him.

Hard. Chest to face. His chest, your face. 

The impact should’ve knocked the thoughts clean out of your head. But they just double in volume. Multiply like gremlins.

You’re ninety percent sure he’s looking straight into your frontal lobe and watching the mental porn reel on loop. 

“Shit, sorry — I was just, um, doing the cold-water-to-the-face thing. That’s why I’m wet. My face, I mean.” You motion to your cheeks, as if this will clarify anything. “Not because I’m sweating. I mean, I am sweating, but not — okay, that’s not important. Anyway. Didn’t mean to, uh, crash into you.”

“Whoa, hey, you’re fine,” he says, all gentle grin and slow hands, like he’s trying to calm a skittish animal. He leans in instead of backing up, tilts his head. “You alright? You’re burning up.” His knuckles skim your cheek. “What were you doing in there, running laps?”

Your heart might stop. Or rupture. Or just melt into a little puddle and drip out of your ear, leaving behind a chalk outline and a puff of smoke.

His touch is so steady, so casual, it makes your own body feel uninhabitable.

“I’m okay,” you blurt. “I mean, I’m warm, but I’m always warm. Homeostasis, you know? Higher basal body temperature.” You blink. “Not sick, though. No fever. I checked. Not checked, but I’d know. Probably. I think.”

Steve studies you for a second longer than necessary before his hand falls away. The cool air rushes in where he was, and you almost flinch.

“You sure?” he asks, brow pinched. “You look kinda…” He stops himself. Swallows. “Never mind.”

His fingers move to his belt, fidgeting without thinking, you’re sure. You follow the motion like he’s got you on a string, and you're the world's most suggestible puppet.

His jeans are tight. Unreasonably so. 

Is this new? Has he always looked like that? Or are you simply being punished? Because your thoughts are not kind anymore. They are filthy and frantic and belt-shaped.

“I’m fine. I promise. Seriously. Don’t start psychoanalyzing me.”

“Right,” he says, lips twitching like he almost smiles. “Just saying, you’ve been a little… scarce. Thought maybe you were avoiding me.”

Your foot pivots, heel to toe, heel to toe. “No, I’m not avoiding you. Why would I —?”

And there it is. The stumble. The dead end.

“Good question. Why would you?”

“I wasn’t!” you say too fast. “I just… figured if I gave you space, it’d keep things from getting…” You wince. Shit. “I mean, no. I wasn’t avoiding you, really.”

Steve leans back against the wall like it was built just for him, arms crossed, smirk dialed up to lethal.

“Yeah?” he says. “Because from where I’m standing, it looked a lot like someone running scared.”

“I just think it’s completely fair to occasionally take space, okay?” you ramble, hands flailing. “Sometimes people just need time. Alone. To recalibrate. It’s healthy. Especially if, hypothetically, someone maybe said something that stuck in your head like a thumbtack and now you can’t stop thinking about it, and it might not even true but it feels true, and —”

“What feels true?”

You try to reroute. Hit the emergency eject. Say literally anything that doesn’t involve Robin or Steve or his dick size.

Your mouth moves, but nothing intelligent follows.

“I — uh.” Good start. “It’s nothing. It’s stupid. It’s — wow, I’m bad at this.”

You don’t specify what this is. You pray he doesn’t ask.

But then his brow twitches, just a little. And his eyes widen with that soft, dooming interest that means he’s put something together.

“This is about what Robin said.”

You choke on the inhale. “What? No.”

Steve actually looks sorry for you.

It’s worse than laughter. Worse than death. It’s in the eyes, the little tilt of his head, the amused pinch of his lips like he’s fighting the urge to ruffle your hair and tell you to sit this one out.

“Jesus,” he says, grinning. “You might be the worst liar I’ve ever seen.”

“I wasn’t — I haven’t been, like, dwelling on it or anything.”

“If it’s been keeping you up at night,” he murmurs, almost innocently, “I could just tell you. Might help you sleep.”

You cover your face with both hands. “Please stop talking.”

“What?” he laughs. “You’ve got questions, sweetheart. I’ve got answers. This is a mutually beneficial arrangement.”

“I don’t!” you say, voice pitching an octave too high. “I do not have questions. Maybe — okay, fine — maybe I had a thought. Singular. One unit of mental disturbance. But that’s not the same thing, and I definitely don’t need answers, because answers imply interest, and I’m not interested. I’m so far from interested.”

“So you’re telling me, just for the record, that there’s zero interest in whether or not Robin was exaggerating... or proof she wasn't?”

You immediately take a step back like his words physically shoved you.

“You can’t — don’t say things like that. You can’t say things like that.” 

He follows anyway. A goddamn golden retriever walking into the flames, all softness and sunlight, warmth invading every inch of your body like light through the blinds.

He smells like vanilla and ocean wind and the kind of summer you only remember in snapshots. Melting popsicles. Sweat-slick heat. Grass stains on your shins.

Your gaze dips to the slope of his collarbone, to the tiny freckle just beneath it.

You think about mouthing over it like it’s the last clean sin left in the world.

“Why not?”

“I — because.”

“That’s not an answer.” He takes a half step. “You sure you don’t want to know?”

“I’m sure I don’t need your charity.”

“That’s not what this is.”

“Then what is this?”

“This is me giving you the chance to just ask,” he murmurs. “Because I think you’ve want to.”

“I just don’t want you to think I’m…” You trail off, suddenly unsure what the ending of that sentence is. What? Pathetic? Presumptuous? Clingy in that skin-crawling, middle school way? “It’s embarrassing, okay?” you say instead, voice barely above a whisper. “So if you’re being nice, stop. Please.”

“Do you really think I’d be standing here if I didn’t want to be?” he says. “That I’d be — what? Entertaining you out of pity?”

“I don’t know, maybe?” you say, hands flying up. “You’ve always been nice to me, Steve, and maybe that’s just a you thing, maybe you’re just pathologically polite and constitutionally incapable of making a clean exit from a conversation because you’re scared of being rude and I get that, I really do, but I’m kind of a lot, like, objectively, and sometimes I can’t tell —”

He leans in and kisses you. 

The moment detonates, no warning or countdown, just pure combustion, like his mouth struck the match and you were already soaked in gasoline. 

Or maybe it dissolves instead, maybe it disappears entirely and takes you with it, because suddenly there’s nothing solid left to stand on. 

Your thoughts scatter in every direction, slippery, clattering out of reach before you can grab onto even one of them. Maybe it’s relief, or maybe it’s panic, or maybe it’s both in equal measure tangled so tightly you can’t separate them, because the kiss doesn’t feel sweet or soft or safe.

It feels like something that’s been waiting. Pacing. Burning its way through the walls of his chest until it finally found a way out through your mouth.

This isn’t a kiss you’ll bounce back from. This isn’t a kiss you can shrug off later or file under harmless flirtation, Steve being Steve, like always. Because this is not harmless. This is not casual. This is not anything close to friendly.

It’s blistering. It’s possessive. It’s entirely incompatible with every version of this relationship you’ve tried to pretend was normal.

Your brain blanks. Your lungs forget how to function. You can’t even remember what you were saying before your mouth is full of heat and your brain is full of him, and all the polite categories you sorted him into are collapsing like paper in the rain. 

No one kisses like this out of pity.

He pulls back just enough to look at you. His eyes drag over your face like he’s assessing the wreckage, seeing what parts of you still work.

You’re flushed. Breathless. Somewhere between euphoric and humiliated and already hungry for more.

“You talk too much,” he says, almost fondly. But his eyes catch on your mouth, and the way they darken doesn’t feel fond at all.  “Maybe I should keep kissing you until you forget how to speak.”

His thumb traces your lip like he’s considering biting it next.

You blink past him, looking anywhere that isn’t his mouth or his eyes or his neck or the absolutely devastating angle of his jaw, because you’re pretty sure if you keep staring at him, you’re going to forget basic laws of human decency. And public indecency.

Like Joyce Byers walking out of the breakroom with a mug that says “World’s Best Mom” and catching you looking like a couple of hormonal teenagers in the AV room.

“Steve,” you whisper, half-mortified, half-dizzy. “We can’t just make out in the hallway.”

“Then let me take you somewhere we can.”

You nod before the sentence even fully lands, a reflexive, eager little movement that tells on you immediately. So much for playing it cool. So much for dignity. 

He doesn’t comment on it, thank the gods, but he does capitalize on it, fingers already hooking into your wrist as he pulls you backward, mouth never quite leaving yours, like he’s discovered a loophole in reality where consequences can’t reach him as long as he keeps kissing you. 

The hallway blurs, your awareness narrowing to the press of his body and the sound of a closet door being located purely by faith.

“You know,” he mumbles, voice rough and amused between kisses, “there’s a middle ground between unresolved sexual tension and closet makeouts, but clearly we skipped it.”

You giggle helplessly against his mouth. “You’re the one who kissed me!”

“Mmhm.” He presses another kiss to the corner of your smile. “And look at that —” kiss “— still doing it. Can’t seem to stop.”

There’s a clever comeback balancing precariously on the edge of your tongue, but it never makes it past your lips because his tongue gets there first, hot and shameless, swallowing the thought whole as he presses you back, deeper, until your spine meets cinderblock and your heel kicks something papery and hollow that might’ve once been a box but is now a casualty of lust.

The sound is distant. Muffled. Everything is. Except him. Except the way his fingers, practically dipped in snow, slip beneath your shirt, finding your hips to flatten against the give of flesh.

Your body jerks toward him like a tide you don’t remember starting. He meets you halfway, grinding in slow and steady, the thick ridge of his jeans dragging across your thigh but not there, not where you actually need him.

You know that smile. You can feel it ghosting across your mouth, equal parts smug and merciless.

You brace one hand on his shoulder like you might push him back, but it’s a lie. You just need something to hold onto.

“You’re being mean.”

“Thought I was nice,” he murmurs, not even bothering to hide the grin stretching across his face. “That’s what you said, right? ‘You’ve always been nice to me, Steve.’” His hand drags slow over your waist, inching lower. “Funny how quick your definition changes when you don’t get what you want.”

“You’re twisting my words on purpose.”

“Maybe.” His hand palms your ass, full and greedy, and a faint noise punches out of you. “Or maybe I’m just demonstrating,” he says then rolls his hips forward until the you feel the line of his length presssing right against you through the fabric of your skirt. “People wouldn’t keep saying things if there wasn’t something to back it up.”

Oh.

Well. That clears that up. No more half-smiles or “wouldn’t you like to know” bullshit, no more overheard rumors or vague commentary from people who’ve allegedly seen things, because now you’ve seen things.

Now you’ve felt things. Not secondhand or exaggerated or imagined, but actual, firsthand, physically-verifiable evidence currently pressing against you like an anatomical threat.

He’s hard. Through the layers. Thick and hot and very, very real. So real it’s bordering on impolite.

You don’t understand how he’s just… lived like this. Walked around. Sat next to you. Carried on entire conversations with that much potential sitting in his pants. It’s inhumane. 

You want to help. You want to unzip, unburden, atone. You want him in your hand, in your mouth, carved into every version of your imagination like an overdue upgrade.

And you’re going to make that happen. Even if your brain’s just looping ohmygodohmygodohmygod like a broken fire alarm.

“M’wanna see,” you mumble, voice dipped in sugar and challenge and please.

Your hand slips down before you can even finish the thought, trembling with the kind of anticipation usually reserved for Christmas mornings and divine interventions.

You find his belt blindly, drag your knuckles over the stiff leather like it might melt under your palms, and start working at it with a kind of frantic desperation.

But it’s hard, and he’s big, and your fingers are trembling, and the buckle just won’t —

“C’mere,” he says softly, catching your wrist before you can make it worse. His fingers brush yours as he takes over, the buckle opening instantly under his hands like it’s been waiting for him specifically. “So eager, aren’t you?”

“‘S not my fault,” you whisper, almost defensively.

You’re not even trying to play it cool anymore. Because you’re not. Cool, that is. You’re boiling. Bubbling. Practically vibrating with need.

You are eager. Ridiculously so. 

“Not your fault,” he echoes, voice gone hoarse. “No, baby. I did this, didn’t I?”

He hums in his throat, hands drifting up your thighs. His fingernail grazes a scar, a stretch mark, a patch of skin you’ve never liked. He draws absent little shapes that make you twitch. One circle. Then another. 

You open your mouth to respond, but nothing coherent makes it out, just your own shallow breathing, tangled in vowels.

Your hands are trying to get into his pants, trying to do something, but it’s all angles and nerves. 

You get as far as his waistband before his hand finds the damp heat of your underwear and presses down. 

Whatever you were going to say evaporates instantly, lost in the whimper that slips out instead.

He groans softly when at that, thumb starting slow circles over your swollen clit, like the sound just fuels him. “There it is. That’s the noise I was waiting for.”

His other hand slips into his boxers, palm wrapping around himself with a hissed breath.

He drags himself free and your eyes drop instantly, your breath catching like he’s knocked the wind out of you. 

It’s… obscene. Thick and flushed and heavy and pretty, if cocks can be pretty.

He’s big. Bigger than any rumor. Bigger than anyone should be. The head’s already slick, angry pink, twitching the wrap of his fist.

Your thighs clench automatically.

Steve sees the look on your face and huffs a breath that’s almost a laugh, hand stroking himself once.

“Go ahead, sweetheart,” he murmurs, “You wanted it. Touch.”

Your hand wraps around him like you’ve been waiting your whole life for the opportunity, thumb swiping the slick at the tip without thinking.

“Robin was so right, oh my god, and did you know she once said you probably broke up with that girl because your dick was too big? I thought she was being so rude and now I’m like — shit, maybe she was being nice —”

“Christ,” Steve growls.

You don’t stop. Can’t. “And those stupid rumors in gym? With the thing about the baseball team? And the —”

He cuts you off with two fingers pushing inside you like punctuation. Deep. Perfect.

You gasp like he stole your oxygen. Clutch his cock like it’s your last tether to reality.

“There,” he mutters. “That’s better.”

You whine, then moan, high and sharp, your head tilting back. Your hand twitches on his length, trying to keep up, trying to do something, but your rhythm’s off, messy, helpless.

“Steve — I — I’m trying to — I’m just —”

His free hand finds your jaw.

“Shh, baby,” he says, “just breathe. Let me take care of you, yeah?”

You can’t think. You really can’t. There’s static where your thoughts should be, white noise words once lived, and all of it being overwritten by the flex of his fingers. Your body spasms on instinct, like it’s trying to trap the sensation and keep it.

What kind of person is this good? What kind of boy-next-door-has-a-bat-in-his-trunk knows how to ruin someone with just two fingers and a thumb?

Not that you’re complaining. You’re just… processing. Or trying to. Which is hard, because he looks so beautiful like this. Hair mused, pupils blown, jaw slack. You want to keep him like this. Want to memorize this version of him.

“Want you,” you materialize. “Steve, please. I want you inside me.”

“Yeah?” he says, jaw tight, like the word almost chokes him.

Your eyes well and you nod, fingers digging into his skin. “Yeah. Please — please, Steve.”

“I’ll give you what you want, sweetheart,” he says, thumb brushing your clit once, then pinching, gentle, filthy, mean. “Want it so bad, don’t you?”

You’re nodding frantically before he’s even finished lining himself up, the head of his cock pressing hot and slick against your entrance.

“Are you sure?” he asks, voice cracking with restraint. “You sure you —”

You cut him off with action, sinking down without waiting, a breathless cry catching in your throat.

“Fuck,” he grits. “Okay. Okay. Baby, slow down.”

He’s big, so big, and you knew that, and you’ve said that, and now it’s too late, he’s already inside you, and you swear you can feel him everywhere, not just between your legs but in your chest, your throat, your teeth, like he’s in your bloodstream now, branded into your nerve endings, and it stretches, stretches, stretches until it feels like you might split in half and you don’t care because it’s so good, impossibly good, the kind of good you didn’t think was even real outside of books or porn or those random sleepover stories where girls said it hurt the first time and then got quiet and dreamy and said but it felt amazing too, and now you understand, now you get it, because this… this is transcendent.

You materialize those thoughts into words as best you can: “I — I didn’t know it could feel like this.”

“Fuck. I’m trying so hard not to move,” he pants, knuckles whitening where he’s gripping you.

“Please, Steve,” you babble, hands curling around his biceps. “I’m okay. I’m okay. Promise. You can move, I need you to.”

But you don’t sound okay. You sound wrecked. Because he’s so close, so real, his sweat dripping onto your collarbone, his breath tangled with yours like it’s shared, like you’re not two separate people at all.

“You sure?” he pants, but he’s already circling your clit again, already letting his hips roll forward like he needs it to survive. “You tell me if it’s too much, yeah?”

The pleasure’s cresting again, thick and dizzying and curling in your belly like your body’s working ahead of your brain, chasing a high you can’t articulate.

“Funny,” he mutters in your ear, “you got all flustered over kissing me in the hallway, and now look at you…” He thrusts hard, then again, a little growl pulsing in his throats. “Letting me fuck you in a closet where anyone could walk by. Anyone could hear.”

“I don’t care,” you breathe, eyes wide and glassy. “Let them — let them hear.”

You’re clenching around him, tighter, desperate, the idea of getting caught only making everything worse.

“Yeah?” he says, hips stuttering as your cunt flutters around him. “You want them to hear how needy you sound?” He circles your clit rougher now, chasing it. “You gonna come for me right here? Gonna soak my cock and let the whole building hear it?”

You should be ashamed. You should be mortified. But instead you’re gasping into his shoulder, cunt clenching around him like your body’s forgotten how to let go, and your brain is stuck on loop of his words. 

Because you are, you’re going to, because he’s still thumbing at your slit like he knows exactly what your breaking point sounds like and he wants everyone else to know it too, and it’s so hot it feels like being worshipped and ruined at the same time.

“Steve, I’m gonna — I’m gonna come —” The words fracture as your hips jerk, body trying to meet him stroke for stroke.

“I’m right there — just let go, baby, come with me.”

The orgasm builds and breaks in you like a tidal wave, folding over every nerve ending, leaving you gasping, trembling, clutching at his shoulders like you’re afraid you’ll drift away. They might. You don’t know anything concrete right now.

He groans your name as his rhythm falters, hips stuttering, and then he’s coming too. You feel it, the rush of heat, the way his cock throbs inside you in sync with every last sound that crawls its way out of his throat. 

His breath is warm against your cheek, lips brushing yours but not kissing, just hovering there, like even that would be too much. You’re both trembling, sweaty and flushed and completely gone, still pressed together like if you separate too fast the world might not start spinning again.

You can feel him inside you still, the rush of his seed spreading and pooling.

Everything’s cotton and fog. Your whole body hums. You don’t know what to do with your hands.

Steve kisses the corner of your mouth, then your cheekbone, then your forehead, whispering your name like he’s checking for a pulse.

“Still with me?” he breathes, nudging your nose with his. “You okay?”

You nod. Or think you do. Maybe you just melt a little more into him instead.

You blink up at him, eyes glassy, breath still not fully your own. “That was…”

You trail off, because no word feels big enough.

Steve smiles like he knows what you meant anyway, like he felt it too. He brushes your hair off your damp cheek, kissing your temple.

“Yeah,” he says softly. “Me too.”

It was weird how gentle he was afterward, like the same hands that just took you apart couldn’t stop smoothing you down, wiping sweat from your hairline, murmuring sweet nothings between kisses.

You were still trembling, your thighs sticky and your thoughts barely functional, so when he cupped your face and whispered, “Do you maybe want to go on an actual date with me?” it took you a full five seconds to realize he wasn’t joking. 

You blinked, dazed, nodded (maybe said yes?) and then you were pulling your shirt down, slipping past mops and shelves and half-melted brain cells toward the exit.

You were still smiling when Hopper strolled past with a grunt and a raised brow.

“Ten bucks says you knocked something off the janitor’s schedule.”

You nearly fall over. Steve turns bright red. You both pretend very hard not to exist.

[explicitlyrics]

stained glass snoopy at redwood empire ice arena, 2007.

[cicobuffs]

*st5 finale spoilers* (expanding on one off line in the epilogue)

living with stonathan in new york when rent gets tight. it was always just a joking suggestion passed around between you, jonathan, steve, nancy, and robin during your once a month rendezvous' to philadelphia. always starting with you complaining about rent for your apartment and your sleazebag landlord milking you for all your worth when one of them always hits you with "oh well I don't know why you would move to new york on your own when we live there" and "if it ever gets too bad, you know where to go," (this ones always said with a kind look from jonathan).

so when the day comes where you're standing in the doorway of steve and jonathans shared apartment with two boxes of just some of your belongings and the story of how you flipped your landlord the bird and stormed away, no ones really surprised. and the adjustment is odd: having two roommates (men at that), having at the same time a realistically bigger but somehow smaller space, and spending the first few weeks clearing out the spare room that jonathan had previously dedicated to his cameras and film to turn it into a livable space for you were frustratingly taxing. but you got used to it fast despite you feeling bad that you barged in to their apartment like this (steve always tells you it’s better this way since you’re helping with the rent so really you’re doing them a favor).

so it all becomes strangely domestic. brewing coffee in the mornings (steve pours sugar on sugar on sugar in his and jonathan likes his just black…sometimes with cream). starring in student short films that you can’t bare to watch even though jonathan says you aren’t even that bad (you are that bad). bringing home chinese from the place down the street that you pass on your way home from work and steve picking up a movie to watch from the video store.

sitcoms on the couch where you’re in the middle, leaning against steve and your legs are draped on jonathan’s lap where his hands are on your knees slightly rubbing up and down and steve’s got an arm haphazardly hanging off your shoulder. the regular slight touches between the three of you. it’s a hand on the small of your back or steve’s knee knocking against jonathan’s but instead of moving away they both stay there or arms around shoulders that don’t feel as friend-like as they should. like there’s some sort of built up tension rising between the three of you.

but surely it’s nothing right?

[bruisedboys]

i saw ur weird!girl reader x steve harrington and oh. my god. i fell in love. as a self proclaimed weird girl i need MORE!!! i need reader who is full of whimsy and is an irl fairy princess dragging steve along on hikes or or just wandering around like the woody surroundings of skull rock. idk i need SOMETHING WITH A WHISMY/WEIRD!GIRL READER AND STEVE SOSOSOSO BAD HOLY FREAKING COW

steve and his whimsy girl yes!!! thank you angel xo

steve harrington x whimsy!fem!reader, 0.9k words (not proofread I do not give a gaf)

Steve shouts your name into the trees for what feels like the hundredth time. Despite his best efforts, the trees don’t answer.

“Baby, where are you?!” He shouts.

He's starting to panic. He’s lost you. One minute you were right there, trailing along behind him while he led the way back to the car from Skull Rock, and the next you were gone. No footsteps, no warning, nothing. You’re simply gone.

“Y/N, I swear to god.” Steve runs a hand through his hair, frustrated, sweating, panic starting to claw at his chest a bit. Normally, he wouldn’t be so worried. But this is Hawkins. As he’s discovered, anything can happen. “Where the hell are you?”

No response. He stomps off in a random direction and hopes for the best. He pushes through the trees until he spots something colourful on the ground.

He squats to inspect it. It’s your hair ribbon. Bright red and sticking out like a sore thumb in the mud and brown leaves. He picks it up. There’s no sign of a struggle, so that soothes Steve’s nerves a bit.

“Y/N?” He says again, pocketing your ribbon.

Steve straightens up and looks around. You can’t have gone far, right? He’s about to start pushing through the trees again when he feels a tap on his shoulder.

“Ah!” Steve shouts, almost jumping out of his skin. He whirls around and finds himself face to face with you.

You’re standing there with an owlish look on your face, unscathed apart from a leaf in your hair. Steve’s heart pounds hard.

“Baby,” he manages, clutching his chest. You almost scared the skin off of him. “There you are.”

Your brow furrows. “You were looking for me?”

Steve stops himself from rolling his eyes. “I was calling your name, honey.” He reaches for you, plucking the leaf from your hair, then cupping your jaw with his hand. “For ages. Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” you say, beaming up at him.

“You lost your ribbon.”

“I did?”

Steve nods, pulling it from his pocket to show you.

“Oh,” you say. You take it from him gratefully and push it into your jeans pocket. “Thanks, handsome. Do you want to see what I found?”

“Uh.” Steve flounders a little. Handsome? “Sure! What is it, exactly?”

“It’s a surprise,” you say. “Come on.”

You grab his hand and take off into the trees. Steve stumbles along behind you. He’s not as nimble as you, and you’re moving fast. He’s also taller than you, and he keeps narrowly missing getting eyeballed by a tree branch. You’re oblivious to his suffering, clearly excited to show him whatever it is you’ve found.

After a few moments you start to slow down. Still clutching Steve’s hand, you look over your shoulder at him.

“You have to be quiet,” you say softly. “Otherwise they’ll get scared, okay?”

Steve’s not sure he wants to know who they are. But he nods anyway. He finds it horribly difficult to say no to you at the best of times.

“Okay,” he says back, matching your gentle tone.

You beam at him then duck into a bush, tugging him with you. Steve forgets how to move for a second, struck by your pretty smile, but eventually ends up kneeling next to you in the dirt.

“Uh. What are we looking at?” He asks.

“Shh,” you say. You peer through a small gap in the bush. “C’mere, Steve. Look.”

You pull back a little to make space for Steve to look through the gap too. Weirdly nervous, Steve leans forward and peers through.

He finds himself looking at a small clearing in the trees. The ground is more grassy here, less mud like the stuff he’s practically sitting in right now. In the center of the clearing are three or four little brown bunnies chewing at the grass.

“See them?” You whisper, alarmingly close to Steve’s ear. He feels your warm breath on his neck and tries not to breathe too loud.

“I see them,” he says.

“Aren’t they cute?!” You whisper-squeal. “I followed that little one on the left.”

Steve looks away from the (admittedly cute) bunnies to raise his eyebrows at you. “You followed it?”

You nod, falling back on your heels. Obviously you don’t care about the mud as much as Steve does. “Yeah. Why?”

“You didn’t think to tell me where you were going?”

“I had to be quiet so I didn’t scare him,” you explain. “You would’ve been too loud, Steve.”

Steve’s jaw drops. “What? Babe, you’re greatly underestimating my spy instincts.”

You burst into a giggle, but quickly slap your hand over your mouth. You’re not fast enough — you and Steve both look back into the clearing to find the bunnies have disappeared, gone off in a rush when they heard your laugh.

“Oops,” you say, not without amusement.

Steve huffs. “It’s okay. We can find more, if you want.” He only half believes himself. But he’d look for bunnies all day if it meant making you happy.

You shake your head. “No, it’s okay. I’m getting hungry.”

You stand up, brushing off your jeans as you go. Steve follows.

“You want to head home now?” He asks. He’s been ready to go home for at least an hour now, but if you want to stay out here all day, that’s what he’ll do.

Thankfully, you nod. “Can we go get burgers?”

Steve grins. “Okay, sure. But, sweetheart.” He takes your hand in his, locking his fingers with yours. “Promise me you won’t disappear again on the way back to the car?”

You smile. “Yeah, I promise.”

Steve keeps a firm hold of your hand all the way back just in case.

[obriy]

Steve Harrington + cars/driving

[plaugiest-deactivated20260525]

and if I suggest hooking up in the car on some old back road and getting caught by chief hopper….. PLEASE PLEASE PLESE

steve harrington fucking you in the back of his truck

all it was, was a stupid college party— a get-together where students got stupidly drunk, lose their sense of self and run off of pure hedonism. though that in itself could be a bit contradictory. but nothing has to make sense— not when you have steve tugging you by the arm, interrupting your conversation with a low, “come on, we’re leaving.” as if he were on his last bit of patience, before pulling you towards the exit.

“how many times do i have to tell you to keep your distance from hagan?” steve sighs, as the dry grass and worn sticks crunch underneath your feet. “he’s bad news.” steve emphasizes, while swinging open the passenger’s door for you to hop in as he helps you up with his free hand, slamming the door shut before making his way around the vehicle.

“oh you’re so dramatic.” you scoff, shaking your head with a soft laugh as steve enters the car. “no, you just don’t have a sense of awareness.” steve responds sharp, controlled in a way that makes him more attractive, as he jams the car keys into the slot with a tight twist and clutch— as the engine begins to roar.

you furrow your eyebrow with a soft pout, “no sense of awareness? c’mon harrington, not every dude that talks to me wants to date.” you roll your eyes, reaching back to grab at the seatbelt.

“yeah, date.” he quips sarcastically as if the word date had another connotation. steve let out an annoyed, breathy laugh before kissing his teeth— his left hand gripping the steering wheel as his right hand holds onto the clutch, changing the gear before stepping on the gas as you feel your body push back against the seat.

the engine of his truck roars quietly as you hear the wind dance through the cracks of the windows— no talking, no music just the breeze and a hum of unspoken tension between you two.

“soo i take it, you’re gonna be mad at me all night.” you tilt your head towards steve, pausing for a beat— waiting for an answer as you watch him bring a hand up to his head, before running his fingers through his brunette locks with an elongated exhale.

his hand still gripping the wheel, you can see his veins flex with every pulse. steve doesn’t even bat an eye towards you, he refuses to.

“i’m not mad.” he lets out a reprimanding sigh, like he’s collecting his thoughts before uttering a word as his eyes stay focused on the road. “it’s just, i know hagan… i’ve known him since high school.” you watch the way his jaw tightens, “and i don’t trust him near you.” he states.

“well, stevie.” you bring one of your hands down against his thigh playfully. “i think that you just hate any man who breathes near me.” you tease, patting his thigh with soft landings as you hear a soft laugh rumble from steve’s chest, his tongue prodding against the inside of his cheek.

“i do.” he replies without hesitation— which makes you whip your head toward him, catching you completely off guard hearing the slight shift in his tone. “mmm.” you hum softly, not knowing what to respond with because you’ve never seen steve like this before— not like this as the truck drifts closer and closer to the edge of the ill lit road.

“didn’t take you as a jealous man, harrington.” you grinned as his gaze finally met yours.

the truck parked off the road— as steve steered past the white emergency line, dipping into a small forgotten pothole the county never bothered fixing. the engine cutting off with a soft click as steve twists the keys out of the slot.

“come here.” he tugs his seat back, spreading his knees just enough to make room for you, before patting his thigh, inviting you to sit as you climb over the console. your skirt riding up as you plant down on his lap— feeling him hard against you, wrapping his hands around your waist before grinding you against his bulge, earning a soft gasp from you.

his soft lips peck at your neck before planting wet kisses down your throat. “r-right now, steve?” you whine, your palms on his shoulders as he rocks your body against his. the friction of jeans catching against your clothed clit perfectly as you moan at the action.

“yeah, baby.” he groans against the column of your neck, his calloused hands roaming your body— underneath your top as he slurs against your skin. “need to show tom hagan…” steve presses a kiss against the corner of your mouth, “and any other loser that wants to talk to you, that you’re fuckin’ mine.” he’d rasp, as he pulls one of his hands down to unbuckle his belt while unzipping his jeans around to free himself from his boxers.

you bite down on your lip, “what if we get caught?” you ask, subconsciously grinding your hips into his as your eyes meet his. steve’s eyes flicker to the side-mirror, back to you then down to your core as he slips a hand down your crotch. the palm of his hand grazing against the fabric as he groans at the damp feeling, “i think you’re worrying about the wrong thing, princess.” he grins before tugging the hem of your skirt and panties to the side as he dips his middle finger into your pussy.

a precious moan falls from your mouth as steve inserts another finger— your slick coating his fingers as he curls deep, into that perfect spot inside you making your vision blur for a second. “mmphm f—fuck, c’mon steve!” you whine at the bundle of pleasure building within your tummy, as the fear of a random car approaching adds to the dopamine for some unexplainable reason.

“shhh. gotta stretch you out first, yeah.” steve shushes you, while whispering against the shell of your ear as you shake your head no. “there’s no time for that!” you breathe out— one of your small hands wrapping around the base of steve’s dick as you press against him, gliding his length through your wet folds as the head of his leaking cock brushes against your swollen clit, as you both moan at the sensation.

“mmh, wait. don’t hurt your— s-shittt.” steve chokes out, throwing his head back against the headrest as your cunt swallows him whole. the stretch burning so good, your legs begin shaking around him as you clawing into his shoulders.

“t-thought you wanted to show them m’ yours, pretty boy.” you purr, pressing your forehead against his as he lets out a breathy laugh. his pupils blown wide as he watches the way you take him, body flush against him before he’s digging his fingers into the flesh of your ass.

“i am.” he groans, slams his hips up against you. the head of his cock nuzzling sweet against your cervix as your back arches at the sudden thrust, sending a shudder up your spine as you cry out.

your vision getting blurry as tears swell in your eyes, it’s so overwhelming in pleasure your brain can’t coherent a single thought, only chanting steve’s name as if your life depended on it.

the windows fogging up with an obscene amount of sinful body heat, flush against each other— panting in one another’s mouths as the presence of time became irrelevant. so irrelevant that the outside world could be completely eradicated and you wouldn’t know.

steve’s hand travels up your body, rough fingers curling underneath your chin, tipping your face towards him as makes you look at him while absolutely destroying your insides. “thaaat’s it, baby— feels good, yeah?” he lets out a low praise, as you nod— whimpering as he’s bouncing you on his length as you milk him for everything he’s worth.

“that’s fuckin’ right.” steve enunciates through each thrusts, as he’s still holding your chin forcing you to look at him through wet lashes. “and who’s makin’ you feel this good.” his tone dips into a condescending reassurance as he keeps his gaze upon you watching you struggle with swallowing your pride and saying it.

“y-you.” you bite down on your lip, a pout forming on your lips— which steve finds so fucking cute. “that’s right, baby i—”

knock knock

two light taps on the window is enough to make you and harrington stop dead in your tracks, as you both freeze in pure shock.

knock knock knock

this time the taps are harder, much more impatient as you scurry across the console, fixing yourself up in the passengers seat as steve quickly pulls his pants up and buckles his belt.

steve clears his throat before rolling down the window, before getting instantly blinded by a flashing flashlight.

“out.” says the dark silhouette, as steve opens the door, before slowly getting out.

“harrington?” the gruff voice says shockingly, though not quite shocked enough. he looks steve up and down before scrunching his face, “for the love of god, please fix your belt.” he sighs from pure disappointment before ducking down to look through the window into the passengers seat.

“ … no fucking way.” the man bit on his words, as if what he saw were truly repulsive.

“get out the car. right fucking now.” he gritted, as your heart dropped to your ass.

“dad?”

and there he was. the county sheriff— jim hopper in the flesh, who unfortunately happened to be your father.

[thedeadsparrow]

donna’s old class mates reading the secret history for the first time

[rensfairygarden]

henry winter and bunny corcoran are everywhere for those with the eyes to see

[littlemsshoney]

clementines.

henry winter x reader (?)

this is HEAVILY inspired by this post by @superbusmeretrix. It’s been stuck in my mind for days and I just need to write this.

Getting uncurated moments of Henry was rare.

He kept to himself.

That’s why Sunday mornings were sacred. After a night of three packs of cigarettes, arguments over who cheated at Bridge, and countless glasses of wine, the country house wakes in pure silence.

In the morning everything is asleep, the kind of asleep that makes you wonder if it’s dead.

You put on something woolen and knitted and walk downstairs. The wooden floors are cold and ready to betray you. Each step is careful and gentle, as if your very existence at this hour deserves secrecy—and it does. You wouldn’t want anyone to wake up and steal this from you.

In the kitchen, your hands come around the round kettle. Still warm. You almost smile.

You make your way to the porch, and there you find him. You stop in the doorway, not daring to cross that threshold. Under the smoke of his cigarette, under the unripe morning light, you see him in all his glory.

It’s nothing godlike, not the kind of beauty he’d appreciate or write odes to. Dark circles sit under the hollow of his eyes, glasses off, scar vulnerable for the sun and you to see.

Ugly and clumsy in all its humanity.

When you finally feel brave, you move to the other chair.

He doesn’t speak, doesn’t even reach for his glasses. Your presence doesn’t disturb his equation of peace. This kind of stillness scares you.

On the table sit two cups of tea, steaming. Next to them lie two clean clementines, carefully peeled, their rinds resting patiently on the saucer.

You steal one like a raccoon. They’re yours; you just can’t prove it yet.

He always picks the sweetest ones.

You pull your cardigan closer.

“I will go into town later,” he says, taking a drag of his cigarette. His voice is hoarse from sleep—or the lack of it. “Francis says he needs some oranges.”

He looks at you as if checking the weather, as if to make sure you are and will always be the same as he remembers you.

A chill creeps up your body. You swear it’s the humidity.

“We should look for a new chessboard too.” You wait for him to correct you, to politely remind you there is no we.

He almost smiles.

“We should.” His breath comes out foggy—a mix of smoke and cold. “The last one didn’t know how to swim.”

You bite back a laugh and wrap frozen fingers around the hot cup.

“I read something last night.” With odd care he flicks his cigarette into some potted plant. “All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream.”

“Existential crisis at 7:40? Aren’t you punctual?”

The Earl Grey burns your tongue.

“It’s not that. It made me think of that dream you had, where you were the last Tsar.” Mild amusement or mockery drips from his voice. “I wonder what Poe would have said about that.”

“Oh, don’t remind me,” you sigh. You steal his cigarette with practiced ease. “I haven’t recovered from that day.”

He watches as you take a drag from where his lips were a moment ago.

“Missing your Fabergé eggs?”

You almost laugh.

He looks back out at the lake. A thin veil of mist hangs low over the water, blurring the line between lake and sky. The forest behind it is still asleep, dark.

“Henry?”

He hums. You pass him the cigarette. He takes it without looking.

“You can knock on my door when you can’t sleep. I mean, Edgar Allan Poe doesn’t count as company.”

He takes a drag. Your eyes flicker to the cigarette.

“I know.”

“About me or Edgar?”

“Both.”

You hum and look ahead.

“Can you peel me another tangerine? I don’t want my nails to get all yellow.”

He nods. The cigarette shifts between his fingers, and when he brings it back to his mouth you feel the faintest sting of recognition; your lips were just there.

The smoke in your mouth still tastes like him, or maybe you like to pretend it does.

He begins peeling the fruit without looking at you, the rind coming away in slow, practiced spirals.