So I'm playing around with backgrounds again (bless you, free version of Canva 🤪) and couldn't resist doing bear versions of Joe Keery in these outfits 😄 I hope you like themmm!! 🐻🧸❤️🫶
I'm really feeling the accessories in these, and I used a vintage scarf on Hopbear's hat (full 'fit coming soon...), made a wristband from pink ribbon and and a black bead and a bracelet using jewellery chain, and used another armband from an actual festival I went to, so here's some detail shots (nobody use this as an excuse to zoom in reeeeal close on Joe's belly, nuh-uh, nope... 👀)
Please tell me what you think! Also, as I don't follow much Djo stuff I'd love to hear any lore about these reference pics and where/why they were taken 😀
Bear masterlist | Fic masterlists
Bear taglist (soooo open omg...) bc yeah I'm back on my furry BS again 😆 @the-unforgivenn @joejoequinnquinn @airen256 @rebelfell @jamdoughnutmagician @sunshinepeachx @wolfqueenxxx @pedroschka @80s-addict @guiltyasquinn @losingmygrasponreality @steve-loves-eddie @munsonstorm @earthlyangelbby @skyfullofsong123 @munsonbee @deaddflowerz @teddeybee @beritybaker @shelleyminx @bubblegumflavor @wordynerdygurl @seashantiesforthoughts @sunkillerencoder @fivenightsatsunnys
TW: nothing, little bedroom moment between gator & miss but nothing bad. Tara I guess.
Tara turns to face you, Mouth slightly open as you stand in front of them both.
"Tara?"
"I was just.." She turns towards Gator who's also wearing a guilty expression before he walks over to you, Hand resting on your cheek.
"She's jus goin"
"I wanted to see Dollie" Tara smiled at you, quickly walking towards Dollie. You watched as she crouched down in front of her, The grin on Dollies face making your stomach turn. Something wasn't right, You could see it in the guilty expressions on both of their faces. You could see it in the way Dollie had a new found strong connection with her, sure Dollie always liked her. Dollie liked everyone but this? It was different and it made you feel sick, You looked down at Teddy sleeping peacefully in your arms. The only one left untouched by the bitch you thought was your best friend if the thoughts racing through your head were right.
"I'll come back soon, Meet Teddy properly" Tara smiled, her hand squeezing at your shoulder. Even that felt strange, Where was the hug she usually gave you? Her arms thrown around you holding onto you like if she let go you'd disappear? Your mind was racing, You couldn't answer her. You just stared as her with a blank expression, Her eyebrows furrowed as she looked at you.
"But Dollie was with me, She told me she'd already seen you" You replied, Gator looking down at the floor making your stomach turn, You look towards him "Gator?"
"Was just chattin" He mumbled, Telling you everything you needed to know.
You looked down at Dollie whose eyes were flicking between everyone, Way too young to hear what you were about to say.
"Come on, you" You smile down at her before guiding her out of the stables, Heart racing as you made your way back towards the house with her.
"Happy?" Gator hissed as he looked at Tara, His own heart racing.
"Oh please, You think she knows? Ive known her forever Gator" Tara scoffed "She's.."
"Let me fuckin stop ya there" Gator spat out leaning down into Taras face "Ten times better than you"
Tara laughed rolling her eyes, Hand gripping his shirt pulling him closer as Gator turned his face away from her.
"You'll learn otherwise" Tara shrugged "You just dont know me yet"
“Don’t fuckin wanna know ya, want ya as far away from us all as fuckin possible!”
“That’s never gonna happen, you know that right?”
He did. Gator knew nothing he could say would ever change how you felt about Tara, you’d never belive him over her. She was the family you never had, the family you chose.
~
The house was silent when Gator made his way back inside, You'd cleaned up and put both the kids to bed while he was somewhere you had no idea. Was he still with Tara all that time? You left them both alone and he didn't come back for two hours, Your stomach turned when you looked at him.
"Where were you?" You asked walking towards him, Gators chest tightened. He could see the hurt in your eyes, He knew you knew something and he wanted to make it right but honestly he didn't know where to start.
"Baby"
"Please dont" You half smile "Just be honest with me" You could feel the lump in your throat, but you'd cried too many tears over Gator Tillman. You wouldn't let him see any more.
You watched as Gator exhaled, Eyes filled with something you couldn't make out.
"Kids ok?"
"Gator" You almost sobbed as you stepped closer, Regaining your composure as you look up at him. "Do you love her?"
Gators eyes closed, Like your words physically hurt him.
"No" He opened his eyes, Letting them search yours to see if you believed him. "Fuckin course I don't" Your heart was racing, but his words did let some form of relief wash over you.
"What happened?" You whispered, Gators body filled with guilt. He should have told you the minute it happened but how could he do that after everything you'd just been through? Was he just meant to walk into the hospital and confess he'd had your best friend living in the house? That she'd taken your place while you were gone? She read Dollie stories and he'd caught her smelling of your shampoo a few times? "Im not mad, I get it" You shrug.
Gators eyebrows raised as he looked at you, A chill washing over him.
"Get what?" He asked barely above a whisper, stepping closer resting his hand on your cheek.
"That you needed someone to fuck, She was there" The words hurt as they came out, You didn't get it. You'd never do that to him, But Tara was right. She'd told you all along the type of man Gator was and you chose not to believe her. Maybe she was mad at you, Wanted to prove a point just how easy he was.
"What, Fuck! No" Gators heart was racing in his chest, Stepping forward resting his hands on your shoulders to get you to look at him "Ya really think id do tha to ya?"
"Yes" You whisper, looking him straight in the eyes "I do"
Gator felt like he'd been winded, The calm expression on your face confirming that you really did believe it. You thought he'd fucked her, You thought he'd do that to you after everything you'd been through together.
"She's..shes fuckin crazy!" Gator stuttered, Voice raised as he watched you for anything. "She come onta me!"
"Gator, Ive known her my whole life!" You matched his tone, Finger pressed into his chest "I knew it wouldn't be long before you fucked up again, I just didnt think it would be this soon" You exhaled before turning away from his to walk to the kitchen, Gators hand catching your wrist to stop you as he pulled you in close to him and then it hit you, You knew exactly where he'd been for the last two hours as the smell of alcohol hit you. "You've been drinking?"
"Needed some fuckin courage" He sighed, grip on your wrist loosening now he had your attention again "I didnt wanna be tha one ta break yer heart"
"again" You scoffed "Should be used to it"
"Jus..Just listen ta me this once" Gators eyes pleaded with yours, Something settled in your stomach. "Please, pretty girl"
~
You sat opposite him at the kitchen table, Gators fingers were tapping the wood nervously like he didnt know what to say now he had you here.
"She offered ta help when ya were gone, I stupidly said yeah" Gator laughed breathlessly "She moved in"
"For the whole time?"
"Pretty much" Your stomach turned, Heart racing as you looked at him. "She cooked, Cleaned, Put Doll ta bed"
You shake your head as you look down at the table, Mind spinning with everything that could have happened.
"Tommy?"
"Stayed with his dad, listen I fucked up"
"Damn right you did" You sighed letting your face fall against your hand, Hoping you'd wake up and all of this would just be another nightmare. You thought you'd feel more hurt but truthfully it had been fuck up after fuck up from Gator so eventually you knew cheating would make its way onto the table.
"Not in tha way yer thinkin, I think I let her think things were..different. Shouldn't have let her help"
No,no, no he was just trying to lie his way out of it, he was trying to blame her. There is no way that Tara would ever do this to you, he had to have instigated this. You looked up at him, You couldn't tell if he was lying yet.
"Was one night I was..emotional" He looked down like he was embarrassed and honestly he probably was, never being one to give much away. "We was sat on tha sofa an she hugged me, like she always does but I dunno.."
You felt like you could be sick, You didn't want to hear what he was about to say next but you needed to. Maybe this would be the final thing to make you realise what a dick Gator really was, Maybe this would be the wake up call you needed. Letting you walk away from this whole mess without feeling guilty, Maybe Tara would move in and replace you. The thought of them hugging on the sofa, was it a quick good night hug or were they cuddling? Did it even matter anymore?
"Maybe it was tha stress of everythin an she leaned in a tried ta y'know?" Gator looked at you with an awkward expression, Rage flooded your body at the thought of her betraying you like this. No, She wouldn't do that.
"She what?" You replied bluntly, eyes burning into him.
"Tried ta kiss me, Pulled away mama I wouldn't do tha.."
"You must have..You must have made her feel like you wanted it!" You tried to shout but it came out weak, Your eyes wide as they pleaded with him to confirm you were right. That she wasn't the one that initiated the betrayal.
"No..Fuck, said I loved ya!" Gators hand reached across the table for yours, You pulled away quickly. "I fuckin meant everythin I said ta ya! She fuckin came onta me an I backed away kicked her the fuck out"
You started at him, Breathing rapidly as it hit you in the moment. She wasn't trying to get you away from him to protect you, She wanted him for herself.
"An now she wont back off, Keeps saying we should be together an shit" You tried to hear him, You really did but your head was spinning "Tha's what she was in tha barn fer, told her no again" He shrugged "She aint gonna stop tryin"
Your skin was prickling, Heart broken worse than any way he could ever break it.
"Fuckin meant it mama, M'all in with ya" Gator reached for your hand again, this time you let him. Thumb brushing over your skin softly. You looked up at him and swear you could see the relief in his eyes that you believed him.
"You shouldn't have had her in the house, But I get why you trusted her" You sighed "Id have trusted her with you too"
"M'jus irresistible" Gator smiled trying to lighten the mood, You scoffed shaking your head.
"Not the time"
"Sorry"
"You should have told me when it happened"
"Didnt wanna break ya heart, Thought if she jus backed off wouldn't have ta"
Your heart hurt, he wasn't being secretive he was trying to protect you.
"Can we go to bed?" You asked, mind still racing with what to do next. How to confront her, How to end the friendship that had kept you alive your whole life. Fuck, how could she?
"C'mon" Gator smiled, Pulling you up from the table with your hand. Wrapping his arm around your shoulders as he guided you to the stairs, Kissing the top of your head.
"Ya know id never do tha ta ya right?" He whispered as you reached the top of the stairs, You looked at him before nodding.
"I know"
Gator exhaled before pulling you into the bedroom, You both peered over Teddy's crib to make sure he was still sleeping.
"Hes so perfect" You whispered turning towards Gator who was wearing a smirk.
"Takes after his daddy"
You scoff playfully slapping his arm, Gators hand catches your wrist bringing your hand to his mouth placing a kiss to it.
"Missin ya mama" He whispered against the skin, Kissing down your arm slowly "How long left?"
"A week" You reply breathlessly as the feeling of his lips on your skin sent a shiver through you, Gator groaned pulling you flush against his body.
"S'ok a weeks nothin, a week early won’t hurt" He laughed quietly before pushing his lips against yours and you swear you could feel him melting into you, Like it was the best thing he'd ever felt.
"Hmm I think you're right" You teased as you bit down on his bottom lip making him groan, His hands finding your hips as he rolled against you again.
"Cant mama, Dont wanna hurt ya but.." He rolled them against you again, The perfect pressure against you making you gasp as you wrap your arms around his neck "Want ya so bad" He kissed your ear before pulling your thighs round him so he could lift you up, Walking you to the bed before placing you down softly.
Crawling on top of you on the bed, Pressing warm open mouth kisses against your neck.
"Gator" You whisper, moving your head to the side to give him more access to you.
"Shhhh, baby" He whispered, Hand moving up your thigh squeezing the flesh before pushing it down to the bed so he could get closer to you "Ya dont know how hard it is fer me not ta fuck this pretty pussy" He groaned rolling his hips against you again, You cant help the soft moan that falls from you, His words going straight to your core. "Tha's it baby, let me hear ya"
You pull his face back down to yours, lips crashing into his as you breathed into each others mouth's like you'd never been kissed before. Gators hard length dragging perfectly over you, Wrapping your legs around his waist to pull him closer to you.
"Fuck, Aint gonna be able ta stop soon pretty" He mumbled into your mouth, Tongue brushing over yours as you moan into his mouth.
~
You stoke your hand down his cheek, So pretty when he's sleeping. You couldn't sleep, A deep hatred for someone you'd have died for now buried in your chest, The man you loved? The only man you'd ever loved and she couldn't just stay away? She couldn't let you have this one thing?
YOU: Hey, im sorry if I seemed a little idk off earlier. are you still up? Id love to talk?
TARA: Im up.
YOU: I think it's the hormones, I have wine. Wanna come over? I miss you!
TARA: omw bitch.
You smiled down at your phone, placing it down on the bedside table before kissing Gators cheek climbing out of the bed.
You didnt know what you wanted from this, Didnt know how it was going to go but you knew if you wanted to ever sleep again you needed to confront her.
You filled two wine glasses placing them on the table before you heard the sound of her car pulling into the drive way. You quickly pushed the bottle onto the side, hands shaking as you walked towards the door.
"Hey" You forced a smile to your face, Skin burning as tara threw her arms around you.
"Girl. You dont know how much I need this wine." Tara scoffed walking towards the kitchen.
"I can imagine" You reply bluntly making Tara turn to you with an uneasy expression on her face before you smile at her, Picking up your own glass clinking it against hers "Tell me all about it, bestie"
Tara looked at you, unsure for a moment. The smile on your face looked way too happy for the time of night it was, She watched as you downed your glass of wine before refilling it.
"Drink up" You smiled pushing her glass towards her lips "We have a lot to talk about"
"We do?" Tara asked with a breathless laugh, You nod watching as she downs her wine this time. You top it up again quickly. "You're being weird"
"Dont you always say im weird?"
"Guess so" Tara shrugged "Girl things are so bad at home, He does nothing around the house. He does nothing with Tommy!"
"Didnt he have him the whole month you were here?" You asked bluntly, Watching the colour drain from her face "Oh" You smile "Thank you so so much for all of the help you gave Gator! He would have been lost without you"
Tara looked like she'd seen a ghost, not knowing what you knew but knowing something was off.
"Oh, he told you?"
"Mhm, Said you were amazing actually"
Tara grinned as she looked at you, a pink flush spreading across her cheeks.
"You know me, love to help" She beamed, turning your stomach as you looked at her. Not seeing your best friend anymore when you looked at her, Seeing a stranger. A rage bubbling away in you as you watched her get bashful thinking Gator spoke so highly of her, wanting to slap it straight off her face.
"So how was he with you? I know he can be a little.. you know" You shrugged.
"Oh he was also amazing" Tara smiled, Making the grip on your wine glass tighten as you looked at her. "Hes such a good dad, Almost too good"
"Im lucky, aren't I?" You smiled, Watching the smile drop off her face at the realisation she wasn't talking about someone she had a crush on. She was talking about your person, Her best friends person.
"I mean, Yeah" Tara shrugged acting coy, Drinking the last of her wine from the glass.
"Hes been talking about us getting married" You smiled sweetly, placing your glass down on the table. "Says that's our next step"
"You'd be stupid to do it" Tara scoffed, Making you laugh.
"But he's amazing? You said so yourself" You reply tilting your head as you look at her "Hes a good daddy, remember?" You whisper as you let your gaze burn into her skin.
"Exactly, good daddy but shit boyfriend" Tara shrugged "Any more of this?" Tara asked pushing her glass across the table to you, Frowning when you shake your head.
"No, Dont want you too drunk. Needs to be fair" You mumble walking her glass over to the sink.
"What?" Tara laughed, You turn back around to her smiling softly.
"Nothing"
"Bitch, You're so fucking weird" Tara giggled.
"Oh shit, I think Dollies bunny is still in the stables from earlier" You sigh "Come grab it with me? If she wakes up she'll want it"
"Ugh, That bunny will be the death of me" Tara groaned, Walking towards the door.
You smile, picking your wine glass up following her out of the door.
Join my Gator tag list here!
Hello my pretty babies, Someone on wattpadd said they want less angst and more cutesy. which is fine they don't know me as well as people on here, I guess you guys know what to expect with me! But if we're being honest am I missing the mark? I deff have some cute moments coming up for this family but I did make it clear from the start this is a big mess! ALSO, I just want to thank you all for still being here over 30 parts in. It means so so much to me that you take the time to read it and get so invested, my heart literally flutters when I see your comments/likes/asks about it. idk how I got so lucky with you all but yeah im rambling but pls know I love every single one of you 🥹🤍 VVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVV
gator finding older tapes of eden!! he was rummaging through the attic and found them, of course he watched them, and it’s a clip of his baby girl waddling around the garden or something, and he hears you talking to her in the background. and she babbles to you like “dada?” and you’re like “he’s not here baby. you’ll have to wait for him” and he breaks when he sees his eden’s lip curl like she’s understanding the weight of his absence from a young age
extra from here again
a/n: hey, did you want me to friggin sob???????? also, i made it a camcorder to be slightly more accurate to the time but still nostalgic.
while you're out at work, and eden's out with friends (because that's the only place she ever is now), the loneliness starts to creep in on him a bit. he got used to it — being alone, and keeping himself entertained (mostly through alcohol), but now that he has you two back, the moments he doesn't feel all the more unbearable to get through.
he wanders up to the attic in hopes of finding literally anything else to do. he never had anything close to a hobby besides fixing things, and surely, that abandoned old attic has something he can put back together.
his original goal gets completely abandoned when the dust causes a violent coughing fit, which in turn knocks a bunch of boxes over. grunting, he lean down to collect the bits and pieces stored in them — eden's old toys, a stack of empty canvases and among them all, a camcorder. one he's never seen before.
his curiosity gets the better of him and he hits the little playback button on the machine. the first video is eden, maybe three years old, she's dressed with a tiara on her head, dancing in the living room to some radio pop song in the background. "come on eden, show daddy your dance." he can see your reflection in the television, your smile from ear to ear much like his very own as he watches the clip. he scrolls through to see eden on a swing, you braiding eden's hair, the two of you seeing ponies, getting younger and younger in each clip. in every single one, you talk to her, laugh with her, the sweetness in her smile simply an extension of just how much sweetness you showed her that you never got. his two perfect girls. gator's heart warms because that sweetness is his again. no more nights of bitter alcohol hitting the back of his throats and attempts to suppress memories much like the ones you'd spent years recording. he could keep those precious moments — teaching eden how to ride a bike, or sitting in a kiddie chair, pretending he hated when she did his makeup. he could make so many more.
he reaches one where she's a bit smaller now. maybe just shy of two. you're in the backyard in early winter, the snow still light enough that the two of you can wander around. eden stumbles through, her feet occasionally slipping but never enough to fall. you're right there even if she does. she sees a plant covered in a thick layer of white and points at it, looking to you in confusion. gator can't quite make out what her babbles mean, but you answer without missing a beat. "yeah, honey, that's snow."
"thnow." she repeats back, and you laugh at her little lisp.
all of a sudden, a rumble of a car engine can be heard as it speeds past the house. eden snaps up without missing a beat, a huge smile coming across her face. "daddy come?"
her toothless smile takes up half the screen, but he can't focus on it when he hears your stuttering. "not yet, baby. you'll have to wait for him."
he sees it instantly. the way her face darkens, and her lips curl into a frown. she doesn't cry, and that somehow makes it worse. it's like she knows that it isn't temporary, and crying won't change a thing.
and that idea shatters gator.
because it's true. oh, god, is it true, and he realizes it now. he must've just spent an hour scrubbing through video after video after video, and he wasn't in a single one. no matter how many times you told eden to "show daddy," or tell her how much gator would love something, he hadn't seen any of this either. maybe you'd tried to, but he was too busy in his own world that he hadn't even realized. he didn't even know this fucking camera existed.
something feels heavy in his chest when he thinks about it.
he spent many years wishing he could've known what went wrong, praying that he could've gone back in time and erased whatever it was he did. but seeing these videos, he understands. there wasn't one thing. it was years of this. unspoken words, and distance between you that only grew further and further with time. even now, he's crying about eden always being gone like it’s her fault. this time machine can’t erase an incident and put his family back on the right path.
but it can teach him, and make for goddamn sure, that there would never be another lens he doesn’t look through, or another memory he misses.
"I don't like it there," Steve shrugs as they trek across the park to the birthday party of a kid in their kindergarten class. "Your house is better."
"But I don't know that," Tommy replies. "I've never been to your house."
"It's not fun there, Tommy. It's fun at your house."
"Hm," He hums before declaring, ""Guess we're not best friend then."
"What?"
"Best friends go to each other's house," He says. "I've never been to your house so I guess Carol is my best friend now."
Steve frowns, "I’m your best friend."
"Not anymore."
"Fine," Steve crumbles immediately. "You can come to my house but it's really far away and you can't make any messes."
"Cool!" Tommy jumps. "Let's go now."
"What about-"
"We don't even like Jasmine," He says even though Steve kinda did like her. She's nice and can do a cartwheel. "We'll leave our presents and then go to your house. We'll come back before my mom picks us up and no one will know. It'll be a secret, and then you can ask my mom if I can sleepover and I'll stay the night at your house for once."
"I don't think I’m allowed to have people stay the..." Steve trails off when Tommy gives him a look. "Okay, um. Follow me."
They start off towards Loch Nora on the other side of town, darting behind parked cars and karate chopping road signs in a game of ninjas along the way. The neighborhoods get quieter and quieter as they go, the houses getting bigger and bigger until, "Whoa."
"You live here?" Tommy asks. "Your house is huge! You live in a mansion."
"I guess," Steve says, sticking his key in the lock and twisting it. He pushes the door open, "It's just me most of-"
Steve pauses in the doorway.
Tommy ducks under his arm to marvel at the big front hall and the lack of big brother clutter. There's not even only child clutter.
He turns back to Steve to point this out but Steve is frowning. Tommy follows his gaze to a set of suitcases by the door.
"Mama?" Steve calls out, leaving Tommy behind as he walks toward the back of the house. He disappears out of Tommy's sight into the den where, "Mama! I didn't know you were comin' home today. Come meet T-"
"Steven, shhh," Tommy hears when he creeps a little closer. "I’m on the phone. Calm down."
"Sorry, Mama," Steve says a little quieter. Tommy already knows he's bad at whispering. "I missed you."
"Steven," A man - Mr Harrington, Tommy realizes - says in the room. "What did your mother just say?"
"Sorry."
Tommy steps a little closer to the entrance of the den. He hears Mr Harrington sigh and say, "It's fine. Come over here and give your dad a hug."
"Alright," Mr Harrington says a few seconds later. "The number to our hotel is on the fridge and there's money on the counter for-"
"What?" Steve asks. "You're leaving? But you just got back."
"You know about this trip, Steve," He says. "It's been on the calendar all month. It's only five days."
"But you said," He starts and stops. "I miss you a whole lot and you said-"
"I rescheduled our flight," Steve's mom cuts in, ending her call. "They were able to bump us to an earlier flight. It leaves in two hours."
"We'll need to leave soon then."
"You promised!" Steve snaps. "You said if I was good that - that you wouldn't -"
"Let me get the number, Steve. You can let my client know that you'd rather he rot in-"
Tommy jumps back when Steve burst out of the room.
He grabs Tommy by the hand and doesn't let go until they're upstairs in a room that's - "Butt ugly, I know. I didn't pick the wallpaper. Do you wanna see my Hot Wheels collection?"
"Heck yes."
Tommy watches Steve scrub at his dry eyes before he reaches under the bed and pulls out a box of toy cars. His eyes go wide, "Whoa. I didn't even know this many Hot Wheels existed."
Steve shrugs, "My dad gets them for me when he goes out of town."
Tommy is pretty sure that Steve is sad but he's not crying so they don't need to get a grown up. Plus, they gotta go back to the park pretty soon so they need to do as much playing as they can.
They're halfway through creating an obstacle course when they hear, "Steve!"
"Steve, come down here and say goodbye. We're leaving soon," His father calls from the bottom of the stairs. Steve presses his lips together and frowns at the floor but he doesn't move. He doesn't say anything even when they hear, "Steven! Come say goodbye to your mother."
Tommy hears Mr Harrington sigh, "Come on, buddy."
Steve doesn't move.
Tommy's kinda prepared for playtime to be over and for Steve to have to sit in time out but...
The front door shuts.
The silence remains.
"Did - did your mom and dad leave you by yourself?" He asks, eyes wide. "That's... that's awesome!"
"It is?"
"You can do whatever you want!" Tommy exclaims in awe. "You can stay up late and eat candy for breakfast and no one can tell you not to. You don't have to take a bath ever! That's so cool!
"Really?"
"Yeah!"
"It, um. I guess, it is kinda cool," Steve says with a small smile. "It's 'cause I’m a big kid in my head so I take care of myself."
"Carol's gonna be so jel-"
"You cant tell no one," Steve tells him seriously. "My dad says not to talk 'bout it 'cause then I'll have to go away forever and I won't never see my mama again. Or my dad. Or my friends."
"Even me?!"
"Even everyone," Steve says. "And my dad won't be allowed to be a lawyer no more so a bunch of people will go to jail when they didn't do nothing wrong."
"It'd be real bad," He adds. "So you cant tell no one. Even Carol 'cause she blabs a lot."
Tommy thinks about it.
He turns it over in his head the whole way back to the park. He's so deep in thought that he nearly walks into Steve when he stops abruptly with, "Uh-oh."
He looks up and, "Uh-oh."
"Thomas Hagan," His mother swears. "Where the h- where were you two because it certainly wasn't celebrating Jasmine's birthday?"
Tommy thinks that his mom might call Steve's mom if she knows that's where they went, and Steve's mom isn't home. He doesn't want Steve to go away forever.
What happens when you wake up in Hawkins summer of 1985, with no clue how you got there, or why there’s a handsome boy in a sailors costume staring down at you? Between secret Russian bunkers, Starcourt mall, and inter-dimensional monsters, one question becomes increasingly difficult: do you take the chance to go home and leave everything behind, or stay with the boy who was never supposed to be part of your future?
summary: steve helps you wind down after a bad day with a massage. and a little more.
warnings: smut, unprotected p in v, fingers in mouth, cursing, fingering, a little softdom!steve, massage leading into sex, creampie ofc, lots of pet names, i think that’s it
word count: 3.2k
You had been a ball of nerves since the sun rose this morning.
The shrill sound of your alarm clock had awoken something deep inside you, effectively kickstarting the day on a bad note before you even had breakfast.
You’d woken up cold and alone, Steve having left for his day an hour earlier. You managed to burn your breakfast burrito over the stove. The pants you planned to wear sat in the dryer and shrunk three sizes overnight.
When you actually made it to work at the library, your downward mood had turned completely sour. You had to deal with two of your coworkers calling out and were graciously given the task of taking care three overfilled carts of put back books.
Whether it was every small thing to go wrong or the bad mood you simply woke up in, every awful emotion you were dealing with felt heightened.
By the time you made it home, your head throbbed, your feet were sore and tingly and your body just ached.
You slammed the door shut behind you, haphazardly flicking the lock in place. You toss your keys into the small dish on the end table next to you and kick your shoes off.
Steve’s keys are already on top of the wood, his shoes neatly placed in the designated spot – you can’t even bother to care where yours have flung off to.
Your mouth is pulled into a tight frown. The crease between your brows is back and contributing to your headache. Your shoulders are tense and all you want is to lay down.
Steve appears around the corner, a lazy smile already on his face. It’s hard not to reciprocate it and you want to but the bad day keeps its hooks in you.
“Hey beautiful,” He says, walking close to wrap his arms around you.
His voice does actually loosen the tightness in your chest and it’s so easy to melt into his arms. Your body is still a little tense even as you lean into him.
You feel his lips press against the skin of your forehead.
“Hi,” You murmur.
Steve picks up on the exhaustion in your tone and carefully peers down at you. Both of his palms end up on your arms, lazily stroking the skin.
“What’s the matter, baby? Bad day?”
You hum in lieu of response. He gives you a sympathetic smile.
“I’m sorry, honey,” He raises one hand to push back some loose hair from your face, tucking it behind your ear. His thumb continues for stroke your hair. “Anything I can do to fix it?”
You shake your head, your brows pulled tighter together.
“No, I’ll be fine,” You assure him but neither of you believe it. You push up on the tips of your toes to peck his lips. “I’m just gonna shower and go to bed,”
Concern swirls in his beautiful brown eyes, and his lips part like he wants to say something but he keeps it to himself. He nods gently. “Okay baby,”
Without another response, you take off towards your shared room and straight to the bathroom.
Your movements are sluggish as you turn the water on and undress for the shower. It’s the same even as you step inside the tub. You take a few minutes to let the warm water wash over your skin, hopeful that it’ll help ease the aching.
It doesn’t.
Lathering your body wash, you try to wash away the bad day and let it swirl down the drain. You forego washing your hair tonight, too lazy to deal with it.
You’re not sure how long you spent in there but when you finish, you wrap the fluffy white towel around your body and head for the bedroom to change.
Steve isn’t in the room when you walk out but he set a record on the player, a soft and low Air Supply album filling the air. He left the overhead light off and opted for the small lamp on his bed side table, and even lit a few candles around the room. It leaves the room in warm orange light.
It’s comforting.
The tension has significantly loosened since you came home but it’s still not enough.
With the towel still wrapped around your body, you begin to gather your clothes from the dresser and grab the lotion from your vanity. You’re standing in front of the large mirror attached to your dresser, your back turned to the door, when Steve walks back in.
His eyes catch yours through the mirror immediately and in a few short strides, he’s pressed against you. His arms wrap around your waist, hugging you tight and against his chest.
He buries his face in your neck, inhaling the scent of your vanilla body wash. He hums in contentment against your skin and you let him.
The weight of his warm body offers you some relief. You’re about to lather your skin with lotion when his hands leave your waist and grab the bottle from you.
“Let me do it,” Steve murmurs in your ear. Your knees feel like jelly and you’re nodding in agreement before you can even comprehend it.
He plants a chaste kiss to your cheek before gripping the lotion in one hand and placing the other on the small of your back, slowly guiding you towards the bed.
You follow his lead implicitly.
You sit at the edge of the bed, expecting him to kneel in front of you but instead he places the bottle on the bed and easily hauls you into his arms. Your breath catches as he carries you to the center of the bed, hovering beside you.
You stare up at him with wide eyes, your towel covered back pressed against the duvet. He gently tugs on the knot of the towel until it comes loose.
You shiver when the cool air meets your bare body. Even years later, you still feel a little self conscious around him. You know you shouldn’t, especially when Steve bends down, planting warm and open mouthed kisses along your collarbone.
“You’re so pretty baby,” He whispers against your skin. Goosebumps arise across your body and you can feel him smile. He leans back up and pecks your lips. “Turn on your stomach,”
You swallow, completely unsure of where he’s going with this but you listen. You shift over the bed until your stomach is pressed into the mattress and Steve easily removes the towel from beneath you. Your cheek presses against the cooled silk pillowcase.
Steve shifts around until he straddles the back of your thighs and you hear the lotion squirting from the bottle and land in his hands.
His warm hands covered in lotion press against your back and he uses gentle strength to rub the liquid into your skin. A sigh of relief escapes you almost immediately and your body melts into the mattress.
He let out a soft sound of acknowledgment, the pads of his fingers knead into the knotted skin of your shoulders, carefully working out the tension.
“I’m sorry you had such a bad day today, sweet girl,” Steve’s voice rings in your ears. “I’m gonna make it better, yeah? Want me to make it better?”
You hum absentmindedly, already lost in the feeling of his hands on your skin. He chuckles quietly behind you and continues working over your skin.
His hands travel from your shoulders, down the sides of your ribs and over the small of your back. His thumbs press into the skin there, gliding upwards to release the tightness there.
A soft moan slips past your lips and Steve presses his mouth to the middle of your back, kissing a line upwards until he reaches the back of your neck.
“Does that feel good, baby?” He coaxed softly.
“Mhm..” You nod against the pillow. His hands continue to trail across your skin until both of his large hands land on your hips and he gently twists you until your shift onto your back.
Your eyes peel open as his palms slide down to your thighs and he pulls them apart to wrap around his waist. He looks down at you with such a soft smile and even softer eyes, it’s so easy to forget why you were upset in the first place.
He lathers more lotion in his palms, rubbing it together and brings his hands back to your skin – this time he lands on your stomach. You inhale a shaky breath as he works the lotion into your skin again, slowly and steadily.
His eyes flick up to meet yours at the sound and he gives you another gentle smile.
“Relax,” He murmurs. “Just let yourself feel it,”
You nod up at him, your teeth sinking into your bottom lip as you will your body to relax against the sheets. As comforting as his touch is, you can feel your nerves begin to simmer with something else the more he touches you.
Your eyes stay on him while his stay on your body.
He’s careful and intentional with everywhere his hands glide across your skin. He kneads into the tight spots of your sides, and gently strokes circles into the tips of your thighs. He thumbs into your hips and rubs the pads of his fingers into your stomach.
It’s perfect.
When all the lotion is completely soaked into your skin, Steve leans over you, his chest pressed to yours and hovers his mouth above yours.
You fight the instinct to rise up and slam your mouth against his. Your breath comes out in short puffs as his fingers dance across the skin of your thighs.
He lazily glides his lips across yours, still not kissing but enough to drive you crazy. Your skin buzzes where his fingers slide up to your inner thigh.
“You feel better baby?” He whispers, but doesn’t let you answer before he speaks again. “Or do you need more?”
You nod immediately. “I want – I want more, please.” Your voice is a desperate whine and you don’t even care.
He smirks above you and finally presses his mouth into yours.
You sigh in relief against his lips. The kiss is slow but feverish, Steve is purposeful with every move of his mouth against yours. His hand trailing up your thighs lands exactly where you need them.
He swipes two fingers through your slit, gathering the wetness already pooled there. The pads of his fingers, now soaked wet with your slick, press against your clit and make you moan against his mouth.
He rubs deliberate circles into your swollen bud and without hesitation, you kiss him harder. Your breathing goes erratic and your hand raises to grab the back of his neck, fingers tangling in the nape of his hair.
Your lips part and Steve is quick to slip his tongue into your mouth, sliding his against yours.
With all of your attention on his mouth, he slips his slender finger inside you, lazily pumping in and out. Your brows pull together tight as he swallows every moan into his mouth again.
He pulls away from your mouth and trails his lips to your jaw and down your neck. When his lips meet that perfect spot beneath your jaw, he sucks hard, teeth nipping at your skin. At the same time, he slides another finger into your warm heat and your back arches into his chest, a breathless whine escaping your throat.
“Oh Steve,” You cry out, your fingers fisting the sheets beneath you.
His fingers pump in and out of you at a steady pace and he carefully curls them upwards. The sound of his fingers sliding through your slick fills the room and you’re both drunk of the sound.
“Fuck you feel so good baby,” He breathes. Steve leans up on his knees to look at you.
Your eyes are fluttered shut, your head turned to bury your face into the pillow. Your lips are parted, pretty little cries slipping past them. You have one hand holding onto his tightly, fingers interlocked and the other has a fistful of blanket.
Steve watches the way your stomach tightens, the muscles beneath your skin contracting with every plunge of his fingers inside you. Your chest heaves every time the tips of his fingers brush against that spongey spot inside you.
He keeps his eyes trained on you and he groans at the way your pussy sucks his fingers in, completely soaking him in your wetness.
“That’s it baby, keep squeezing my fingers.” He huffs out. He thrusts his fingers faster, splatters of your slick flying through the air and onto his clothes. His entire hand and wrist is covered in you and he doesn’t care for a second.
Your body withers against him and he raises the hand still interlocked with yours to press into your lower stomach, keeping you firm against the bed.
“Fuck Steve!” You cry out, thighs tightening around his waist. “I’m gonna – I’m gonna c-cum,”
He leans over you again, slamming his mouth against yours. This kiss is fast and desperate. His teeth bite into your bottom lip, forcing them apart so his tongue can lick into your mouth.
His fingers move faster, relentlessly, as he coaxes your orgasm from you. Your body feels like it’s on fire, and all that’s left is him.
“Come on then,” He demands. “Cum all over my fingers baby, give it to me,”
His words are the catalyst you need. Your back arches into his chest, thighs convulsing around his waist as the dam finally breaks. Your breath gets stuck in your throat as he works you through your high, carefully slowing his movements.
Your ears ring but you can just barely make out his soft voice murmuring sweet praises to you. You can feel his lips glide across the skin of your cheek and over your face.
When your breathing returns to normal, your eyes flutter open to look at him. He has one hand brushing through your hair, his thumb stroking the skin of your temple. He’s already looking down at you, his eyes dancing across your face.
He barely has a chance to say anything before your shaky hands are reaching for his jeans, tugging at the button and zipper.
He chuckles heartedly and reaches between you two to grab your hands.
“You still want more?” He teases. You want to glare at him and his teasing but you’re desperate.
Your eyes go glassy and even wider for him – his number one weakness. You can see his teasing nature disappear at the sight of you so pliant beneath him.
“It’s just so much, Steve,” You whimper, forcing your lip to wobble. “I need you so bad,”
He grunts above you and his lips land over yours again. You can’t hide the smirk that covers your mouth.
He’s too easy.
His hands fumble with the zipper of his jeans while you push him off just enough to pull his shirt over his head. He’s occupied with his pants and you take the time to glide your palms across the skin of his broad shoulders. Your nails rake across him and down the skin of his chest, gliding over the muscles in his stomach.
Your eyes sweep across his bare body. His tanned skin littered with those moles you count as he sleeps. The few scars he has from playing sports growing up. He was so gorgeous, and he was all yours.
Finally, Steve kicks his jeans and boxers to the floor, leaving him just as bare to you as you were to him. Your hand cups around the back of his neck and you pull him down to meet your lips again.
It’s messy and uncoordinated but then his hand slips between you two, gripping himself in his palm and you feel the tip of his cock slide through your soaked folds. You both let out a shared moan at the first feeling of real contact together and he lazily slides against your pussy.
“Please baby,” You beg and it’s enough for him to finally slide home.
The feeling of Steve stretching you out is intense, pulling a whine from your chest. His arms collapse beneath him and he presses his chest against yours.
“Oh fuck, you’re so tight baby,” He whines into your skin. Your arms wrap around his back, holding him to your chest tight.
Steve starts his pace immediately, deep and dizzying. You’re a moaning mess beneath him, thighs tightening around his hips and pulling him deeper inside you.
“St-Steve!” Your voice is a broken cry out.
He moans over you and gathers his strength to pull himself up to look down at you. His eyes catch the sight of where your pussy clenches around him, a white creamy ring forming at the base of his cock.
He groans at the sight, pushing even harder. Your body bounces beneath him with each unforgiving thrust. Your mouth is hung open and Steve takes the opportunity to slip his index and middle finger inside. Instinctively, your lips close around his fingers and you open your eyes to look at him when you suck.
Warm spit pools around around his fingers and slips past the corners of your mouth. He moans at the feeling of your wet mouth and soaking pussy covering him.
“God, you’re s’perfect. Like you were made for me, weren’t you, baby?”
You nod, brows scrunched tight and mouth full. He huffs a laugh out.
“Yeah, you are.” He groans, keeping his pace steady and relentless. “This is all you needed to feel better, huh? Needed me to fuck out the bad day,”
You whine around his fingers when the tip of his cock begins to kiss your cervix. Your thighs tighten and shake around his hips, your pussy spasming around him.
Steve groans when he feels it and he can tell you’re close, just like he is.
“Come on baby, give me another one.” His breathing is frantic and uneven. Sweat beads across his skin and his loose curl hands over his forehead. “Let me feel this pussy come all over me,”
Your second orgasm comes with hardly any warning as soon as the words leave his lips. Your mouth slips his fingers out and your body shakes as your pussy squeezes around his cock. Your lips are parted in silent moans, your entire body locked.
Steve moans at the feeling of you soaking him and with a few more thrusts, he collapses back over you, his mouth slanted into yours as you feel his cock twitch inside you until warm ropes of cum spill inside you.
You’re both whining messes against each other as you ride out your orgasms.
Even though you feel sticky and warm, your body finally feels completely relaxed as you melt into the mattress.
After a few moments, Steve pushes himself up and gently kisses the skin of your face. He carefully pulls out, wincing at the sensitivity before cleaning you both up.
Your hearing slowly returns to normal, no longer clouded by the rush of blood in them, and you can hear the static of the finished record across the room.
Steve quickly shuts it off, blows out the candles around the room and gathers clothes for the both you before returning back to you. He helps you dress before dressing himself and climbing into bed beside you.
Your body is a limp mess when he gathers you in his big arms, pulling you into his chest. Your ear presses against his skin, listening to the beating of his heart.
“Wake up sweetheart…” The hushed voice filled your ears as you woke up slowly, eyes still closed. “Come on baby. It’s time to get up.” You stirred and turned to face your boyfriend’s side of the bed.
“Mmm not yet.” You snuggled back into the pillow, relishing in the warmth and comfort of your bed. You were barely even awake and not planning on fully waking up anytime soon. It was a Saturday morning after all.
“Yes, now.” Your brows scrunched at the authority in his voice. Yet you moved in closer to him, laying your leg on top of his and snuggling into him.
“Just let me sleep Dean.”
“I must’ve tired you out real good last night, huh.” He half chuckled. With that chuckle you knew something was wrong. You hadn’t realized it before in your half awake state, but it didn’t sound like Dean. Plus, Dean never called you sweetheart or baby.
Suddenly your eyes flew open and you were face to face with Gator fucking Tillman. You screamed and scrambled away from your boyfriend’s best friend, pushing his chest hard in the process. Though he hardly budged.
You sat up quickly, but regretted it when the covers fell down, exposing your bare chest. Gator locked eyes with your tits for a second before his face flushed and he looked away. You quickly pulled the covers back over you and hid your face in embarrassment.
“Why?! Why are you in my bed?!” Your shouting muffled from underneath the thick comforter.
“I thought it would be funny.” You finally heard Dean's voice from the other side of the room. He sounded entirely too humorous for your liking in this moment.
“Why would you think it would be funny?! Now Gator’s seen my fucking tits.” You groaned.
“Well, sleeping beauty, it ain’t the first time.” Gator snickered. You yanked the covers down over your head and narrowed your eyes at Dean. He shot Gator a ‘seriously’ look before turning back to you.
“Why is he saying that? Did you show him a picture?” You accused your boyfriend. He looked flustered as he made his way over to you with your robe, plopping it on the bed in front of you.
“No… He’s just kidding. He hasn’t seen em’ before. Don’t worry, I would never do that to you.” You accepted the answer, knowing from the crazy stories Gator has told over the years that he’s probably full of shit, but Gator just huffed a laugh, knowing that Dean was gaslighting you. He had seen probably fifty pictures of your tits before, usually when Dean was drunk. He’d pull out his phone and show half the damn bar.
Gator thought it was crazy, why would you wanna show off what’s yours to everyone you know like that? But he had to admit, coming face to face with them for the first time was pretty remarkable. They were great tits.
“Well can you please get out Gator. I want to sleep.”
“Babe, Annie and Paul’s wedding is in, like, 2 hours. You have to get ready.” Dean said sternly. You suddenly shot out of the bed, hands covering your tits as you sprinted to the bathroom. Thankfully, you had on a pair of pink cotton panties to cover your ass, but Gator was zeroed in on the perfectly shaped flesh as it jiggled with each step.
“Why didn’t you wake me up earlier! I have like, no time to get ready now!” You yelled as the door slammed behind you.
“She’s a piece of fucking work.” Gator said as he pointed to the bathroom door.
“Tell me about it,” Gator chuckled but Dean kept talking. “I mean everything’s always my fault. I can’t do anything right by her.” Gator raised his eyebrows.
“You’re seeing shit. She looks at you like you hung the moon.” Gator huffed a laugh.
“Yeah. It’s an act. That whole sweet girl persona she puts on… shit isn’t real. She’s a raging bitch when we’re alone.” Gator felt a little awkward now at Dean’s confession. He never talked badly about you. Gator didn’t believe it for one second.
“No fucking way. I mean, yeah, she gets bitchy with me when I piss er’ off, but she acts like you’re her… knight in shining armor or sum shit.”
“Trust me man. She’s a nightmare.” Gator accepted what he was saying. He didn’t really know if it was true or not. Dean never talked bad about you before now, so he figured maybe you two had a fight. But he obviously wasn’t with you guys when you were alone, so how would he know?
“Alright… Well, I'm gonna go to that coffee shop in town. You want something?” Dean grinned at Gator as he squinted at him.
“Yeah? Gonna go flirt up that sexy little barista?” Dean questioned. Gator laughed in response.
“What’s it to you if I am?”
“Aint shit to me.”
“Ok well you want something or not?”
“Nah i’m good. She’s gonna want something though. She’ll bitch about it if you don’t come back with something for her.”
“Alright, just text me what she wants.” Gator stood up from the bed and clapped Dean's shoulder as he made his way out.
⠄･ ⋆ ･ ⠄⠂⋆ ･ ⠄⠂⋆ ･ ⠄
Gator spent the whole ride to the coffee shop trying to picture you as a ‘raging bitch’ but he just couldn’t. You were the embodiment of a ray of sunshine most of the time.
Yeah, you and him got under each other's skin, but you were never outright awful to him. He couldn’t imagine you acting like that with the man you loved.
Dean never texted Gator what you wanted, so he tried to think about what you liked.
The ‘sexy little barista’ was in fact working, and Gator did in fact flirt with her a bit. He asked her what was good, and she had responded with things he knew you and your sweet tooth wouldn’t like. So he tried his best to come up with something based on what he knew you liked.
After 10 minutes of contemplation, he decided on getting you an iced matcha latte with raspberry cold foam, because he knew how much you liked raspberries by the five containers you would keep in the fridge at all times.
When Gator got back to Dean and your’s house, he walked inside without knocking like he usually did, and you were running around downstairs in your fluffy pink robe, hair wet, looking for something.
Gator stepped into the kitchen where you were rummaging through drawers and set the drink on the counter in front of you as he leaned against it.
“What’s this?” You asked as you looked at him, pausing your movements.
“Some raspberry-matcha bullshit. I dunno.” Your lips quirked up into a humorous smile.
“Is this you apologizing, Gator Tillman?” Gators brows furrowed as he straightened and crossed his arms.
“Fuck do I have to apologize for?” You gave him a knowing look and said,
“For perving on me earlier. You know, getting into my bed with me while I was naked and whispering shit in my ear.” Gator cheeks flushed at the way you were twisting the situation.
“I did- that’s not- I wasn’t trying to perv on you. I didn’t know you were naked. Who the hell even sleeps naked?”
“You’re telling me you don’t sleep in your underwear with no shirt on? Cause i’ve come downstairs some mornings and seen you in that exact state on my couch.” You were holding back your laughter at how flustered Gator was getting.
“Well you’ve got tits and I don’t.” He said matter of factly.
“Everyone’s got tits, Gator.”
“Yeah well not everyone’s got tits that look like yours.” He said, not realizing how perverted it sounded until it was too late.
“You saying I got great tits?” Gator felt like a cat trapped in a corner. He would never say that to his buddy’s girlfriend, even though he was definitely not disagreeing. He stared at your smiling face for a minute and grunted out.
“Just drink the damn thing.” He pushed the matcha closer to you and stormed off.
“Apology accepted!” You called out to him as you giggled. When you took a sip of the drink, you were shocked that you had never had it before, because it was now your new favorite.
You tried not to think too hard about the fact that Gator had gotten you the perfect drink without you having to tell him, while Dean would usually just ask the barista what they liked and get that for you.
Did Gator Tillman actually pay enough attention to you to know what you would like?
With that thought in your mind, you made your way back upstairs to finish getting ready for your friends’ wedding.
⠄･ ⋆ ･ ⠄⠂⋆ ･ ⠄⠂⋆ ･ ⠄
a/n: I really hope this wasn’t boring or bad lol. I am a new writer so I may not be great with details so far, but i’m hoping it will get better as I write more.
I know there wasn’t much world building in this chapter but the next chapter is going to get heavy into Dean and the readers relationship and how Gator factors into it. I just wanted to write the first scenario I imagined when I came up with this story to get started.
Also chapters will get longer!!! I just wanted to start out nice and short so that I wouldn’t get overwhelmed and scrap the whole thing like I usually do haha.
Summary : A weekend at a lake house with your unfaithful boyfriend and his friends was already your idea of hell. But when he betrays you again, Gator Tillman, the last person you should turn to, is exactly the bad decision you need.
TW : smut with very little plot, cheating (not reader), oral (m receiving), unprotected p in v, Dom!Gator, use of slurs.
Words : 3.7k
A/N : I KNOW i have a general taglist somewhere but I just can't find it anymore 🫣 if you wanna be tagged in all of my future one shots let me know again 😩
You knew the weekend was going to be shit before you even got there. Three hours trapped in a car with your boyfriend complaining about your music, the snacks you'd bought, and the fact that you'd made him leave twenty minutes later than he'd wanted had pretty much killed whatever optimism you'd had left. “Fucking finally.” Mason muttered as the lake house came into view.
The house belonged to the father of one of Mason's friends. It was big, isolated, surrounded by trees, with a wooden deck overlooking the lake. The kind of place that probably would've been peaceful if it weren't currently occupied by twelve people you didn't particularly like. Mason had barely parked the car before he was out, slamming the door behind him and heading straight towards the group gathered outside the house.
You sighed loudly, got out of the car and opened the trunk. Two duffel bags, a cooler, and the massive suitcase Mason had insisted you share because apparently bringing separate luggage was ‘stupid’. You grabbed the handle and pulled, but it got caught underneath one of the bags. “Come on, you piece of shit.”
“Need help ?” You looked over your shoulder, Gator Tillman, one of your asshole boyfriend’s asshole friend, stood a few feet away, sunglasses pushed up into his hair, hands shoved into the pockets of his jeans. You sighed again.
“I’ve got it.”
“Yeah. Looks like it.”
“Fuck off Gator.” He grinned and walked over before you could stop him, reaching into the trunk, and pulling the suitcase out with one hand. Okay, out of all of Mason's asshole friends, Gator was probably the least unbearable, which wasn't exactly a compliment. You'd known him for a few years now. He was arrogant, loud, and had an irritating habit of acting like every room belonged to him the second he walked into it, but he'd always been decent to you. He'd never joined in when Mason's friends made jokes at your expense, never treated you like you were just some annoying girlfriend who'd somehow gotten invited into their group.
“Where you guys staying ?”
“Upstairs.” He grabbed the handle of the suitcase and followed you into the house. You could already hear everyone outside, shouting and laughing over music playing from somewhere near the lake. You led Gator upstairs and pushed open the bedroom door. “This one.” He carried the suitcase inside and dropped it near the bed. “Thanks.”
“You’re welcome.” You expected him to leave but he didn’t, instead, he leaned against the dresser. “You good ?” The question caught you off guard, clearly you weren’t expecting him to ask you that.
“Yeah. Why ?” He stared at you.
“Cause you look fucking miserable.”
“Wow. Thanks.” He shrugged.
“You always look like you wanna kill somebody when Mason's around.” You crossed your arms, getting defensive now.
“I said I'm fine Gator. Mind your business.”
“Okay.” That was it, no pushing and no stupid questions. Gator nodded once and headed towards the door as someone was shouting his name from downstairs. He looked back at you. “You coming ?” You closed your eyes for a second and sighed before following him downstairs. And as you stepped outside into the noise, the music, and the group of people you were apparently supposed to spend the next four days with, you had one very clear thought : this was going to be fucking hell.
By the second day, Mason had spoken to you for maybe twenty minutes total. He'd spent the entire morning drinking with his friends, the afternoon playing some stupid game near the lake and the evening sitting around the fire with two girls one of his friends had invited at the last minute. One of them kept touching his arm but Mason didn't seem bothered, you were though.
He had already cheated once, and you forgave him. It wasn’t easy or quick, but eventually you did, telling him that there wouldn’t be another chance. He promised there wouldn't need to be, but you should've known promises didn't mean much coming from him. You left the group without telling anyone, and found a big rock that was far enough from the house that the music became nothing more than a distant hum. You climbed onto it and sat down, pulling your knees towards your chest.
The lake stretched out in front of you, and you stared at it until your vision blurred, one tear slipping down your cheek.
“Thought I'd find you here.” You closed your eyes.
“Jesus Christ.” Gator climbed onto the rock beside you.
“Nice to see you too.”
“What do you fucking want ?” He sat down next to you.
“Nothing.”
“Then go away.” You looked at him but Gator was looking straight ahead, letting silence settle between you. After a few minutes, he spoke again.
“Mason’s a fucking idiot.” Your jaw tightened.
“Oh so you’re coming all the way here to tell me how shitty my relationship is ?”
“I wasn't gonna say shitty.” You gave him a look, and he was looking straight back at you this time. “I was actually gonna say pathetic.” God, you wanted to hit him.
“You’re such an asshole. And you wonder why I don't wanna talk to you.” You stood up but Gator grabbed your wrist, not hard, just enough to stop you from leaving.
“Sit down.” You stayed standing and Gator sighed. “Come on.”
“No. You come over here while I'm clearly upset and start insulting me…”
“I’m insulting him.”
“It doesn't feel like it.”
“Why ?”
“Because I'm the idiot who stayed.” Gator went quiet, and you hated that you had said it. “Forget it.”
“No. I'm saying you're not the idiot.”
“You literally just called my relationship pathetic.”
“Because it is.”
“Fuck you Gator.” He stood up too, facing you now.
“You wanna know what I think ? I think you know exactly what he is. And I think you keep waiting for him to turn into somebody else. But he fucking won’t.” Your throat tightened.
“You don't know anything about us.”
“Oh I know enough. I know he cheated on you. I know he talks to you like shit. I know he leaves you alone every time we go somewhere. I know you've spent two days following him around hoping he'll notice you're here.”
“Fuck you.” The tears were threatening to fall again and you noticed how his jaw tightened.
“You deserve better.” The words came out so simply that you didn't know what to say. Then, Gator ruined it. “Seriously. It's getting embarrassing to watch you like that.” You laughed.
“God, I fucking hate you.”
“No, you don’t.” The smugness in his voice made something inside you snap. You climbed down from the rock, flipping him off and walking back towards the house. Behind you, you heard him laugh. Fucking asshole.
The next afternoon, everyone went swimming but you stayed inside. Mason didn't ask why. You watched him leave through the kitchen window, a towel thrown over his shoulder, and one of the girls from last night walking next to him, the same one who kept touching his arm.
You sat on the couch, scrolled through your phone, tried watching television. After almost forty minutes, you got annoyed with yourself. Why the fuck were you hiding inside ? You hadn't done anything wrong. You decided to go upstairs and change into your swimsuit before heading towards the lake.
You could hear everyone before you saw them, they were laughing, screaming, playing loud music. You stepped out from between the trees and stopped. At first, your brain didn't understand what you were looking at. Mason was near the dock, his hand on someone's waist and her arms around his neck. The girl from last night, his tongue halfway down her fucking throat.
Everything inside you went still. You'd always imagined what you'd do if it happened again, probably scream and cry, maybe hit him, throw something at him. Instead, you just stood there, watching for maybe three seconds before something inside you finally snapped. That was it, all the feelings you had for him disappeared instantly. You weren’t going to take the disrespect anymore, so you walked back towards the house, opened the door and went upstairs, pulling the suitcase from under the bed. You started throwing clothes inside as the bedroom door opened.
“You know, I hate to say I told you so.” You spun around, Gator stood in the doorway.
“Then fucking don’t. Not now, Gator.”
“I’m just saying…”
“Get the fuck out.” He stepped into the room instead, watching you throw your clothes into the suitcase.
“You should've left him a year ago.” Your hands froze for a second as you slowly turned around.
“Can you shut the fuck up for five minutes ? I just caught my boyfriend cheating on me and somehow you still manage to make this about how right you are.”
“I am right.” You grabbed another pile of clothes as Gator watched you. “I think you should get even.” You laughed.
“Of course you'd say that. That's such a fucking Gator thing to say.”
“What’s that supposed to mean ?”
“It means normal people don't immediately suggest revenge.”
“Normal people are boring then.” You zipped the suitcase, or at least tried to, a sleeve was caught in it. Gator walked over but you slapped his hand away when he reached for it. You yanked the sleeve free. “You know he’s probably gonna come in here, gonna apologize and tell you it didn't mean anything. And you're gonna go back to him again.” Deep inside you, you knew he was wrong this time, it was over and done with.
“I hate you.” Gator's expression changed slightly.
“No, you don’t. I know you're pissed and embarrassed. And I also know you wanna do something about it.” You stared at him as he stepped closer. “He’s outside right now, his dick probably inside that girl, trying to figure out what bullshit excuse he's gonna give you later. You wanna know what I'd do ? I'd make sure he knew exactly what he lost.” You laughed once.
“God, you're so full of shit.” He grinned, God he was completely fucking insufferable. “You know what your problem is ? You think you're irresistible.” Gator tilted his head.
“Am I not mama ?” You stared at him that stupid fucking grin while thinking about Mason, about that girl, about the past two years, about every time you'd made yourself smaller just to keep the peace. “Could always use me for revenge you know.” You blinked, dumbfounded and he just shrugged. “I’m just saying.”
“You’re disgusting Gator, and I genuinely can't stand you.” He just smiled.
“Keep telling yourself that.” You looked at him, then you crossed the space between you, grabbed the front of his shirt, and kissed him. Gator froze for two seconds before his hand found your waist. He kissed you back hard enough to make you stumble, your back hitting the edge of the dresser. Gator pulled back just enough to look at you. “Is this what you fucking need to forget about him, huh ?” His hands reached your back, pulling you even closer to him.
“Shut up.” You said, before grabbing his lips with yours again.
“Fuck, come here, get on top of me baby.” He said as he sat on the edge of the bed, pulling you with him, making you straddle his lap. You were both still in your swimsuits, your tongues in each other’s mouth. “Let me see your tits mama, I fucking dreamed about them.” His right hand reached behind you and pulled at the strings holding your top together. He undid the knot and once your top hit the ground, both of his hands grabbed at your tits, kneading them. His mouth wrapped around your left nipple, sucking on it.
“Fuck, yes Gator. Harder please.” You moaned, and he groaned at your words.
“Harder ? Damn, I fucking knew you’d be like that, like a fucking slut.” His words sent a jolt in your lower belly, and you started grinding on him while his mouth wrapped around your nipple again, sucking harder. “Fucking hell, keep grinding on my cock baby. I’ve been waiting to finally get my hands on you, to be able to play with you like that.” His right hand reached in your swimsuit bottoms, immediately going through your folds and moaning when he realized how wet you were already. “God fucking damn, I’m gonna treat you so right mama.”
His thumb found your clit and started rubbing circles around it. Your nails dug into the skin on his back, and he hissed. His mouth found yours again, and you felt his middle finger going inside you. The sudden intrusion made you moan, and he didn’t wait another second before putting another finger inside you, pumping them in and out fast while his thumb still rubbed circles around your clit.
“You’ve been driving me fucking crazy for years, I can’t believe I get to have you like this, squirming on my fingers like a fucking whore.” His fingers went even faster, and the pleasure you were feeling now was unlike anything you’ve ever felt before. Your thighs started shaking on his lap.
“Gator … fuck keep going.” You whimpered, looking straight at him. You could see the lust in his eyes, his lips were wet with his saliva and his brows furrowed in pleasure.
“Yeah ? He didn’t know how to touch you like this, did he ? You gonna come for me baby ?” You couldn’t respond, digging your nails even deeper into his skin while he finger fucked you so deep you were already seeing stars. Your thighs were shaking so much he had to wrap his other arm around your waist to keep you from falling. “Come on mama, I know you’re close. Come for me you filthy little slut.” And you did, his dirty words combined with the movements of his hand were enough to send you over the edge. You came hard, clenching on his fingers while he kept fucking you with them, helping you ride out your orgasm.
Your ears were ringing so loud you couldn’t hear anything. After a few seconds, your senses came back to you, and you looked down at Gator, who was placing kisses on the skin between your breasts, while slowly withdrawing his fingers from your pussy. “Fuck baby, I can’t believe I just made you come.” He said, voice rough as he tried to reach for you lips again. You crashed your mouth onto his, and he whimpered again, one of his hand leaving your body to tug his swimsuit down, freeing his cock.
You glanced down, and fuck, he was so pretty. His thick cock a nice shade of pink, while his tip was more red, pre-cum leaking from his slit. You pushed away from his lap, standing up with shaky legs while he stoke his cock lazily. “Get on your knees like a good little whore, I wanna put it in your mouth. I’m so fucking tired of these years pretending I don’t wanna see what you look like with my dick in your mouth.” And you obeyed, dropping to your knees in front of him and opening your mouth wide. He didn’t waste a second before grabbing the back of your head and pushing it towards his cock.
Your lips wrapped around his shaft, already taking him as deep as possible, until you felt the hairs of his happy trail tickling your nose. His free hand wrapped around your throat, not squeezing, just resting there to feel himself pumping inside your mouth. Your started sucking harder, looking up at him through your lashes, he was a mess. Sweating, mouth open, eyes half-closed all while pushing your head on his cock again and again. You couldn’t resist, he looked too fucking good, so your right hand trailed down your body and started circling your clit. He noticed to movement and when he glanced down again to see you with his cock in your mouth while touching yourself, he groaned loudly, brow furrowing again.
“Yeah baby, touch yourself while you suck my cock. Keep yourself all wet for me.” That’s when everything stopped as you both heard the front door slam loudly, and voices echoing through the walls. The others were back inside. Gator pushed your head away from his cock, and you looked at each other, eyes widening. He helped you get up from your knees, picked up your swimsuit top that was laying on the floor and pushed the two of you inside the small bathroom connected to your room.
Once inside, he locked the door behind him and waited a few seconds, making sure no one was coming upstairs. His cock was hard and up resting on his lower stomach. You extended your hand out and wrapped it around him, stroking gently. His head snapped towards you and a smirk tugged at his lips. “Yeah ? You want it so bad don’t you baby ?” You nodded, but his hand grabbed your chin hard, forcing you to look at him. “Words. I need words, you’re always so fucking mouthy so use your fucking words.”
“Yes Gator, I want it. I want you to fuck me so hard I’ll feel you for days.”
That’s all he needed, he grabbed your shoulders and turned you around, making you face the mirror while your back rested on his chest. His left hand wrapped around your throat again, forcing you to look at yourself in the mirror. You could feel his hard cock pressing against your ass, making you moan. “You ready for me ?” He asked.
“Yes. God yes Gator I’m ready.” And once again, he didn’t need anything else, his left hand stayed on your throat while his right hand pushed against your lower back, forcing you to arch.
“You gotta be quiet baby, cause I’m gonna fuck you pretty hard okay ?” He then grabbed his cock and rubbed the tip through your folds, gathering your wetness. Without any warning, he pushed up inside you, bottoming out in one stroke. You started to moan loudly but his left hand quickly left your throat to cover your mouth.
“Shh. Don’t want the others to hear how much of a whore you are, do you ?” He left his hand on your mouth, so you shook your head. Your hands braced against the counter as he started pounding inside you hard. Your tits bounced with each movement, and you caught him staring at them through the mirror. You felt so full that your eyes started to roll to the back of your head. Gator noticed. “You like that brand new cock for you baby ? Am I fucking you better than him ? Yeah, tell me I’m better than him.” He whispered in your ear, making you clench around his shaft.
His hand left your mouth for a few seconds, giving you the opportunity to answer. “So much fucking better Gator, you’re so good to me right now.” You tried to whisper, but with the way he was pounding into you, you were louder than expected. His hand went back to covering your mouth, making sure the others wouldn’t hear what you two were doing.
“Yeah I am ? So you’re not gonna go chase him after I’m done fucking you right ? You don’t need him baby, you just need me.” Your hands gripped the counter tighter, and you started bouncing back into him. He stopped moving completely for a few seconds, just admiring you bouncing on his cock, eyes locked on your ass where his dick disappeared inside your pussy. “Fuck, you feel so fucking good, so hot bouncing on my cock like that. You like fucking your ex boyfriend’s friend like that ? Like a fucking whore ? Never thought I’d get the chance to have you like this.” His hand was still on your mouth so you only nodded, and he started moving again. Your thighs were shaking, so he gathered your arms with his free hand and placed them behind your back.
He removed his hand from your mouth before whispering in your ear. “You gonna be quiet huh ?” You simply nodded, tears forming in your eyes because of how good he was pounding into you. “Good fucking girl.” He then grabbed both of your arms with his hands, pushing them behind your back to use them as leverage to fuck into you even harder. You arched your back even more while he thrusted without mercy inside your cunt, the wet sounds mixing with the slapping of his skin on your ass now filling the small bathroom. Your thighs were pressing so tight together, helping you release some of the tension on your clit.
“You needed to be fucked like this right baby ? I fucking knew I could treat you so damn better.” His thrusts were becoming erratic, a clear sign he was getting close. He let go of your arms and reached in front of you to rub your clit rapidly, making you moan. He went for your mouth again, clamping his hand on it to shut you up. “You gonna cum again mama ? Gonna cum on my cock you fucking slut ?” You couldn’t say anything, but your whole body started shaking, and you came once again right as he whimpered in your ear.
“Gonna cum for you too baby. I won’t pull out, I need to know my cum is leaking out of your cunt while you dump your stupid fucking boyfriend.” And after a few more thrusts, he stilled deep inside you, moaning quietly in your ear, goosebumps spreading all over your body. Your felt his cock throbbing inside you while his hot cum spread inside your walls. He rested his forehead between your shoulder blades, riding out his orgasm.
After a few seconds, he pulled out of you, and you immediately felt so empty, whining. “I know baby, I’m sorry.” He spread kisses on your left shoulder up to your neck, landing right below your ear. “Hey, I was serious by the way … you’re not gonna go back to him, are you ?” He asked, you could hear the hesitation in his voice.
You sighed, a small smile spreading on your lips. “No, I won’t Gator. I think I found something much better.” He smiled too before grabbing your chin to turn your head, grabbing your lips with his.
“Good. Now let’s go tell this dickhead that you’re dumping him for me.”
summary: Steve wants to prove he's manly enough for you to like him. But you like him sweet and gentle as he is.
words: 1.5 k || masterlist
"So how are you adjusting to a new town? You got bored of it yet?" Robin asks you. You were in fact new in Hawkins. You moved here just two months ago, and luckily, quickly made friends with Nancy from work and she was kind enough to introduce you to her friend group since you were in need of new local friends.
"No, not at all." you laugh. "It's nice here, people are really friendly."
"That’s because you don't know them yet." Robin comments.
"Don't be so pessimistic." Nancy tells Robin. "And have you met anyone interesting yet? We can warn you about what they're known for here."
"Like romantically. No, gosh, no." you frown.
"Oh come on! What do you think of our boys?" she insists.
"Oh, well, they're all very nice, very friendly." you simply say, but notice in their faces that they want to know more. "Well, Eddie's very cool. Like he plays guitar and is in a band, and he totally owns who he is. Then, Jonathan is pretty artsy, he's interesting. And then Steve is... really really sweet."
That’s all you said. Harmless, right? Well, no.
There was a little mouse hearing what you had to say behind the door of the kitchen. This mouse is known for his amazing set of hair.
Steve was listening behind the door because since you joined their group he's been developing a crush on you. But he sent the girls first to ask what you thought of him. And he is not happy with what you said.
Sweet? He's sweet? Dogs are sweet! Babies are sweet! He's a grown man!
It's safe to say his ego is a bit bruised right now. Which wouldn't be so bad if he weren’t so dramatic. The last thing he could take right now is for you to start dating the weirdo that is Munson, or the awkward guy that is Byers (he loves them though, they're his friends).
And Steve had an odd thought process here, definitely not something a guy his age should be doing since it's more of a teen drama cliché. But he wants to prove how manly he can be.
So the next time you see him, his usual perfect floppy hair is no longer shiny and smooth. Instead, this time looks more low-maintenance, messy, like he just rolled out of bed and came here (he actually spent 35 minutes in front of the mirror for it to look like this). He changes his pastel polo shirts to a simple dark flannel.
Some of the guys came to your apartment to help you with some new furniture. You just got a new couch and some frames to hang on the wall.
Nancy was helping you choose pictures and deciding where each should go for them to look good. Robin was helping Eddie to move the table and the TV because she claims she's actually stronger than him.
That’s until Steve arrives, pushing them aside.
"Let me handle the heavy stuff." he says.
"Oh, thank god superman's here." Robin mocks him and he looks at her badly.
He starts moving the couch which wasn’t exactly heavy, letting out exaggerated grunts to help his image.
"You need help? You look like you're gonna get a hernia." Eddie jokes which earns him another bad look from Steve.
"Is that good?" he asks you.
"Yeah, I think it looks good there, right?" you ask Nancy and she nods.
"Great. You need help hanging those frames? I brought a hammer and nails just in case." he offers. "Actually, I always carry them in my car, you never know when you’re gonna need them" he lies, Robin actually cringes at that line.
"Uh... yeah, sure. We can hang them if you want." you agree.
"While I'm at it, you want me to take a look at that leaky faucet you've got?" he insists.
"Oh no, that's fine, I already called a guy to come check it out tomorrow."
"You sure? You don't need to pay some random guy. I know how to work those things." he claims.
"That is exactly what a man would say." Robin murmurs to Nance.
"No, please. Don't even worry about it." you quickly dismiss him.
The "manly" act keeps going for the second consecutive week now. His idea to shed his sweet image to prove he's rugged continues in a painfully obvious way. If only he noticed that instead of you being swooned it's actually weirding you out.
Like one afternoon you were hanging out at The Wheeler's household, everyone chatting like usual. But he was not chiming in with his normal personality. He was leaning against a wall, looking around like he was deep in thought, trying to look mysterious and troubled.
"What the fuck is he doing?" Dustin asks Robin.
"I don't even know anymore." she shrugs, rolling her eyes.
Later that same evening, Steve offers to drop you home when he's leaving.
In his car, the radio starts playing with the last cassette he left in once he starts the vehicle. A loud guitar riff scared you through the speakers. Since when does Steve listen to Metallica?
You remember one night talking to him about how you both liked Michael Jackson and The Police and he admitted he even sings along when Madonna plays on the radio. He even started bickering with Eddie once he started making fun of him for listening to pop music.
"Oh, sorry. I forgot that was playing." he acts.
"Steve, seriously, what's going on?" you frown.
"What do you mean, doll?" oh yeah, he calls you 'doll' now too.
"What are you doing? Why are you acting like this lately? Like a character from a bad western movie." you finally question him.
"I'm not acting like anything. I just like some metal music sometimes." he lies.
"Then why did you tell Eddie it sounds like a bunch of noise all put together?"
"Fine, I'm just... being a man, okay? I'm not some cute little puppy dog!"
"A puppy dog? What?" you frown, he's making no sense at all.
"I heard you saying Eddie was cool and metal, and that Jonathan was 'artsy' and that I'm just sweet!" he explains. "I'm not just a golden retriever, I can be a man!"
You stay staring at him surprised for a few more seconds, then you laugh softly.
"You started acting weirdly because of that?" you keep laughing. "Why did you think it was a bad thing? I meant it in a nice way."
"How can that be nice?" he complains.
“I meant that you really take care of people! You're attentive, you're brave, and you're sweet! That’s not a bad thing, it's like my favorite thing about you." you clarify.
"Really?" he looks caught off guard.
"Yes, really! Why would you think I want a crazy macho man?" you frown.
"I don't know... I guess I took it the wrong way." he's still surprised.
"Why did you care so much about how I saw you anyway?" you notice how he started changing everything because of that comment.
"Well... I thought you liked the other guys more than me." he starts. "I just... I think you're very pretty, and funny, and just pretty amazing. Ever since I saw you, but I wanted to know what you thought of me before I asked you out. And I thought you meant I was like... safe, or boring." he finally admits.
"I didn't think that at all. I thought you were also pretty funny and handsome before this whole act." you smile.
"Fuck... okay." he regrets everything now. "Could I still take you out? Next week maybe? I'll fix my hair like I always do and wear my normal clothes. I'll go back to being sweet and funny, I promise." he smiles too.
"Well, I'm actually not doing anything right now." you shrug with a smile. "We can go fix your hair and maybe I could style it in some fun ways..."
You're already picturing yourself braiding his hair, or trying some funny hairstyles just to mess with him.
"I don't just let anyone touch my hair." he warns you with a smirk.
"And what about me? Am I just anyone?" you play along.
"No, I guess you're not." he smiles. "And I guess it would be nice to have a pretty girl play with my hair."
"You're gonna be my barbie doll." you mock him.
"Hey! No."
"I'm kidding! I'm kidding!" you lie... he will be. You're already thinking of getting face masks as well.
You lean into him with a smirk. "So, can I? Please?"
"Yeah, you can." he smiles too, then leans in a little bit more and kisses you softly.
You smile into the kiss and bring him closer, his hands grab your waist, caressing your back over your top. He even moves your hair out your face, placing a strand behind your ear.
Yeah, he is sweet. He's the sweetest. And that might just be your favorite thing about him.
ㅤㅤㅤㅤ₊ ֹ ˖ pulling your panties to the side for a quickie +18 ୨౿
waiting for robin at steve’s house has always been a tradition. the three of you were supposed to have a friends night; some movies, snacks and probably robin complaining about work.
but like always, she was running late. so steve pulled you into his room the second he knew she was going to arrive late, closing the door behind you with a cocky smirk.
‘’got a few minutes before she arrives,’’ he said while he pushed you against the wall. his hand slid up your skirt.
‘’been wanting this all fucking day.’’ he growled. his fingers hooked into your panties and pulled them roughly to the side, not bothering to take them off.
‘’fuuck, steve… she could be here any minute,’’ you whispered in a half-protest tone.
without another word, he freed himself from his jeans, and rubbed the head of his cock against your slick entrance.
‘’i know,’’ he smirked. ‘’that’s why it’s gonna be quick. don’t say you don’t want this when you’re already so wet f’me princess, huh?’’
he pushed himself into you in one hard thrust, burying himself deep. you gasped while your nails digged into his shoulder as he started fucking you fast and rough again wall.
then it was just the wet sounds of your skin and his slapping that were filling the room.
‘’fuck, you’re so wet,’’ he groaned as his hips snaped against yours. ‘’y’hear that? that’s the sound of your pussy while i fuck you’’
he gripped your thigh, holding your leg around his waist as he pounded into you. he started fucking you hard and fast. his right hand kept on your panties, keeping them to one side so they wouldn’t get in the way.
you whimpered shakily as steve’s cock nudged that snug sensitive spot inside you.
‘’steve… shit. oh god.’’ you moaned. his lips lingered on your neck, giving you wet kisses and bites. he put his other hand over your mouth, smirking down at you.
‘’shh, baby. don’t be noisy. be good f’me.'' he fucked you harder and deep. ''you’re so tight and wet. ’’
his cock hit that perfect spot with every thrust. you felt tight around him, his cock disappearing into your dripping hole again and again.
‘’fuuuck, i’m close,’’ he groaned. ‘’gonna cum so deep in you. gonna breed this tight little cunt.’’ his breathing now was hot against your ear.
“my god, steve. slow down, i can’t…” you moaned, scratching his back to the point that he was almost bleeding.
‘’gonna fill you up before she gets here,’’ he said while his thrusts became messier. ‘’want to sit you next to me tonight with my cum leaking out of you all night.’’
you came first, hard around him, moaning against his hand as your thighs start shaking. steve followed the orgasm with a low groan, thrusting deep as he spilled inside you.
he stayed buried into you for a few seconds, catching his breath. then, he slowly pulled out, fixed your panties back into place and slapped slowly your ass.
‘’good girl,’’ he murmured as he kissed you once. ‘’don’t even think about cleaning yourself now. stay all filled up with me.’’
a/n: yet again thank you to @moonstoneandmoonlight & @graywrenhart for hosting this sleepover event!! i had to add in a smut chapter because who am i if not a connoisseur of smut?
masterlist
After the park you and Steve barely left each other’s side. You walked until your feet hurt, talked until your voices went soft, stopped for coffee that turned into lunch that turned into wandering the city like two people who had finally been allowed to breathe. Every time his fingers brushed yours it felt brand new. Every time he looked at you there was no more guilt, no more almost, no more someone else’s wedding hanging over either of you.
By the time night settled in, you were back at your apartment, still in the ivory dress and him still in the tux, both of you too reluctant to change and break whatever spell the day had cast.
The second the door clicked shut behind you, the air changed.
Steve’s hands found your waist like they’d been waiting all day for permission. He backed you against the wall in the entryway, mouth already on yours—hungry, deep, the kind of kiss that had been building since the dumpster and the tree and every millisecond in between. You made a soft, desperate sound against his lips and he swallowed it, pressing closer until the hard lines of his body aligned with yours.
“Fuck,” he muttered against your mouth, voice rough. “Been wanting to do this for weeks. Every time you looked at me in your damn office I wanted to bend you over the table.”
Your fingers fisted in his open collar, tugging him somehow closer. “Then why don’t you?”
Steve’s answering growl vibrated through both of you. He kissed you harder, one hand sliding up to cup the back of your neck, the other dragging down your side until he found the zipper of the dress. He didn’t pull it down yet. Just toyed with it while his mouth moved to your jaw, your throat, the sensitive spot just below your ear.
“Because I want to take my time,” he said against your skin, low and filthy. “Want to ruin this pretty little wedding dress while I make you come on my tongue. That okay with you, sweetheart?”
The words shot straight between your legs. You nodded, already breathless.
“Use your words.”
“Yes—god, yes—”
Steve finally dragged the zipper down in one slow pull. The dress loosened, slipped off one shoulder, then the other. He eased it down your body until it pooled at your feet in a soft ivory puddle, leaving you in just the delicate lace lingerie you’d put on that morning for an entirely different wedding.
His eyes darkened as he looked at you.
“Jesus Christ. Look at you.” He stepped back just enough to take it in, chest rising and falling hard. “All dressed up like you were gonna marry someone else while I was across town doing the same stupid thing. And the whole time this body was meant for me.”
He dropped to his knees right there in the hallway.
You barely had time to gasp before he hooked his fingers in the sides of your panties and dragged them down your legs. The second they were gone he nudged your thighs apart with his shoulders, settled between them, and looked up at you with pure intent.
“Hands in my hair,” he ordered quietly. “I want to feel it when you fall apart.”
You obeyed instantly, fingers sliding into the perfect strands that were already a mess from your earlier kissing. Steve leaned in and dragged his tongue through your folds in one long, filthy stroke that made your knees buckle. He caught your hips, held you steady against the wall, and did it again—slower this time, savoring.
“Fuck, you taste even better than I imagined,” he groaned against you. “Been thinking about this. About getting my mouth on you. About how wet you’d get for me.” Another deliberate lick, the flat of his tongue pressing firm against your clit. “You’re soaked already. That all for me?”
“Yes—” Your voice cracked. “Steve—”
“That’s it. Say my name while I eat this pretty cunt.”
He sealed his mouth over you and worked.
There was no teasing hesitation. Steve ate you like a man who had been starving, tongue circling your clit in tight, relentless patterns before dipping lower to fuck into you. The wet sounds of it filled the quiet apartment. Every time your hips tried to roll he pinned them harder to the wall, forcing you to take exactly what he gave.
“Stay still,” he growled, the vibration making you whimper. “I’m not done with you yet. Gonna make you come on my face first. Then maybe I’ll think about letting you have my cock.”
Your fingers tightened in his hair. “Please—god, your mouth—”
“Yeah? You like the way I use it?” He sucked hard on your clit and two of his fingers pushed inside you at the same time, curling immediately against that perfect spot. “Fuck, you’re tight. Clenching already. You gonna come for me like this? All pretty and desperate against the wall with my tongue in your cunt?”
You were shaking. The dual sensation of his fingers and mouth was devastating—skilled, relentless, exactly as good as he’d promised. Every filthy word that left his lips only pushed you higher.
“Steve—I’m close, I’m so close—”
“I know. I can feel it.” He looked up at you through his lashes, mouth shiny, fingers still working inside you. “Come on my tongue, baby. Let me taste it. Give it to me.”
The orgasm hit hard and sudden. Your thighs clamped around his head, a broken cry tearing out of you as you came, pulsing around his fingers while he licked you through every wave. He didn’t stop until you were trembling and oversensitive, only then pressing one last soft kiss to your clit and rising to his feet.
Steve kissed you deep, letting you taste yourself on his tongue, one hand still between your legs, fingers slow and possessive.
“That’s one,” he murmured against your mouth, voice dark with promise.
His free hand reached for his bow tie, tugging it the rest of the way off.
“Bedroom. Now.”
You barely made it three steps before Steve’s mouth was on yours again.
The tux jacket hit the floor in the hallway. His shirt followed somewhere near the bedroom door, buttons scattered. Your bra was unhooked and discarded without ceremony. By the time the backs of your knees hit the mattress you were both breathing hard, skin on skin, the last pieces of clothing kicked away in a messy trail behind you.
Steve guided you down onto the bed, following immediately, his body covering yours. The weight of him was perfect—solid, warm, overwhelming in the best way. You reached between you the second you could, fingers wrapping around his very well endowed cock, already thick and hard and leaking at the tip. You stroked once, twice, then started to shift down the bed, fully intending to get your mouth on him.
Steve caught your wrist and pinned it to the pillow above your head.
“No.”
The word was rough, almost strained.
“Steve—”
“Not this time.” He kissed you hard, nipping at your bottom lip. “I’ve waited forever to be inside you. I’m not waiting another second. I need you. Right fucking now.”
He grabbed the backs of your thighs and pushed them up, folding you nearly in half, knees toward your chest. The position left you completely open for him. You felt the thick head of his cock drag through your soaked folds once, twice, then he was pushing in—slow at first, letting you feel every inch as he stretched you open.
“Fuck—” The sound punched out of him when he bottomed out. “Jesus Christ. So tight. So wet for me still.”
You moaned, fingers digging into his shoulders as he filled you completely. The stretch was intense, perfect, exactly what you’d been aching for.
Steve didn’t give you long to adjust.
He pulled almost all the way out and thrust back in hard, setting a deep, relentless rhythm that had the headboard knocking softly against the wall. Every stroke hit so deep it stole your breath. His hips snapped against yours, the wet sound of it obscene in the quiet room.
“Look at you,” he growled, eyes locked on where he disappeared inside you. “Taking every inch like you were made for it. This cunt was made for my cock, wasn’t it?”
“Yes—god, yes—” Your voice broke on a particularly deep thrust. “Steve, you feel so good—”
“Yeah? You like it deep like this?” He adjusted the angle, pressing your legs higher, and the next thrust made your back arch off the bed. “Fuck, I can feel you clenching. Already trying to come on me again.”
You were. The constant deep pressure, the way he filled you so completely, the filthy praise—it was building fast.
Steve leaned down, still driving into you, and spoke right against your mouth.
“Been thinking about this every night. Fucking you stupid. Watching you take me. Listening to those pretty sounds you make when I’m buried inside you.” Another hard thrust. “You’re mine now. No more almosts. No more waiting. Just this. Just us.”
Your hands slid down his back, nails dragging lightly as he fucked you harder, deeper, the force of it making your breasts bounce with every stroke. The pleasure was sharp and overwhelming, coiling tight low in your belly.
“Steve—don’t stop—please don’t stop—”
“Not a chance.” His forehead dropped to yours, pace turning almost punishing. “Gonna fuck this tight little cunt until you come all over me. Then I’m gonna keep going. Fuck— you feel so fucking good.”
He shifted one hand between your bodies, thumb finding your clit, rubbing tight circles in time with his thrusts. The dual sensation ripped a broken moan from your throat.
“That’s it,” he groaned. “Let me feel it. Come on my cock, baby. Give it to me.”
The second orgasm crashed over you harder than the first—white-hot and shaking, your walls clamping down around him as you cried out his name. Steve fucked you through it without slowing, chasing his own pleasure now, hips snapping deep and erratic.
“Fuck—so good—gonna—fill you— up—”
He buried himself to the hilt with a guttural groan, cock pulsing as he came inside you, forehead pressed to yours, both of you trembling and gasping in the aftermath.
Steve didn’t pull out. He just stayed deep, pressing soft, open-mouthed kisses along your jaw as the aftershocks faded.
When he did pull out, he did so slowly, both of you hissing at the loss, then sat up and dragged you with him. His hands were already greedy again—sliding over your hips, squeezing the soft flesh of your ass, trailing up your sides like he couldn’t stand not touching you for even a second.
“Come here,” he murmured, voice dark and rough. “Want you to see what you look like when I fuck you.”
He guided you to the edge of the bed, right in front of the wide vanity mirror. The reflection showed everything: your flushed skin, the mess of your hair, the way his cock was still hard and glistening as he sat behind you. Steve settled on the edge of the mattress— feet planted on the floor— and pulled you back into his lap, your back to his chest, thighs spreading over his.
“Sink down on me,” he ordered against your ear. “Nice and slow. Watch.”
You reached between your bodies, lined him up, and lowered yourself. The stretch was different like this—deeper, fuller—and the second he bottomed out both of you groaned. In the mirror you could see every inch of him disappearing inside you, the way your pussy stretched around his thick cock. The faint outline of him in your stomach.
“Fuck, look at that,” Steve rasped, eyes locked on the reflection. His hands clamped onto your hips, holding you down. “Look how pretty you take me. Every single inch.”
He started moving—short, deep thrusts upward that punched the air from your lungs. One hand stayed locked on your hip, guiding the rhythm, while the other slid up your stomach to cup your breast, squeezing, thumb dragging over your nipple.
“That’s it. Bounce on my cock. Let me see those tits move.”
You did, rising and dropping, the wet slap of skin on skin filling the room. Steve’s mouth found the side of your neck, open and hungry, sucking marks into the sensitive skin while he drilled up into you. Every upward thrust hit so deep your mouth fell open. The mirror showed it all—his cock disappearing into you over and over, his hand kneading your breast, the way your stomach fluttered every time he bottomed out.
“Steve—oh my god—”
“Yeah. Watch yourself get fucked.” His other hand slid from your hip to your clit, rubbing tight, filthy circles. “Look how soaked you are. Dripping down my cock. You’re making such a mess for me.”
The dual stimulation was already too much. You were still sensitive from the first two orgasms and every deep stroke pushed you higher, sharper. Your thighs started to shake.
Steve noticed immediately.
“Already getting close again?” He nipped your earlobe, hips snapping up harder. “Good. I want another one. Want to feel this tight little cunt squeeze me while you watch yourself come.”
He fucked up into you relentlessly—deep, punishing strokes that forced broken sounds from your throat. Both hands were occupied— one rubbing fast, tight circles against your clit, the other one sliding up to lightly wrap around your throat so you had to keep looking at the mirror.
“Don’t look away,” he growled. “Watch what I do to you.”
The overstimulation hit hard. Every thrust felt too deep, too intense, pleasure tipping over into something almost unbearable. You were shaking, moaning nonstop, trying to lift off him but his arm locked around your waist and kept you impaled.
“Steve—it’s too much—I can’t—”
“Yes you can.” His voice was pure filth against your neck. “You’re gonna take it. Gonna keep taking this cock until you cum all over me. I can feel how close you are. You’re clenching so fucking hard.”
He doubled down—thumb rubbing your clit in fast, tight circles while he pounded up into you, the angle perfect and devastating. The wet sounds grew louder, filthier. Your whole body went tight.
“That’s it—come on, baby—fucking give it— to me—”
The orgasm ripped through you so hard your vision whited out. A gush of wetness sprayed around his cock as you came, squirting hard onto his lap and the edge of the mattress, thighs trembling violently. You cried out, head falling back against his shoulder, completely overwhelmed.
Steve didn’t stop.
He kept fucking you through it, drawing out every pulse, every messy splash, groaning filthy praise into your neck.
“Fuck yes—look at that. Soaking me. Such a good girl, squirting all over my cock. God, you’re perfect.”
Only when the last tremors faded and you were whimpering from the sensitivity did he finally slow, still buried deep, both arms wrapped tight around you as you both stared at the wrecked, beautiful mess in the mirror.
Steve’s breathing was still heavy against the back of your neck. He pressed a soft kiss there, then another, before carefully lifting you and turning you in his arms so you were facing him. His hands stroked up and down your back, gentle now.
“Hey,” he murmured, voice low and a little wrecked. “You need a break?”
You nodded immediately, forehead dropping against his collarbone. Your whole body felt loose and oversensitive, like every nerve was still humming.
“Yeah,” you admitted, the word coming out soft and slightly dazed. “I feel… completely fucked stupid. I just need a minute.”
Steve huffed a quiet, affectionate laugh and wrapped both arms around you, pulling you fully into his lap. He reached down, tugged the duvet up over both of your cooling bodies, and settled back against the headboard with you draped across his chest.
“Good,” he said, pressing a slow kiss to your hair. “I’ve got you. Just breathe for a second.”
You stayed like that for a while, skin to skin, his heartbeat steady under your ear. Every so often he tipped your chin up for another lazy kiss—soft, unhurried, nothing like the desperate ones from earlier. Just lips brushing, lingering, smiling against each other.
“I still can’t believe today actually happened,” you whispered between kisses. “This morning I was about to marry someone else. Now I’m somehow naked in bed with you and I can barely feel my legs.”
Steve’s chest shook with a quiet laugh. He tucked a strand of hair behind your ear, eyes soft.
“Best plot twist of my life,” he said. “I kept thinking about you the whole time I was putting that tux on. Felt like I was walking toward the wrong future.” His thumb stroked your cheek. “Then Robin told me you were at city hall and I swear my heart stopped.”
You leaned into his touch. “I almost went through with it. I really did. I was so scared of wanting you and not being able to have you that I almost settled.”
“I know.” He kissed you again, slower this time. “I’m really glad your dad grew a conscious.”
You both laughed quietly, the sound warm in the dark room.
“I love you,” you said, the words easy now. “I know I already said it at the park, but… I love you. So much it still scares me a little.”
Steve’s arms tightened around you. He rested his forehead against yours.
“I love you too. More than I know what to do with.” Another soft kiss. “We’re gonna figure the rest out. The job, the families, all of it. But right now I just want to hold you and not let go for a while. That okay?”
“More than okay.”
You shifted so you were tucked more fully against him, head on his chest, one of his hands tracing idle patterns on your bare shoulder. The conversation drifted into quieter things—favorite parts of the day, how ridiculous it was that you’d both almost married other people on the same afternoon, soft teasing about how he still had a hickey forming on his neck from earlier. Every few sentences another slow kiss interrupted the words.
Your blinks started getting longer. The steady rhythm of his breathing and the warmth of his body were impossible to fight.
Steve noticed. He pulled the blanket higher around your shoulders and pressed his lips to your forehead, lingering there.
“Go to sleep, baby,” he whispered. “I’ve got you. I’m not going anywhere.”
You hummed something that might have been an “I love you” and let your eyes close completely, completely safe in his arms.
Steve kissed your forehead one more time, soft and certain.
summary: based on the wedding planner- you're desperately trying to land the biggest wedding of the season- the wheeler/harrington wedding. but when you flirt with death and then the man who SAVED you from certain death by dumpster? you're in for a real treat. how are you going to be able to plan the wedding for the man youre falling in love with?
w/c: 10.7k
warnings/tags: stancy, so much pining, angst, strangers to wedding planner to lovers, alcohol use, so much love
a/n: BIG shoutout to @moonstoneandmoonlight & @graywrenhart for hosting this steve harrington summer sleepover event! i am so honored to have been able to participate in this :)
masterlist // bonus chapter
You sat across from Nancy Wheeler in the sunlit corner booth of the upscale café, your leather portfolio open between you like a shield and a promise. Your boss’s voice still rang in your ears from that morning: “Land Nancy Wheeler and the whole firm will notice. High-profile journalist, tasteful wedding, you pull this off and you’re looking at a senior position.”
You’d dressed the part—tailored blouse tucked into a pencil skirt, heels sharp enough to make a statement but comfortable enough to chase vendors all day. You’d rehearsed your pitch until the words felt like muscle memory. But nothing prepared you for how sharp Nancy’s eyes were in person, how she listened with the same focused intensity she probably used in interviews that made politicians sweat.
She’d arrived exactly on time, offered a firm handshake, and ordered an oat milk latte without looking at the menu. You’d shown her mood boards, vendor lists, and a preliminary timeline that balanced her demanding career with the kind of wedding that felt like them. She’d nodded, asked smart questions about press access and privacy, and then—after only twenty minutes—she’d smiled, slow and genuine.
“I think you’re exactly what we need,” she said, reaching for the contract you’d already slid across the table. “David’s going to love your vision. He’s been so patient through all my deadlines and late nights. He keeps saying the wedding is the one thing that should feel like ours, not just another event.” Her cheeks flushed the faintest pink as she signed with a flourish. “He’s my calm in the storm. I don’t know what I’d do without him.”
You smiled back, professional and warm, even as your pulse kicked with quiet triumph. Nancy Wheeler. Signed. This was the client that would make your boss’s jaw drop. You were already drafting the email in your head.
The meeting wrapped with promises of a follow-up call next week to lock in florals and a venue walk-through. Nancy stood, gathering her bag. “Thank you. Really. I feel like I can actually breathe now.”
“You’re in good hands,” you assured her, meaning every word.
Outside, the afternoon sun hit warm on your shoulders. You stepped onto the sidewalk feeling ten feet tall, already pulling your phone out to text your boss the good news. Nancy Wheeler is officially ours. The words were still forming when your right heel caught.
A metallic clink. A sharp tug. You stumbled, catching yourself on a lamppost, and looked down. The delicate stiletto had wedged itself between the bars of a sidewalk grate, the thin heel trapped like a bear in a trap. You muttered a curse and bent to work it free, twisting your ankle at an awkward angle. The shoe wouldn’t budge.
Then you heard it.
A low, gathering rumble. Metal on pavement. Getting louder. Faster. You cursed yourself for wearing such strappy heels.
You looked up and your stomach dropped.
A massive construction dumpster—bright orange, easily the size of a small car—was rolling down the gentle incline of the street, picking up speed. Its wheels rattled, the heavy lid clanging. It was heading straight for you. Just momentum and bad luck.
“No—no, come on—” You yanked harder at your foot. The heel stayed stuck. Panic flooded your veins, hot and electric. The rumble became a roar. You could see the shadow swallowing the sidewalk, the glint of sunlight on the metal corner that would hit you first.
You squeezed your eyes shut, a scream caught in your throat—
Strong arms slammed around your waist from the side and yanked.
The world blurred. Your foot tore free of the shoe with a painful twist. You hit your head on the ground as you crashed backward into just as the dumpster thundered past, missing you by inches. The wind of it whipped your hair across your face. The crash of metal on metal as it hit the curb echoed like thunder.
For one suspended second, all you could hear was your own heartbeat and the harsh breathing of the person on top of you.
“Are you okay?” The voice was low, rough with adrenaline, right against your ear. “Jesus Christ, that was close.”
You were still pressed flush against him— pinned between the ground and his muscular body. His heart hammered against your chest. You could feel every inch of him— the hard plane of his chest, the corded strength in the arms that had just saved your life, the warmth of his skin seeping through his shirt into yours.
He gently pulled you to your feet, steadying you with hands that didn’t let go. And the world tilted for an entirely different reason.
He was beautiful.
Not in the polished, magazine way—something warmer, more devastating. His hair was perfect in that careless, wind-tousled way that made your fingers itch to touch it. A scatter of freckles dusted across his nose and cheeks like someone had flicked paint at him, softening the strong line of his jaw. His skin was tan, sun-kissed and glowing, and his arms—God, his arms—were tan and lean with muscle, the sleeves of his henley shoved up to reveal the kind of forearms that made your mouth go dry. Veins traced under the skin where he still held you.
Concern etched every line of his face as he looked you over, those freckles shifting when his brow furrowed. “Hey. Talk to me. Are you hurt?”
Your hands had landed on his chest without permission—palms flat over firm muscle, feeling the rapid rise and fall of his breathing. He smelled like clean soap and hairspray and some woodsy cologne. The adrenaline still singing in your blood mixed with something hotter, something that made your stomach flip and your cheeks flush.
A shaky, breathless laugh escaped you. The words came out before you could stop them, flirtation riding the edge of pure relief and the dizzying awareness of how good he felt against you.
“My hero,” you managed, voice husky. “Do you always go around saving women from runaway dumpsters, or did I just get extremely lucky today?”
His mouth curved—slow, surprised, a little crooked. Those freckles danced with the smile. “First time for the dumpster,” he said, voice low and warm. “But I’m really glad I was here.” His thumbs brushed once, unconsciously, over your arms where he still held you. “You’re shaking.”
You were. From fear. From the crash of adrenaline. From the way he was looking at you like you were the only thing in the world right now. You opened your mouth to say something else—maybe ask his name, maybe actually suggest that coffee you suddenly wanted very badly—but the ground chose that moment to tilt.
The throb in your head, the leftover terror, the overwhelming closeness of this beautiful stranger—it all crashed together. Your vision tunneled at the edges. The world went soft and gray.
“I think I…” The words slurred. Your knees buckled.
His arms tightened instantly, catching you before you could fall. “Whoa—hey, easy. I’ve got you.” His voice dropped, urgent and soothing at once. One hand cradled the back of your head as he guided you down, but the darkness was already pulling you under, warm and heavy.
The last thing you felt was the solid safety of his chest and the faint, worried brush of his fingers against your cheek before everything went black.
─── ⋆⭒˚.⋆✿⋆⭒˚.⋆ ───
You woke slowly, like surfacing from deep water. The first thing you registered was the soft, persistent beep of a heart monitor somewhere to your left and the faint, sweet smell of crayons and antiseptic. Your mouth was dry. Your ankle and head throbbed together with a dull, insistent ache. Everything felt slightly off-kilter, like the world had tilted a few degrees while you were out.
A children’s hospital. That much was obvious from the cheerful murals on the walls—cartoon animals in scrubs, rainbows arching over the doorframe, a big window letting in honeyed light that painted everything in soft pastels. You were in a private room, propped on crisp white pillows, a light blanket pulled up to your waist. Your bare foot was elevated on a pillow, wrapped in a soft brace. Someone had taken off your other shoe too.
Confusion prickled at the edges of your mind. The dumpster. The arms around you. That face—those freckles, that perfect hair—then nothing.
The door opened with a quiet click.
He stepped inside, and your stomach did a slow, warm flip.
He was in navy scrubs now, a white coat draped over his shoulders, a stethoscope looped around his neck. The coat somehow made the tan of his forearms even more noticeable where he’d pushed the sleeves up. His hair was still stupidly perfect, a little tousled like he’d run his hands through it. The freckles across his nose and cheeks stood out under the clinical lights, and when he saw you awake, his whole face softened into a smile that hit you right in the chest.
“Hey,” he said, voice low and warm, the same one that had been in your ear when he pulled you out of the way. “There she is. You gave me a pretty good scare back there.”
He crossed the room in a few easy strides, picking up the chart at the end of your bed like it was second nature. “I’m Dr. Steve. Peds. I was the one who… well, who caught you before the dumpster could. Brought you in here after you passed out on me. Nothing serious,” he added quickly, seeing the flicker of worry on your face. “Mild bump on the head, twisted ankle, dehydration from the adrenaline crash. You’ll be sore tomorrow, but you’re okay. I’ve got you on some fluids and pain meds if you need them.”
You managed a weak laugh, still a little foggy. “So you’re not just a professional dumpster-rescuer. You’re an actual doctor.”
Steve’s smile widened, a dimple flashing in one cheek. He leaned a hip against the side of your bed, close enough that you could smell that clean, woodsy scent again. “Guilty. I was actually heading to grab lunch when I saw you. Lucky timing, I guess.”
The way he looked at you—steady, warm, with that undercurrent of something brighter—made the hospital room feel smaller. You were hitting it off stupidly fast. The banter came easy, like you’d known each other longer than twenty minutes of insanity.
“You make a habit of sweeping women off their feet in the middle of the street, Dr.Steve?” you teased, voice still a little raspy.
He huffed a quiet laugh, eyes crinkling at the corners. “Only the ones whose shoes pick fights with sidewalk grates. And only when they flirt with me while they’re still catching their breath.” His gaze lingered on yours for a beat longer than necessary. “You were pretty smooth, by the way. Even while concussed.”
You felt heat creep up your neck, but you didn’t look away. The chemistry was immediate, crackling between you like static. Every time he shifted, you caught another detail—the way the stethoscope rested against his chest, the faint tan line on his wrist where a watch usually sat, the soft concern in his eyes that kept melting into something playful.
After a quick neuro check and confirming your ankle wasn’t broken, he helped you sit up. His hands were gentle but sure—one at your elbow, the other steadying your lower back as you swung your legs over the side of the bed. The contact sent a spark straight through you, the same electric awareness from when he’d held you on the sidewalk.
“You should probably take it easy tonight,” he said, but there was no real doctor-voice coldness in it. “If you’re feeling up to it, I can show you my office while we wait on the discharge paperwork. It’s quieter than the ER. Less… cartoon animals.”
You nodded, and he stayed close as you stood, letting you lean on him just a little. His arm stayed around your waist longer than strictly necessary as he guided you down the short hallway to a corner office with his name plate replaced by a child's drawing of 'Dr.Steve'.
The office was exactly what you’d expect and somehow more. Sunlight slanted through half-open blinds, catching on colorful crayon drawings taped to the walls—some signed To Dr. Steve, you’re my favorite in wobbly kid handwriting. A couple of framed photos sat on the desk— one of him with a group of laughing kids in a park, another with a woman who looked like his mom. Medical books lined one shelf, but there was also a well-worn baseball on the windowsill and a little potted succulent that looked like it was thriving under his care. The air smelled faintly like him—clean and warm—and something like the hand sanitizer they used everywhere, but softer.
You moved slowly around the space, fingertips brushing the edge of his desk, taking it all in. “This is… really nice. You can tell the kids love you.”
Steve leaned against the doorframe, watching you with that same easy smile. “They’re the best part of the job. Makes the hard days worth it.” His eyes followed you as you picked up a small framed drawing of a stick-figure doctor with a big red heart. “You’re welcome to sit if your ankle’s bothering you. Or… I can grab you something to drink. Water? Juice box? I’ve got the good ones with the straws.”
You laughed, the sound lighter now. The flirtation was easy, natural. “Juice box might be pushing it. But water would be great. And… thank you. Again. For everything.”
He pushed off the doorframe and stepped closer, handing you a bottle from a mini-fridge in the corner. His fingers brushed yours. Neither of you pulled away immediately.
“Anytime,” he said quietly. The air between you felt charged again, that same pull from the sidewalk.
Before either of you could say more, the door burst open.
“Oh my God—” Robin Buckley stood there, your assistant, looking like she’d run the whole way from the office. Her cheeks were flushed, curls wild, eyes wide with a mix of panic and pure relief. She was clutching her phone in one hand and a half-empty iced coffee in the other. “You scared the absolute shit out of me! I got the call from the hospital and I thought— I don’t even know what I thought, but it was bad. Are you okay? Is your foot okay? Do you need anything? I brought your backup flats from the office—”
She stopped mid-ramble when she noticed Steve standing there, her gaze flicking between the two of you. A slow, knowing grin started to form.
Steve straightened a little but didn’t move away from you. “She’s okay,” he said, voice warm. “Just a sprain and a mild concussion. I’m keeping an eye on her.”
Robin’s eyebrows shot up, but she recovered fast, stepping in to hug you carefully. “Thank God. Seriously. I was two seconds from calling your boss and telling her you got flattened by a trash can.” She pulled back, still fussing with your hair like a worried big sister. Then her eyes lit up with that classic Robin energy. “Okay, but hear me out—there’s that outdoor movie in the park tonight. The rom-com one? Starts at eight. You should come. Both of you.” She looked pointedly at Steve. “Doctor’s orders, right? Fresh air, low stress, good company. It’ll be fun. I’ll even bring snacks so you don’t have to move much.”
Steve glanced at you, that dimple flashing again, a spark of something hopeful in his eyes. He didn’t hesitate.
“Yeah,” he said, soft but sure. “I’d like that. If you’re up for it.”
The three of you stood there in his sunlit office—Robin still buzzing with relieved energy, you balanced between them with your wrapped ankle, Steve close enough that you could feel the warmth of him again—and for the first time since the grate and the dumpster and the blackout, the day felt like it was tilting toward something good.
Something that felt a lot like the start of more.
─── ⋆⭒˚.⋆✿⋆⭒˚.⋆ ───
Robin bailed.
The text came in right as you were finishing up at the office, your ankle still wrapped but feeling better after a day of rest and Steve’s careful instructions.
Robin: Emergency!! I have to help my sisters boyfriends godmother bake an emergency birthday cake. I’m SO sorry. But you should still go!! Steve’s already on his way. Have fun you two 😉
You stared at the winky face for a long second, then laughed under your breath. Classic Robin. She’d been suspiciously enthusiastic about the plan earlier.
When you arrived at the park, the outdoor movie was already setting up—big inflatable screen glowing against the twilight sky, string lights crisscrossing between the trees, the smell of popcorn and fresh-cut grass in the cool evening air. People were spreading blankets on the lawn, couples claiming spots close to the screen, families with kids in folding chairs.
Steve was waiting near the entrance, hands in the pockets of a light jacket, that perfect hair catching the last of the sunset. He looked up when he saw you and smiled like he’d been hoping you’d still show.
“Robin texted me too,” he said as you approached, voice warm with a hint of amusement. “Something about a cake emergency. I figured we could still make it work… if you’re okay with it just being us.”
You were more than okay with it.
He offered his arm without making a big deal of it, and you took it, letting him steady you as you walked toward the quieter side of the park where the big oak tree stood. This had been your spot for as long as you came here—a thick, padded cushion nestled in the wide, low branch, string lights already woven through the leaves like someone had strung stars just for this. It gave you a perfect, slightly elevated view of the screen while keeping you tucked away from the main crowd. Private. Cozy. Yours.
Steve helped you up first, one strong hand at your waist, the other guiding your good foot onto the wide branch. His touch was steady and warm even through your jacket. Once you were settled on the cushion, he climbed up after you with easy grace, settling beside you close enough that your shoulders brushed when you both leaned back against the trunk.
For a while you just watched the opening credits roll, the park settling into that soft, anticipatory quiet. Then the conversation started—easy, unforced, the way it had been in his office.
Eventually you told him about the puzzling club you went to every other Thursday night.
“It started because of my mom,” you said, smiling at the memory. “When I was little she used to spread these giant jigsaw puzzles out on the dining room table every weekend. We’d work on them for hours—sometimes days. No TV, no distractions, just us and a thousand tiny pieces. She always said it was the best way to learn patience and how to see the bigger picture when everything feels scattered.” You glanced over at him. “I still go. Every other week. Same group of people, same folding tables in the community center basement. It’s kind of my reset button.”
Steve listened like he actually wanted to hear it, eyes soft in the glow from the string lights above you. “That’s really nice,” he said quietly. “You don'treally seem like the puzzle master type” He shrugged, a small, fond smile tugging at his mouth. “But I kind of get it.”
You talked more—about his worst stories from the hospital, the ridiculous things kids say when they’re hopped up on juice boxes and pain killers, the way the park looked in the fall when the leaves turned. No questions about whether either of you were seeing someone. It just… didn’t come up. The night felt like its own little bubble.
The movie played on in the background—some sweet, nostalgic rom-com with sweeping music and lingering glances. At one point the two leads found themselves at a small-town dance, the kind with a slow song that made everyone else in the scene fade away. On screen, the couple swayed together, foreheads almost touching, completely wrapped up in each other.
Steve was quiet for a beat. Then he turned to you, that dimple flashing.
“You know,” he said, voice low so it wouldn’t carry, “I’ve always thought slow dancing looks better in real life than in movies.”
Before you could answer, he reached over and took your hand—gentle, asking without words. His palm was warm and a little callused in the best way. He hopped down from the wide branch, helping you up with him, mindful of your wrapped ankle.
He pulled you in slowly, one hand settling lightly at your waist, the other still holding yours. You rested your free hand on his shoulder, feeling the solid warmth of him through his jacket. The music from the movie drifted up to you, soft and romantic, and you started to sway.
It was sweet. Uncomplicated. Romantic in the way that made your chest feel light. His thumb brushed once over the back of your hand. Your bodies stayed close but respectful, the way two people do when they’re still figuring each other out but really, really want to keep figuring. Every time the breeze moved the leaves, the string lights shifted and highlighted the freckles scattered across his cheeks. He smelled like clean cotton and that faint woodsy note you were already starting to associate with him.
Neither of you spoke. You didn’t need to. The dance said enough—the way he looked at you, the way his hand flexed gently at your waist when you leaned in a little closer, the soft smile that never quite left his mouth.
When the song on screen faded into the next scene, he didn’t let go right away. Just held you there a second longer, eyes searching yours like he was memorizing something. Then he helped you sit back down, careful with your ankle, and settled beside you again. His hand stayed loosely linked with yours on the cushion between you for the rest of the movie.
The credits rolled. The park slowly emptied. Steve walked you to your car, his jacket draped over your shoulders because the night had gotten cooler and he’d noticed you shiver once. He opened your door for you, then paused.
“I had a really good time tonight,” he said, quiet and sincere. “Even with the cake emergency.”
You smiled up at him, heart doing that same flutter it had since the sidewalk. “Me too.”
“Text me when you get home? So I know your ankle survived the night.”
You promised you would.
As you drove away, the park lights fading in your rearview mirror, you caught yourself smiling at nothing. The memory of his hand in yours, the way he’d looked at you under those string lights, the easy rhythm of dancing with him like it was the most natural thing in the world.
Robin was going to lose her mind when you told her.
You met her for coffee the next morning before the dance lesson appointment Nancy had asked you to meet her at. She was already at the little corner table when you walked in, two oat milk lattes waiting, her curls pulled up in a messy bun and that knowing grin already on her face.
You barely sat down before it all came spilling out.
“I think he might be the one, Robin,” you said, voice low but glowing. Your cheeks were warm just thinking about it. “Last night was… God, it was perfect. The tree, the lights, the way he danced with me? It wasn’t even a real date and it still felt like the best one I’ve ever had. He’s funny and kind and he actually listened when I talked about my mom and the puzzles. And the way he looks at me…” You shook your head, smiling helplessly into your cup. “I don’t know. It just felt easy. Like I could see myself doing that again. A lot.”
Robin’s grin widened, eyes sparkling with pure delight. “I knew it. I knew the second I saw you two in his office. You were both doing that thing. The heart-eyes thing.” She reached across the table and squeezed your hand. “I’m so happy for you. You deserve someone who makes you gush like this. Steve seems like good people.”
You left the café floating, already mentally replaying the feel of his hand at your waist. By the time you pulled up to the dance studio, you were still smiling to yourself.
Nancy was already inside when you arrived, looking effortlessly chic in a flowy blouse and leggings, her planner open on a nearby bench. She waved you over with a bright smile.
“I’m so glad you could make it! David’s already here warming up. I want the first dance to feel natural, you know? He's not the best when it comes to dancing." She let out a giggle, "Come meet him.”
You followed her across the polished floor toward the tall figure stretching near the mirror wall, his back to you. Nancy’s voice was warm and proud.
“David, this is the wedding planner I was telling you about. She’s been incredible already.”
The man turned.
Your stomach dropped straight through the floor.
Steve.
Steve Harrington.
His eyes met yours and widened for half a second before he caught himself. The same perfect hair. The same freckles scattered across his nose and cheeks. The same warm tan skin and strong arms you’d had wrapped around you less than twenty-four hours ago. He was in a simple black t-shirt and joggers, looking unfairly good even in dance clothes.
For one suspended heartbeat the world went silent.
Then professional instinct kicked in. You forced your face into a polite, pleasant smile even as your brain screamed.
“Nice to meet you,” you said, extending your hand like you’d never felt those fingers laced with yours under fairy lights. “I’m really looking forward to helping make your day perfect.”
Steve’s grip was warm and familiar. He shook your hand once, firm but careful, his expression carefully neutral even though his eyes flicked over your face like he was checking if you were okay.
“Likewise,” he said, voice steady. “Nancy’s been raving about you.”
Nancy beamed between you, completely oblivious to the silent earthquake happening right in front of her. “Isn’t she the best? Okay, so the instructor wants us to run through the first part of the waltz. Would you mind dancing with David for a minute so I can see how the steps actually look with a partner? I’m terrible at visualizing without a visual.”
Your heart slammed against your ribs.
You nodded, because what else could you do? “Of course.”
The music started — soft, romantic, the same kind of melody that had played while you swayed together in the tree. Steve stepped in, one hand settling at your waist exactly where it had been last night, the other taking your hand. His palm was warm. Steady. The same hands that had pulled you out of danger and then held you like you were something precious.
You began to move.
The second you were close enough that Nancy couldn’t hear, your smile stayed fixed for her benefit but your voice dropped to a sharp, furious whisper.
“You lied to me.”
Steve’s jaw tightened. He kept the steps smooth, turning you gently so it still looked like a normal demonstration. “I didn’t lie.”
“You told me your name was Steve.”
“It is,” he said quietly, eyes flicking to Nancy for a split second before coming back to yours. “David’s my middle name. Everyone calls me David. I didn’t think—”
“You didn’t think what?” Your voice stayed low, but the anger was real now, simmering under the surface. Your body stayed loose and graceful for Nancy’s sake, but your grip on his shoulder was tighter than it needed to be. “You didn’t think maybe you should mention that the woman you were slow-dancing with in a tree was planning your wedding?”
His hand flexed at your waist. “I didn’t know who you were. Do you know how many people have your first name? And then last night…” He swallowed, voice dropping even lower. “Last night was real. I wasn’t thinking about any of this. I was just thinking about you.”
You hated how that made something in your chest twist. You were furious — at the situation, at the lie by omission, at the fact that the man who’d made you feel like maybe this could be something was the same man Nancy had been gushing about as her rock, her calm in the storm, her fiancé.
You kept dancing. Kept smiling like everything was fine. But inside you were quietly seething, every turn making the betrayal sharper.
Steve’s eyes stayed on yours, guilty and conflicted and still warm in that same way that had undone you last night. “I’m sorry,” he murmured as the music swelled. “I should’ve said something. I just… didn’t know how.”
The song ended. You stepped back the second it was polite to do so, your smile still in place even though your pulse was racing for all the wrong reasons now.
Nancy clapped, delighted. “That looked beautiful! You two have great chemistry on the floor.”
You and Steve both froze for half a second.
Then he cleared his throat and looked away first.
You forced a laugh that sounded almost normal. “Just doing my job.”
But when your eyes met his again across the studio, the air between you crackled with everything unsaid.
Nancy was already pulling out her phone to check something, oblivious.
Steve’s gaze lingered on you, quiet and heavy with apology and something else you didn’t want to name.
You looked away first.
You called Robin the second you got to your car after the dance lesson. Your hands were still shaking.
“I can’t do this,” you said the moment she picked up. “I’m quitting. I’m calling Nancy tonight and telling her I have a conflict of interest or a family emergency or that I joined the fucking circus. I don’t care. I cannot keep planning this wedding. Steve? Dr.Steve? Is David. They're the same fucking person.”
Robin was quiet for two full seconds. Then—
“Absolutely not.”
“Robin—”
“No. Listen to me.” Her voice was firm in that way she only used when she was done being the fun best friend and had switched into serious mode. “This is the biggest client we’ve ever landed. Your boss is already talking about putting you on the senior track if this goes well. You do not get to throw that away because the groom happens to be the guy who made you feel butterflies under a tree. Suck it up. Be a big girl. Put on your professional face, finish the job, and then you can fall apart in my apartment with ice cream and terrible reality TV. But you are not walking away from this.”
You hated that she was right.
So you stayed.
The next few days were a special kind of torture.
Venue showing number one was a historic ballroom downtown. Nancy gushed over the crystal chandeliers while you and Steve stood three feet apart pretending the air between you wasn’t thick enough to choke on. Every time you had to address him as “David” your jaw clenched. Every time his hand brushed yours while reaching for a brochure the same spark from the park shot up your arm and you hated yourself for still feeling it.
Venue showing number two was a lakeside garden estate. Worse. Open air, golden light, romantic as hell. Nancy kept asking your opinion on ceremony arches while Steve watched you with that careful, unreadable expression that made your stomach twist. You answered every question with perfect professionalism and refused to meet his eyes for longer than two seconds.
By the third showing you were running on pure spite and coffee.
It was an old converted warehouse on the edge of town—exposed brick, high ceilings, industrial-chic that somehow still felt warm with the right lighting. You were mid-sentence explaining capacity and catering options when the heavy metal door at the far end of the space slammed open.
“There you are, baby.”
You froze.
Eddie Munson strode in like he owned the place, long hair half-tied back, rings glinting on every finger, a battered leather jacket thrown over a black band tee. He made a beeline straight for you, completely ignoring Nancy and Steve, and slid an arm around your waist like it belonged there.
“Missed you this morning,” he said, loud enough for the whole warehouse to hear, then leaned in and pressed a quick, deliberate kiss to your temple. “You ran out before I could even make you coffee.”
Your brain short-circuited for half a second.
Then pure survival instinct kicked in.
You forced a tight smile and leaned into him just enough to sell it. “Eddie. I didn’t think you were coming today.”
“Wouldn’t miss it.” His grin was pure chaos as he finally looked at Nancy and Steve, eyes sparkling with something sharp and amused. “Hi. Eddie Munson. Her fiancé.” He stuck out his free hand toward Steve like a challenge. “You must be the lucky guy. Congratulations, man.”
Steve’s polite smile didn’t reach his eyes. He shook Eddie’s hand with just a little too much force.
“David,” he said evenly. “Nice to meet you.”
Nancy blinked, clearly surprised but recovering fast with a warm smile. “Oh! I had no idea. Congratulations to you both as well.” She glanced between you and Eddie, then at Steve, sensing the sudden shift in temperature even if she didn’t understand it. “We were just looking at the space for the reception…”
Eddie kept his arm firmly around your waist, thumb stroking once over your hip in a way that felt both protective and deeply irritating. You were going to kill him later. Slowly. He was supposed to be back in Hawkins. What he was doing here? Of all places? You had no fucking idea.
“Looks nice,” Eddie said, glancing around with theatrical interest. “Very… exposed brick. Romantic. You into this industrial vibe, baby? I always figured you’d want something more girly. You know, like something in a castle or some cutesy shit.”
Steve’s jaw ticked.
You felt it.
“The warehouse has a lot of flexibility for lighting,” you said tightly, trying to steer everything back to business. “We can do string lights, uplighting, whatever the couple prefers—”
“Whatever she prefers, right?” Eddie cut in, looking at Steve with a lazy, pointed smile. “Since you’re the groom and all. Gotta make sure your bride’s happy. And your wedding planner too, I guess. She’s been working so hard on this. Barely has time for her own fiancé these days.”
Steve’s smile was pure ice. “She’s excellent at her job. We’re lucky to have her.”
“Oh I know.” Eddie’s fingers flexed against your side. “I’m the lucky one though.”
Nancy laughed a little awkwardly, clearly picking up on the weird undercurrent but choosing to ignore it. “Well, why don’t we keep looking around? I’d love to see the outdoor patio area…”
She started walking. You moved to follow, but Eddie kept his arm around you, forcing Steve to walk on your other side. The three of you moved through the space in a tense little triangle.
Every time Steve asked a quiet, professional question about logistics, Eddie answered for you with some overly confident comment. Every time Eddie made a joke or made some sarcastic comment— Steve’s answers got shorter and cooler. The passive aggression was so thick you could taste it.
You were pissed at both of them.
Pissed at Steve for being engaged to Nancy while looking at you like that.
Pissed at Eddie for showing up out of nowhere and claiming a relationship that didn’t exist just to… what? Stir the pot? Protect you? You hadn't spoken to him in years. You know your dad still spoke with him but he wouldn't be involved in this, right?
But most of all you were pissed at yourself for the tiny, traitorous part of you that noticed the way Steve’s eyes kept flicking to Eddie’s hand on your waist like he wanted to remove it.
By the time Nancy finally checked her phone and announced she had a call she needed to take outside, the air in the warehouse felt combustible.
Eddie waited until the door closed behind her before dropping the smile.
“Miss me?” he muttered under his breath.
You didn’t even look at him. Your voice was pure venom.
“We are going to have a very long conversation later.”
Steve stood a few feet away, arms crossed, watching the two of you with an expression that was equal parts jealous and carefully blank.
“Everything okay?” he asked, voice deceptively mild.
Eddie grinned again, all teeth this time. “Peachy. Just talking about our own wedding plans. You know how it is.”
Steve’s eyes met yours for one charged second.
You looked away first.
Nancy came back a minute later, oblivious and smiling, and the rest of the showing passed in a haze of forced professionalism and barely restrained tension that crackled every time Steve and Eddie were forced to stand near each other.
You had never wanted a venue tour to end more in your life.
─── ⋆⭒˚.⋆✿⋆⭒˚.⋆ ───
Nancy left on a Monday morning for a week-long assignment in D.C. She hugged you both at the studio door, already half in work mode, and said, “I trust you two with everything. Just… don’t let David pick all white roses, okay? He’ll try.”
Steve had given her a soft smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes and promised they’d handle it.
And just like that, it was the two of you.
The first couple of days were still stiff. You kept everything strictly professional—emails, shared calendars, clipped conversations about linens and guest lists. But something shifted somewhere between the third seating-chart revision at 10 p.m. and the night you both ended up on the floor of the planning office surrounded by sample menus, laughing until your sides hurt over a caterer who had somehow misspelled “filet mignon” as “filet minion.”
After that, the edges softened.
You started talking like normal people. About stupid things at first—worst wedding disasters you’d witnessed, the ridiculous amount of tulle currently living in your storage closet, how neither of you could stand the sound of a violin being tuned. Then quieter things. Steve admitted he was terrified of public speaking and had already rewritten his vows four times. You told him about the first wedding you’d ever planned and how the bride’s veil had caught fire during the unity candle. You told him that Eddie wasn't really your fiancé. That your father is trying to force a fucked up arranged marriage. Steve's mask broke for a fraction of a second— showing relief instead of anger when Eddie was brought up. The stories got longer. The silences got easier. By Thursday you were finishing each other’s sentences over coffee and arguing about playlist order.
It felt dangerously close to friendship.
Friday afternoon you met at the florist’s for the final flower walkthrough. The shop was small and overflowing—buckets of peonies and garden roses and trailing eucalyptus everywhere, the air thick with sweet, green scent. Steve held the door for you out of habit now. You’d stopped flinching when his hand brushed your lower back as he guided you past a display of cascading orchids.
You were deep in debate over whether the centerpieces should be low and lush or tall and dramatic when the little bell over the door chimed again.
You looked up.
And the floor dropped out from under you.
Jake stood just inside the entrance, one hand resting on the small of the pretty brunette’s back. Her hand was curved protectively over a very obvious baby bump. She was laughing at something he’d said, face soft and glowing in that way only very happy, very pregnant women managed.
Jake’s eyes landed on you and the laugh died mid-breath.
For a second nobody moved.
Then the brunette noticed the sudden tension and glanced between the three of you, the color draining from her face.
“Jake?” she said quietly. “Everything okay?”
Steve, who had been examining a stem of a white rose, looked up at the shift in the air. His gaze flicked from your frozen expression to the couple by the door and back again. Something careful and assessing settled over his face.
Jake cleared his throat. “Yeah. Uh. Hey.” His eyes stayed on you. “Didn’t expect to run into you here.”
You felt Steve step half a pace closer without making it obvious.
“Jake,” you managed. Your voice came out flatter than you wanted. “Hi.”
The woman offered a polite, slightly terrified smile. “We were just looking at some arrangements for the baby shower.” She rested her hand more firmly on her stomach, the diamond on her left hand catching the light.
Steve’s voice was mild when he spoke, but there was steel underneath. “I’m Steve. We’re here for wedding flowers.” He didn’t specify whose. “Nice to meet you both.”
Jake’s eyes narrowed a fraction at the protective edge in Steve’s tone. “Yeah. Likewise.”
Another beat of heavy quiet. Lauren murmured something about checking the peonies and gently steered Jake toward the back of the shop. He went, but not before glancing at you one last time with an expression that was half apology, half something uglier.
The second they were out of earshot Steve turned fully toward you.
“You okay?” he asked quietly.
You stared at a bucket of blush garden roses like they held the secrets of the universe. “I’m fine.”
“You’re not.” He kept his voice low. “How do you know him?”
You let out a short, humorless breath. “That’s my ex-fiancé. Jake.” The name still tasted bitter. “We were together almost three years. Engaged for eight months. I came home early from a venue walkthrough one day and found him in our bed with her.” You tipped your chin toward where Lauren was now examining a display of baby’s breath, one hand still on her stomach. “She was his coworker. They’d been sleeping together for six months. He told me he was ‘in love for real this time’ and moved out the next week. They got married four months later. And now…” You gestured vaguely at the baby bump. “I guess they’re starting a family.”
Steve was quiet for a long moment. When you finally risked a glance at him, his jaw was tight and his eyes were darker than you’d ever seen them.
“He cheated on you,” he said, not a question.
“Yeah.”
“And left you for her.”
“Yeah.”
Steve exhaled slowly through his nose. “That’s fucked up.”
A startled little laugh escaped you. “Eloquent.”
“I’m serious.” He shifted so his body partially blocked the view of Jake and Lauren across the shop. “You didn’t deserve that. Anyone who does that to someone doesn’t deserve a second of your energy.”
You swallowed. The flowers suddenly smelled too strong. “It was a long time ago.”
“Doesn’t mean it doesn’t still hurt when you run into them.” His voice softened. “You don’t have to pretend it doesn’t.”
You looked at him then—really looked. At the freckles across his nose, the concerned furrow between his brows, the way he was standing just close enough that you could feel the steady warmth of him without it being overwhelming. Somewhere over the past week the sharp edges of your anger toward him had worn down into something more complicated. Something that felt a lot like friendship. And something else you were still refusing to name.
“Thank you,” you said quietly.
Steve’s expression gentled. “Anytime.”
Across the shop, Jake laughed at something Lauren said. The sound made your shoulders tighten automatically.
Steve noticed.
Without a word he reached past you, plucked a single stem of white peony from the nearest bucket, and held it out.
“For what it’s worth,” he said, “I think your taste in flowers is better than your taste in ex-fiancés.”
You took the peony. Your fingers brushed his.
For the first time all week, the smile you gave him was real.
─── ⋆⭒˚.⋆✿⋆⭒˚.⋆ ───
You didn’t even make it all the way home before the first tear slipped free.
By the time you unlocked your apartment door the pressure behind your ribs had turned sharp and mean. Jake’s face. Lauren’s hand on that rounded stomach. The easy way they’d stood there like the last three years of your life had never happened. You dropped your bag, kicked off your shoes, and went straight for the bottle of whiskey on the top shelf of the fridge—the one you only ever opened when things got bad.
It got bad fast.
Two glasses in and the apartment felt too quiet. Three and the memories started replaying on a loop—walking in on them, the way Jake had looked at you like you were the inconvenience, the empty side of the bed for months afterward. Four glasses and you were on the floor of the living room with your phone in your hand, trying and failing to text Robin something coherent. The screen swam. Your thumbs wouldn’t cooperate.
You didn’t hear the knock the first time.
The second time it was louder, followed by Steve’s voice through the door, low and careful.
“Hey. It’s me. Robin called—said you weren’t answering and she was worried. Can you open up?”
You somehow made it to the door. The second it swung open Steve took one look at you—red eyes, whiskey glass still in your hand, mascara smudged—and the soft concern on his face deepened into something more urgent.
“Oh, sweetheart,” he murmured.
He stepped inside without waiting for an invitation, gently took the glass from your fingers, and set it on the counter. One warm hand came up to steady your elbow when you swayed.
“How much did you drink?”
“Enough,” you managed, the word thick. Then the tears started again, hot and sudden. “I saw them and it just—everything came back. I thought I was over it. I really thought I was. But I’m not. I’m still just… alone. And miserable. And I keep pretending I’m fine and I’m not. I fucking hate this.”
Steve didn’t try to fix it with empty words. He guided you to the couch, sat beside you, and let you fall apart against his shoulder. One of his hands rubbed slow circles between your shoulder blades while the other held a glass of water to your lips every so often, coaxing you to drink. You cried about Jake. About the way it had felt to be replaced so easily. About how planning other people’s forever made the quiet of your own apartment feel louder every single night. About how tired you were of being the strong one.
He listened to all of it. Never once looked impatient. Never once made you feel dramatic.
When the worst of the shaking stopped he helped you stand, walked you to the bathroom so you could wash your face, then steered you toward the bedroom. You were still in your work clothes. He found an oversized T-shirt in your drawer, turned around while you changed, then waited until you crawled under the covers before sitting on the edge of the mattress.
“I’m going to leave some water and Advil right here,” he said quietly, setting both on the nightstand. “Text me when you wake up, okay? Even if it’s just to tell me you’re alive.”
He stood. Took two steps toward the door.
Stopped.
For a long second he just stood there with his back to you, one hand braced on the doorframe. Then he turned around, walked back to the bed, and sank down onto the edge again. His eyes were darker than you’d ever seen them.
“I can’t leave like this,” he said, voice rough. “Not without saying it.”
Your stomach dropped.
Steve dragged a hand through his perfect hair, making it stick up in a way that should have looked ridiculous and somehow only made him look more wrecked. “I’m in love with you. I’ve been in love with you since the night in the park. Probably since the dumpster, if I’m being honest. This whole week—working with you, laughing with you—I keep falling harder. And I know the timing is shit. I know I’m engaged. I know I have no right. But I can’t keep pretending I don’t feel this.”
The words landed like a physical blow. For one dizzy second you wanted nothing more than to reach for him. Instead you sat up against the headboard, heart slamming, and forced yourself to meet his eyes.
“Don’t,” you whispered. “Please don’t say that.”
“I already did.”
“Then take it back.” Your voice cracked. “I’m not going to be the other woman, Steve. I won’t do that to Nancy. She doesn’t deserve it. And neither do I. I’ve already been the girl who got left. I’m not going to be the girl who helps someone else do the leaving.”
Steve’s face twisted like the words physically hurt. He opened his mouth, closed it, then nodded once—slow and defeated.
“Okay,” he said quietly. “Okay.”
He stood again. This time he made it all the way to the door. His hand lingered on the knob for a second longer than necessary.
“Get some sleep,” he said without turning around. “I’ll check on you in the morning.”
The door clicked shut behind him.
You stared at the ceiling until the whiskey and the tears finally pulled you under, the ghost of his confession still sitting heavy in the middle of your chest.
─── ⋆⭒˚.⋆✿⋆⭒˚.⋆ ───
Nancy showed up at your apartment the next afternoon looking pale and exhausted, still in her travel clothes. She didn’t even wait for you to offer coffee before the words spilled out.
“I don’t know if I’m still in love with him.”
You froze with the coffee pot in your hand.
Nancy sank onto your couch, elbows on her knees, staring at the floor. “I’ve been thinking about it the whole time I was gone. The wedding, the vows, the rest of our lives… and I keep waiting to feel that certainty I used to have. It’s just not there the way it used to be. And I don’t know what to do.”
Your heart was pounding so hard you were sure she could hear it. Every selfish part of you wanted to say Then don’t. Call it off. He’s in love with me and I’m in love with him and maybe this is the universe giving us a chance.
Instead you set the coffee pot down, sat beside her, and took her hand.
“Nancy. Look at me.”
She did.
“Steve is a good man,” you said, voice steady even though something inside you was cracking open. “He’s kind. He’s steady. You can't see the way he looks at you when you walk in a room. I’ve watched him these past weeks. He is all in. And people like that—people who love that hard and that consistently—don’t come around twice. Doubt is normal. Cold feet are normal. But throwing away a man like him because you’re scared of forever? That’s the kind of regret that doesn’t go away.”
You squeezed her hand tighter, forcing every ounce of conviction you didn’t fully feel into the words.
“Go through with the wedding. Choose him. Choose the life you’ve already started building. He’s worth it. And you’re going to be so happy once you’re on the other side of this fear. I really believe that.”
Nancy’s eyes filled. She pulled you into a tight hug and whispered, “Thank you. I needed to hear that from someone who isn’t him.”
You held her and smiled and hated yourself a little more with every second that passed.
─── ⋆⭒˚.⋆✿⋆⭒˚.⋆ ───
Two days later you were at your dad’s house for your cousin’s birthday cookout. The backyard was full of aunts in folding chairs, uncles arguing about sports, little kids chasing each other with water guns, the smell of charcoal and sun-warmed grass. Your dad kept bringing it up to distant relatives that you weren't married yet— the horror settling on their faces.
You were standing by the dessert table nursing a soda when Eddie appeared at the edge of the yard.
He looked uncharacteristically nervous. Hair tied back, nice black button-down instead of a band tee, rings still on every finger but somehow more put together. The second your eyes met he started walking toward you like a man on a mission.
Conversation around you gradually quieted.
Eddie stopped a few feet away, swallowed hard, and dropped to one knee right there on the grass.
Your heart stopped.
“I’ve been thinking about this for weeks,” he said, voice carrying across the suddenly silent backyard. “But I’m done thinking. I love you. I’ve loved you longer than I should admit out loud. And I know the timing is messy and I know you’re scared and I know you’ve been hurt before—but I want to spend the rest of my life proving I’m not going anywhere. Marry me.”
He opened a small black box. A simple gold band with a dark stone sat inside.
Every relative was staring. Your dad’s face had gone soft with something that looked a lot like relief but with something knowing hidden underneath— like he expected this.
You could feel the weight of all those eyes. The quiet hope in your father’s expression. The ghost of Jake’s betrayal still sitting heavy in your chest. The knowledge that the man you actually wanted was currently planning a wedding with someone else because you had told his fiancée to go through with it.
Cynicism settled over you like a familiar coat.
Maybe this was as good as it got. Maybe safe and real and right in front of you was better than wanting someone you could never have.
Your dad stepped closer, voice low and thick. “Honey… it’s time. Let yourself be happy. Say yes.”
Eddie’s eyes never left yours. Waiting. Hopeful. Steady in a way you hadn’t expected.
You heard yourself speak before you fully decided.
“…Okay.”
A beat of stunned silence.
Then the backyard erupted in cheers and applause. Your aunts were crying. Your dad pulled you into a crushing hug. Eddie slipped the ring onto your finger with shaking hands and kissed your cheek like he couldn’t quite believe it had worked.
You smiled for the photos.
You laughed when your cousins started chanting for a toast.
And the entire time the new ring felt like a beautiful, heavy lie against your skin.
─── ⋆⭒˚.⋆✿⋆⭒˚.⋆ ───
A week later—
City Hall, 2:47 p.m.
You stood in the small waiting area outside the clerk’s office in a simple ivory dress that didn’t feel like yours. Eddie was beside you in a black shirt and slacks, looking more nervous than you’d ever seen him. Your dad kept checking his watch.
Robin was across town handling the Wheeler-Harrington wedding so you wouldn’t have to. You’d handed everything over two days ago with a tight smile and a “You’ve got this.” You hadn’t let yourself think about the ballroom or the flowers or the man who was supposed to be standing at the end of that aisle.
The clerk called your names.
Eddie squeezed your hand. “Last chance to run,” he tried to joke. It came out soft.
You managed a thin smile. “Let’s just get it over with.”
Your dad stepped forward before either of you could move.
“No.”
The single word cut through the hallway. Everyone turned.
Your father looked older than usual, eyes glossy but steady. “I can’t let you do this, sweetheart. Not like this. Not because you’re scared or because I pushed or because it feels safer than wanting something bigger. You deserve an epic love story. The kind that knocks the wind out of you. Not- Not just doing this because you’re tired of being alone.”
Eddie stared at him for a long second. Then he let out a shaky breath and actually laughed—quiet and a little broken.
“He’s right,” Eddie said, turning to you. He took both of your hands. “You don’t look at me the way you look when you talk about him. And I care about you too much to let you settle for a backup plan. Even if the backup plan is me.”
The ring suddenly felt unbearable on your finger.
You slipped it off and pressed it into his palm. Eddie closed his fingers around it, kissed your forehead once, and stepped back.
Your dad wrapped an arm around your shoulders as the three of you walked out of city hall into the afternoon sun, the marriage license unsigned on the clerk’s desk behind you.
─── ⋆⭒˚.⋆✿⋆⭒˚.⋆ ───
The Ballroom Venue, 2:47 p.m.
Steve stood in the small room just off the ceremony space, already in the tux, boutonnière pinned, heart hammering against his ribs. Guests were seated. Music was about to start. Nancy was on the other side of the door in her dress.
She slipped into the room without knocking, still holding her bouquet. For a moment they just looked at each other.
“I can’t do this,” Nancy said quietly.
Steve’s shoulders sagged with something that felt dangerously like relief.
“I know,” he answered.
Nancy let out a watery little laugh. “We’re really bad at this, huh?”
“The worst.” He stepped closer, gentle. “I care about you. So much. You’re one of my best friends. But I’m not in love with you the way a husband should be. And I don’t think you’re in love with me that way either. Not anymore.”
Nancy’s eyes filled, but she was nodding. “I’ve been trying to force it because it looked right on paper. Because everyone expected it. Because were good together. But good isn’t the same as right.”
Steve reached out and carefully took the bouquet from her hands, setting it on the side table.
“We can still walk out there and tell them together,” he said. “No blame. No big scene. Just… the truth.”
Nancy wiped under her eyes, careful of the makeup. “What about the planner? All the work she put in—”
“She’ll understand,” Steve said, and the way his voice softened on the words made Nancy look at him more closely. She didn’t ask. She just squeezed his hand once.
“Okay,” she whispered. “Let’s go be honest.”
They walked out of the room side by side, not as a bride and groom, but as two people who had finally stopped pretending. The string quartet faltered. Guests turned. Steve found Robin near the front and gave her a small, apologetic shake of his head.
Across the city, at almost the exact same moment, two almost-weddings quietly ended.
And somewhere in the middle of both of them, the same unspoken name sat heavy in two different chests.
─── ⋆⭒˚.⋆✿⋆⭒˚.⋆ ───
Robin found Steve still in his tux, standing alone near the empty ceremony arch while the last confused guests filtered out.
She grabbed his arm, eyes wide and urgent.
“Holy shit—I can't believe you two did that. I have to tell you something important though. She went to city hall today. With Eddie. They were getting married. Like, for real this time. I didn’t know until an hour ago and I couldn’t reach her and I—”
Steve didn’t let her finish.
He was already running.
─── ⋆⭒˚.⋆✿⋆⭒˚.⋆ ───
City hall was quiet when he burst through the doors. The clerk’s office was empty. The only people left in the hallway were Eddie Munson, slumped on a bench with his head in his hands, and your father sitting beside him looking equally gutted.
Steve skidded to a stop in front of them, breathing hard.
“Where is she?”
Eddie looked up. His eyes were red. He didn’t even look surprised to see Steve.
“Gone,” he said simply. “Wedding didn’t happen. Her dad stopped it. I stopped it. She left about twenty minutes ago. We don’t know where.”
Your father studied Steve for a long second, something knowing and almost gentle in his expression.
“You’re the one,” he said. Not a question.
Steve didn’t answer. He just dragged a hand through his hair, already turning for the door, mind racing.
Then it hit him.
The park.
The tree.
He was gone before either of them could say another word.
─── ⋆⭒˚.⋆✿⋆⭒˚.⋆ ───
You were already there.
Sitting on the wide branch of the old oak, knees pulled up, ivory dress wrinkled and dusty at the hem. You’d come straight from city hall without thinking, like the tree was the only place left that made sense.
You heard footsteps a second before you saw him.
Steve stepped into the little clearing beneath the tree, still in the tux, bow tie undone and hanging loose, chest rising and falling like he’d run the whole way. When his eyes found you, the relief that broke across his face was so raw it almost hurt to look at.
Neither of you spoke at first.
He climbed up carefully, the same way he had the night of the outdoor movie, and sat beside you on the cushioned branch. Close, but not touching. The air between you felt electric and fragile all at once.
“Robin told me you were at city hall,” he said quietly. “I went there. Your dad and Eddie… they told me what happened.”
You let out a shaky breath. “I couldn’t do it. Any of it.”
“Me neither.” Steve’s voice was rough. “Nancy and I called it off right before the ceremony. We both knew. We’ve known for a while.”
You finally looked at him. Really looked. The freckles. The perfect hair that was a mess for once. The way his eyes were shining.
“I’m in love with you,” you said. The words came out steady, even though your hands were trembling. “I’ve been in love with you since the hospital. Since you danced with me right here. I tried so hard not to be. I pushed you away and I told Nancy to marry you and I almost married someone else just so I wouldn’t have to want you. But I do. I love you. And there’s nothing holding me back anymore.”
Steve’s breath hitched.
He reached up and cradled your face with both hands, thumbs brushing under your eyes like he was afraid you might disappear.
“I’m in love with you too,” he said, voice breaking on the words. “So much it scares me. You’re it for me. You’re the only person I’ve ever looked at and thought, there you are. I don’t care how messy this has been. I don’t care about the timing or the almost-weddings or any of it. I just want you. However I can have you. For as long as you’ll let me.”
You leaned into his touch, eyes falling shut for a second as the weight of everything finally lifted.
When you opened them again, Steve was already leaning in.
The kiss was soft at first—careful, almost reverent—then deeper, all of the restraint and almosts and quiet longing pouring into it. His hands slid into your hair. Yours fisted in the lapels of his tux. The branch swayed gently beneath you, leaves rustling like the whole tree was exhaling with relief.
When you finally pulled apart, foreheads resting together, Steve let out a quiet, disbelieving laugh.
“Hi,” he whispered.
You smiled against his mouth, tears still clinging to your lashes.
“Hi.”
Nothing was standing between you anymore.
Just the two of you, the old oak tree, and the rest of whatever came next.
Summary: This is a story about two idiots in love but being too shy to admit it.
Warnings: fluff. yearning. friends to lovers. love confession. kissing. no use of y/n.
_________________
Steve had loved you for so long that he couldn't remember a version of himself that didn't.
It had started with sharing crayons in kindergarten and with scraped knees. With building blanket forts in your living room and with you insisting his dinosaur lunchbox was cooler than yours.
Somewhere between then and now… It had become impossible to imagine life without you in it.
You knew every version of him. The loud eleven-year-old. The painfully awkward middle-schooler. King Steve. The Steve who cried in your driveway after everything with Nancy fell apart. The Steve who came home from Starcourt bruised and exhausted but smiled the second you opened your front door.
You had seen every broken piece. And somehow you stayed anyway. Which only made him love you more.
Unfortunately… Steve Harrington was a complete coward.
Because every time he decided Today's the day to tell you how he really feels, you'd smile at him— and suddenly he'd think,
Don't ruin this.
So he never said anything.
You had loved Steve for exactly the same amount of time. Which was deeply inconvenient.
You'd watched girls fall for him since middle school. Watched him date and get his heart broken.
Watched him somehow become kinder every single year. He was still Steve. Still the boy who held your hand on the first day of kindergarten because you'd both been scared.
But now… Now he looked at people like they mattered. He remembered birthdays. Opened doors. Walked you home without ever making it seem like an obligation.
You loved him. And you were tired of pretending otherwise. Tonight you were finally going to tell him. If he didn't feel the same…at least you'd know.
And you could die from embarrassment, but hey at least know.
The party was busy enough that nobody noticed your hands shaking. Someone had hung strings of lights through the trees. Music drifted across the backyard. People laughed around bonfires.
Steve looked unfairly handsome standing by the drinks table. Sleeves rolled to his elbows. Laughing at something Dustin had apparently shouted from across the yard.
Your heart immediately betrayed you. Just tell him. You could do this.
You had survived monsters. Interdimensional nightmares. Vecna. Surely you could survive one conversation.
You started walking toward him. Halfway there, someone else reached him first. A girl... very pretty and very confident.
She laughed at something Steve said. Stepped closer. Too close.
Your feet stopped moving. Steve looked… confused. The girl smiled and said something you couldn't hear.
Then she reached up. One hand on his arm. And leaned in.
Your heart dropped.
Steve immediately took a step backward. Gentle and instinctive.
"I'm sorry," he said. He smiled apologetically and shook his head. Pointed vaguely across the yard. "I like somebody else."
You never saw it. Because by then… You were already gone.
Steve looked toward where you'd been standing, but all he saw was the empty spot. His stomach fell straight through the ground. "…No."
He scanned the crowd. Nothing. Then realization hit him like a truck.
She saw that. "Oh, you've got to be kidding me."
Without another word, he was running. Ignoring whoever called his name. Ignoring Robin shouting, "Steve?!"
He knew you. You wouldn't stay. You'd walk straight home, busy overthinking. Because every time something would be messed up, you needed to move. Walk it out.
You walked whenever you needed to think.
Please. He thought. Please don't have gone far.
You'd almost made it home before you heard footsteps. "Wait!"
You wiped angrily at your eyes.
"Hey!"
No. If you turned around… You'd cry even harder. And you refused to do that in front of Steve right now.
Unfortunately… Steve had apparently decided that was no longer your choice.
He caught up with you, slightly out of breath. Stepping in front of you just enough to make you stop. "You left."
You looked anywhere but at him. "I was tired."
"You are crying."
"I have allergies."
"In October?"
"…Weird allergies."
Despite everything Steve almost smiled. Almost. Then he saw your face.
Red eyes and wet cheeks. Trying so hard to pretend you were okay. His heart cracked clean in half. "Hey." His voice became impossibly gentle. "Why are you running from me?"
You laughed. A broken sound. "You should probably ask that girl."
Steve blinked. "Fuck, I knew you saw that."
"She seemed nice."
"No. I mean I dont know and I dont care." Steve ran both hands through his hair. "You dont understand."
"I thought…"
Steve stepped closer.
"She kissed you."
"No she did not."
"I saw ..."
"You saw her try."
You frowned. "…Try?"
"I moved." Your eyes slowly found his. Steve looked almost desperate. "I told her no."
"You did?"
"I told her…" He smiled helplessly. "…that I liked somebody else."
The world seemed to stop. "Oh."
"Yeah. And then I saw that you were gone and that really scared the shit out of me, sweetheart."
The way the nickname sounded so soft from his lips almost made your legs give in. “What? Why?"
Steve looking at you like he was trying to memorize your face. "I thought…" he admitted quietly, "you left because you didn't feel the same."
You stared. "What?"
"I figured you saw me turn her down."
"I didn't."
"I know that now." He laughed softly. "I figured you realized who I meant."
Your heart began to pound. "…Who?"
Steve looked at you as if the answer had always been obvious. "You."
Your breath caught.
"You." He nodded. "It's always been you."
You couldn't speak. So Steve kept going. Because if he stopped now… He never would again.
"I've loved you since we were kids." He gently brushed his thumb over your jawline. "I tried telling you in eighth grade."
"You did?"
"You got excited because you found a frog."
You remembered. "I did find a frog."
"You made me hold it."
"It was a nice frog."
Steve laughed despite himself. "It peed on me."
"It was nervous."
"So was I."
Another laugh escaped you. God. This had to be his favorite sound.
"I tried again after graduation."
"What happened?"
"You hugged me."
"…That stopped you?"
"You have no idea what a hug from you does to me."
Your cheeks flushed. Steve smiled. "I've loved you through every selfmade haircut."
"Oh no."
"Even the bangs."
"I knew those were a mistake."
"They were."
You swatted his arm but he caught your hand. Without thinking. His smile softened. "I've loved every version of you."
The teasing faded from your expression.
"So…" He took one careful step closer. "If this is about me kissing somebody else…" He gently squeezed your hand. "I can't."
You looked up at him. "Why?"
"Because I'd spend the whole time wishing she was you."
A tear slipped down your cheek. This time… It wasn't from heartbreak. "I've been in love with you since kindergarten."
Steve blinked. "…Seriously?"
"I thought you only saw me as your friend."
"I thought you only saw me as yours."
You both stared. Then, at exactly the same moment— "You've got to be kidding me."
The words came out together. You laughed and so did Steve laughed. The kind of helpless laughter that only comes after realizing you've both spent years making the exact same mistake.
"You mean…" You smiled through happy tears. "We're both idiots?"
"The biggest." He stepped closer again. "So…"
"So?"
"Can I finally kiss the girl I've been in love with for practically my entire life?"
You pretended to think about it. "Hm." Steve waited dramatically. "I suppose…" You smiled. "…it's about damn time."
He didn't hesitate again. Not this time. His hands cupped your face so gently it made your heart ache. The kiss was soft. Warm and familiar somehow…
Like coming home after being away for far too long.
When you finally pulled apart, Steve rested his forehead against yours. "You know what?"
"Hm?"
"I really wish you'd told me sooner."
You laughed. "I was literally on my way to tell you back there."
"…Seriously?"
"Yep."
"What stopped you?"
You gave him the most unimpressed look imaginable. "Some blonde girl trying to kiss you."
Steve groaned. "Oh, I am never forgiving her."
You giggled. "I think everything worked out okay."
He looked at you. Really looked at you. The girl he'd loved since finger paints and playground swings. The girl he'd almost spent a lifetime believing he couldn't have.
Then he smiled the biggest smile you'd ever seen. "Yeah," he whispered. "It really did."
He slipped his fingers through yours as you turned toward home. This time neither of you had to wonder if the other one felt the same.
And Steve decided that, after all those years of waiting the walk home had never felt so short.
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Thank you so much for reading! All interactions are highly appreciated
summary: You only meant to write an article about the fall of King Steve Harrington. Somewhere between the interviews, the experiments, and the late-night drives, you forgot he was supposed to be your story — not the boy you fell for. ⟡ LOOSELY INSPIRED BY "HOW TO LOSE A GUY IN TEN DAYS (2003)"
pairing: steve harrington x reader
w/c: 13k (I lost the plot)
a/n: i literally fever dreamed this so im hoping it comes across good because i totally blanked out writing this haha 😭. this is all brain and vibes. thank u for reading, and reblogs are appreciated!! enjoy <3
content warnings: angst, slow burn-ish tension, emotional hurt/comfort, bittersweet longing, (one bed trope kind of), observant/highly sensitive reader, mentions of nancy wheeler, miscommunication, interrupted kisses, public confessions, steve harrington being sad and soft (yay!), reader being a stubborn high school journalist, hopeful ending, etc
By the time the final bell rang, the newsroom already smelled of hot dust, old paper, and somebody’s disgusting coffee of choice.
It was not really a newsroom, not in the way you truly wanted it to be. It was a converted classroom at the end of the English hall with two long tables shoved together, a crooked bulletin board covered in deadlines, and a mimeograph machine that coughed ink onto everyone’s fingers. The overhead lights hummed with a flat, yellow patience.
Outside the narrow windows, Hawkins High School settled into its usual afternoon disorder; lockers slamming, sneakers squeaking, and boys yelling too loudly because silence made them feel small. Typical behaviors.
You had spent three nights on your article.
Three nights with your notes spread across your desk, your pencil worn down to a nub, and your mother calling from downstairs that dinner was getting cold. Three nights reading through library clippings about school funding, college acceptance rates, and the way girls in Hawkins were politely encouraged toward “practical” futures while boys with half of your grades were told they had potential. You had interviewed four seniors, two teachers, one guidance counselor who had smiled at you with the concerned tenderness adults reserved for girls they planned to ignore.
It was practically perfect.
You had written it carefully. Not angrily, though you had to admit that anger had lived under every line you wrote, warming the words from dpwn below. You had made it clean, sharp, and correctly sourced. You had imagined your byline on the front page. You had victoriously imagined holding the paper in your hands and seeing proof that all the hours you spent noticing things nobody asked you to notice had finally become something real.
The reaction to it, unfortunately, had left much to be desired.
Mr. Walsh held the pages in one hand and adjusted his glasses with the other. His voice was polite enough, but it held that familiar detachment.
“It’s very thorough,” he noted with a faint nod of his head towards the article.
You knew you were absolutely dead, or rather, any hopes of seeing a cover page was.
Across the table, Mark Ellison leaned back in his chair, tapping his pencil against his front teeth. His article was a soft little thing about “school spirit making a comeback,” built around three quotes from basketball players and one sweeping paragraph about how Hawkins High had ‘survived difficult years by pulling together’. He had written it during study hall. You had watched him do it while eating chips from a vending machine. You had also watched him pay more attention to his stupid Walkman than his article.
Mr. Walsh then gave Mark’s pages a fond pat from beside you. You had to physically stop yourself from letting the steam errupt from your expression, and curled your fingers into your palm. You didn't, however, hide the scoff when the teacher told the boy his next words.
“I think this is what we need above the fold this week. Something upbeat. The town’s had enough heaviness, don’t you think?”
The room moved on. You couldn't even get another word in before everything decided it was time to start up again. That only served further in building up your irritation.
Someone asked about the sports column, someone else complained that the typewriter ribbon was fading again, and most annoyingly, Mark grinned without trying to look too pleased, which made him only look worse. You sat very still with your hands folded over your notebook, your nails continuing to press little moons into your palms.
“Maybe we can run yours inside,” Mr. Walsh added, almost kindly. You hated how he made it seem like it was somehow charitable of him to do so. After all, his excuses were always relatively the same. “It’s strong work. Just a bit… intense for the front page.”
Intense.
You looked down at your notes until the letters blurred into a block of black.
That was what they always called girls who didn't make unfairness easier to swallow for others. Intense. Difficult. Ambitious in a tone that meant unattractive. Boys were driven. Boys were promising. Boys were leaders, even when they had to borrow a pencil to write a paragraph about pep rallies. Even when half of them couldn't even write clean enough for legitimacy on papers of loose leaf.
You smiled promptly then because you knew how to make adults comfortable. You weren't so sure your face was able to hide your growing annoyance, though. It was practically humiliating in its steady routine, but you'd learned over the years Mr. Walsh was as stubborn as the donkey he was named after.
“Sure,” you gave a small exhale alongside your smile, your tone was too light to be breezy and far too sweet to be real. “Inside is fine.”
Inside was not fine.
At lunch, you stabbed your fork into a pile of cafeteria mashed potatoes until they lost their shape entirely. With a cheek resting in hand, the sight of the sullen plate reflected your own inner turmoil. Conversational chatter flattered about around you.
“He said it was intense?” One friend asked, sitting across from you with a carton of milk she had not opened. “Everything's intense to that guy. Mr. Walsh wears the same brown sweater every day and once called Pat Benatar ‘too confrontational.’”
“He didn’t say Mark’s article was intense,” you muttered with poorly disguised disgust. Your brows twitched together and your eyes flicked up in a roll. The moment replayed in your head, Mark getting far too much praise for something he spent the better half of an hour listening to Olivia John-Newton, though he'd refuse the accusation vehemently if questioned.
“That’s because Mark’s article has the emotional range of a gym sock,” your friend Stacey said from beside you. She had bright blue eyeliner, a talent for gossip, and the terrifying confidence of someone who had never once doubted she deserved to take up space. You admired her for that. “You need something undeniable.”
“I had something undeniable.” the response came almost petulant, and if you were still holding onto the leverage that you had a shoe-in for an article, you'd have refrained from saying it.
“No,” Stacey clicked her tongue, pointing her plastic spoon at you. “You had something true. That’s different. Truth makes people sleepy unless there’s blood on it.”
Leah made a face, looking down at the strawberry jam on her cake slice, and promptly pushed it forward. “Please never go into medicine.”
You tried not to laugh and failed halfway, the sound catching in your throat before it could become anything that felt good. For a moment, there was something besides that sense of annoyed displacement.
The cafeteria around you churned with noise. Trays clattered, and somebody at the far end started chanting for reasons that probably involved a dare and milk coming out of someone’s nose. You let the spark of clear judgement light through your expression as you looked over to the basketball table occupied its usual territory near the windows.
They were loud enough to own the room without having to ask, a result of years of indulged arrogance, you could only assume. Tommy H. was telling a story with both hands, his laugh sharp and performative. A few juniors watched him the way freshmen used to watch Steve Harrington.
Steve did not sit with them anymore, that was something practically everyone noticed since last year.
He sat two tables away from the old crowd, alone with a slice of pizza gone stiff at the edges. His hair was still perfect in the way that seemed less accidental the longer you looked at it, all careful lift and feathered brown shine.
His shoulders filled out his yellow polo, but they were rounded inward today, one hand pressed against his temple while he stared at a textbook he did not seem to be reading. There was a bruise near his jaw, faded yellow at the edges. His eyes kept moving toward the basketball table and then away before anyone caught him looking.
King Steve, deposed but still dressed for court.
Stacey followed your gaze. Her mouth curved before you could shove it away off of her.
“If you want the front page,” she brightened up with a revived vigor, “you have to write about the biggest tragedy in Hawkins.”
Leah, unfortunately, looked too.
“Oh Stace’, I don't think that's a good—” she was swiftly cut off by your mutual friends voice dipped in delight
“The fall of King Steve,” Stacey finished and you gasped at her.
You snorted without ceremony promptly, her words did less to entice you and more to amuse you. If there was anything you couldn't find yourself caring less to write about, it would be about anything involving Steve Harrington. “That’s not an article.”
“It is absolutely an article! It’s got everything. Popularity. Masculine fragility. Hair products.”
Leah leaned forward then, lowering her voice. She looked besides you two with a more hesitant approach, her eyes flicked to the table a few feet away from you. “Also maybe just leave him alone? He looks one spilled pudding cup away from a complete collapse.”
“That’s the point,” Stacey had taken to promptly ignoring the two of you. “What happens when a guy builds his whole identity on being wanted, and then people stop wanting him?”
The words landed before the joke did.
You looked at Steve again. He dragged a hand through his hair, then immediately seemed to regret it, patting the front back into place with a reflex so automatic it made your chest pinch in spite of yourself. If you were to compare it to anything, it would be akin to a kid being filmed for a birthday party. It held the familiar awareness of being all too stiff, even in the singular companionship of just himself.
A whole identity built on being wanted.
The cafeteria lights flashed across the windows as usual. Outside, October had pulled Hawkins into a cold, colorless stretch of afternoon. The trees beyond the parking lot shivered with half-bare branches, leaves gathered wetly along the curb. It was a domestic background that you've memorized in routine these past four years.
You pulled your notebook from your bag suddenly. Stacy's words had flicked on a small lightbulb in your brain.
Leah's brown eyes blinked wearily on you as the next few minutes were received in silence from your side, only the sound of pen to paper filling your ears. “Oh, God. Stacey, you broke her.”
You rolled your eyes at that.
“I inspired her.” Stacey gave a self assured correction, her fingers going up as if it would further solidify her point.
There was no real attention paid to your friends for the next whirlwind of time, and you clicked your pen every so often in an attempt to soften the strokes of ink.
At the top of a previous blank page, you had written:
The Lifecycle of a High School God: why a crown crushes a king.
Stacey leaned over your shoulder and let out a delighted gasp.
“That is disgusting,” Leah immediately. Her eyes widened and she threw you a look that your promptly avoided.
“It’s not, it's anonymous… and a work in progress,” you murmured in weak retaliation, already thinking faster than you could write. “Stacy's right, it'd be a good article. How we make gods out of boys and then act shocked when they don’t know how to be human.”
Leah’s expression softened in a way you did not want to look at too closely. Realistically, you realized this might be a bit too cruel. But you were already on your verge, and no matter how absurd the idea had seemed before – you could admit held strong potential.
“And Harrington?”
You watched him push his tray away untouched, and your gaze was less detached than you had been before.
“Steve is the case study.”
You told yourself that made it cleaner, and you also told yourself a lot of things that week. Things that in hindsight, might’ve been necessary to proceed with caution.
—
You approached him after basketball practice on a Wednesday, when the hallway outside the gym smelled most strongly of rubber, sweat, and floor wax. Most of the team members had already spilled toward the locker room, their voices echoing against the cinderblock walls. Steve came out last, a gym bag slung over one shoulder, and damp hair falling looser than usual around his forehead.
He looked tired enough that the sight of him made your plan wobble. It was one thing to think this out carefully and assume control, and it was another to actually act it out.
Then, finally, he glanced up and saw you waiting by his locker.
You pushed off the wall before you could think better of it. Any further delay would only serve in faltering you more.
“Harrington,” you called out firmly, letting your voice carry the boldness you had practiced in your mirror. Though, you weren't entirely sure you properly hid the wince that came with addressing him like that. “I’ve been looking for you.”
His eyebrows lifted then, that was what you'd noticed first. His face seemed to twitch in a complicated way, his face didn't hold a smirk, not right away at least. Surprise was there first. Real surprise, open and unguarded enough to make you feel briefly cruel. Your tried not to ponder on him for too long.
“For me?” his voice held a sincere curiosity that had you irritated at repeating yourself.
“No, the other guy with gravity-defying hair and a tragic aura.”
That got him.
A breath left him, almost a laugh, you saw the movement happen in real time. He leaned his shoulder against the locker, trying to recover his balance by looking casual. His thumb hooked into his belt loop. His shining eyes flicked over your face, landed on your mouth for half a second too long, then jumped back up.
You really had to refrain from the scoff that wished to escape you.
“Tragic aura,” he repeated, his eyes twisted in a regained stability. His voice was more awkward than you remembered it being, strangely that'd been your first true thought of him. “Wow. That’s, uh… that’s new.”
You gave a low hum in response. “I’m a journalist. We notice things.”
“Is that why you’re here? To notice me?”
The line should have been smooth. You could actively hear him reaching for an older version of himself, the one who would have tilted his head and let girls do the work of melting. But his voice caught on the last word. Not much, but it was just slightly enough that you felt something in you feel successful.
You smiled, the formation stretched across your face as you cleared your throat softly. “I need help.”
Now, he seemed a bit confused, his head tilted slightly in a way that reminded you of the neighborhood poodle. You let a smile turn slightly genuine at the semblance found between the two.
“With?”
You stepped closer finally, and you stepped close enough to see the faint line where his tan had started to fade at his throat, and certainly close enough to catch the smell of clean soap beneath sweat and cologne.
“Understanding someone.” the words came out a bit hesitant, not at all like the suaveness you had practiced by standing in front of your bathroom mirror.
His gaze sharpened a little. Instinct took over him well. “Someone?”
“A boy,” you said quickly. Whatever it was that appeared in your face seemed to have gotten to him.
You saw the ghost of King Steve ever so slightly stir in movement in him. His mouth curved, one corner first, then another. It was almost unfair how quickly he could change expressions, and even worse so, that each expression of his seemed to cause your nerves to fray.
“Well, lucky for you, I happen to be an expert.”
Your eyes flickered to his, though not before you let your gaze find the small details of his face that were only exposed up close. “You do?”
“Former expert,” he amended, and something dry entered his voice. “My credentials are under review.”
You laughed before you meant to. You couldn't help it at the moment. It came out too genuine and his face changed with it. Not entirely dramatic, though. He just went still, the way people did when a sound touched some starved part of them. His own pools of hazel seemed to be too flittery for someone you were sure had done this plenty of time before. Still, against your better judgment, you kept staring into his eyeline.
You should have written that down later, a faint voice echoed through your head. Not the eyes part, you quickly denied and even got upset at yourself for supplying the image. You really should have been memorizing any small part he'd exposed, even more of the behavior you were out to conquer.
Instead, you remembered the exact angle of his shoulder against the locker, the wet curl slipping toward his eyebrow, the way he looked at you with confusion and cautious interest and a kind of bruised hope that had no place in your article.
You tilted your chin, chewing on the bottom of your lip by pure instinct. By now, you were close enough to have to tilt your head up to meet his gaze. You blinked, breaking whatever power he seemed to have had momentarily to have you swept up and cleared your throat.
Your voice was back to being confident again, since practice made perfect. “Pick me up Friday?”
His mouth caught in a faint sputter, you could tell you had caught him completely off guard. Faintly, as if it were a bodily response, you softened your smile into something smaller, tilting up at him for the silent moment.
“Friday,” he said after a beat. Steve’s voice seemed to have taken a breathless edge now. It did something all weird and wonky to you. “Yeah. I can do Friday.”
“Seven.”
“Seven,” he repeated, and appearing to remember he wasn't an apparition, Steve's body seemed to lean toward yours as he continued. “Where are we going?”
You hadn't thought that far. Instead of deciding on the spot, you bit the inside flesh of your cheek as an amused exhale escaped your lips.
“You’re the expert, Harrington. Impress me.”
You walked away before your nerve gave out. You could feel him watching you down the hall, could feel the whole plan beginning to take shape behind your ribs. You had even taken to looking through your sosters old magazines for inspiration. Hot and cold. Interest and withdrawal. Private sincerity, public disruption. All those where supposed to be tactics to reuse interest in relationships, but you figured that the same could also be said for an indirect character study.
Observe the subject under changing social conditions. Note responses. Analyze, that had been your plan split up into groups.
You were very good at making terrible ideas sound academic.
—
On Friday, his Beamer waited by the curb under a sky the color of sad, wet cement.
He got out when he saw you, which you hated because it was exactly the kind of performative gentleman routine you had expected, and also because he did it without checking if anyone was watching. That complicated your observations, causing a flutter to go through you. He wore a brown leather jacket over a striped shirt, jeans that fit him too well, and that expensive cologne that seemed built into the mythology of him.
Ralph Lauren, Stacey had said with the authority of a girl who knew these things and lived vicariously through others. It mixed with the leather and the faint sweet smell of cherry chapstick when he opened the passenger door.
"Aren't you going to get in,” Steve gave you a wounded look. His head was tilted down slightly towards you and it seemed like he was more offended you had even made an attempt to reach for the door.
You looked at the open door in his hand, feeling less like a mastermind and more like a nervous girl. “Do you do that for all your dates?”
Steve's hand went up to run the back of his neck as he let out a weak exhale, the ghost of a smile on his face. “Only the intimidating ones.”
You slid into the car after that, tucking your notebook deep inside your bag where he would not see it. The seats were cold through your skirt. The dashboard glowed amber when he turned the key, washing his face in soft light as the engine rumbled awake.
He didn't take you to Enzo’s, where everyone went to be seen. He drove past the diner, past the arcade, past the bright places where Hawkins pretended it had a pulse. The town fell away into dark stretches of road bordered by skeletal trees and damp fields. Eventually he pulled into a small overlook above the park, where the swings moved gently in the wind below and the streetlamps made small gold circles on the path.
“This is your idea of impressive?” you couldn't help the baffled tone that took over as you asked, but your voice had taken a softer lift.
He shrugged, fingers resting on the steering wheel. “You said you wanted to understand someone. Hard to do that while watching someone like Tommy try to fit an entire breadstick in his mouth.”
“You’re not friends with him anymore?” you didn't really need the answer, everyone practically knew the answer by now. But still, it's different to have someone tell you something by choice than admit knowledge by association.
His thumb moved along the stitching of the wheel. Back and forth. Back and forth.
“Not really.”
“Why?”
He gave you a sideways look. “Wow. Straight to it.”
“I told you. Inquisitive.”
“Right.” He exhaled through his nose, not quite laughing. The smile on his face was soft in its hesitancy. “I don’t know. Stuff happened. I got tired. He got meaner. Or maybe he was like that, and I just stopped thinking it was funny.”
The words fell between the two of you in a hush.
You watched him in the dashboard light. Away from school, he seemed younger and older at once. Without the noise around him, without the audience, the space he occupied seemed to changed shape. He rubbed a hand over his face, then caught himself before he ruined his hair and dropped it to his lap. He did that a lot.
“You okay?” he asked suddenly, breaking you out of your trance. You quickly gave a few hard blinks to refocus, you seriously had to stop doing that around him.
“What?”
“You’re shivering.”
Were you? You hadn't noticed much besides him. “I’m fine.”
“You’re obviously not fine.”
Before you could answer, he shrugged out of his leather jacket and draped it over your shoulders. The weight of it settled around you, warm from his body, lined with the smell of him so completely that your next breath came slower than the last.
“You’ll get cold,” you said, a frown finding its way on to your face. It was a cold evening in Hawkins, the chill more prominent than usual. Your worry was quickly shoved down by him.
Steve seemed to just fidget by habit now. The muscle in his forearms tensed and gained your attention as his arms crossed against his chest. He gave a slight shove and his smile was all teeth and unintentional charm.“I’m tough.”
Now, you didn’t even bother to hide your scoff. A challenging twist of your brow appeared and you pointed out the faults in his words. “You just complained about the heater not working.”
“I’m selectively tough,” his grin stayed and was backed up by a small chuckle.
You looked at him, and he looked back, and something quiet opened in the car.
The conversation shift quickly after that. You asked questions you had meant to use later. What did he want after graduation? He did not know. Where did he want to go? Away, maybe. Or nowhere. What was he afraid of? He made a joke at first, something about being left unsupervised with fireworks, and then he went quiet long enough for the windows to begin fogging at the edges.
“I don’t think I’m good at anything,” Steve told you after that. He said it plainly, almost casually, which made it worse. It was easier to dissect him clinically when he didn't wear that expression that caused you faltering to gain back control.
You shifted toward him, eyes dragging over him. They seemed darker with the setting say, but somehow they had something stored away that made you want to push back on his words. “That’s not true.”
He gave you a look that unnerved you. “You don’t know that.”
You didn't let it get to you. You pushed through because for some reason, you felt like you couldn't stay silent. “I know you noticed I was cold before I did.”
The words had you faltering from the truth it held.
Steve gave a wry exhale, his head tilted back against his seat with his eyes on you. “That’s not a skill.”
Your voice felt firmer now. “It is, actually.”
He stared out through the windshield. Below, the park sat empty and silvered by frost. You couldn't really focus on that, not when Steve sat besides you looking less like the king you knew and more like a boy you wanted to know. You couldn't even process the words before Steve continued in. “Nancy used to say I had good instincts when I got out of my own way.”
Nancy.
There it was. The bruise beneath the bruise. It wasn't one you were exactly shocked to hear, the whole sum of Hawkins new about the romance between the Wheeler daughter and him. Still, you weren't going deny the tinge of discomfort you felt at the mention.
What? Why were you uncomfortable? You immediately shut down the thought. A hard clearing of your throat helped stabilize yourself. You had to remind yourself that you weren't here for whatever reason that your body seemed to mistake. Instead, you focused on the task at hand, or at least tried to. You should have leaned in then when his head bowed slightly. You should have gathered the quote, traced the wound back to its social function, and built your thesis brick by brick.
You settled on something else, because strangely, anything else seemed harsh. “She sounds smart.”
“She is.”
The words carried no bitterness. That threw you off. You'd have known guys to turn completely hostile after break-ups, and you couldn't even remember a time where someone from Steve’s circle stayed genuine for the moment. You'd completely expected him to talk badly about her, about the situation, and frankly just about anything and everything that came up. To place blame in everything that never warranted it.
You'd have felt more comfortable if he reacted like that. He didn't notice your turmoil.
“She’s also right,” he added, turning back to you. His hazel eyes mesmerizing in its softness. “I get in my own way a lot.”
You wanted to ask how. You wanted to ask why. What came out was a stupid joke about how his hair probably counted as a separate obstacle. “How, by looking in the mirror and not finding your face under all that hair?”
His laugh wasn’t loud, it certainly was not the cafeteria laugh you'd have known, not the old one that announced him from across the room. It was small and startled and breathless, given to you without polish. It didn't help you when he leaned back against the seat, smiling at the roof of the car, and your pulse betrayed you completely.
What happened next made you feel less like you were playing him and more like he was playing you. When he reached over to tuck a loose piece of hair behind your ear, he did it slowly enough that you could have stopped him.
You didn't. You didn't stop him.
You told yourself it was because you were playing an act.
His knuckles brushed your cheekbone, working in breaking you out of your mind. Steve’s hand lingered there, his thumb moving once over your skin, it barely had any pressure. He watched the place he touched instead of your eyes, and the careful uncertainty of it burned through you harder than confidence would have.
For one long second, you wanted him to kiss you so badly that you forgot why you were there.
Then a car passed on the road behind you, headlights cutting through the windows, and both of you shifted apart.
Steve cleared his throat, his head turning to look out the driver's side. He seemed to have looked aware of just how vulnerable the moment was, and didn't know how to navigate it. “So. Did I help?”
You looked down at his jacket wrapped around you. It made feel warm in ways you almost wished it didn't.
“Yes,” your voice came out all wrong, small and breathless. “You did.”
You wrote three pages that night and hated all of them. It was as frustrating as it was complicated. The problem was not that Steve failed your test. You found that out quickly.
The true problem was that he kept passing in the wrong direction.
—
In public, you performed coldness with the sharp dread of a person setting a match to her own sleeve. Or at least, you truly hoped it looked like that.
Monday morning, Steve found you near your locker with a bright, almost boyish smile that made you glance away before it could hit directly.
“Hey,” he leaned besides you near the locker. “I was thinking maybe after school we could—”
You shut your locker too hard.
“Can we not do this right now?”
His hand, halfway extended toward yours, stopped in the air. He dropped it quickly, trying to make the movement look natural.
“Do what?” his voice had you wanting to falter. God, since when were you this weak?
“This.” You gestured between you, impatient and vague. “The whole thing.”
People moved around you in the hallway, a current of denim jackets and textbooks and perfume. Someone bumped your shoulder. Before you could stumble, Steve stepped closer, placing himself between you and the rush of bodies. It was an unconscious movement. Protective without announcement.
Your stomach turned. You bowed your head to ignore looking into his enrapturing eyes. A warmth came instinctive in your stomach standing in such close proximity with the boy in front of you. You tried to push it down.
Keyword, tried.
His voice dropped, his head leaning down to yours in an attempt to meet your gaze. “Hey. What did I do?”
His voice had you feeling weak already. “Nothing.”
“Okay, well, I’m getting a pretty strong not-nothing feeling here.”
You looked past him toward Stacey at the end of the hall. She watched with wide eyes, silently mouthing something that might have been commitment or abort. Her hands moved in front of her in a weaving gesture. You weren't sure what she'd been trying to convey, so you only assume she wanted to to keep going.
You crossed your arms, forcing your tone to turn cold and far away. No words really landed cleanly in your head for inspiration, so you took the first ones that would stick. “Maybe you don’t have to be so… much.”
Steve blinked.
His jaw tensed with movement, your eyes drew to the action by unfortunate reflex now. He glanced down, then back up, searching your face with a focus that made your skin feel too thin and your act feel too hesitant.
“I’ll fix it,” the words came quietly. You were sure your expression was dumbfounded, sure you had been acting like this on purpose – but what did he gain from doing that? You were so rapidly expecting a textbook fit. Instead, you got patient murmurings. That was worse than any possible anger.
“I don’t need you to fix it.”
“Then tell me what you need.”
His breath warmed your forehead. His hazel eyes showed no sign of any true hostility. They were worried and confused, and there was something heartbreakingly earnest in the way he tried to solve the version of the problem you had invented. You liked that. You liked that he seemed to act like that by instinct.
And so, because of that, you almost reached for him.
You willed yourself to iron quickly. Wetting your bottom lip, you finally looked up at him. eyes. The action had you remembering just why you were so hesitant to meet his gaze, having a look that could melt anything in them. Instead, you stepped around him and walked to class with your throat tight enough to hurt.
At lunch later, you made notes that took up new space in your writing notebook.
He responded to social rejection not with aggression but accommodation. Attempts repair. Shows confusion when expected script fails. Public status seems less motivating than personal connection.
You underlined personal connection so hard the paper tore.
Even detached on paper didn't feel right.
—
The next test, as the girls had dubbed it, was supposed to be funny. You were sure it was meant to be, but it still held an underlying issue. It was Stacey’s idea, though you were the one foolish enough to do it.
The party was at some fellow senior’s house on Maple Street, loud enough to rattle the windows from the street. Steve picked you up with his hair arranged into what could only be called architecture. He seemed nervous about the party in a way he tried to bury under commentary about the radio, the road, and the fact that you were late even though you had been ready for ten minutes and had simply stood in your room wondering when exactly you had become the villain in your own story.
It was a rough start to say the least.
When you got there, he came around to open your door.
You stood and tried not to let the deep inhale of breathe be heard. The last thing you needed was to look as nervous as you felt. And quickly after that, you took one look at his carefully styled hair, and before you could lose courage, reached up and ran both hands through it. A smile found its way on your face, practiced and teasing, mirroring the girl in the catalogue of your People magazine.
The brush through his hair wasn't gentle, although his hair certainly was. Seriously, you had to ask later on what his secret was.
The structure of its volume collapsed instantly, and Steve froze. His head still remained in its bowed position from where he leaned down from the passenger seat door of his car. His brows twitched together as your hands ran along his temple. You froze too, fingers still threaded into his hair.
For one second, you waited for the familiar snap. For the old King Steve to step forward with wounded pride and a cruel mouth. The porch light hummed above you. Inside, someone shrieked with laughter. His friends, or former friends, or whatever they were now, could see you from the living room window.
Steve looked at his reflection in the dark glass of the car. He let out a small sigh, and the familiar heart fluttering charming grin appeared on his face. Steve's eyes shut for a moment but his expression didn't falter, even as a series of laughter escaped him. The sound felt warm to you, and your body responded in turn.
“Better?” Steve then fluttered his pretty eyes back open, his head tilting with curiosity. “It was exhausting keeping that up anyway.”
Your hands fell quickly, your finger tips missing the way his hair felt against your skin instantly. The joke died so completely that you could almost hear it hit the pavement.
He glanced at you, the ruined hair falling soft around his face only enhancing him. “Does it look terrible?”
“No,” you denied, and it came out too quickly. You winced at that, a small noise escaped Steve.
His mouth twitched. “That was very convincing.”
“I mean it.” you did.
He looked younger again. Not smaller, exactly. Just less fully arranged. Another strand fell over his forehead, and you had the sudden, awful urge to smooth it back with care instead of strategy.
The party behind you roared alive, and Steve heard. His shoulders tightened, but he didn't turn toward them like you thought. He looked at you instead, waiting for your reaction, which somehow made you responsible for the whole fragile moment.
You reached up and fixed one piece of hair near his temple. Something in you liked doing that.
“There,” your voice was stronger now, and your smile had turned real moments ago. “Better.”
The smile he gave you was crooked and private. It really was nothing in comparison to the rest of the party, but it lingered. You spent the next few hours trying to get him to smile like that again.
You didn't take notes that night, or any of the other future nights.
You just remembered things instead.
You remembered the blue flicker of a movie screen across his face two nights later, when he sat beside you in the theater and kept his arm over your shoulders for the first half hour because that was what Steve Harrington knew how to do. Smooth. Easy. Practiced. Then, sometime after the second reel started rolling, his fingers stopped drumming against your sleeve and settled there with a hesitant weight, not claiming, only asking.
You remembered the way he drove with one hand when he was showing off, then switched to both hands when he told you about the time he forgot about his gym clothes and his coach made him wear an extra one two sizes too small. You remembered that he kept cherry chapstick in his glove box beside a flashlight, two old cassette tapes, and a receipt from a gas station outside Indianapolis. You remembered him stealing fries from your plate at the nearby diner and pretending to be wounded when you kicked his shin under the booth.
And in the next important memory, you remembered rain.
It came hard one random Thursday night, turning Hawkins into a blur of headlights and slick black roads. Steve’s house was empty in the way large houses could be empty even before you stepped inside. It was too clean, and far too quiet. The kind of place where expensive furniture sat untouched, waiting for adults who came home late and left early.
You ended up in his bedroom because the living room felt too much like a showroom for you.
His room was warmer than you expected, messier in an unapologetically human way. A baseball glove rested comfortably on the nearby dresser. Records stacked crookedly near the stereo. A half-open drawer with socks spilling out. Hair products lined along the bathroom counter with an intensity that might have been funny if it did not now seem faintly sad. Still, you had gotten a few quips out in hopes of cracking a smile from him.
The storm rattled the windows deeper into that even when conversations died down. You sat on the floor with your backs against the thick wooden frame of his bed, sharing a blanket that smelled faintly of detergent and his cologne. It was a familiar scent to your mind now. His knee pressed against yours beneath the fabric.
Neither of you moved away.
“I used to think this place was cool,” Steve had mentioned offhandedly after a moment, looking around the space of his room.
You didn't quite follow why his tone seemed far away, to you, his words were still holding up. “It is cool.”
“It’s big.”
Your head turned to face him, a hum on your lips. “That’s usually part of cool.”
He shook his head, the slight shake of his hair reminded you of how you missed touching it. You shook your head and focused once more when he spoke again. “No, I mean… it’s just big.”
You understood what he meant.
Near his large bedroom window, thunder rolled low over the town. The room flashed pale for a second, then settled back into the lamplight.
You rested your cheek against the edge of the mattress, warm eyes pouring into yours as he mimicked your actions. “Are your parents gone a lot?”
“Yeah.” Steve then picked at a loose thread in the blanket. His next words came out short and detached, so unlike the guy you've known. “Dad travels. Mom goes with him when she’s tired of pretending she likes Hawkins.”
You didn't like how his eyes dimmed. “And you?”
“I stay.”
The word sat between you.
He laughed once, it was without humor, and rubbed at his eye with the heel of his hand. His voice held that rasped edge that sent tingles down your spine. “God, that sounded pathetic.”
“It didn’t.” The reassurance came so quick it shocked you. You attempted to play it cool, repeating the words slower.
“It did.” He looked down at his hands, the same ones you found yourself wanting to hold without the premise of a lie. “I just… I don’t know what happens when this is over. School. All of it. Everybody keeps acting like we’re supposed to know.” You didn't know what to say, it was the first time you've seen him so visibly wrecked. “College, jobs, whatever. And I’m sitting there thinking—what if this was it? What if being King Steve was the only thing I was ever good at, and I wasn’t even good enough to keep it?”
Your chest tightened, it seemed like the world was laughing at you. Her he was, sitting on his bedroom floor besides talking about his insecurities all while you were actively trying to back on them.
The article was in your bag downstairs. A draft. A title. A guillotine made of clever sentences.
“Steve,” the name came of gentle from your lips.
He would not look at you, he kept staring at a spot on the floor.
“Nancy figured it out before I did,” he went on, his voice lower now. His shoulders carried his tension clear as day. “That all the stuff people liked about me was just… noise. Parties, basketball, the car, the hair. The Harrington house. I thought that meant something. Then it didn’t, and it was—”
He stopped and didn't continue any further. You knew the signs before it came, and the room quieted down.
His throat moved, a small, forcefully restrained noise finding its way out. The rain that thudded against his window filled the silence for him. And for you.
You reached for his hand quickly.
He looked at your fingers covering his, then turned his palm upward and held on. You opened your mouth to speak, but not much came out. His grip was still foreign to you, but it was different right now. It wasn't smooth, and it didn't feel like it held any kind of plan. His grip tightened once, almost too much to be soft, but then he quickly loosened it.
You shifted closer.
That was all it took.
He pulled you into his lap with a suddenness that stole your breath, then seemed to realize what he had done a second after doing it. His hands hovered at your waist.
“Sorry,” he whispered.
You settled there instead of moving away. Your own eyes were blown wide and mirroring his. You tried to speak but it came out all airy. “It’s okay.”
His breathing changed when yours did. Steve's eyes seemed to track your face, and the air seemed to turn into something deeper.
For a moment, neither of you spoke up again. He lowered his forehead to your shoulder,then to the curve of your neck, his breath warm against your skin. The response that you gave was instantaneous, a rapid rising and falling of your chest went through the warmth of your body. His hands gripped your waist through the blanket, not possessive necessarily, you thought it felt more like clinging. Tethering. The storm made the windows tremble. His hair brushed your jaw.
You lifted a hand and threaded your fingers into the back of his hair. The return of the welcome feeling was pleasant in your grasp.
He went still under your touch, and for a moment. Then he exhaled, deep and unsteady, and held you closer. Your faces were breaths away now, the bridge of his nose softly touched yours.
“Hey,” your voice came out weak. It was too soft to be teasing like you'd hoped.
Steve’s eyes softened instantly. You saw it happen. You saw the moment the small, genuine grin stretched across his face. His voice came back whispered, as if scared to break the moment. “Hi there.”
When he finally pulled back, his eyes searched your face with an openness that made lying feel entirely impossible. You knew he was about to kiss you. You knew that you really should stop him. You knew the truth should come out before his mouth touches yours, before this became another thing you had stolen under false pretenses.
But you'd been stupid, and so you didn't stop him.
The kiss began softly, almost carefully. His lips were brushing yours once before returning with more certainty. He tasted faintly sweet from the chapstick he pretended not to use. The kiss felt like it was bewitching your body whole. His hand rose to your hair, fingers sinking in with a restraint that kept breaking and returning. You gave a slight laugh against his lips before calming down. You felt him trying not to rush, trying not to take more than you gave, and the effort undid you more thoroughly than any practiced confidence could have. Because it was just so him.
You kissed him back.
Not for the article. Not for the headline. Not because Stacey would demand details or because Mr. Walsh would have to admit you knew how to find a story
You wanted to, you truly wanted to..
You kissed him because his hand was warm against your back and his breath caught when you touched his face. Because the room smelled of rain and leather and laundry soap. Because his mouth moved against yours with need and care tangled together, and your whole body answered before your conscience could organize a defense.
When you pulled away, his forehead rested against yours. The faint flush from his skin felt nice against yours
He smiled, small and dazed. You added that of the list of expressions you liked to see on him.
“Does this mean I’m helping with your boy problem?”
A laugh broke out of you, shaky and real. You pressed your face into his shoulder to hide it. With a lightness in you chest you lifted your head up as you rolled your eyes. Your hand moved on its own account now. It slid up to grasp the side of his face, your fingers sliding against the shape of his jaw.
“Shut up, Steve.”
His arms tightened around you, and his lips found yours once again. His own lightness expressed through the laughter that filled the echoing bedroom. "Ouch, you wound me."
For a few minutes, the world narrowed to the storm, his heartbeat beneath your palm, and the terrible knowledge that you had done something you could not write your way out of.
—
The article sat unfinished for two days.
You told yourself you would kill it. You also told yourself that you had time. Then you told yourself you would revise it.
So you sat in the newsroom after school, staring at the draft title until the faniliar letters turned cruel.
The Lifecycle of a High School God: why a crown crushes a king.
It sounded brilliant in the cafeteria. You distinctly remember thinking that. But now? Now it sounded mean.
No, mean was too light of a word. It felt cruel.
You pulled the pages from the typewriter, folded them once, and shoved them into your folder. You would tell Mr. Walsh you had changed direction. You would write something else. Anything else. A review of the cafeteria pizza. A profile on the marching band. A blank page with sorry written in the center.
The front page spot didn't seem so enticing anymore when the cost came so harsh.
You were reaching for your bag when Mark appeared in the doorway, looking over at you. You didn't bother to hide the deep exhale you gave, you whole body tensing on on instinct.
“Working late?”
You stiffened and corrected him. “Leaving, actually.”
His eyes dropped to the folder in your hand. You immediately shut the folder, not liking the look in his gaze. “Is that the mystery column everyone’s whispering about?”
“No.”
“So yes.”
You tucked it against your chest. You had truly no paitence for the boy. You had been feeling horrible all last night yesterday, well, even more so last night than usual. “Move, Mark.”
He held up both hands, smiling. You didn't like his smile. It was nothing like the comforting presence of Steve's. The thought only made your mood worsened. “Relax. I just wanted to see what was so important that Walsh was considering bumping my school spirit piece.”
“He wasn’t.” You wished you sounded as steady as you needed to, but the flicker in your voice betrayed you.
Mark noticed. Boys like Mark always noticed weakness when it benefited them. And Mark himself no doubt would revel in any chance of taking an empty shot at you.
“Come on,” he clicked his tongue in a way that made your blood boil from its condescension. “We’re all on the same staff.”
“No, we’re not.” You pushed past him quickly.
You did not know, however, that then one folded carbon copy had slipped from your folder and landed beneath the table, half-hidden by the trash can. You did not know Mark found it ten minutes later. You did not know he read it standing under the buzzing lights with his mouth slowly opening into the delighted shape of opportunity.
If you knew, you certainly wouldn't have lived through the reoccurring nightmare you've been having for the past few weeks.
You found out the next morning when Hawkins High came alive with your words.
Not the final version of your words, for it surely would've had a different result. It wasn't even the whole draft.
It was the worst version, the sharpest version.
The version written before you knew the way Steve looked when he gave away his jacket and pretended not to be cold.
Copies appeared on lockers before first period. Someone had run them fast and dirty, the ink uneven, the margins crooked. The title screamed from the top in bold type.
By second period, everyone had read it. By lunch, they were reading it aloud. You pushed through the hallway with your heart hammering so hard your vision pulsed at the edges.
A boy near the trophy case laughed. “Listen to this part—”
You snatched the page from his hand and you were sure the rhythm of your heart could be heard from miles away.
There it was.
Your article.
Your voice, sharpened into a blade that you couldn't even begin to imagine dulling.
The Lifecycle of a High School God: why a crown crushes a king
Every high school builds a throne, though no one admits to carrying the wood to make it. We vote with our eyes, our invitations, and our laughter at jokes that are not funny enough to deserve it. We create a boy and call him a king because it is easier than admitting we are the kingdom that is faulty.
The high school god is rarely born exceptional. He is assembled meticulously. A good car. A good face. The right jacket. The right table. Enough people saying his name in the right tone until even he begins to believe there is something sacred in being wanted. These continue to enforce how sincerity rarely makes the cut.
But worship is not love. Anyone will tell you that, and those who disagree would be dumb enough to face the consequences. Popularity feeds on performance, and performance rots whatever is underneath the layer given. A boy taught to survive by being admired will eventually mistake attention for affection, control for confidence, and loneliness for proof that everyone else has failed him
When a crown falls, what remains is often not a villain, but something more ordinary and more frightening: a boy with no language for himself beyond what other people once applauded and now isolate.
Hawkins High should ask why we keep making kings out of boys who do not know how to be human — and why we act surprised when the weight of a crown crushes them to dust.
You had written every word. It would have been easier to say that Mark embellished over your words, and exaggerated for journalist effect. But he didn't, you were the one to do that. It was the worst part of the draft he could have chosen, simply because of the fact that you had left out everything you saw after.
You had also left out every human thing that would have saved him.
You found Steve in the print room a few hours later. And before you could assume any sort of hope of a clean explanation, it was shot and dead in front of you. You almost wished he hadn't gone there.
But of course he would have gone there, and of course the place where your betrayal had been made public still smelled of ink and metal and hot paper. It was proof of the now posted article that you didn't even want out. Faintly, you could hear something loud with the clacking press that someone had forgotten to turn off. Steve stood near the long table, one of the copies in his hand, the page trembling slightly between his fingers.
He looked up when you entered and you almost wished he hadn't.
His eyes were red.
Not crying, not exactly. Worse. It made your heart drop and panic spike up into you. It seemed he intended to hold back so hard that the effort had hollowed out his face.
“Steve–” you didn't recognize your voice. It was so desperate and and pleading. You opened your mouth and tried to stammer out any explanation that came into your head, but there was nothing you found coming to mind.
“Steve, please! Just listen, I–” He interrupted you and laughed, but it shook you. It wasn't like the laughter you had come to live, this one had no warmth in it. It was so unlike him and you hated it. You hated causing that.
“Was any of it real?”
You stopped short, any explanation does quickly in the tip of your tongue.
He held up the article for you to see. As if you needed to be reminded of what you'd have done, a small breath part of you mouthed off bitterly.
“When you looked at me like that. When you stayed with me. When you—” His voice caught, and he looked away, jaw tight. You immediately took to shaking your head, the implication of his words just. Because they were true. And because they weren't. “Was that just material for your front page?”
“No!”
“No?”
“It started—” You hated yourself before the words finished forming. “It started as an article, but—”
His face changed and your heart seemed perpetually lodged into your ribcage. There were some truths that did not deserve the dignity of a full explanation. Steve just exhaled out sharply, his head finally facing you. The reaction wasn't what you wanted, you wanted–no, needed to explain yourself.
He nodded slowly, eyes dropping to the floor. Steve didn't give the you the chance to continue. “Right.”
“Steve, I was going to stop it. I didn't even turn it in! I swear, I wasn't going to hand it over. Mark found an old draft, and he—”
“Don’t.” He looked at you then, and the quiet in his voice hurt more than shouting would have. The word held so much that you froze on instinct. Your eyes stung viciously as you opened your mouth but nothing came out. “Don’t make this about him.”
Your mouth closed then. You felt utterly helpless, which might have been deserved. You desperately wanted to tell him everything, wanting him to understand that it was real – is real. But your eyes, wide and frantic, just froze. He stepped closer, the paper crumpling in his fist.
“Everyone else wanted to see me for my status,” Steve began with a sharp inhale. You felt the stinging turn more prominent in your eyes, you tried to take a step forward but that was rejected when he almost flinched back two steps himself.. “The car, the parties, the game. Whatever. I got that. I was stupid, but I got it.” His breath shook. Steve’s voice cracked nearing the end, and that was the last thing you heard before your vision blurred into spots. “I thought you were the only one who didn’t care about it.”
“I did! No, I mean–I do, you have to believe me, Steve.” Your voice was surely pathetically small. Everything else seemed to turn into static silence in the empty printing room and you desperately needed to fix it. You wanted to, but you felt so utterly unsure of your next steps. You reached for him on instinct.
Steve flinched back.
The movement was small. Instinctive. As if his body no longer registered you as a comfort, and that split something open in you. You felt the first few tears fall from your lashes, each blink dropping tiny little pearls. Steve made a noise you couldn't properly translate, his eyes were on yours but they held a thousand words and emotions in a single look. His own hand twitched open and shut before being brought up to bury itself in his hair, Steve then forced his eyes shut and his head turned to the side. He couldn't decide what hurt more, being hurt by you, or seeing you hurt.
He was the one that came back sharp and strained.
“Turns out,” Steve’s voice was so rough, it could have been unrecognizable. You opened your mouth immediately to shut down whatever he would say, but he beat you to it. “you just used me for a headline.”
The press clattered behind him. A sheet slid loose and fluttered to the floor.
“I’m sorry,” you whispered, your voice cracking and stinging from feeling utterly defeated. Because he was right, you did. You did get to know him for a chance at a headline, so that was why you could only apologize. But you wanted nothing to do with that stupid article, and regret washed over you at the thought of him thinking none of it was real. Because yes, it was messy, but it was real for you. “But–fuck, Steve... please you have to understand that–” you were cut off before you could even continue.
He stared at you for a long moment, and you could see the part of him that wanted to believe you fighting with the part that had learned too many times what wanting cost.
Then he turned and walked out.
The room didn't become empty when he left, there was no relief that came with him leaving. And the room didn't become calmer in his disappearance; instead, it filled with him.
The absence of his cologne. The missing warmth of his jacket. The ghost of his hand at your cheek, careful and uncertain, before you had earned any of it. All of the little things that were so present just a moment ago were gone and let the physical trail of what happened.
You were left alone with the faint clacking of the room's machinery. And for a moment, you were so ready to run out to try and plead. To explain, to tell him every complete thing he was missing in hopes of him understanding. But you couldn't do that, not when you were already reason enough that he was hurting all over again.
With a loud curse, you found yourself feeling completely lost in a room that you've only ever compared with a haven.
—
For two days, Steve Harrington became visible to you in a way he had never been as king.
You saw him at his locker the next Friday morning, hollow-eyed and quiet, pretending not to hear the whispers. You saw him in the cafeteria, sitting with a younger boy you didn't know for exactly six minutes before the younger boy said something animated enough to make Steve almost smile. Then Steve caught sight of you across the room and the almost vanished.
That hurt like a stab to the heart.
Then came the other little things that made you feel significantly worse. He stopped coming to the parking lot after school until the buses had left. He stopped looking down your hallway. He stopped being available to your guilt.
You tried to corner Mark. He denied leaking it with the loose, oily confidence of someone who knew proof mattered more than truth. Mr. Walsh gave a speech to the staff about journalistic ethics while refusing to meet your eyes. Stacey apologized three times, then stopped because the apologies had nowhere to land when she held you while your sobs filled your bedroom. Leah sat beside you at lunch without talking much. That was the kindest thing anyone did.
By Friday afternoon, the newsroom felt smaller than it ever had for you. More suffocating.
The printing press sat under the window, still and waiting. Dust turned in the late sun. Your original ambition lay around you in stacks of paper and headline sketches and discarded layouts.
You looked at the front page proof with Mark’s article on school spirit and felt nothing.
Not disappointment. Not anger.
Nothing.
That truly scared you more than pain did.
You had thought giving up the article would be enough. You had thought killing the story would count as a moral act. But the story was already alive, crawling through Hawkins High with your fingerprints around its throat. You didn't know what to do, the words were already there for everyone that listened.
You sat at the typewriter.
For a long moment, you did not move. Shortly after a fit of tense silence, you finally rolled in a clean sheet. The keys struck hard enough to ache in your fingers.
This time, you did not write anonymously because you were clever. Or because you were trying to be witty or cruel. You wrote anonymously because the confession was not meant to redeem your name. It was meant to give him back his.
By the final bell, the flyer was everywhere, curtesy of your desperate and frantic efforts.
It wasn't approved, it certainly also wasn't polished. Id didn't become formatted with Mr. Walsh’s careful little rules. It was just a single page copied until the machine jammed twice and your hands were black with ink that you couldn't scrub off
Students grabbed them from the tables, from the lockers, from the floor where they skidded under shoes. After all, no one loved potential hidden stories more than Hawkins High
You didn't wait to watch them read. That had been the least of your priorities. There was more important things that you cared about than who read a piece of your work now, and he had been gone from your sight long enough.
So, you ran.
The hallways exploded around you with the annual end-of-week chaos of Hawkins High School. Lockers slammed open, someone yelled about a shared ride, and a freshman dropped an entire stack of books and cursed with such feeling that a teacher shouted his name from twenty feet away. The sun poured through the front doors in a white-gold sheet, way too bright after the fluorescent dimness of the hall.
Steve was not at his locker. He was not outside the gym. He wasn't by the trophy case or the pay phones or even the side entrance near the band room. Your lungs burned by the time you shoved through the heavy double doors and stumbled into the afternoon.
The parking lot sprawled ahead of you, shining under the cold sun. Cars backed out in crooked lines. Girls shouted through open windows. The air smelled of gasoline, damp leaves, and somebody’s cigarette. It was all nothing that you cared about. The one thing you did seemed to be missing from the scene. Your eyes squinted in the light as it traveled across the parking spaces of the lot, failing to find what your heart desperately wanted to see.
At the far end, the BMW’s engine roared to life.
“No,” you breathed with pure adrenaline rushing through your veins. Steve sat behind the wheel, one hand on the gearshift, his profile hard through the windshield.
Before you even knew it, you started running.
It was stupid, rushed, and entirely filled with desperation. Your shoes slapped the asphalt. You heard Leah faintly calling your name, but you didn't turn back. The wind tore at your hair. Your bag bounced painfully against your hip but you paid it no mind. You cut between two parked cars and nearly slipped on loose gravel.
“Steve!”
He did not hear you, or pretended not to. You gave a groan of loud annoyance, but it still did little to deter you.
You reached the car just as the reverse lights flashed.
Without thinking, without dignity, and definitely without any plan beyond the awful certainty that if he drove away now something inside you would never forgive you, you threw yourself in front of the driver’s side door.
The car jerked to a stop and Steve froze behind the wheel.
Through the glass, his beautifully bright eyes widened. Hurt, shock, and stubborn pride moved across his face so quickly you could barely separate them. Then his mouth tightened. You could tell he wasn't expecting your actions, and you couldn't exactly say you were the most sane person now.
The window rolled down slowly, the crank turning under his hand with mechanical, agonizing patience.
“What are you doing?” his words came loud and filled with unresolved frustration. Steve’s voice was rough. Thick in its tension. He wouldn't look straight at you. You refused to settle for that, the days spent with the familiar feeling practically left you numb and empty.
“Go back inside,” Steve’s eyes and words seemed to contradict each other. He shifted back into looking into his dashboard instead of you. “Go celebrate your front page.”
You shoved the crumpled paper through the open window. It landed in his lap.
“I don’t care about the stupid article, ” you said, breathless enough that the words broke apart. “I don’t care about the front page. Just–read it. Please.”
His jaw flexed. For a second, you thought he would throw it back at you. Then Steve looked down at the copy of printed words.
You watched his eyes move over the page.
Correcting mistakes:
There was an article circulating this week about a king. It was clever in the cruel way people mistake for intelligence when they are too afraid to admit they have been wrong.
The girl who wrote it thought she was exposing a system. She thought it clever and brilliant. She told herself the boy at the center of it was an idea, a symbol, a lesson with good hair. She thought distance made her fair and judicial. She thought observation made her honest.
Then the boy gave her his jacket when she was cold.
Then he admitted he was afraid of being forgotten, and the girl realized she had been so busy studying the crown of his that she had ignored the weight of it on his own head.
The first article was right about one thing: Hawkins High School makes kings out of boys and then punishes them for not knowing how to be anything else. That wasn't the mistake here. But it was wrong to confuse a boy’s damage with his character. It was wrong to turn trust into evidence. And it was wrong to take the softest things he offered and sharpen them for public consumption.
This is not an apology meant to earn forgiveness. This is meant, instead to fix the record.
The boy was never a god.
He was kinder than any story allowed him to be, and he was kinder than she deserved.
Steve stared at the paper.
His chest rose and fell under his yellow polo. His rings glinted where his fingers gripped the page. Around you, students slowed. A few openly stared. You could feel the parking lot turning toward you with the appetite of a place that loved spectacle.
For once, you really, truly, couldn't care.
Steve’s eyes lifted to yours, and you could weep just from that alone. “Why should I believe you?” he asked.
The question was quiet enough that no one else could hear. You stepped closer, hands gripping the edge of the open window. Your own voice want any better, it was loud and messy, and undeniably real. A breathless bount of laughter escaped you “Because I was playing a game and I lost, Steve.”
“I lost.”
His throat moved but you hadn't seen it.
“And I lost you,” you sighed with your head hanging low in shame near the open window, voice shaking now, “and I regret it. I was supposed to push you away, but every time you held my hand, every time you looked at me like I actually mattered, I—”
Your breath caught, and you forced it down in order to continue.
“I don’t care about King Steve. I don’t care about the crown or the table or the stupid front page. I want the guy who gets cold in his own car because he gave me his jacket. I want the guy who pretends he doesn’t use cherry chapstick. I want the guy who worries too much and fixes his hair when he’s nervous and acts tough until somebody he cares about needs him to be gentle.”
The words were embarrassing in their vulnerability, and it didn't help that Steve just stared at you. But even small battle wins were tremendous to those who were cautious. The defensive hardness in his face trembled.
You leaned closer, not touching him. Though God knew you wanted too. But you wouldn't take what he had not offered.
“I just want you,” you said and the words hung there in the bright afternoon.
For a second, nothing happened. That scared you. Because if even though all of this, he didn't believe you, you were sure that would break you entirely. You didn't understand how looking at him now, with his beautifully enrupturing genuine gaze and constellations of freckles so faint kissing his skin with blessings, you could have been so stupid.
Your panicking monologue was cut off when Steve let out a breath that broke halfway into a laugh.
It made you falter momentarily. You wouldn't exactly describe it as fully happy or clean. Instead, it was more ragged. Disbelieving. Full of relief that came so sudden it seemed to knock the strength out of him. He looked down at the crumpled printed again, then back at you. You saw the exact moment when whatever he had been holding together for two days came apart in his hands.
“You’re insane,” Steve held his head in his hands. The heels of his palms dragged to his eyes, and that when you noticed the concealed redness there. Your panic was a quick guest arrival as your hand hesitantly went over the threshold of the open window and found its spot tangling through his hair at his temple.
Your voice came out soft. “I know.”
“You ran in front of my car.” Steve's was returned in a disbelieving laugh. The sound on instinct made you smile.
“I know.”
“I could’ve hit you.”
You weren't quite so sure you believed that. And it seemed like neither did he fully either. The both of you stared through the air between you “You're not exactly driving donuts with your Beamer in a school parking lot, Harrington. You were going four miles an hour, max.”
His mouth twitched and your heart found its comfort. There he was. That was the boy you wanted to see, the one who was sincere and silly and all of the words in between.
The moment didn't truly feel fixed all the way, and it didn't feel so easily forgiven so neatly that the hurt could be vanished beneath a kiss. But there, beneath the bruised pride and the red eyes and the stubborn set of his jaw, was the boy from the park. The boy from the rainstorm. The boy who had laughed quietly when nobody asked him to perform.
He shoved the car door open.
You barely had time to step back before he was out, hands catching your waist. Steve lifted you clean off the pavement, and a startled sound escaped you as your hands grabbed his shoulders.
“Steve—”
“Shut up,” he rasped, but his voice broke around the smile. Then kiss that came next didn't surprise you. But it certainly didn't prepare you for it either.
It was not exactly graceful, but it was completely and utterly impassioned.
Someone in the parking lot whooped. Someone else yelled something that sounded suspiciously like “Harrington!” A horn blared because a car was stuck behind his open door. The reminder of just how crazy this whole situation was roared in your ears.
Steve didn't seem to hear any of it. You had a feeling that he did, but just pretended he didn't. That made you smile on reflex against him.
His hands held your waist with desperate certainty, then slid up your back, pulling you close enough that the cold afternoon disappeared between you. Your fingers tangled in his hair, ruining it again, and he made a sound against your mouth that was half laugh, half relief. He tasted the same sweet cherry chapstick you started buying for yourself and breathless warmth. The kiss carried every unsaid thing neither of you knew how to organize yet. Anger. Want. Hurt. Forgiveness beginning somewhere far off and walking slowly toward you.
When your feet touched the ground again, you were dizzy. It was a good dizzy, and the pounding in your side was a welcome pleasure now.
Steve rested his forehead against yours, breathing hard. His hands stayed anchored at your hips, refusing to let you drift away. Up close, you could see the faint details scattered along his neck, the tiredness under his eyes, and the careful hope he was trying not to show too quickly.
“You really printed that?” The question broke you out of your stupor. You were still so dazed from his touch that you distantly found yourself nodding. Your hands refused to leave their spot in reaching for him now that there wasn't a lie justifying it.
“Over Mark’s stupid school spirit thing?”
Your words came mechanical, as if offended he'd even question it. “Technically under it. Around it. On top of some of it.”
“I made a stupid amount of copies.” The confession came paired with you momentarily dropping your hands where they were wrapped around him to hold up the black ink stains on your fingers.
His smile spread, crooked and real enough to hurt. And you swore that it was the most beautiful sight in the world.
“Good.”
You laughed weakly, your hands finding their way back into sliding to the back of his nape. “That’s what you took from the public confession?”
“I’m processing.” His thumb moved along your jaw, slow and familiar. “Also, I liked the cherry chapstick line.”
“I hoped you would,” you felt like a cat relishing in caresses. The smile that mirrored his came quick and teasing on your mouth. His eyes stayed on yours, and his smile softened at the edges.
“You’re a terrible writer.”
Your brows lifted in instinctive defensiveness of your craft. “Excuse me?”
He brushed his thumb beneath your chin, eyes bright with that old Harrington charm, gentler now, and clearly worn in rather than performed.
“You didn’t even come close to losing me.”
The ache in your chest loosened all at once.
It would not be so easy for you to say it was gone, you would still have to apologize without speeches. He would still have to decide what trust looked like after being turned into copy.
But Steve was standing in front of you with his hair wrecked by your hands and your confession folded against his car seat. He was looking at you, really looking, not the way a king looked over a crowd, but the way a boy looked at the girl he was still willing to let close enough to hurt him.
You rose onto your toes with a soft shake of your head and grin. “Just shut up and kiss me, Harrington.”
His grin flashed.
“Yes, ma’am.”
This time, when he kissed you, the whole parking lot blurred into sun and noise and the smell of gasoline warming on asphalt. His hands were still careful. Yours were not. You held onto him with ink-stained fingerspads and a heart that learned how to be true.
