I’m just existing at this point in my life … also this is seriously just a Joe keery (and all his character roles) account at this point.. pearl jam will forever be my #1 .. in my 40’s from Melbourne Australia
dryhumping steve in the squawk van (2k) [smut]
steve teaches you how to use your voice in the bedroom (1.9k) [smut]
PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE ! (3.2k) [fluff]
the worst part about hating steve is that he loves how mean you are to him (1.5k)
by @lovebugism
steve gives his curious girlfriend her first hickey (1.2k) [fluff]
by @bruisedboys
you missed the memo (5.6k) [fluff] [angst]
by @suprclark
i think we're alone now (2.6k) [fluff]
by @rimtrbl
steve looking after you (1k) [fluff]
let somebody love you (14k) [fluff]
summary: To you, he's always been Stevie. Until one day he's just Steve. He isn't handling the change well.
wc: 2.5 k
warnings: lovesick Steve, reader is overly fond of nicknames, meddling kids, tooth-rotting fluff
a/n: I am absolutely losing my mind over the new season, please feel free to send Steve thoughts/requests my way <3
“Hey, Steve?”
The yelling that had filled the entirety of Steve’s living room for the past ten minutes ceased. His heart started beating out of his chest. There was no reason to get all twisted up about it, that is the name his parents gave him. Except, you were so sweet, and everyone had a nickname. Everyone, but especially him. He’s your Stevie. Well, not strictly yours, as much as he’d like to be.
You would drop the others’ nicknames when you were tired, or when you had a headache after a long day. Dustin was no longer Dusty-Bun, which you’d gleefully stolen from Suzie. The ‘Y’ was dropped from the end of Mike. Steve could count on one hand the number of times he’d heard you call his best friend ‘Robin’ instead of ‘Robs’. But always, without fail, he was ‘Stevie’.
He’d been Stevie when your respective parents had brought the both of you to the company Christmas party and you were the only two there below the age of 30. He’d been Stevie when you found him shamefully cleaning up Tommy’s graffiti on the front of the theater, Stevie when you saw him from across the mall, face beaten to a pulp and there was no one else to pick him up. And he was Stevie every single time that he crawled in through your window after a nightmare or when he needed someone to sit with him in the aftermath of another concussion.
Max was still sitting on the floor in front of you as you diligently weaved her hair into a braid, eyes looking as far up as they could to catch a glimpse of you. Robin was hanging upside down in her typical arm chair, and the other kids were tangled up in a pile on the rug. But without fail, every eye in the room was boring into you. Steve watched you tie off the braid in an elastic and jump a bit when you looked up, squirming under their scrutiny. You blinked, confused. “What?”
Oh God, you didn’t even realize. You hate him now and you don’t even know it.
Robin was the first one to break her trance. “You called him Steve,” she said, her finger pointing at you accusingly as she sat up straight in the armchair. Steve’s heart, which was already doing double time, picked up the pace. He loved her, but Robin was the last person he would’ve chosen to try and sort out this mess.
Your head tilted to the side of it’s own accord. “That’s his name?” Max turned towards you, head already in her hand.
“Riiight,” Robin said, eyes darting between the two of you. “Right! Okay, yes.” She nodded her head slowly, as if trying to convince herself.
Steve could see Max’s smile threatening to break into a grin, and Dustin looked dangerously close to snarking off. He couldn’t let it go on like this, someone was dangerously close to blowing his poorly maintained cover.
Steve snatched the pile of VHS tapes off the coffee table and flipped through them. The Thing, The Exorcist and The Shining? He was never letting Robin escort the kids to Family Video without him again. Last movie night, you’d all watched Nightmare on Elm Street and you’d nightmares for a week. It wasn’t that he minded you waking him up, but hearing your voice shake over the phone made his chest tight in a way he would do almost anything to avoid. “Executive decision, we aren’t watching any of these.” He announced, tossing the tapes on top of the tv and kneeling down to dig through the entertainment cabinet.
For once, he was thankful for the chorus of groans and teenage whining from the couch. Anything to break the tension. Steve chanced a glance you and was content to find you giggling with Max and El. Crisis somewhat averted. He grabbed Pretty in Pink off the stack of John Hughes tapes he’d stashed in the back of the cabinet and popped it in. If anyone asked, he’d claim they were his moms. He’d bought them two towns over after you came into Family Video with your heart set on it only to find the shelf empty.
He flopped down on the couch beside you in this usual spot, mindful not to sit too close. If you were mad at him, he didn’t want to make it worse. You gave him a strange look, but El quickly distracted you by asking to have her hair braided as well. The trailers played softly in the background while the tv casted a cool glow across the room. Steve was thankful you were distracted, because he couldn’t stop watching you out of the corner of his eyes.
You smiled at the top of El’s head, unfazed to be missing the beginning of your favorite movie. He wracked his brain, trying to figure out what had caused you to drop his nickname. He’d been on time picking you up from work, but even when he’s been occasionally late you hadn’t minded in the slightest. You’d seemed fine last night on the phone when you’d called to make sure that he’d gotten home okay. He was in the middle of replaying the short conversation you’d had when he opened the door when your hand found his and your head settled on his shoulder. El had rejoined the pile of teenagers and snacks on the rug and you were right back where you belonged.
“You okay?” He asked quietly, leaning so close his lips almost brushed the top of your head. Your concentration on the tv didn’t break as you hummed a ‘hmm?’ back to him. Steve smiled despite himself. “You okay, honey?”
His heart shuddered when he realized a nickname of his own had slipped out. A quick glance around you confirmed that you were just as focused on Andie making her prom dress as you had been thirty seconds ago. You nodded, adjusting so that you could nuzzle further into his bicep, your grip on his left arm growing tighter. “I’m fine, Steve.” Your voice was muffled, but Steve still felt his stomach drop.
Steve didn't realize he’d spent the whole movie worrying over whatever must’ve done to upset you until the credits roll and the kids are gathering up their blankets and pillows from the floor. He started to stand up to chauffeur everyone home, but you weren’t following suit. In fact, your lashes were brushing the tops of your cheeks and your breathing was deep and steady. You’d fallen asleep on him.
Mercifully, Robin was already corralling the kids out of the house, confirming that she would walk them to the Wheeler’s. “Talk to her, Stevie!” She calls from the front door before shutting it behind he. Steve winced, glancing down at you to confirm that you hadn’t woken up. If you hadn’t been dead to the world on his chest, he would’ve given her an earful.
He felt like he was going to be sick from all the whiplash. You were so unbelievably normal today. You were sweet with the kids, laughing with Robin and unable to last through an entire movie without falling asleep. It all checked out. And still, he was ‘Steve’. His head fell back against the sofa, and he fought the urge to groan. Suddenly, he was tired. Surely it wouldn't hurt to rest his eyes for a second.
Steve woke up to the sight of you about to slip out the front door. “What’re you doing?” He asked, his voice heavy with sleep.
You froze with the door half open, as if he’d caught you with your hand in the cookie jar. Your eyebrows scrunched together and your lips parted in an ‘o’. “Just, I didn’t realize I fell asleep,” you said, your hand still grasping the handle of the Harrington’s front door. “Felt wrong to wake you up,” you shrugged.
Steve scrambled over the back of the couch, nearly falling when his foot caught on one of the kids’ blankets. A strangled cry of “Wait!” Came out shakily as he managed to catch himself before falling face first into the carpet.
“Oh my god, Steve!” You laughed, doubling over at the waist.
Usually, the sound would cause the butterflies in his stomach to kick up. But there it was again. ‘Steve’. He gently took your hand off of the door handle, shutting the door behind you. “We’ve gotta talk about this, honey.” His thumb was rubbing soft circles around your knuckles, and when he noticed what he was doing, he couldn’t bring himself to stop.
You leaned back against the door, ducking down in order to catch his gaze. “Is everything okay?” Steve could feel his cheeks turning pink, and it was suddenly very difficult to meet your eyes.
He took a deep breath, and leaned his free hand on the door behind you. “You’ve been calling me Steve all day.”
“Oh, that.” Your eyes are wide, and if he’s not mistaken, you’re pouting.
It’s one of the cutest things he’s ever seen and he can’t help it, he’s grinning. “Yeah, that.” Maybe you don’t hate him after all. He squeezed your hand once, and then threaded your fingers together. “You’re breakin’ my heart here.”
“I just,” you started to explain and then paused, taking a deep breath and gathering your courage. “Didn’t wanna embarrass you.”
Steve’s hand slid down the doorway to rest on the side of your neck. “Now where’d you get a crazy idea like that?” the tip of his nose was nearly brushing against yours. “Thought you were mad at me all day, honey.”
You blinked up at him, suddenly feeling woozy. You had always been affectionate with each other, but something about this felt different. “When I was visiting you at work the other day?” Steve nodded, doing his best to be patient. “I, well…” you weren’t sure how to get the words out. “I heard the kids laughing at us, and I just. I don’t know. I guess I got shy.”
Steve was holding himself back from rolling his eyes. Those little shits managed to get in the way of things even when they weren’t in the building. “I’m sure they weren’t laughing at you, honey.”
Embarrassed tears begin to well at the corners of your eyes. “I’m pretty sure.” Steve’s hand gently cupped your cheek, his thumb brushing away a stray tear that managed to escape. “They were giggling, and I thought it was just over a movie or something,” Steve nodded, his hand not leaving your face. “But then I heard Dusty say ‘she doesn’t even know’ and they all took turns saying… well. They were all saying ‘Stevie’ in high voices. And I don’t even sound like that!” You winced, hearing your voice pitch up at the end.
“When have you ever cared what the kids think? Hell, when have I ever cared what they think?” He was laughing, but it didn’t feel unkind. You could tell he wasn’t laughing at you.
“And you always tell them to shut up if they call you Stevie. I thought maybe you didn’t like it anymore.”
You hesitated, the reality of the situation really hitting you for the first time. Steve had you trapped between him and the door, one hand intertwined with yours and the other making lazy strokes across your cheekbone. And he was hurt that you’d stopped using his nickname. One that you have specifically heard him telling the others that they weren’t allowed to use. Did he-? No.
“I was so worried.” He said, voice barely a whisper.
“About what?” Your asked gently, matching his volume.
“Thought I’d screwed it all up. Your Dusty-Bun is always insisting I’m going to mess this up. Guess he got in my head.” Steve’s forehead rested against yours, his eyes fluttering shut.
Oh. Maybe he did. “Mess what up, Stevie?”
His grin was blinding, despite his eyes remaining shut. “Say it again.” You felt like your face was on fire, and your heart was doing summersaults in your chest. A swarm of butterflies was causing a ruckus in your stomach. Your eyes fell shut, and you tried to pull away. Steve’s hand slid from your cheek to find the back of your neck, the his other hand leaving yours so that his thumb could run along the end of your eyebrow. “Please,” he was practically begging, and not one part of him had managed to feel ashamed of it.
Your hands found his forearms, needing something to cling to. “Stevie?” You couldn’t wrap your head around this. It was like you had all the pieces but they wouldn’t fall into place. Your eyes peak open, and the next thing you know, Steve is smoothing out the space between your brows with his thumb.
“You don’t know how hard it’s been for me,” his inhale is shaky, and loud to your ears. “To not do that constantly.” His eyes were soft in a way that you realized had been more and more common lately. “Wanna kiss you so bad, honey.” Steve watched as your eyes went wide, but you didn't pull away. You’re processing, and he has been working on his patience for a good long while now.
Moments feel like a lifetime before you nod your head, just once. Up and down and so sure. Steve mirrored you, his nose bumping gently against yours before he was leaning in.
You would’ve expected fireworks, big explosions that made you go weak in the knees. You got something better. Steve’s arms wrapped around your middle, molding you to him, and it felt like coming home. He was gentle at first, giving you a moment to adjust. And then your arms found their way around his neck, your fingers tangling in his hair, and he couldn’t help it anymore.
You didn’t know how long you were backed up against the door, but you were sure you would’ve happily stayed for a few more hours. And you would have, if it weren’t for the banging from the other side of the door. In seconds, Steve had swept you behind him and plucked the bat that sat in the umbrella stand near the door.
“Steve, man! I don’t care if you’re asleep I left my walkie.”
Steve sighed, his shoulders deflating as he propped the bat up against the wall. “We don’t have to answer it,” he whispered, hands at your waist again.
You laughed, forehead resting against his shoulder. “Stevie, don’t make him suffer.”
Steve grumbled something that sounded suspiciously like “he’s never suffered a day in his life” and before planting a kiss on your temple and throwing the door open. “Henderson, you’re lucky she loves you.”
Dustin rolled his eyes, shouldering past his friend. He had the decency to give you a sheepish look on his way to the living room. “Where’d you leave it, Dusty-Bun?” You asked, Dustin called something back, but you were distracted by Steve playing with the hem of your sweatshirt.
“You waited months, a couple more minutes won’t kill you, hot-shot.”
Steve groaned, his forehead meeting the space between your neck and your shoulder. “It’s sweet you think it’s only been months.”
synopsis: you can’t shake the sharp sting of jealousy when you catch your boyfriend, steve, engrossed in conversation with his ex, nancy wheeler.
warnings: anxiety, jealousy, emotional intensity, over thinking, retroactive jealousy, mild sexual jokes, strong language, trauma references, romantic tension.
word count: 2.8k
There should be many things occupying your mind right now.
Truly important things. Life or death details that deserve all of your focus as you stand inside WSQK, the old Hawkins radio station that has quietly become the heart of every plan for the crawl.
Maps cling to the walls like a second skin. Radios pulse with a low, steady charge along the tables. Flashlights rest in perfect rows, each one waiting for a hand to claim it.
The whole place hums with a nervous energy that settles at the base of your spine, a reminder that tonight is the hinge on which everything turns.
You should be thinking about the crawl itself and the way every step must fall into place if there is any hope of proving that Vecna is truly gone.
You should be reviewing your role in the plan, the position that keeps you beside Mike and Lucas as the assigned lookout for Hopper while he slips through the burn distraction and descends into the Upside Down.
Hopper is risking everything by entering the perimeter alone, and you are supposed to be watching the dark behind him for the slightest sign of movement.
Those are the thoughts that should be filling your head. Serious thoughts. Necessary ones.
But they do not.
Your mind is not on the maps or the radios or the tight pull of tension running through the room. It is not on the creature hiding beneath the crawl’s design, or the danger waiting on the other side of the gate.
Instead, your attention keeps drifting to something far less important and somehow far more distracting.
The only movement you can focus on is your boyfriend standing a little too close to his ex.
Steve stands at one of the central tables, rolling his sleeves to his elbows while Nancy points out a small circled note on the map.
The two of them speak quietly, too close, their heads bent over the same sheet of paper. There is space everywhere in this warehouse, yet they somehow occupy inches between them. Nancy gestures again, and Steve nods along, hair falling slightly over his forehead.
It should not bother you. It really should not.
Nancy is with Jonathan. Steve is with you. These are facts. Clear, simple facts that should repel every insecure thought pressing against your ribs.
But the truth is far more complicated.
Nancy Wheeler carries a presence that is difficult to ignore. She is intelligent, steady, and unflinching in moments when most people would fall apart. There is a quiet precision to the way she moves, as if her instincts have been trained by years of surviving things no teenager should survive. The light catches in her hair, and her expression stays calm even while the room pulses with nerves. She looks like she belongs here, in this place built on tension and fear, as though belonging is something she learned to master long ago.
And she and Steve share years you were never part of. Years shaped in the aftermath of breakups, reconciliations, monsters, and late-night plans that forged a bond no outsider can fully understand.
So when Steve leans over the map, jaw set, eyes bright with that familiar focus he gets before a fight, something shifts inside you.
A small, unwelcome drop in your stomach. A reminder that no matter how firmly you hold someone’s hand, there are parts of their history you can never touch. Jealousy is a quiet creature;; It slips in without your permission.
You try to focus. You try to breathe. You try to tell yourself there are bigger things at stake tonight than the way Nancy leans in or the way Steve’s mouth curves when he agrees with her assessment.
But the thoughts creep in anyway.
Thoughts you cannot block out, no matter how hard you try.
Thoughts that whisper you are not enough and never will be.
Thoughts that ask why Steve looks so alive when talking to her.
You swallow hard, fingers curling around the strap of your bag. Voices blur around you as Dustin argues about radio channels with Robin and Jonathan sets down another crate of gear. Everything is moving, and yet you feel painfully still, like your insecurity has frozen you in place.
Nancy notices you before Steve does.
Her eyes lift, quick and precise, the way they do when she is already three steps ahead of the room. She gives a small nod in greeting and shifts the map closer to you.
“You made it,” Nancy says, her tone focused but not unkind. “We were just finishing up coverage. You’ll be with Mike and Lucas tonight. Hopper wants eyes on the east access hall while he goes in.”
You shake yourself out of your spiraling thoughts and bring your attention back to the map. “Yeah. I’m here,” you answer, steadying your voice. “Just tell me where you need me.”
Robin waves from the corner, leaning against the table stacked with radios. “Finally. We were just debating who should take the binoculars tonight.”
Mike groans. “It’s not a debate. Someone has to watch the corridor, and I can do it.”
Robin rolls her eyes. “Yeah, but you’re slow. Lucas sees better. He should have them.”
Lucas crosses his arms. “Hey, I’m not that much better—”
Robin spots you glancing up and tilts her head. “Actually, Y/N should take them. You’ve got the eyes for this, not Mike.”
You give a small smile. “Alright. I’ll take them.”
Then Steve finally turns.
It is almost comical how fast his expression changes. One moment he is squinting at the map. The next, it is like someone switched a light on inside him. His whole face softens, the kind of warmth that makes the edges of everything else blur.
“There you are!” he says, as if you’d been gone for hours instead of minutes.
He crosses the room in a few long strides, weaving around Dustin’s equipment pile without hesitation. When he reaches you, his hands settle gently on your waist, thumbs brushing lightly over the small of your back. He draws you close, and you feel the familiar press of his chest against yours, solid and steady, the kind of hug that grounds you without a word.
He leans down just enough to press a soft kiss to your hairline. “Hey. You okay?” His voice is low and careful, carrying the weight of concern in a way that makes your chest feel too full. “Rough day?”
You nod, even though that is not quite the truth. “I’m fine.”
Steve pulls back enough to meet your eyes. “Yeah? You sure?”
You push a small smile onto your face. “Yeah. I’m sure.”
He watches you for a second longer, like he knows something is off but will not push it here in front of everyone. His thumb brushes once against your hip before he steps back.
Behind him, Dustin clears his throat. “Uh, Harrington, six sharp. You and her better not show up late, man.”
Steve shoots him a look and bumps his shoulder up. “Relax, Henderson. We will be here.”
“Six exactly,” Nancy adds. She taps the map again. “We cannot afford timing mistakes tonight.”
“Got it,” Steve says. His hand finds yours without him even looking, like muscle memory, like instinct. “We’ll see you all then.”
Robin salutes with two fingers. “Do not die!”
Lucas mutters, “Seriously, please don’t.”
You squeeze Steve’s hand as he guides you toward the exit, everyone returning to their tasks behind you.
The cool air outside the Square hits your face the moment you step out, a soft bite of Hawkins wind that makes your lungs feel a little fuller. Steve’s hand is warm in yours, solid and steady, and he lifts his free arm to wave back at Robin through the doorway.
“See you later!” she calls, already ducking back into the chaos.
Steve squeezes your fingers once, gentle but certain. “Alright, sweetheart. Come on.”
You follow him toward his car, the familiar rattle of his keys and the soft thud of his sneakers grounding you more than you want to admit. He reaches the passenger door first and pulls it open for you like he always does, a habit that never faded from him no matter how much everything else in your lives changed.
You climb in, settling into the seat that smells faintly like pine-scent napkins and whatever cologne he pretends he does not use. He shuts the door carefully before jogging around the front, sliding into the driver’s side with a small exhale.
The engine hums to life, headlights cutting through the dull late-afternoon glow. As the car pulls away from tge curb, Steve’s hand drifts to the center console, fingers brushing your knee before settling there with casual familiarity.
“So,” he starts, glancing at you briefly before watching the road again. “You’re with Mike and Lucas tonight. Hopper wants you guys covering the rooftop near the military checkpoint.”
You nod. “Yeah. Nancy told me.”
“I know,” Steve says, and there’s a softness in his voice that he cannot hide, even when talking strategy. “But I want you to be careful up there.”
You smile a little. “Steve, I’ve done this almost a hundred times.”
“Still.” He gives a small laugh. “You know how it is. Every crawl gets worse, and Hopper’s plan tonight is insane. And that rooftop has, like, the worst visibility ever. Wind, dust, those busted spotlights. Anything can go wrong, and I can’t have you getting hurt.”
You huff a quiet laugh, because that part is true. “I’ll manage.”
“I know you will,” he says. Then, softer, “But I can’t turn this part of my brain off, alright? The worrying part. I see you out there with Mike and Lucas and my stomach does this… thing.”
He gestures vaguely, shaking his head with a rueful smile. “I don’t love it. Not when it comes to you.”
Your chest warms, but only for a moment. The quiet returns, the heavy kind that feels like it’s pressing something down instead of letting something breathe.
Steve notices.
He glances at you again, longer this time. “Hey. You sure you’re okay?”
His voice is gentle, not probing, just concerned. It makes the ache in your chest twist tighter.
You swallow, fingers curling faintly against your thigh. “Steve… can I ask you something?”
He nods immediately. “Yeah. Anything.”
You hesitate, watching the blur of Hawkins pass outside the window, all cracked pavement and rusted street signs and the faint hum of a world still pretending it is normal.
Your voice comes out softer than you intend. “Do you… still have feelings for Nancy?”
Steve’s hands tighten on the steering wheel, not dramatically, just enough for you to notice. Just enough to show he heard you clearly, and just enough to make your heart thud against your ribs.
The silence stretches for a beat.
Then another.
And in that space, your thoughts start to spiral, tiny sparks igniting into a tangled web you can’t untangle.
Maybe he does. Maybe he still cares about her more than you think. Maybe all this time, you’ve been fooling yourself, reading warmth where there is habit, taking comfort where there is convenience.
Maybe you are just the temporary girl, the placeholder he holds close until something—or someone—else feels like home.
Maybe standing here, beside Nancy, you really do look smaller, like a shadow someone could step over without noticing. Maybe he doesn’t even see you the way you hope he does. Maybe—
Steve exhales, shaky and disbelieving, pulling his gaze from the road long enough to actually look at you.
“Sweetheart,” he murmurs, the word tender but heavy with something else. “Where did that come from?”
The question still hangs in the air when your voice breaks. You try to blink it back, try to breathe deeply, try to pretend the sting in your eyes is nothing, but your throat tightens and the first tear escapes before you can stop it.
Steve sees it instantly.
“Hey…hey, hey,” he murmurs, worry flooding his voice in an instant. He looks between you and the road, jaw tightening with decision. Then he eases the car toward the side of the street and pulls over.
The engine stays running, but the rest of the world seems to fall still.
He turns to you fully. His hands come up, palms open, ready to hold your face or your hands or whatever part of you you will allow him to touch.
“Sweetheart,” he says softly, “what’s wrong? Talk to me. Please talk to me.”
You shake your head, breath catching. “It’s nothing. I just— I’m being stupid.”
He leans closer, eyes earnest and steady. “You’re not stupid. Not even close. Tell me.”
It comes out all at once, messy and anxious, the way secrets sound when they’ve been sitting in the dark too long, refusing to stay hidden.
“I see the way you look at her,” you say, voice trembling, your hands gripping the edge of the table until your knuckles ache. “I see it every time she walks into the room. You light up in this… this way.”
You take a sharp breath, trying to steady yourself, but it comes out jagged. “And I know she’s your ex. I know you both have history. I know she’s with Jonathan. I know all of that! But it still feels like I’m… temporary. Like I’m just this placeholder, standing here while you figure out what you actually want —or like I’m someone you care about only in moments, and not the one you choose when it really matters.”
Your chest tightens and your throat burns as the words tumble out. You look down, fiddling with your sleeve, avoiding his eyes for the fraction of a second you dare.
More tears fall, hot and clumsy, and you rub them away but they keep coming. “I mean, she’s Nancy Wheeler. She’s brilliant and confident and she knows exactly who she is and she’s everything I’m not. And I swear I’m not imagining it because even Jonathan notices too the way you look at her sometimes and—”
“Okay,” Steve says gently, cutting you off in the softest way imaginable.
He unclips his seatbelt. Then he reaches across you and unclips yours.
Before you can even question it, he has his hands around your waist, lifting you carefully and guiding you onto his lap. You settle sideways against him, his arms wrapping around you like he is afraid you might slip through his fingers.
His thumbs brush your cheeks, wiping each tear as it falls. His forehead rests lightly against yours.
“First of all,” he says, voice warm and serious, “I never want to see you cry like this. It makes me feel like some kind of terrible boyfriend. Like the worst one in Hawkins history. And trust me, that list is long.”
A tiny, startled breath leaves you that almost resembles a laugh.
Steve smiles at the sound. “There she is,” he whispers.
His fingers keep brushing your face, soft and steady, as he looks at you with a sincerity that pulls the air straight from your lungs.
He pulls you closer, just enough to feel the press of his chest against yours, hands settling gently on your arms. “I know it’s hard to trust me sometimes, especially with everything that’s happened, with history and past mistakes and people we care about. But none of that changes this. None of that changes how I feel about you.”
Steve leans in just slightly, thumb brushing softly along your jawline. “I care about you. I’ve always cared about you. You’re the one I want. You’re the one I choose. Always. And I’ll make sure you know it every single day, no matter what.”
“I don’t have feelings for Nancy. Not lingering ones, not secret ones, not hidden-in-the-back-of-my-stupid-brain ones. Nothing.” He shakes his head slowly. “I care about her, sure. She’s Nancy. She’s brave and determined and half the reason we’re alive. But I’m not in love with her. I haven’t been in love with her for a long time.”
Your breath trembles.
He continues, voice firm but full of affection. “And do you want to know why? Because I met you.”
Your heart stutters painfully.
“I am in love with you,” he says simply. “Head over heels. Completely gone. I think about you when I wake up. I think about you when I go to sleep. I think about you even when I’m supposed to be thinking about monsters and plans and crawl maps and all the other garbage that keeps trying to kill us.”
He tilts your face up gently, his hands cradling your cheeks. One soft kiss brushes your forehead, another grazes your temple, and then he nudges your nose against his lips in the gentlest way.
“And you want to talk about who has everything?” he says, voice low and teasing, hands sliding to your hips to hold you close. “Baby, you are the absolute hottest girl I have ever seen in my entire life. I mean it. And I’ve worked as a lifeguard, so that’s a statistically significant sample size.”
A small laugh escapes you, breathless and relieved. “Yeah, yeah. Good to hear that you think your girlfriend is hot, Harrington,” you murmur, smiling.
He grins, leaning down to press a soft kiss to the top of your hand, then another to your knuckles. “And you know what?” he says, eyes sparkling, playful and serious all at once. “You’re the only person on this planet who’s ever going to be the mom of my six nuggets.”
Your head jerks back. “Six nuggets?”
He nods very seriously, hands still resting on your hips. “Six. I already have names picked out. Nugget One through Nugget Six. Three boys, three girls—”
You laugh, cutting him off. “Wait, wait—you think I’m actually going to give birth six times?”
Steve shrugs, smug and playful. “Why not? You love me, don’t you?”
You swat his chest. “I love you, but not enough to give you six babies!”
Steve leans in, brushing a kiss to the corner of your mouth. “Well, if that’s the case,” he murmurs, smirk curling, “we could always practice making babies.”
no one’s ever doubted what steve’s packing, but you still need to find out for yourself WARNINGS ﹕ mdni (18+ explicit content), smut, fem! reader, little to no plot, bigdick! steve who’s painfully humble about it, oral (m! receiving), fingering, unprotected sex, pull out method, way more words than i intended
you’d never thought twice about it when you and steve started your… fling. all those comments and hushed rumours from all the girls before about what was in his pants.
so what he was packing? that didn’t mean anything to you, nor did it make you want to sleep with him more. five inches or eight, what difference did it really make?
well— maybe you’d thought twice about it when your hand was over his jeans, cupping his bulge — feeling the weight for just a second before he pressed against you.
maybe when your make out sessions had gotten too heated, finding yourself on his lap in the front seat of his car — feeling the bulk of it, tight behind the denim.
juuust maybe when he reached down to readjust before sneaking out of your house — seeing the way his large hand gripped around it before it disappeared from your sight.
but other than that, you never really thought about it— it’s almost like it didn’t exist to you.
not a single thought. not at all.
“holy shit, harrington.”
you’re on your knees in front of him (bad start), his belt unbuckled, jeans and boxers shoved down to his mid thigh.
“what?” he tries to act coy, thumb resting at the base as his eyes flicker between you and the sight — but you don’t miss the small scoff of pride, his lips curling up ever so slightly.
you frown, tempted to back up a bit. “uhh, the fuckin’ weapon in my face right now.”
his brows furrow together in offence. “weapon? what— it’s not—” he scoffs multiple times, looking down to match your gaze.
silence passes for a few seconds too long as he starts to feel a little embarrassed. “would you stop staring and just…” his voice comes out quiet, his hand subtly wrapping around it — either to hide it or encourage you.
“oh i- i don’t think i can.” he swallows, confused and a little flushed. “like… physically.” you add in all seriousness, raising your eyebrows as you keep your eyes on him.
you’ve never seen him so red, stood there like a lost puppy who’d just been told he can’t play. he’s lost for words, his throat dry in the most deathly awkward moment of his life.
“i’m kidding.” you whisper.
“you—” his chest rises with a deep breath of relief. “not funny, like at all.” he groans, running his hand over his face.
you giggle, shifting forward to wrap your hand around him. “i hope that’s not your idea of foreplay.” he murmurs, letting go to run his hands through his hair. “cause it needs some work— i mean like, serious rethinking.”
you tilt your head, pressing your lips to the tip for a small kiss as your hand tugs back and forth gently. “didn’t like the ego boost?”
he’s not as quippy, eyes a little more out of focus as he watches with quiet, shallow breaths. “it was hardly an ego boost.”
“so you’re not turned on by the thought of… being too big to fit?” you hum out, watching your hand gently squeeze his length.
his breath catches, like it isn’t the first time he’s thought of it. “n-no.” he swallows hard as you kiss the tip again, just as teasing as before. “not particularly.” he lies.
you hum out curiously, as if you didn’t believe him (which you didn’t), before wrapping your lips around him — gently sucking. his breath is shallow, uneven as he tries not to let a noise slip.
you suck him down further, feeling the ache in your jaw just trying to take more of him — his cock heavy on your tongue and stuffing your mouth full.
“jesus— you’re not exactly… struggling.” he groans out, instinctively letting his hand spread across the back of your head — resisting the urge to push and feel more of your throat that already has his legs tensing.
it’s addictive. the weight of it, every vein — every pulse. the fact your tongue can’t even reach it all when half his dick has disappeared between your lips. you want to taste, swallow it all down, coat every inch in salivation.
spit pools at the corner of your lips as his dick eases back and forth. he’s more focused on the way you flick your tongue across the bottom, sucking hard — than how deep you’re going. until your lips meet the base, just for a second before you pull back with a gag.
“o-oh fuuck.” his head tilts back, body turning hot with the feeling. “jesus christ.” he whispers out like prayer— like he couldn’t believe what he’d just seen.
you find yourself grinding your hips down, clit rubbing along the seam of your jeans like you were a dog in heat. something about steve packing what he was packing, had you dizzy with need — embarrassingly so as you pull back, hands finding his hips to push him back onto his bed.
“shit.” he whispers as you straddle him, lips locking with his in a familiar haze of making out.
what wasn’t so familiar was his fingers fidgeting to unzip your jeans — hand dipping into your underwear as he pulls away just far enough to whisper against your lips. “this okay?”
you nod a little too enthusiastically, gripping his shoulders as he contorts his wrist, swiping his fingers through your slick before slipping one in. slowly easing, curling up gently till he grazes the spot — hearing the raw moan rip through you, the sound heading straight to his dick.
“oh god… steve.” it’s the hottest his name has ever sounded, coming from your throat with praise and sincerity.
“right there?” his middle finger prods deeper for a second before pulling back, repeating the motion as you grind against his hand — as if all it took was for you to get fingered by steve harrington to shut your gob and reach some sort of new out of body sensation.
his cock lays across his abdomen, under you, leaking with precum for an ungodly sight that has you throbbing even more. “you’re so wet, like… fuckin’ soaked.” his voice is a little strained with sheer lust, clearly more than desperate to have his dick there instead.
he drags his hand out, fingers shiny from your slick. he looks like a deer caught in headlights, cogs turning in his brain as he hesitates. “i tasted you.” you murmur, hooking thumbs into the waistband of your jeans to tug them down as you lean forward to whisper in his ear. “return the favour.”
all the colour from his face drains. throat bobbing, breath shaky, dick twitching. every sign that he wanted to — and did. his face beat red as he sucks his fingers clean, hoping your eyes wouldn’t be solely trained on him as you shuffled out of your bottoms.
but you saw, well enough to know he was holding back from sinking his tongue deep into your cunt for another taste — instead wiping his fingers clean on his jeans before shoving them down, along with his boxers, and throwing them to the floor.
his back hits the bed quickly as you climb on top of him, pushing the hem of his top up slowly as you trail kisses along his torso. “you’re so hot— god… so fuckin’ hot.” he breathes out, almost too quiet for you to hear — fingers running through his hair to push the strands out of his flushed face.
“mm, i think you’re just in a haze, harrington.” you retort, making your way up to his neck where you leave a scatter of kisses and nips — that all make him impossibly squirmy.
his brows furrow in confusion, hands finding their way to your hips instinctively as your bare pussy hovers above his aching dick. “a haze?” he murmurs, unable to pull his eyes away from the sight further down.
your lips curl up as your hand reaches down to tease the tip of his dick against your hole. “yeah, a sex haze.”
there’s no room for a response from him, not when you’re sinking down with your eyes rolled back — feeling him stretch you out and fill you up in a way you never had been before.
sure you’d had sex, and it had felt good — but something about steve, and more specifically his hefty dick, just had you. eager for all of it, greedy even — like you wouldn’t be happy until every inch was inside and you were stuffed to the brim.
“fuck, are you—” he groans, looking down at where your bodies join in disbelief.
“is this…? is this good?” you pant out. a strangled noise comes out, followed by a tightened grip as his eyes screw shut.
but he’s nodding, at your mercy. “shit, it’s… amazing.” he swallows at his own words, clearly not in the right state to articulate himself correctly. “just, uh, never gone all the way.”
you’re beyond confused, before it registers in your brain. “no one’s ever taken all of it?” you can’t help the pride that slips past in your tone.
he shakes his head, scoffing as his gaze locks on the way his dick has completely disappeared inside of you — all sucked in, almost like you were trying to take more that wasn’t even there. “not like this.”
that spurs you on, your hips lifting up before coming back down — establishing a gentle rhythm that feels like fucking heaven.
somewhere in your new found pleasure, clothes start coming off — anything either of you still had on finding its way to his bed or the floor, leaving room for both your lips and hands to explore.
“your dick’s so fucking big, steve.” he groans at that, sultry words fizzling through his body, straight down south.
his fingers dig into your hips the same way yours do into his shoulders, grounding yourself hard as you fuck yourself on him like no one’s watching. but he is. eyes trained on your body, the bliss on your face, the twitch in your thighs as you exhaust yourself. and all he can think about is doing this over and over again with you.
your eyes are shut though, mind in another place — only focused on the feeling of his cock repeatedly hitting the spot. every. single. time. you let your hand pull away from his shoulder, lingering down to circle around your sensitive clit.
it’s an immediate pulse around him, suffocating his dick perfectly in waves. “s-shit.” he grits out, losing his cool as he sees what you’re doing — the feeling making his balls thump and draw up. “oh— fuck.” he does everything he can to hold off, thrusting up into you to push you over the edge.
it’s ridiculously effective. every ounce of built up tension in you snapping in a split second. “steve! oh god—” your words cut off into loud moans, tumbling out as your gummy walls spasm around his dick. your fingers twitching over your nerves to pull you through your orgasm.
you hardly notice as he lifts you up, enough for his dick to slip out — spurts of cum costing his torso as he whines out ever so slightly panicked. “fuck, fuck— mmh.”
only when your hand rushes to tug at his dick does he relax, letting the pleasure rush through him as you pull out the last of his orgasm.
“jeez.” you’re both out of breath, pulling apart your sweaty bodies the second you come down from your highs — you already heading to the bathroom. “you good?” he calls out, sitting up to reach for the box of tissues on his nightstand.
you’re halfway out of the door, heading down the hall to the bathroom on trembling legs. “all good, big dick harrington.” you murmur back, missing the way he scoffs and shakes his head at the name.
( 🗯️ ) thank you for reading, i hope you enjoyed !! any and all interactions are greatly appreciated :3
Here you find all of my fan fictions about the best goddamn babysitter. The list will get updated every time I post something new. All interactions are highly appreciated!
Summary: Steve invented you to a party. Unfortunately you are not doing well in crowds so you start panicking.
Warnings: hurt/comfort. dating Steve. panic attack. no use of y/n.
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Music thumped through the walls so hard you could feel it in your ribs. Someone shouted from the kitchen. A group of people burst into laughter somewhere upstairs.
The living room was packed shoulder to shoulder. Every few seconds someone bumped into you.
The air smelled like perfume, spilled beer, and smoke drifting in through the open back door.
Steve hold himself up with one hand against the wall your back was leaning at. He was so close that you could feel his warmth forming a shield around you. He leaned down so you could hear him over the music. "You okay?"
You smiled automatically. "Yeah."
He smiled back. "Good. I`m glad you came with me, sweetheart." He squeezed your hand once before Dustin called his name from across the room.
"Harrington!"
Steve sighed dramatically. "I'll be right back."
You laughed. "I'll survive two minutes."
"I make no promises." He pointed playfully at Dustin. "He usually finds trouble in thirty seconds."
You giggled nut it sounded a little forced. "I'll stay right here."
"You sure?" Steve asked with a cautious tone in his voice, like he was sensing the shift in the air.
"Mhm."
He hesitated, just for a second. Then Dustin yelled again.
Steve finally let go of your hand. "I'll be back."
You watched him disappear into the crowd. Then you looked around. The music suddenly seemed louder and someone brushed past your shoulder.
Another person laughed right behind you. Voices overlapped, someone dropped a bottle and the sharp crack made you jump.
You inhaled too quickly. It's fine. I`m fine.
Someone stumbled into you with an apology and your heart lurched. Another burst of laughter. The room suddenly felt much too warm, too small.
You looked toward the front door but it seemed impossibly far away.
Your breathing became shallow. Not here. Please. Not here.
You slipped between people as quietly as you could. No one noticed that you crossed the front porch, then the driveway. You kept walking past the parked cars, past the mailbox.
Until the music was little more than a distant thump behind you. The edge of the woods waited across the road, wrapped in quiet darkness.
You stopped beneath the first pine tree. Your hands were shaking.
"No…" You pressed both palms against your face. "Come on."
Breathe. You knew how to, you'd done this before. But every breath seemed to stop halfway. Your chest tightened. Tears stung your eyes.
"I'm okay." Your voice sounded so small. "I'm okay." You didn't believe yourself.
Inside the house...
Steve frowned. "…Where is she?"
Dustin looked up from whatever ridiculous argument he was having with Eddie. "Huh?"
Steve scanned the room again. You weren't by the fireplace, or the kitchen. Or talking to Nancy.
His smile disappeared. "You seen her?"
Robin shook her head. "I thought she was with you."
"I thought she was here." A tiny knot formed in his stomach. He set his drink down immediately. "I'll be back."
Robin watched him weave through the crowd. "…Uh-oh."
Nancy looked over. "What?"
Robin pointed at Steve. "That's his worried walk."
Steve checked every room first. Bathroom, kitchen even the backyard.
Nothing.
His heartbeat sped up. Then he noticed the front gate hanging slightly open. He felt it in his bones. You'd left.
He didn't think. He just ran. The cold air hit him the second he stepped outside. Steve called your name but there was no answer.
He walked farther down the road. Your name left his lips again. Still nothing.
Then…movement. Near the tree line. Someone sitting on the ground with their knees pulled tightly against their chest.
His heart nearly broke. "There you are."
You looked up. Your eyes were red. The moment you saw him fresh tears spilled over. "I'm sorry."
Steve frowned immediately. "For what?"
"I ruined everything."
He crossed the last few steps without hesitation. Then, instead of sitting beside you he lowered himself onto the cold ground a few feet away.
Close enough that you weren't alone. Far enough that you didn't feel crowded. "You didn't ruin anything."
You sobbed quietly. "I left."
"Yeah because you needed to."
"I couldn't stay."
"You didn`t have to." He shrugged gently. "I think that was pretty smart."
You stared at him. "…You do?"
"Mhm."
Silence settled between you. The wind stirred the pine branches overhead. Steve watched you carefully, not staring, just… making sure you knew he was there. You looked like a frightened animal and it broke his heart clean in two.
After a minute, he spoke again. "Can I sit a little closer?"
You nodded.
He scooted over slowly until your shoulders almost touched. "Thank you."
You laughed weakly. "For what?"
"For letting me be here with you, sweetheart." His voice was so soft it almost made you cry again.
"I didn't know I swear…" You wiped your cheeks. "…I thought I could do it."
"You did."
"No, Steve. I panicked."
"You realized you were overwhelmed." He looked at you. "Then you got yourself somewhere quiet." Another little shrug. "Sounds like you took care of yourself."
You shook your head. "I just ran away like a stupid child."
"You ran toward something that helped." Steve smiled gently. "I think there's a difference."
Your breathing had already begun to slow. Not because he had magically fixed anything. Simply because he hadn't asked anything from you. He was just there.
After another quiet minute, he asked, "Can I hold your hand?"
You nodded and his fingers slipped carefully between yours. You watched your joined hands for a long time.
"I'm embarrassed."
Steve's eyebrows lifted. "Why?"
"You probably think I'm…" You couldn't finish.
His expression softened immediately. "I think…" He squeezed your hand ever so slightly. "…that I learned something important tonight."
You looked up. "What?"
"You don't like big parties."
Despite everything you smiled a little. "I guess not."
"Is it the noise?"
You nodded. "Too many people."
He filed every word away like it was the most important information he'd ever received. "Okay it`s settled then."
You frowned. "…What are you talking about?"
"Now I know." He smiled. So next time you feel like this…"
"There won't be a next time."
"There absolutely will be, sweetheart. And thats okay."
You looked at him in surprise. "But…"
"If you ever want to try again and it happens…" He shrugged. "…we leave the second it gets too much."
"You'd leave?"
"I already did."
"No, I mean…" You searched his face. "You'd leave because of me?"
Steve actually looked confused. "Who else would I leave for?"
Your heart stumbled and without meaning to, you sink into his frame a little more. Steve is hyperaware of every movement but doesn`t mention it.
"I don't care about some party." He gestured vaguely toward the house behind you. "I came because you were coming."
Your eyes filled with tears again.
"So if you're out here…" He smiled. "…this is where I want to be."
You laughed through your tears. "You're making this very hard."
"What do you mean?"
"To keep crying."
"Good." He smiled. "I'd much rather make you laugh."
You leaned your head carefully against his shoulder. He went perfectly still, not because he was uncomfortable, because he wanted to make sure you knew you could stay there as long as you wanted.
After a little while your breathing finally settled into an easy rhythm. The panic slowly melted away, replaced by the quiet sound of the wind moving through the trees.
"I'm sorry our date ended like this."
Steve turned his head just enough to look at you. "You think this isn't our date?" He smiled. "I'm sitting with my girlfriend under the stars." He glanced up through the branches. "…Okay, under mostly clouds."
That earned a small laugh from you, which made his heart beat even faster than before.
"I get to hold your hand." Another squeeze. "You trusted me enough to let me into your world a little more." His voice became wonderfully gentle. "And I just learned something new about someone I really, really like."
He looked at you with so much warmth that it made your chest ache. "I don't think tonight went wrong. I think…" His thumb brushed lightly over your knuckles. "…I just got to know you a little better."
A tear slipped down your cheek. This time not because you were overwhelmed. But because nobody had ever reacted like this before. "You don't think I'm too much?"
Steve's answer came without a second's hesitation. "No." He shook his head. "I think the world was too much tonight."
Silence. Then, after a thoughtful moment, he added with a little smile, "Besides…"
"What?"
"I've fought interdimensional monsters." He looked down at you still leaning against him. "A noisy house party?" He nudged your shoulder playfully. "I think we've officially identified which one's actually scarier."
You laughed—a real laugh this time. Steve grinned. The sound he'd been hoping for.
He stood and offered you his hand. "Come on."
"Where are we going?"
He pulled you close to his chest. His big, warm hands wrapping around your waist. "We`re going home, sweatheart."
"What about the party and your friends?"
He scrunched up his face dramatically. "I've had enough of that party."
"You have?"
"Mhm. Besides I know that my friends would beat me into oblivion if I drag you back there against your will."
You laughed at the thought of it and Steve pressed a gentle kiss on the top of your head.
He intertwined your fingers with his again. "I've got hot chocolate." He lowered his voice conspiratorially. "…Robin hid two bags of marshmallows in my kitchen because she says I buy the wrong kind."
You giggled.
"So…" He smiled. "…we can go home, steal Robin's marshmallows, watch a movie, and listen to absolutely nothing."
You squeezed his hand. "That sounds perfect."
Steve smiled so brightly it almost outshone the porch lights in the distance. He'd spent years thinking being a good boyfriend meant grand gestures.
Saving the day. Having the right words. Standing between danger and the people he loved.
Tonight, he realized sometimes it meant something much simpler. Learning where your safe places were.
And quietly becoming one of them.
_________________
Thank you so much for reading 💙 All interactions are highly appreciated!
summary: Steve is always there to make you feel better when you cry. Even when he's the cause behind your tears.
pairing: bf!Steve Harrington x f!Reader
warnings: explicit sexual content MDNI, established relationship, porn without plot, dacryphilia, unprotected piv, edging, (temporary) orgasm denial, crybaby!reader, lots and lots of teasing, heavy praise kink, dirty talk, creampie, steve has a breeding kink
note: hiii!! this is my very first steve fic ever so i'm a little nervous, but please let me know what you think!!
wc: 3.08k
[masterlist] [AO3]
Steve Harrington loves his crybaby girlfriend.
You’re always in your feelings about something. Whether it’s a silly joke Dustin made that you take to heart, or a rude cashier, or maybe your boss scheduled you on a day you didn’t want to work next week. Your eyes will get all wide and watery and your bottom lip will tremble.
And Steve? Oh, he’s just waiting there with open arms and the softest look on his face. “Aw, babe. C’mere. It’s okay, I’ve got you.”
He’ll wrap you up all nice and tight and tuck your hair behind your ear and kiss your tears away. And he’ll hold you as long as it takes, too. Five minutes? Ten? Fifteen?
He doesn’t mind. You’ll never catch him complaining about getting to hold a pretty girl close to his chest.
So, he lets you cry it out and dries your tears with the back of his knuckles. Lets you bury your face in the crook of his neck to breathe in salt and skin and the lingering scent of his irish spring body wash until your hiccups fade away.
Robin asks him about it, late one night at the radio tower. You’d come to him earlier in the day with tears in your eyes. Upset about an argument you’d had with a particularly prickly coworker. Steve had taken it in stride, of course. Like he always does.
Held you in his lap on the couch tucked into the corner of the room until you’d fallen fast asleep. He laid his brown leather jacket over your shoulders, kissed your forehead, and went right back to work as if dropping everything to soothe you was the easiest thing in the world.
When she hears your soft snores, Robin says, “Wow. She sure is, uh…easy to set off, huh?”
Steve shakes his head. “Nah. It’s not like that. She’s just got a soft heart. You know. Sensitive,” he corrects.
“It doesn’t ever, like…bother you? I mean, always having to like. Console her, or whatever. Just ‘cause, I mean, me? Personally? I wouldn’t have the patience for it.”
A crease forms between his brows as she speaks. The idea that the act of comforting you could ever be bothersome has never occurred to him. Not even once. “What? No, it doesn’t. Not at all.” He sighs, willing away the irritation in his voice.
Steve knows Robin doesn’t mean to upset him. Knows she genuinely likes you, some days even more than she likes Steve himself.
So he tries to explain it the best way he can. “I actually sort of…like it, I guess. Not that she’s upset, obviously. But I just like that when she is, she always comes to me to fix it. Makes me feel…needed. You know?”
There’s a weird, pitiful look in Robin’s eye, but she doesn’t press for more.
And Steve’s thankful for it.
Because if she did, if she poked and prodded just a little further. Well, Steve would have to admit the truth. He would have to sit there and explain to Robin that no, he really, really doesn’t mind it when you cry.
Not one fucking bit.
He would have to admit that he loves it, in fact.
You just look so fucking pretty with tears in your eyes.
He would have to explain that you don’t only cry when you’re sad. You cry when you’re happy, too. Or if you’re laughing really hard, or if you’re frustrated, or, Steve’s favorite一when you’re so, so very desperate.
When the sun sets, he gets you home and tucks you into bed. And Steve knows you’ve had an emotional rollercoaster of a day, so he starts off slow. Kisses you all sweet and soft, fingertips gliding up your sides beneath his old t-shirt. He licks into your mouth, tasting the mint on your tongue until it no longer remains.
He kisses your throat, your collarbones, and the steady thump, thump, thump of your pulse, cherishing the way the beat of that sensitive heart of yours feels under his pillowy lips. He sings praises against your skin, his cock stiffening with each little gasp he pulls out of you.
“You’re so beautiful, baby,” he says. “Do you know that? Hm? You know how gorgeous you are? My pretty girl.”
He hooks his thumbs in the elastic of your panties and pulls them down your thighs, smiling against your mouth when you immediately spread your legs to make room for him between them.
And Steve finds his rightful place there, and slides his hand through all that sticky wetness he’s created. “You feel so warm here,” he whispers against the shell of your ear, wishing he could kiss every goosebump that rises across the smooth plane of your throat.
He circles your opening with the pad of his middle finger, gathering your arousal and pulling it upwards, using it to lessen the friction as he circles your clit. That makes your spine arch, and you whimper as you bend into his touch.
Steve smiles against your cheek, inhaling the scent of your shampoo deep into his lungs. “Sorry, baby,” he says. “Is my hand cold?”
You let out a shaky breath. “N-no,” you answer. “Just…feels good.”
He knows, of course. Has become an expert at winding you up by now. Steve touches your clit again, a little more firm this time, delighting in the way your mouth falls open and the way you sink your nails into the muscle of his bicep. “Yeah? Like that?”
Your voice is all quiet and breathy when you answer. Pitched just a little higher in that way he loves. “Yes. Oh, god—”
It doesn’t take long for him to find a rhythm that has you all squirmy. He uses a single finger—just one, spreading your arousal over your clit and kissing you sweetly all the while.
Steve swears he’ll never get enough of this. Of you. His perfect, needy girl. He doesn’t pick up his pace, even when you start to writhe beneath the heavy weight of his body. Even when you lift your hips to try and slide his hand lower, to where you need him most. Not even when you say his name and it sounds like a prayer in your saccharine mouth.
He stays steady. Perseveres. Because he knows, and you know, too—that this is just the beginning.
“That still feel good? Still what you want?”
Your sweet sounds start to border on a frustrated sigh, but you don’t answer. Not yet. You arch into his touch and even go as far as trying to push his shoulder to force his hand lower.
“Tell me,” Steve demands. “Use your words.”
“Can you—just—god. I want…inside. I want you inside, Steve, please.”
He leans back just enough to admire that pretty flush on your cheeks and your kiss-swollen lips and, Christ—your eyes. Pupils blown wide and already starting to gloss over with those desperate tears of yours. “Ohh,” he coos. “Inside, hm? Is that right?” He slides his middle finger from your clit down to your entrance that’s already dripping for him.
Steve doesn’t press in, though. Not yet. He just…stays there. Strokes slow and steady, sometimes letting his finger catch just on the edge.
“Here? This where you want me?”
Your nodding is so frantic it makes him laugh. “Yes, yes, please.”
And, well—he’s always been weak for you. Always breaks, especially when you beg so beautifully. So Steve presses his finger inside of you and lets out a breathy moan at the way you take him in. So easy, so inviting. All silky and warm and wet on the inside. His cock is already heavy and hard in his boxers, and he wonders if you can feel it throbbing against the inside of your thigh.
The moan you let out in response is nothing short of pornographic. Just one finger and you’re putty in his hands. His to push, his to pull, his to love. All his.
It’s more for his benefit than yours when he slides another finger in. His ring finger this time, curling them both upwards.
“Oh my god—”
“Is that good, baby?”
“Yes, fuck. So good. Don’t stop.”
He wouldn’t dream of it. He presses in deep and pulls out slow, the steady drag of his fingers inside of you ratcheting your pleasure higher and higher. The room fills quickly with the noises you make; gasping moans and sighs of pleasure mixed with the wet sounds he pulls from between your legs.
He knows you're getting close when your breath begins to stutter. When your already grasping fingers dig deeper into his flesh. He kisses the side of your throat and feels the vibration of your words as you say, “I’m—I’m close, Steve, I’m—”
The moment he hears the word close, he’s delicately sliding his fingers out of you and back up your folds, sliding them apart in a V shape to narrowly miss your clit.
Your whining starts then. Pretty sounds of defiance, desperate for him. You drag your knees up and hook one around his waist, trying with all your might to bring him closer. “No, please—please put them back in. I need…please, Steve, I can’t—”
His lips curl up into a smile against your jaw. “Shh. You’re fine, beautiful girl. I’ll do whatever you want me to, yeah? You just gotta ask nice. Real, real nice. Okay?”
“Please, please, please—”
“Please is too easy. How about a kiss? Hm? A good one. You think that’s fair?” He cradles the side of your face in his free hand, his big thumb stroking back the sweat-damp whisps of your hair at your temple. “Just want a kiss. That’s all. I get what I want, and I’ll give you what you want in return. Even Steven. Right?”
You lean up and press your mouth to his. All tongue and lips and teeth. Hungry. He loves it when you get like this. When there’s nothing and no one you need more than him. You lick into his mouth and he rewards you with his fingers again.
You’re soaking him now, your arousal beginning to drip down and pool in the palm of his hand. This time, though, Steve slides his thumb through your slick folds to stroke your clit with each thrust of his fingers.
He swallows up your moans like oxygen and smiles against your mouth when your legs start to tremble around him.
The rhythm he sets this time is a little faster, more intentional. He stops kissing you for one reason and one reason only; to feel the way your walls clench around him when he says, “I’ve got you, baby. I’m right here. Christ. Can you hear how wet you are? You want it real bad, huh?”
“Steve.” It’s a warning, he knows. You don’t even have to say anything else.
He can feel the way you tense up around him. Can feel the way your pussy pulls him in deeper, working in tandem with your watery eyes to wither his resolve.
Steve pulls his fingers out of you with only moments to spare this time, just before you reach the summit.
You’re a squirming, whimpering mess of a girl beneath him. Unable to mutter any words beyond his name and please. Your favorite word, it seems. Or maybe it’s his favorite.
“I know, baby, I know,” he soothes. “It’s okay. I’m gonna make it all better, alright? You know I will.”
Steve leans back and pushes his boxers down enough to free his cock. It’s heavy in his hand, swollen and aching for you. The tip is flushed red and there’s a bead of precum at the center.
He nudges your legs further apart and lines himself up at your entrance, breathing in deep to keep an iron grip on the control that he knows will waver the moment he’s inside of you.
He eases forward slowly, savoring both the way your lips part in bliss and the way your pussy takes his cock so greedily. “Fuck,” he hisses. “You feel so good. You know that? Like you were made for me.”
Steve rolls his hips against yours, sinking fully inside now. He stays there for just a couple seconds, buried to the hilt, just savoring the way your walls pulse around him and giving you time to catch your breath.
It’s so full. He’s so big, stretching you wide, smothering in all the best ways.
When he starts to move it feels like relief, his cock soaked in your arousal, shiny and glistening with slick. Steve finds your clit with his thumb again, smoothing over it delicately.
“You’re so…god. You make me feel so good. Keep going this time, please.”
Your begging is music to his ears. “My fucking girl,” he murmurs. “My pretty girl. You’re doing so good for me. Always so good for me.”
He’s got you strung so tight that it doesn’t take much. With his thumb on your clit and the heavy drag of his cock inside of you, your orgasm builds faster than before. And he knows you deserve it, his perfect girl. But Steve wants more. Wants everything you’re willing to give.
He wants to see you cry.
And you do. He lifts his thumb from your clit and pulls out to thrust the underside of his cock through your syrupy folds. Tears immediately spring to the corners of your eyes and your bottom lip starts to wobble.
“Steve, please. Please, I need—it hurts. Don’t be—don’t be mean anymore, please I just want you to make me feel good, I want—I need you. Please.”
He laughs lowly at the anguish in your voice.
They fall fast. Big, crocodile tears spilling down your cheeks.
Steve’s cock throbs painfully inside of you at the sight of them. “Oh, baby. You look so cute right now. So pretty when you cry for me. I know it hurts. I’m gonna take care of you, though. Yeah? Like I always do.”
You nod frantically, your entire body shaking below him now. His pretty, desperate girl. Such a needy little thing. Steve leans forward and kisses the moisture from beneath your eyes, tasting the faintest trace of salt on his tongue.
The word comes out again, this time a barely there sound. Your voice cracks, and you’re fucking crying for his dick, and christ—he can’t deny you. Not anymore. Not when he has you like this.
“Please.”
Steve lifts his hips and slips his cock into your once more, groaning low against your ear. You’re all warmth and velvet around him. Dripping and desperate. He rocks his hips into you eagerly, chasing that high like a man starved for it.
Sweat begins to bead at his hairline, and by the time he finds your swollen clit again with stumbling fingers, it’s throbbing beneath his touch.
He kisses you hard and promises, “M’gonna let you cum this time, baby. You really—fuck—you really earned it. Want you to give it to me. Can you do that, sweetheart? Hm?”
“Yes, yes, I’m almost there. I’m—”
“Look at me,” he orders, gently sliding his hand on your cheek just a little lower. Just enough to slip his thumb beneath your chin and hold your face in a firm grip. The moment your watery eyes meet his, pleasure shoots down his spine, sending him careening towards release. “You’re perfect,” he says. “My beautiful, perfect girl. Always gonna be there to take care of you. You know that, right? Hm? Anytime you’re hurting I’m gonna be there to fix it.”
“I’m gonna cum. I’m gonna—oh god—”
Steve keeps his pace steady. Fucks his cock into you deep, hitting just right, and keeps his thumb against your clit. Lets you take it this time.
And oh—it’s stunning. The way your tear filled eyes flutter closed and your walls twitch around his cock and your legs shake around his waist. You cry out his name and it’s the most mouthwatering sound he’s ever heard.
Your whimpers turn into incoherent words, but he can make out three of them. That sweet, sweet admission that he’ll never grow tired of hearing.
I love you, I love you, I love you.
His cock twitches when he hears it, and before he can think better of it he’s filling you up with sticky ropes of cum right up against your cervix. And he knows it’s soon—too soon—but he secretly hopes it sticks.
Hopes that his seed takes root in his perfect, crybaby girl. Hopes that in six months time your belly will be rounded with his baby.
Steve rolls his hips against yours until he’s well and truly spent. Until his cock starts to soften inside of you, all sticky and messy now with the combined wetness of your release and his.
When he does finally tuck himself back into his boxers, he crawls up to his side of the bed and runs a hand through his hair. Opens up his arm and you crawl right beneath it, your leg resting over his hips. Practiced. Routine.
Steve presses a kiss into your hairline and tries to catch his breath.
You turn your head to look up at him and mirroring grins stretch across your faces.
He swipes the final tear of the night from beneath your eye and the thought crosses his mind that heaven might very well be this. Holding you, wiping your tears away, hearing your giggles all shy and soft beneath his acute attention.
“I love you, beautiful girl,” he says. “You know that, right?”
Always asking, because he never, ever wants you to forget.
“Yeah,” you say. “Of course I do. Just like I know that Robin will kill you tomorrow if you’re late. So shush. Go to sleep.”
He laughs, but pulls the blankets up around your shoulders and holds you closer.
You lay your head on his shoulder and press your nose into the crook of his neck— a spot that Steve suspects may have been created specifically with you in mind.
MY MAN ON WILLPOWER
steve harrington x fem!reader (wc: 5.0k)
summary: steve harrington used to be literally obsessed with you, but you’re suddenly the least sought after girl in the land — or at least in hawkins.
warnings: pre-established relationship, set during season 5, no use of y/n, angst with comfort, swearing, non-sexual nudity, mentions of sex but no smut, miscommunication, use of pet names (honey, baby).
—
steve harrington was the blueprint of a perfect boyfriend.
keyword: was.
he always called every morning and night. always held your hand in crowds, and he drove you everywhere, even when you said he didn’t have to. he’d take you out for dinner, or sometimes he’d attempt to cook you dinner himself.
he took care of you in every way he could. he clung to your side every day, and held you close each night. you didn’t know how any of that could ever change.
you had started dating just a couple months before the earthquake that split your small town of hawkins, indiana four ways to sunday. back in january of 1986, steve harrington had been, at least in your eyes, the most perfect man on earth.
you had met him the same way he met most of his dates back then, by walking into family video, where he had been working at the time.
sure, you had heard of steve harrington before that. you went to hawkins high between the years of 1981 and 1985, after all. everyone knew 'king steve', even after he had lost the title, the friends, and the popularity, he wasn't exactly forgettable.
years of whispers in crowded school hallways, giggles between girls at the lockers beside yours, even you fell victim to that famed harrington charm when he passed you in the hallways, sending you a brief smile on occasion if your eyes ever met in a fleeting glance.
but you never had the pleasure of really knowing steve in high school, you just had the whispers and rumors and occasional 'hi' if you passed each other in the hallway.
four years of school together and steve harrington never seemed to spare you anything more than a quick glance in the sea of students flooding the hallways of hawkins high.
that was, until the day you walked into family video, searching for something to watch in hopes of filling up some of the spare time you'd had since graduating high school.
as you had headed for the stand where all the new releases waited, you noticed him — or specifically, his hair.
he had been standing behind the counter, dressed in a striped blue and white polo with that dark green family video vest sitting over it. his hair had been what made you recognize him, but you could also it was a little different — longer, definitely, and a little messier than in high school, like he wasn't trying as hard to style it anymore.
he was talking with a girl behind the counter with him, the both of them lost in a fit of giggles, too invested in their conversation to notice a customer had even entered the store.
you weren't bothered, instead you just began browsing the shelves. your fingertips danced along the plain covers, reading each title with a sigh before you found yourself in the romance section, reaching for a copy of grease, because nothing was better than a film you had already seen more times than you could count.
that was the moment steve harrington had noticed you. he stopped mid-sentence in whatever he had been saying to his co-worker and stumbled around the counter to head towards the romance section, running a hand through his hair and adjusting his vest so it sat a little neater on his shoulders, not that he had expected you to find the vest attractive in any way.
when he was just a few steps behind you, he cleared his throat and leaned against the shelf of tapes with his most charming smile. you jumped at the sudden sound, and spun around to come face-to-face with steve himself.
"oh!" you had gasped, still clutching grease to your chest, and for a moment steve had just stared, like he was a malfunctioning robot for about 10 seconds before he snapped himself out of it.
"uh," he cleared his throat again, curling his hand into a fist and using it to cover his mouth before he smiled again. "hi. can i help you find anything?"
the corner of your mouth twitched upwards before curling into a full smile. this wasn't quite the steve harrington you knew of from high school, there was something different. he seemed a little less cocky and sure of himself, a little less overly confident. you could hear it in his tone, see it in his smile.
"hi," you greeted cheerfully, then lifted the vhs tape in your hand. "just looking for some movies to rent."
"oh, yeah. well, it's a good thing we've got plenty of those here." steve chuckled, then squeezed his eyes shut to curse at himself silently, as if scolding himself for his not-so-smooth delivery just to state the obvious.
but then you laughed, a small chuckle, and steve opened his eyes again to meet yours.
"that is a good thing, huh?" you spoke, your smile still pulling at your lips as the words left them. "i'm not really sure what to pick, though. do you have any recommendations?"
steve's eyes went wide and his posture straightened immediately, like he hadn't expected to get this far in your conversation. "uh, recommendations? pssh— yeah, totally. what kinda thing are you in the mood for?"
you then spent the next ten minutes following him around the store as he pointed out a few different titles in almost every genre, though some of which he had admitted to you he hadn't seen, only to then suggest for the two of you to watch it together.
you had laughed lightly, not in a mean way, but almost flustered, a little unsure on how to answer. but the answer wasn't a no, you knew that much.
you had always thought steve harrington was handsome, and, yeah, maybe there had been a few times in high school where you had fantasized about being one of the girls he would hold hands with down the halls and take on dates around town, but you didn't want something with steve if it was just going to be a one-time date, or some shitty hook-up. you wanted something more, because that was what you had been searching for.
and that turned out to be pretty perfect, because steve had been searching for something more, too.
by the end of that month, steve harrington was your boyfriend, and you were his girlfriend, and you could've sworn life was perfect.
for a short while, at least.
toward the end of march, he disappeared.
not literally, and not entirely, but just enough for it to be noticeable.
the night before spring break, you had gone to hawkins high school’s championship basketball game in support of steve’s friends: lucas sinclair, who was on the basketball team, and robin buckley, who played in the school band.
then that night he drove you home, kissed you outside your front door, and promised he’d come by the next night to stay with you while your parents went out of town for the break.
he didn’t turn up.
you waited all night, perched on the edge of the couch, eyes drifting from the television and across the room to the phone on the wall, willing it to ring and hoping to hear steve’s voice telling you he was just running late and would be there in 15 minutes.
you didn’t see him again until a couple days later, the morning after the earthquake.
you didn’t sleep all night, you had been terrified. you watched houses you drove past almost daily being ripped apart, sirens wailed outside filling the usual quiet nights in hawkins with horror.
the town had been on fire, smoke billowing from every corner, and you had no idea where steve was.
when the knock on your door came early the next morning, your mouth felt dry and your stomach flipped, because you were somehow fearing the worst.
but when you pulled the door open to see steve, relief rolled over your body like a wave and you practically launched yourself into him, arms circling around his neck like you always would, only this time he winced.
gently, his hands came to your hips and he carefully pulled himself back, making your brows furrow and your mouth twist into a frown.
“you okay?” you asked softly, immediately concerned, and he nodded, though you noticed the way one hand hovered over his middle like he was shielding it.
your eyes flicked up and down his body, taking him in. there were scratches covering his face, and an unfamiliar tiredness behind his eyes, sunken in a way you could only compare to grief.
around his neck, poking out from beneath the collar of his polo, was a dark, angry red line, bruising and scarring the skin just beneath his throat.
“jesus christ, steve, what happened?” you gasped, fingertips reaching up to trace the mark gently, and he forced a smile.
“you should see the other guy.” he joked, but you didn’t smile. your eyes dropped back down to his waist, right where his hand still sat not-so-subtly.
you grabbed his hand and tugged him into the house, forcing him to sit on the couch and you rolled up his shirt to examine whatever he was hiding from you.
a large, white bandage circled his middle, faint red stains coating some of the fabric on each of his sides, and you looked up at him.
“steve, what the hell happened to you?” you asked, and he brushed you off, pushing his shirt back down and pulling you up onto the couch to sit on his lap.
“‘s fine, baby. i promise, i’m fine.” he told you, his eyes searching yours as his hands circled your waist and pulled you in closer. “just got a little held up. sorry i didn’t come by the other night.”
you sighed, but then leaned your head forward to press it against his forehead, kissing him softly, and steve relaxed against you immediately.
“it’s okay. i’m just glad you’re okay, stevie.” you mumbled against his shoulder, burying your face into his neck. “when you didn’t show up, then with all these murders… i got scared.”
“i know, honey, i’m sorry.” he squeezed you tighter, kissing your head. “i missed you so much, god, you don’t even know.”
and the two of you sat like that on your couch from what could’ve been anything from 5 minutes to 5 hours, and you were unaware that this was the beginning of something much bigger than the two of you.
—
six months into hawkins’ government issued quarantine, and things were already much more different than you realized.
you had moved in with steve. maybe it was a little soon, considering you had only been together for about 9 months, but his parents had skipped town before the quarantine was set in place, and he hated being alone.
he worked at the wsqk radio station now, still paired with his best friend robin, but now every night he came home to you.
at least, he used to.
he’d call you before he left for work, asking if you needed him to pick anything up on his way home in this strangely domestic way that made you forget you were just a couple of 20 year olds who had only been together for a year, it made you feel like he was forever. he was your future.
he’d step into the house and drop his keys by the door, the clatter echoing across the first floor before he’d find you, and his hands would be on you in an instant.
arms around your waist, pulling you into a hug, or onto his lap. his lips would meet yours, or his face would end up buried in your neck, depending on how his day went.
but he’d always come home to you, he’d grip onto you like you were the only thing worth holding on to, and he’d whisper that he loved you repeatedly, like it were a prayer.
that’s what made it noticeable when he began pulling away.
at first it was subtle; maybe he wouldn’t call before driving home, or he’d head upstairs and shower before coming downstairs to curl onto the couch with you. it was easy enough to brush off as a bad day.
but then there were those strange nights as the months passed. the nights when he’d come home unexplainably late, sometimes in the early hours of the morning when you were already asleep in his bed, arm reaching across his empty side of the bed as you awaited his return, even in sleep.
when he’d get home, you’d wake up to the sound of him shuffling around the room, shrugging off his jacket, unbuckling his belt, and soon climbing into bed beside you, pulling the covers over his body and pressing his chest up against your back, letting his arm slide around your middle as he'd leave a gentle kiss on the back of your neck.
you’d ask him about it in the morning, why he got home after midnight, and he'd tell you it was because of work.
you didn't know whether or not to believe him, because who works all night at a radio station? but other than that, he never really gave you a reason to be suspicious of anything, because he'd always be by your side again.
that was until november of 1987.
—
he's pulling away, you can feel it. you've been feeling it for the last month at least, maybe even longer. you can't remember exactly how long it's been since you'd noticed, but ever since you noticed, it's been all you can see.
he doesn't cling to you anymore. no hands on your hips while you're cooking in the kitchen, no pulling you onto his lap after work, no phone calls "just 'cause he misses you" no kisses on the back of your neck in the middle of the night. there hasn't even been any sex.
it's like there's been a stranger in your shared bed each night. he still sleeps beside you, but he's not close to you anymore. he doesn't hold you; he just lies on his back and stares up at the ceiling with wide eyes, as if he's lost deep in his thoughts.
when you ask, he just tells you he's busy with work, that he's been helping his friends with things, that he's "just tired".
you just don't understand it. he used to be literally obsessed with you, but now you're fighting for just five minutes of his attention.
he's almost always out of the house, and when he is at home, he's got that walkie talkie glued to his side, ready to take off the moment there's a crackle of static asking for his help.
it's a nightmare. you know his friends need him, but you need him too, and the more he runs after them, you wonder if it's just something to do with you.
you want his attention back; you want him to love you again.
it's like your devoted boyfriend, steve harrington, went to work one day and disappeared, only to be replaced by something that looks like him, moves and talks like him, but isn't him.
you tried everything you could think of; any kind of excuse for him to spend more than ten minutes with you for something that wasn't just going to sleep in the same bed.
you planned dates, but those plans always fell through when he'd get stuck "working late". you tried to get him to watch a movie with you on the couch, but he'd fall asleep halfway in, or he'd not have enough time because "dustin needed him for something".
you tried to tempt him, because you were getting desperate. you dressed in one of his shirts, no bra beneath it like he always loved, and a pair of lacy panties, just waiting for him to get home. ten months ago, he'd have told you he "couldn't resist you looking like this" and he'd have gone all in.
but when he got home, he hardly glanced your way as he took off his shirt and changed into pajama pants, slipping into bed beside you and keeping his back facing your way.
"stevie..." you'd whispered softly, leaning in closer so your chin was pressed to his shoulder and your voice right beside his ear. he hummed in response as you slowly kissed the warm skin of his bicep. "steve."
"not tonight, honey." he mumbled, burying his face into his pillow. "'m sorry. i'm just tired."
you frowned, your lips still glued to his skin, but listened. you respected his space. without as much as a sigh, you'd rolled over and curled into yourself, unsure of what you were supposed to do, because steve didn't want you anymore.
and that leads you to now. november 4th, 1987.
steve hadn't come home the night before, only arriving now, in the early afternoon of the next day, just to shower and change his clothes before he disappears again. and you've had enough.
you watch the way he brushes past you, pulling a jacket on over his sweater — your favorite sweater of his — and grabbing his keys.
"steve." you call out his name as he reaches for the doorhandle, and you're almost surprised to see him stop and turn to face you.
"yeah, honey?" his tone was sweet, almost familiar, but you could hear the tiredness behind it, like there was something forcing the tone out of him.
"don't 'yeah, honey' me, steven." you stated, and his face immediately scrunched into an expression that was a mixture of confusion, concern and surprise. "where the hell are you going?"
"work." he states, and you scoff, crossing your arms and giving him a look that tells him loud and clear that you don't believe him.
"you just got home from work." you point out, and he sighs, running a hand through his hair. "steve, just talk to me. please. tell me what's going on."
he sighs and shifts on his feet, pulling the front door open. "i can't do this right now, i gotta go."
he takes one step out the doorway, and you draw in a sharp breath.
"if you leave right now, i won't be here when you get back." the words leave your mouth before you even had the chance to think them over, because, frankly, you're just done. "i'm so sick of this, steve. you don't talk to me, you don't touch me, you hardly even look at me anymore, and it's bullshit."
the last word slices through the air like a blade, and steve freezes in his tracks, his blood running cold as he turns to face you again. bullshit.
"honey, please—” his voice comes out shakier than it was before. "can we... we can talk about this tonight. i promise. it's just, i have to go. please don't leave."
you don’t meet his eyes, you just cross your arms and look down at the floor, but you do give him a hesitant nod, because you don’t want to lose him.
steve looks hurt as he closes the front door, and you watch from the window as he trudges to his beamer in the driveway.
you almost wanted to leave, but then something in his tone, the desperation, makes you stay. you feel hopeful. once he gets home tonight, you'll be able to talk and work everything out.
except steve doesn't come home that night. or at all the next day. it's the night of november 6th when he returns, or the early morning of november 7th technically, and you're ready to fight with him, because he promised you would talk, then disappeared again, leaving you worried sick even when you don't want to be.
you sit in the living room, arms crossed while your leg bounces up and down with anxiety. you're not sure if he's going to come home tonight, but you're praying he does, because no matter how angry you are with him, you still love steve harrington more than anything.
then, when you were passed out on the couch, sometime between 4 and 5 a.m., the sky still dark outside, you wake up to the sound of his keys scratching against the door.
you stand up quickly and hurry across the room, pulling the door open without a moment's hesitation, and your breath catches in your throat.
he's a mess, both physically and emotionally, but he's steve, and he's standing right in front of you.
there's a fresh cut on one of his cheekbones, with a few more cuts and bruises covering his face, and you feel a sudden rush of deja vu. this was almost the same thing that had happened 18 months ago, and it makes your stomach sink.
he's dressed in full tactical gear; a brown leather jacket, a backwards cap covering his usually perfectly styled hair, camo print shirt, cargo pants and a red bandana around his neck. all of it is coated in a thick layer of some foul-smelling slime, but you still step back to let him inside the house.
he doesn't walk past you this time, instead of heading upstairs to the shower without another word, he collapses into your arms with a shaky sob, his hands gripping onto you tighter than in months as his fists gripped into the fabric of your sweater and his face slipped into the crook of your neck.
you hug him back, a little confused, and overwhelmed by both the sight before you and the stench that comes with it, but you still hold him.
"i'm sorry." he whimpers into your neck, and it all hits you at once.
you had never once seen steve cry, especially not like this, and now he was breaking down in your arms, crying into your shoulder and holding onto your body like an anchor.
"steve," you whisper out his name and his arms circle you tighter, almost like he's trying to melt into your body. "where on earth have you been? i've— i've been so worried."
he just cried harder, the two of you still standing in the doorway.
"i'm so sorry, honey. i love you so much." his voice comes out shakily, and you pull away from the hug to meet his eyes, cupping his slimy, tear-stained cheek with one hand.
"come on." you tell him, not responding to anything else he's said and just taking his hand to lead him upstairs to the bathroom.
you start running him a hot bath without another word, only glancing his way to tell him to take off his slime-covered war outfit and get in the tub.
"you gonna join me?" he asks shakily, like it’s a poor attempt at a joke, but there’s hope in his tone. you draw in a sharp breath before speaking tearfully.
"only if you promise to tell me what the hell is going on with you right now. because, steve, i swear to god—”
"i'll tell you everything."
and he does. finally.
with his back pressed against your chest, his body slotted between your legs, in the bath, he tells you everything.
years of trauma, from fighting monsters in joyce byers’s living room, to being tortured by russians, from being choked and eaten by killer bats, to coming up with the final plan to take down who he referred to as “vecna”.
and you listen to it all, and though it’s a little confusing, it makes sense. it fills in so many gaps and questions in your mind.
the scars steve could never explain came from monsters, his late nights at work were because of what he called “crawls”.
he tells you about the upside down, about el, about everything he never could before, and you listen, from the beginning all the way to the end, when he explains that it’s over, that they just destroyed the upside down, that el sacrificed herself, and that he and the rest of his friends were safe.
when he finishes talking, you don’t say anything. you stay quiet, taking it all in, thinking it all over, solving all the little things steve had said in the past that had left you confused, the times he had almost let a secret slip out.
it’s hard not to believe him when you’ve seen the wounds first hand, when the timelines add up perfectly, when he shows up covered head-to-toe in mysterious slime that really can’t be explained in any other way.
“honey?” his voice broke the silence, because had noticed the way you fell quiet. “you okay back there?”
“yeah. just— just thinking.” you whisper, and steve sits up straighter, no longer leaning against you, and he turns to face you, reaching for your hand.
“what are you thinking about?” he asks you. he laces your fingers together like he always used to.
“the fact that you’ve apparently been fighting monsters for the last four years of your life and you just didn’t think of mentioning it to me?” you said, looking up to see steve’s frown. “steve, i was so scared. you were disappearing, you hardly talked to me anymore i thought— i thought you were going to break up with me, or that you were cheating, or that you just… didn’t love me anymore.”
steve’s face softens, guilt immediately eating away at his features, brows knitted together as he attempted to slide closer to you in the tub. “oh, baby, no, no, no.”
his arms come around you, pulling you towards him as he peppers kisses all over your forehead and face. you finally let the lump in your throat go, tears flowing from your eyes as you sob into the bare skin of his shoulder.
steve cradles you, holding you so gently and refusing to let go.
“i’m sorry. i’m so sorry, honey.” he whispers into your hairline, letting his own tears slip free again. “i should’ve— i never wanted you to feel like this, i just wanted to keep you safe. god, i didn’t even notice i was hurting you, baby, i’m sorry.”
“i thought you didn’t want me anymore.” you whimper against his skin, lip quivering and voice shaky no matter how hard you try to stop it. “i really thought you didn’t love me.”
“no, honey, never. i’ll always love you.” he reassures you, arms tightening around your body. “i’ll always want you, ‘cause you’re it for me, okay? i don’t want anyone else but you.”
you draw in another shaky breath, but nod as your breathing begins to balance out again and you collect yourself.
“i love you.” he states, letting his hands loosen from where they were wrapped around you to pull back jist slightly, allowing him to meet your gaze, your eyes red and raw from the tears.
“i love you, too.” you reply, and steve smiles, leaning in to kiss you and you let his lips meet yours.
it’s soft, gentle, and somehow the first real kiss you’ve had in months. steve’s hand comes up to cup your cheek as he kisses you deeper, eyes closed before he pulls back and presses his forehead against yours.
“i’ve missed you, you know? i didn’t mean to push you away.” he mumbles and you nod. there’s a silent pause before you giggle quietly, and steve stares fondly, a little puzzled. “what?”
“just— i think we need to wash your hair.” you say. “you reek, steve.”
“thank you.” he mutters sarcastically, but his lips curve upwards. “you always know how to flatter me, honey.”
you just smile and hum in response, because even if the hurt is still at the surface, it’s slowly fading away, replacing itself with relief just because you have him back.
“okay.” steve says, reaching for his shampoo and pulling it closer. “how about we make a deal? you take care of me and help me wash all of this goopy shit from my hair, and i promise to take the best care of you the moment we get out.”
“hmm.” you let your eyes narrow and tap your chin as if you’re deep in thought. “how would you take care of me?”
“i’ll do anything you want, honey.” steve promises, lips traveling down your neck as he leaves wet kisses that make you giggle. “you want to stay in bed and cuddle for the next week? done. you want me to cook you dinner and watch a movie? on it. you want me to eat you out for the rest of the night? i’m on my knees already, baby. i’ll do anything to make it up to you.”
your hands drift around his neck, nails gently scratching against the bottom of his hair as you him him close and rest your chin on his head, his laugh sending vibrations up your neck.
“okay.” you finally say and he sits up to meet your eyes again.
“yeah?” he asks and you nod.
“yeah.” you confirm, tears sparkling in the corners of your eyes. you brush some of his wet hair away from his eyes. “and, for the record, all you have to do to make it up to me is be here. just be here with me.”
he nods, thumb stroking your cheek. “i can do that.”
you smile. he smiles back, then pulls you close again, into another hug, like he doesn’t want to let you go.
steve would gladly hold you in his arms for the rest of his life and he’d never get bored. not when he has you. and he’ll very gladly spend the rest of his life proving that to you.
that’s why he’s had a ring hidden in his underwear drawer for the last year, just waiting for the perfect moment.
now that he knows that hawkins, and the entire world, is safe from monsters and the upside down, he has a feeling that perfect moment’s going to come up sometime soon, and he can’t wait.
—
a/n: lowkey rushed the ending cause i got stuck i hope that’s not noticeable.. anyway i hope u enjoyed! comments and reblogs are always appreciated <3
Summary: Five weeks of silence, one panicked hallway apology, and a lot of unglamorous therapy later, you shows up ready to actually talk instead of letting the voice in your head keep talking
A/N: I know some of you were wanting a part 3 but in the moment I didn't know how to write it in a way that didn't seem like she was just settling, I hate the idea of going back to a guy out of fear because you forgot what It was like to be single. BUT but I am a romantic at heart so here is an alt ending for those who wanted Steve to be forgiven. Have a good day my lovelys :)
It was almost five weeks before you let yourself knock on his door.
Not because you didn't miss him. You missed him constantly, in the stupidest ways, reaching for the wrong side of the bed at Robin's, hearing a voice on the street that made your whole body turn before you realised it wasn't him. But you'd needed those five weeks. You'd needed to sit with the ache long enough to know what you wanted to say when you finally saw him again, instead of just saying whatever the hurt wanted you to say.
You'd called him that morning from Robin's kitchen phone, the cord stretched as far as it would go so no one could listen in. Can I come by tonight?
He'd barely let you finish the sentence. Yeah. Of course. Whenever you want.
Now you were standing outside the apartment you used to call home, keys still sitting heavy and unused in your coat pocket, because some part of you hadn't wanted to just let yourself in. Not yet. Some part of you needed him to open the door.
He did, almost before you'd finished knocking, like he'd been standing on the other side waiting.
He looked better than the last time you'd seen him, not fixed, exactly, but steadier. His hair was doing the thing where it looked like he'd run his hands through it too many times to count, and there were still faint shadows under his eyes, but he was wearing a shirt you recognised, one you used to steal to sleep in, and something about that small detail made your throat go tight.
"Hi," he said. Careful. Like the word itself might startle you off.
"Hi."
Neither of you moved for a second.
"Can I come in?"
"God, yeah. Sorry." He stepped back so fast he nearly tripped over his own feet, and despite everything, despite the five weeks and the ache and the name that still sat between you like a scar not quite healed, you almost laughed.
The apartment looked the same and completely different at once. Your coffee mug was still in the drying rack, like he hadn't been able to put it away. There was a blanket balled up on one end of the couch that hadn't been there before, like he'd taken to sleeping down here instead of in the bed you used to share.
"I've been meaning to ask Robin to grab the rest of your stuff," he said, following your gaze. "Wasn't sure if you wanted it, or if you wanted new stuff, or-" He stopped himself, exhaled. "Sorry. I'm nervous."
"I can tell."
"Yeah, well." A small, helpless smile. "You're kind of the most important person in the world to me and I have no idea what you came here to say, so."
You sat down on the couch. After a beat, he sat too, leaving space between you that felt both too far and exactly right.
"I've been thinking," you said, "about what you told me. That day on Robin's landing. About the name just... being there. Waiting for a crack to slip through."
His jaw tightened, but he didn't look away. "Yeah."
"I hated that you said it like that. Like it was inevitable. Like there was nothing you could've done."
"I know."
"But I've also been thinking that maybe I hated it because it scared me." You picked at a loose thread on the couch cushion, needing somewhere to put your hands. "Because if it's just... in there. If five years with someone leaves marks like that. Then what happens after five years with me?"
Steve was quiet for a moment. When he spoke, his voice was low, steady in a way it hadn't been that night in the hallway.
"You'd leave marks too," he said. "Good ones. I'd hope. But yeah, probably weird ones, too. Like I'll probably say something in twenty years that only makes sense because of some dumb argument we had about the thermostat. That's not a bad thing. That's just what happens when someone gets far enough into you that they're part of how your brain works."
"That's not really reassuring."
"No, I know, let me finish." He turned to face you properly, angling his whole body toward you the way he used to when he actually wanted you to hear him, not just wait for his turn to talk. "What happened with Nancy's name, that wasn't her getting into me twenty years from now. That was old. That was a scar, not a wound. It doesn't mean anything about what's happening between us right now, today. But you didn't know that in the moment, because I didn't explain it. I just got defensive because I was scared of what it meant if I admitted the truth, which is that some part of who I used to be is still going to show up sometimes, even in a life I built with you. And I panicked instead of just telling you that."
You looked at him for a long moment. "That's the most self-aware I think I've ever heard you sound."
"I've had a lot of time to think," he said, wry. "Robin made me go to actual therapy. Did she tell you that?"
"She mentioned it. I thought she was joking."
"Nope. Six sessions in. Guy's office smells like a candle store, and I hate it, and I've cried twice, and I'm still going." He rubbed the back of his neck. "Wanted you to know that. Not because I think it fixes anything automatically. Just, I didn't want to come to you again with nothing but an apology and no actual answer for why it happened."
Something in your chest loosened, just slightly, at that. Not because he'd fixed it, five weeks and six sessions didn't erase five seconds that still played on a loop in your head sometimes. But because he'd actually done something. He hadn't just waited for the hurt to fade on its own and hoped you'd come back to the same version of him.
"I'm not all the way there," you admitted. "I don't know if I will be for a while. Sometimes I still think about it and it just, hurts. Out of nowhere."
"That's okay."
"I don't want you to think I'm punishing you by taking this slow."
"I don't think that." He shifted closer, not touching you, just closing some of the distance. "I think you're being careful with something that matters to you. I'd rather have that than have you pretend you're fine when you're not."
You let out a breath you hadn't realised you were holding. "Can I ask you something?"
"Anything."
"Why her, in that argument? Out of everyone. Out of every name you've ever known."
He considered it honestly, the way you'd asked, instead of rushing to defend himself the way he had that night.
"Because we used to fight like that," he said finally. "Nancy and me. All shouting, no listening, both of us just waiting for the other person to stop talking so we could win. It was the only way I knew how to fight with someone I loved, for a long time. And when we started going at it like that, not you, me, I mean the shape of the argument, some old, dumb part of my brain reached for the name that used to go with that shape." He shook his head. "It's not an excuse. It's just, the actual answer, instead of the panicked one I gave you."
"That's a better answer."
"Therapy," he said, with a small, self-deprecating almost-smile. "Turns out paying a guy to make you sit with your feelings actually helps you understand your feelings. Who knew."
You laughed, really laughed, for the first time in weeks, and something about the sound of it seemed to hit him like relief made physical, his shoulders dropping, his whole face softening.
"I missed that," he said quietly. "You laughing. God, I missed that so much."
"I missed you too." You said it before you'd fully decided to, but once it was out, you didn't want to take it back. "That's the annoying part. I was so angry, and I still missed you the entire time."
"I'd take annoyed and missing me over not missing me at all."
"Low bar, Harrington."
"I contain multitudes." He reached out, slow, giving you every chance to pull away, and brushed his knuckles gently against the back of your hand where it rested on the couch cushion. You didn't pull away. "Can I say something that's going to sound insane?"
"When has that ever stopped you."
"I'm glad it happened," he said. "Not- not the hurting you part, God, not that. I'd take that back in a heartbeat if I could. But I think I needed to actually sit with why I do the things I do instead of just getting to coast because things were good. I don't think I would've gone to therapy if you hadn't left that night. I don't think I would've actually looked at the Nancy stuff instead of just deciding it didn't matter anymore because it was in the past." His thumb moved slowly against your knuckles. "You leaving made me become someone I actually want to be, instead of just someone who got lucky enough that you loved him anyway."
Your eyes stung. "That's really unfair to say to me right now."
"Yeah, probably." He smiled, small and crooked. "I've had five weeks to write this speech. Figured I should actually use it."
"You said you didn't think the speech that fixes it exists."
"It doesn't fix it," he said. "I don't think anything fixes it, exactly. I think we just, keep choosing each other, on purpose, even with the scar there. Every day, instead of once and done."
You turned your hand over under his, so your fingers could actually lace with his instead of just touching. He exhaled like he'd been holding his breath for five weeks too.
"I'm not moving back in tonight," you said.
"Okay."
"I mean it. I want to. I want to so badly it's stupid. But I don't want to do it because I'm scared of staying away, I want it to be because I actually trust you again, not just because I miss my own couch."
"Okay," he said again, softer. "Take whatever time you need. I meant that the first time, and I mean it now. I'm not going anywhere. I'll wait as long as it takes, even if that's annoying, even if Robin makes fun of me for moping."
"She's definitely going to make fun of you for moping."
"She already has. Extensively. She made a chart. An actual chart, on notebook paper, tracking how many days I've worn the same flannel."
You laughed again, and this time when he shifted closer, you let your head drop onto his shoulder, the way you used to on lazy Sunday mornings, before any of this happened. He went still for a second, like he couldn't quite believe you'd allowed it, and then carefully, so carefully, wrapped his arm around you.
"For what it's worth," he murmured into your hair, "you were never just the person I found after her. You were the person that made me understand what I actually wanted love to feel like. She was the practice. You're the person I'm trying to get it right for."
"That's a lot less humiliating than being called by her name in the middle of a fight."
"I will be reminding myself of that every single day for the foreseeable future, yes."
You sat there for a long while, not talking, just breathing each other in, the apartment quiet in a way that finally felt peaceful instead of hollow. At some point his hand found yours again, and this time you let your fingers stay tangled together, and it felt less like forgiveness and more like the first small brick being laid back into place.
Your stomach picked that exact moment to growl, loudly, right into the quiet of the room.
Steve burst out laughing, the real kind, the kind that used to be your favourite sound in the world. "Was that you or the couch?"
"Shut up." You were laughing too now, pressing a hand over your face. "I haven't eaten since lunch."
"Okay, well, I refuse to let the woman I love starve on principle." He was already up, padding toward the kitchen in his socked feet, throwing the words over his shoulder like it was the easiest thing in the world. "Stay. I make a mean grilled cheese. It's the one thing I've perfected in five weeks of feeling sorry for myself."
"That's a low bar."
"I contain multitudes, I already told you that."
You should have said no. You'd meant to leave twenty minutes ago. Instead you found yourself trailing after him into the kitchen, hopping up to sit on the counter the way you always used to while he cooked, swinging your feet, watching him fumble the butter knife twice because he kept glancing over to check that you were actually still there.
"You're staring," you said.
"I am absolutely staring." He didn't even try to deny it. "I haven't seen you sit on that counter in five weeks. Forgive me for enjoying it."
Dinner was, objectively, just grilled cheese and canned tomato soup eaten standing up at the counter because neither of you wanted to sit at the table like actual adults. It was also, somehow, the best meal you'd had in a month. He told you about the notebook-paper flannel chart in horrifying detail. You told him about the customer at work who'd tried to return a pair of shoes with visible grass stains on the soles. He laughed so hard at that one he nearly choked, and you had to thump him on the back, and somewhere in the middle of it you realised your hand was still resting on his shoulder blade long after the choking had stopped, and neither of you moved it away.
By the time you actually did head for the door, it was nearly eleven, and the ache in your chest had rearranged itself into something warmer.
"I should really go," you said, not moving.
"Yeah." He didn't move either.
"I have work in the morning."
"Yeah." His hand found yours again, unhurried, like it belonged there. "You said that already."
"I know." You laughed, soft, and let him walk you to the door, his fingers laced loosely through yours the whole way, like some old habit his body couldn't unlearn even through the worst five weeks of his life.
At the door, you turned back to him.
"Same time next week?" you asked. "Grilled cheese?"
His whole face lit up, boyish and delighted, in a way that made your heart do something helpless and fond. "Yeah. Every week, if you want. I'll perfect a second dish. Really impress you."
"Don't get ambitious. The grilled cheese is doing a lot of the emotional labour tonight."
"Rude, but fair."
You were smiling, really smiling, the first easy, unguarded smile in five weeks, and he was looking at you like he couldn't quite believe his luck, like you were something he'd been given a second chance to deserve.
"Can I-" He stopped himself, glancing down at you almost shyly, which on a twenty-something-year-old Steve Harrington was somehow the most endearing thing you'd ever seen. "Can I kiss you goodnight? You can say no. I just, I've missed your face a stupid amount and I don't want to just assume."
Your chest went warm and full in a way it hadn't in weeks. "Yeah," you said. "You can kiss me goodnight."
He cupped your face like it was something precious, and kissed you slow and soft and a little disbelieving, like he still couldn't quite trust that you were really there. You melted into it despite yourself, one hand curling into the front of his shirt, and when he finally pulled back he was grinning, dopey and bright, forehead resting against yours.
"Okay," he breathed. "Okay, wow. Good. Great, even."
"Articulate."
"Give me a break, I just got kissed by my favourite person for the first time in a month." He laughed, delighted and a little dazed, and pressed one more quick kiss to your forehead before finally letting you step back. "Drive safe. Call me when you get to Robin's so I know you got there."
"I will."
"I mean it. I'll worry."
"I know you will." You smiled up at him, feeling lighter than you had in weeks, like something that had been clenched tight in your chest for five weeks had finally, gently, let go. "Goodnight, Steve."
"Goodnight." He watched you all the way to your car, hands shoved in his pockets, grinning like an idiot, and when you glanced in the rearview mirror as you pulled away, he was still standing there in the driveway under the porch light, waving, exactly the way he always had.
You called him the second you got to Robin's, just like you promised, and he picked up before the first ring even finished.
"That was fast," he said, and you could hear the smile in his voice.
"You told me to."
"I know. I just really like that you listened." A pause, warm and easy. "Same time next week?"
"Same time next week," you agreed, and for the first time in five weeks, you fell asleep without your chest aching, already looking forward to Tuesday.
summary: when meeting each others families looks like it’s going south, gator assures your dad he’s not going to mess with you
cw: fluff, soft!gator, not great parental relationships (reader and gator), guilt, crying, pet names
wc: 2.9k
six months you'd been involved with gator, two since you made it official with him.
and now it was near on impossible to keep him away from your family. especially when he'd show up on patrol everyday just to check on you even when you told him not to.
your parents were past suspicious, and starting to just get concerned deputy tillman was actually stalking their young daughter.
today you'd had enough. enough of your parents questioning you, of them locking your window at night, of your father following you around everywhere almost everywhere.
sprawled across your bed, you were watching gator snoop through your bedroom you'd recently reorganised on a rare afternoon that both your parents went out the house without you.
the second they left you were on the phone to gator, and he was at your door before you could even hang up.
"gates?"
"yes my sweet girl?"
"i think we need to tell our parents about us.. mine at least. like..” you started to ramble “im not a child you know, i can do i want, i don’t have to.. hide” your voice fizzed out by the end.
"sure- whatever ya want mama" he said casually, not taking his eyes out of your underwear drawer.
"i mean today"
he dropped the lacy thong he was inspecting and spun around, startled.
"to- today?"
"is that a bad idea?"
slowly, he stepped forward towards your bed, dropping beside you and pulling you into him instantly with a loud sigh.
"probably.."
"but i-"
"ma i ain't done"
"sorry" you mumbled against his chest, exhaling as his fingers threaded through your hair.
"hmm.. was gonna say, i agree with ya- that we should tell em. ya ain’t no kid"
"yeah?"
"yeah, we can tell my dad first if ya like- ease into it"
"that sounds like a good idea"
you feel him press a kiss to the top of your head, then your forehead as you sit up, then down your nose, then your mouth. before you knew it he was on top of you, clearing your head of every concern you had.
stepping out onto the gravely ground of the ranch later in the day, the ground you'd walked over countless times, you suddenly started second guessing everything.
"should i not have worn this? is it too much? i don't wanna look-"
"you look divine"
gator came up behind you as you stared in the reflection of his shiny car door, stuffing his face in your neck and murmuring into your ear.
"but-"
"no buts, cmon let's do this 'fore you spiral anymore"
you sigh, the ground below you abruptly feeling so unfamiliar and strange.
Gator had pre warned you about his family situation before today, a quiet conversation in the dead of night after a long evening. he would probably say it was a moment of weakness, you'd say it was a moment of vulnerability.
a moment where you realised you actually meant something to this man, that this man wasn't just the hard exterior he claimed to be.
you never spoke about it again, not really. you'd shared about yourself that night too, how controlling your father was over you and your mother, how although deep down you knew he was protecting you, it drove you insane.
gator already knew. it was just a way to make him feel more comfortable, to connect.
but now, staring at the front door waiting for gators father to open it, that night came back into your mind. and from the way gator was acting, you believe he's thinking about it too.
"we'll probably be here for like 20 minutes, try not to worry sugar- he probably won’t care" his hand squeezed your waist where he had you pulled into him.
"okay- okay yea-"
the door swings open, a large man stood in the doorway. leather jacket, cowboy hat, oversized boots.
sherif tillman.
"gator"
"hey dad- uh- this is!" gator went to gesture to you, introduce you.
"i know-" roy looked at you. "yer daddy know you're here darlin?"
"my- uh"
no he didn't. your parents thought you were out with your church girls. maybe even at church. anywhere but sherif tillman's ranch, confessing to your relationship with his son.
"i'll take that as a no, coming in then? ive been waiting for this since i saw you two a couple months ago” he turned on his heel, walking into the house towards the kitchen.
your heart dropped and you grabbed gators hand who also looked at you with a mortified expression.
“he saw us?” you whisper-shout
“i don’t know sugar- could be bluffin” gator shrugged.
“why would- nevermind”
you and gator followed, down the halls you'd (clearly not very successfully) creeped through on countless occasions.
"yer daddy know what yer doin with my son?"
"uhm no sir"
he tutted and shook his head, gesturing you to sit at the kitchen table as he went to the fridge to get a drink. you sit with gator on the left of you, his hand in your lap, griping into your thigh.
"dad- we just wanted to- figure it all out before-"
"i'm disappointed in you kid- takin out a lady an not even asking her father? that gonna be yer excuse to him too"
"what-" gator flailed his arms about, huffing out his words. "ain't like i'm askin to marry her, we're just datin"
"should have known yer seeing some girl- yer getting softer by the second"
roy sits opposite you both at the table, pushing two already open diet cokes in front of you. you swallow dryly, looking between gator and his father, the cold look behind roy's eyes, and the look of breaking confidence behind gator's.
"ain't soft" he grumbled, jaw tightening.
"should hope not"
"just wanted to introduce you to her"
roy looked at you. you smiled politely, trying to ignore how hard your heart was hammering against your chest. you told yourself over and over that this cold front is just how he is.
"well hello sweetheart"
"hello sir" you said shakily, with a humorous smile, even though there was nothing to laugh about in this situation.
"how old are you again?" he said flatly, sat opposite you like an interview.
"22 sir" roy nodded, eyes flicking to gator with a glimpse of pride.
"you a church girl?"
"yes"
"my son treating you good?"
"he's amazing" you smiled, a real smile.
"you in this for the long run?"
"yes sir"
"good" he stared at gator with impressed eyes.
you looked to gator also, half expecting them to break out in some sort of fist fight any second now.
"now go and tell her daddy 'fore i have to do it myself" he flashed you a smirk at the end of his sentence. "treat her right son" he finished, getting up and leaving you alone with gator in the kitchen.
"well sugar that wasn't too-" gator laughed with relief.
"he's right"
"what?" gator looked at you, you'd already twisted in your seat to be facing him fully.
"your dad i- please we need to tell my parents i don't-"
"oh sweets he's not actually gonna tell them" gator reached out to hold your face, worried his dad's actually sacred you.
"no i know- i want to please can we do it now before i change my mind"
"as long as yer sure mama"
"i am"
minutes after your weirdly quick meeting with roy, you and gator were out the house and on the way back to yours, pulling up just outside as the sun was about to set.
"fuck! what are we doing- gate is this-"
"sugar take a breath, cmere"
gator reached over to your side in the car, unbuckling your seat belt and pulling you over the console into his lap.
"gator what if they don't like you" you whimpered.
"i'll make em like me- worked with you didn't it" he teased, getting a very small smile out of you.
"you may be able to get my mother that way but my father?"
"bet ya i could get him to swoon"
"and i will take that bet" you giggled.
"there's my girl" he tilted his head and pushed on your back, forcing you closer where he pressed his lips to yours.
"gate"
"okay" he broke the kiss, running his hands over your face as he nodded.
"let's go"
"you're gonna be okay- anything happens i'll get ya right outa there"
you're at the front door before you realise, your feet carrying you there own their own accord.
gators hand is on your lower back, his brows knitted together in concern and even though he’d never admit it, fear.
deep down he was just as nervous as you. what if he couldn’t get your parents to like him, what if they banned you from seeing him, moved you out the state or something crazy. he didn’t know how he’d be able to cope without you.
“huh?” gator looked down at you, swearing he’d heard you say something.
his eyes locked on you, your head bowed, eyes closed, hands pressed together against your chest where your cross necklace laid as you mumbled under your breath.
“mama?”
no answer.
“angel”
“what?” you jumped as his hand squeezed your side, starting up at him with wide eyes.
“it’s gonna be okay yeah?”
“yeah” looking to the door you exhaled, reaching your key out to open it.
as the door swung open, the hallway was quiet; too quite. both you and gator timidly stepped in, closing the door quietly behind you and carefully removing your shoes.
the smell of dinner filled your senses as you padded across the house towards the kitchen. when you came faced with the door you saw your mother at the counter cooking, your father at the table.
“oh there you- who’s that? whys he here” your fathers voices dropped suddenly, rising from the table with a loud scrape of the chair.
“daddy it’s-“
“gator tillman sir” he stepped forward, arm extended in your fathers direction.
“i know who you are boy” he refused gator’s hand. “what ya doin round my daughter? she in trouble?”
“no sir! she’s-“
“can we all sit. please” you interrupted weakly.
your heart was racing, breathing frantic as now your mother had abandoned dinner at the name of gator.
“honey what’s going on?”
“our daughter has traipsed the tillman boy into our home” your father growled.
“daddy he has a name!”
with squinted eyes your father flicked between you and gator, then he took a deep breath and stepped back. you thought maybe he’d sit, like you asked, be calm and civilised.
“he’s not.. you are not” he pointed accusingly at you, then gator.
“please just-“
“no! no” he turned to gator. “you stay away from my daughter, i know how you people are”
“dad let us explain!” you screamed, tears filling your eyes.
“don’t wanna hear nothing from you”
stepping back, you curled in on yourself at your fathers words, looking at gator from the side, desperate to run into his arms for safety, to leave this house. gator was just taking being hollered at with a straight face, waiting for a chance to say his piece.
he shouts for what feels like hours even though it’s probably 10 minutes. tears are streaming down your face, you don’t dare to reach out to gator but even through the personal upset, your scared for him.
you feel guilty for bringing him into this, you should have kept it hidden. guilt floods your veins, everything you and gator had done behind gods back.
travelling up to your chest, your fingers wrap around the cold metal of your cross, damp from the tears that have ran down your neck.
“i’m not having you hurting my daughter”
“hurtin her!” gator repeated, finally breaking his silence, a shocked expression on his face, offended at the accusation.
the sound of gator’s voice cuts through the monotone grumble of your fathers, pulling your out of your own head.
“yes! you have no business with her”
“i wouldn’t dream of hurting her- i’d hurt the people that hurt her- i have”
“right” your dad shakes his head, huffing out a non humorous laugh.
“i’m not a kid daddy” everyone drops silent watching you as you step forward suddenly speaking up.
“i can still-“
“no you can’t. i’m sure of this cuz i can make my own decisions.” your voice trembled. “now can we all sit” you whisper in the moment of quiet, tears still silently rolling down your cheeks.
gators heart breaks when he looks at his girl, small and scared trying to stand up for herself. but he’s proud, proud of you standing up for yourself.
“fine” your father huffs, loudly pulling out his own chair and dropping down.
your mother sits quietly next to him, her own eyes glassy after the shouting match. in front of them you and gator sit, his hands reaching out to gently wipe across your wet face.
“you okay angel?”
“are you gate- i’m so sorry”
“so what’s it with you two?” he starts, cutting you off and breaking your moment, gator’s hands flying back to his own lap.
“we’ve been seeing each other for a couple months” you say with weak confidence.
luckily, either your father pities your sad face or he’s wanting to believe you, he stayed quiet and listens.
“uh- so i just wanted to tell you, let you get to know gator. like i know him- and we kept it quiet because we wanted to be sure of it” you look to your mother for some sort of reaction, a bit of sympathy for how your father reacted maybe.
“and sir-“ gator adds before anyone can speak. “i swear i will look after your daughter, i would never hurt her all i do every day is protect her, and i plan to do for as long as she’ll let me. i love her”
his hand squeezed your thigh and you turned to him with a soft expression.
“and i love him”
silence flooded across the table, your parents examining the look you were sharing, trying to figure out if it was real.
but it was undeniable.
“honey.. haven’t you noticed how different she’s been recently” you mother whispered.
your father looked, defeated almost, like he really wanted to find something to hate gator for. but in reality, there wasn’t anything.
well, wasn’t anything that he could find right now.
“you pray?” your father asked quietly, like it was a selling point.
“yes sir” gator hummed.
gator truly sold his charm, just like he told you he would. he even got your father to apologise for his outburst eventually as your mother agreed to dish up dinner for all of you.
“tell me in advance when he stays over, and no, under any circumstances, no funny business”
“yes dad”
“yes dad” gator smirked at you when your father turned his head down to his food again.
they made small talk over the meal, gator turning up the charm when talking to your mum until all four plates had been cleared. it was still awkward of course, but the borderline violent tension had fizzled away, and so had your guilt.
at the sink you and your mother washed the dishes as gator was taken off by your dad, for ‘a chat’.
“i hope he doesn’t kill him out there”
“he’s just protecting you” your mum said softly, reaching out to hold your arm.
“i know, but he doesn’t have to anymore, mummy i’m a grown up”
“i know you are honey. but he always will, its just what dads do”
“yeah… do you like him, gator?” you ask quietly.
“i do yeah. he’s got a bad reputation though, you need to be mindful- you don’t get that for no reason”
“he’s not his dad” you chewed your lip nervously, desperate for everyone to see gator like you do. truthfully you know why he has that reputation, and why you can look past it.
“i can see that” she pulled you in for a hug, which you melted into. “speaking of?”
you pulled back with furrowed eyebrows.
“his daddy? you met him yet?”
“yeah- just earlier he- he didn’t really care, actually told gator we should have come here sooner”
“well, i’m sure you told us when you felt it was right”
and you did.
yes, the evening may have been touch and go to begin with but as you settled into bed next to gator after he spent the whole evening with your dad, you felt like the timing couldn’t have been better.
somehow gator had managed to sweet talk your dad into letting him stay the night, in your room.
your body curled into his under your thick duvet, letting the peaceful quiet of the midnight hours surround you.
“are ya sure yer okay mama? after today- i know it was pretty emotional”
“emotional is an understatement”
you looked up at gator, eyes still slightly red and swollen from earlier, and he looked down at you, eyes filled with pure love.
“gate i knew it was gonna be difficult. i’m happy it’s done. i just feel bad for you being shouted at an’ all that”
“im fine babygirl, that was nothin. and i meant what i told ya daddy”
“you’ll protect me?”
“till death do us part” he winked and you blushed, surging forward to kiss him.
a kiss that got deeper and more intense as it lead to something you definitely would not be sharing with your parents over breakfast tomorrow morning.
Summary: Maybe Steve isn't a fan of arguing in public, but he sure as hell has no qualms about showing you your place.
MDNI!!!! SMUT, praise kink if you squint, oral (F receiving), hair pulling, fingering, p in v (no condom! don't be silly guys),
The fight had started downstairs in the kitchen, loud enough that half the party heard the first round.
Steve had been leaning against the counter with a half-finished beer, laughing at something Tommy said, when you walked up and told him exactly what you thought of the way he’d been looking at that girl from the next town over. You didn’t keep your voice down. You never did when you were pissed.
His smile vanished. The easy, popular-kid mask slipped and something sharper took its place.
“Outside,” he said, quiet enough that only you heard it. “Now.”
You didn’t move. So he grabbed your wrist, not hard enough to hurt, but firm enough that you felt every finger, and steered you through the crowd, up the stairs, past the locked bedrooms, and into the last bathroom at the end of the hall. The door shut. The lock clicked. The bass from downstairs became a distant, muffled thump.
Steve turned on you immediately.
“You don’t get to talk to me like that in front of people,” he said, voice low and tight. His hair was already a mess, polo damp at the collar, the faint mix of chlorine and cheap beer still clinging to him. “Not like that. Not ever.”
You laughed in his face, sharp and mean. “Or what? You’ll ignore me for another week? Go find someone easier?”
He stepped in close. Close enough that you had to tip your head back to keep looking at him. “Keep pushing.”
You did. You shoved his chest with both hands. “Fuck you, Steve.”
That was the last thing you got out before he spun you around and bent you over the sink. One palm planted hard between your shoulder blades, pinning you to the cool porcelain. The other yanked your jeans open, shoved them and your underwear down just far enough to bare you. The mirror was already fogging with your breath.
“Keep talking,” he muttered, working his belt open one-handed. The metal clinked. His zipper followed. “See where it gets you.”
The blunt head of his cock pressed against you, hot, thick, already hard from the argument, and then he shoved in to the hilt in one relentless thrust. The stretch punched a broken sound out of your throat that echoed off the tile. Steve groaned like it hit him just as hard, hips snapping forward again immediately, no pause, no gentleness.
He fucked you like the fight was still happening. Deep, punishing strokes that made the sink creak and your thighs slap against the edge. Every time you tried to push back or curse him he just drove in harder, the wet sound of it filthy under the distant music. One hand stayed firm between your shoulder blades. The other fisted in your hair and yanked your head up so you had to watch yourself in the mirror, flushed, open-mouthed, taking every inch of him.
“Still got something to say?” he gritted, eyes locked on yours in the glass. “Go on. Say it while I’m balls-deep. Tell me how much you hate me.”
You opened your mouth and he shoved two fingers in, pressing down on your tongue until you choked around them. Spit ran down his knuckles. He only fucked you faster, the base of his cock dragging against you with every thrust, the angle brutal and perfect. Your jeans were still tangled around your thighs. The edge of the sink dug into your hips. You could feel every ridge of him, every pulse, the way he was already starting to lose that careful control he usually kept in public.
When your legs started to shake he released your hair just long enough to reach around and rub tight, almost mean circles over your clit. The dual pressure tipped you over hard, your walls clamping down around him while you moaned around his fingers, body jerking against the sink. Steve cursed, dropped his forehead to the back of your neck, and fucked you through it without slowing, chasing the way you fluttered around him.
He didn’t come yet.
He pulled out suddenly, spun you around, and boosted you up onto the edge of the sink so your back hit the mirror. Your jeans were kicked the rest of the way off. He stepped between your thighs, hooked one of your legs over his arm, and shoved back in just as deep. The new angle made your head knock lightly against the glass. Steve didn’t apologize. He just gripped your hip hard enough to bruise and kept going, rougher now, less controlled, the wet slap of skin loud in the small room.
“Look at you,” he muttered against your mouth, not quite kissing, just breathing the words into you. “Mouthing off all night and now you’re dripping down my fucking balls. This what you needed? Somebody to shut you up?”
You dug your nails into his shoulders through the thin fabric of his polo. He hissed and fucked you harder for it, the head of his cock dragging against that spot inside you that made your vision blur. One of his hands left your hip to wrap loosely around your throat, not squeezing, just holding, a reminder of who was in control. His thumb stroked once over your pulse.
“Come again,” he ordered, voice rough. “I want to feel it. Want to feel you lose it while I’m still pissed at you.”
The second orgasm hit sharper than the first. Your whole body locked up and Steve groaned like it punched the air out of him, burying his face in your neck as he finally chased his own. A few more deep, stuttering thrusts and he came with a guttural sound, grinding in as deep as he could get while he pulsed inside you, filling you until it started to leak out around his cock.
For a long moment the only sound was both of you breathing hard. The bass from downstairs kept thumping like nothing had happened. Steve stayed inside you, forehead pressed to your shoulder, one hand still loosely around your throat, the other braced on the sink beside your hip. His cock twitched as he softened.
Eventually he pulled out slow, watching the mess of him drip down onto the porcelain. He didn’t clean you up. Just helped you down, tugged your underwear and jeans back into place with rough hands, fixed his own belt, and unlocked the door.
His voice was quieter when he spoke, but still edged with the leftover heat of the argument.
“Next time you want to start shit in front of people,” he said, thumb brushing once over your lower lip, “find me first. I’ll handle it the same way. Upstairs. Anywhere. Doesn’t matter.”
He leaned in and bit the same lip, soft, but not gentle, then walked out first, leaving you flushed and leaking in the bathroom while the party kept going like the whole world hadn’t just shifted.
You stayed there a minute longer, catching your breath against the sink, the ache between your legs a perfect match for the one still sitting under your ribs.
summary: a weekend off gives you and gator some time to unwind, with that in-the-moment ideas and feeling of the futures turn into plans
cw: fluff, vague hints of trad roles (reader doesn’t seem to work / gator is a man-man)
a/n: yes the house buying period is very unrealistic- they were js lucky or idk🧍♂️ it’s my fic i make up the rules sue me also i should prolly give reader a job bless her.
wc: 1.6k

Gator tillman was a good boyfriend. a good man? that was questionable. a good officer? probably not. but he was good to you.
almost a year into your official relationship with gator, and it was so easy. gator was hardly at work late and when he was there during the day he'd let you into the station or in the cruiser with him, just to give you a kiss.
he had time for dates that ended in sleepovers. he bought you presents almost everyday. and he was not afraid to use his 'deputy tillman' title to scare of any other men who tried to hit on you.
as the year faded into autumn, sherrif tillman remembered his son actually worked for him. gators shifts were doubled, most of them late evening and overnight.
suddenly, you hardly saw your boyfriend.
the effect was immediate, like a genuine part of you had been ripped away from your body. it felt like loosing an arm or a leg, every small thing was now seemingly impossible to do despite the fact it was muscle memory.
gator would sleep until the early afternoon, exhausted and burned out, before getting ready to go to the station to do it all over again.
the odd day gator would get off, he'd spend the whole time 'making it up to you' which was of course, nice (and included a lot of sex) but it felt like he was never fully there.
and he'd never let you take care of him.
"men serve their woman- don't need ya fussin over me"
after three months, through thanksgiving and christmas and the new year, gator admitted he was struggling.
it was difficult for him to admit, having waited so long to be taken seriously by his father. but this wasn't that. this was being taken advantage of, humiliated and puppeted.
he had a weekend. a whole weekend.
your phone had rang early morning, waking you up from you lonely sleep youd still not gotten used to.
"ma!"
"gate?"
"hey! i'm on my way sweets- get ready i'm taking ya out" his voice crackled down the line and you could tell he was in the car.
"it's seven in the morning"
"yeah?"
"i'm not even awake"
"ive got the whole weekend off- im gonna treat ya"
"you don't need to treat me"
"i ain't seen ya in three months"
"you have a whole weekend?"
"exactly"
"then what's the rush?"
when he pulled up to your house, still on the phone arguing that he needed to take you out, you ushered him inside and upstairs to your room.
"angel cmon we'll go that italian ya like"
"sure that sounds nice"
"right so-"
"later- tonight maybe" you pushed him down onto your bed cutting him off. "how much have you slept recently"
"uh- not much" you knew the answer, you could tell by the way he smelled like a redbull factory.
standing in between his parted legs, you asses his body, the way his jaw is set tight, his shoulders tensed. trailing your fingertips lightly over his work jacket that he basically lives in, you wonder if he's even been home.
"so sleep now- we have all weekend, place to ourself too" gesturing to the house, you added.
"i've not been here fer ya- let me make it up to ya" his hands grip onto your hips.
he holds you, not like he's teasing, or like his convincing. but like he's holding onto you to stay afloat, to ground him, like he needs reminding his real.
"cuddle me, that's making it up.. that's all i want" you whispered, removing his hands from you gently.
dropping to your knees, you begin to unlace his heavy boots and take them off before standing and peeling his jacket away.
you do it all with devastating tenderness, and each reminder of his work that's removed visibly relaxes gator more and more until he's left in his underwear.
"you're out- all the time serving the town" you continue as your stripping him off. "then you come home exhausted and still try to do the same for me... let me serve you for once, 's what wives are for anyway"
"yer not actually my wife" he grunts, trying for some reason (and failing) to not give into your softness.
"not my point"
"an' that's not right- serving me's not all ya for- that's my job"
"today it's mine"
you kiss gators forehead once as your hands cradle his jaw, a soft press of your lips against his skin that truly wrecks him.
"angel.."
"you want tea?"
"do i want fuckin tea" he spits out, but there's not real bite to it.
"what do you want?"
he swallowed thickly, huffs once like he's debating wether there's any more point in trying to save face.
"you got any of them madeline cake things" he whispers.
you smile and nod, scurrying off to the kitchen as sinks into your bed, immediately falling back into the way he'd gotten so used to living in your space. unguarded.
when you come back, a packet of cakes in one hand, a tea for you in the other (which you know he's going to want some of), you see gator had made himself truly at home.
the tv is on, he's complaining about you having the advert plan on netflix, his body is more visibly relaxed, wrapped in your soft sheets.
"you okay?"
"yeah- thanks mama, ya didn't have to do all this"
"i've literally done nothing, i just want to take care of you"
"i know sweets, ya do it so well." gator pulls you into his body, wrapping his arms tight around you.
"you're being overworked, i don't even care that i don't see you as much- well i do obviously it's horrible"
"so horrible" he cooed in agreement.
"im worried about you"
he sighs against you, his breath ruffling your hair.
"and i like looking after you, it feels right"
"yeah?"
"yeah- it would be a lot easier if we actually like.. lived together" you began to think out loud just filling the quiet.
"ya think?"
"yeah totally- i think it would be nice, id be there all the time to look after you. like one super long sleepover" you giggled, leaning up to look at him.
"don't call em that" he hated when you called it a sleepover, but you only laughed more and he couldn't help but smile.
the conversation faded out, the dull noise of Brooklyn 99 filled the quiet and your eyes began to drop, until gator shifted under you.
"what if we did?" gator murmured.
"huh?" you looked back up, his voice vibrating in his chest against your face.
"lived together?"
"gate i know you and daddy are weirdly close and i love that, even though i don’t get it, but i don't think he would like you to move in"
"ma i don't mean me move in" he chuckled.
"no offence.. i don't wanna live on the ranch"
"you are so cute" he muttered under his breath.
"huh?"
"what about we get a place of our own?"
"our own?" you repeated, never thinking of that as an option.
and just like that a whole life unfolded in front of you, a life you thought you might never have.
"daddy i think it's a good idea- i know we're not married but cohabitation is a really good thing"
it was sunday night, your parents had arrived home and were greeted with take out that you and gator had ordered. and the news that you were finding a house together.
"i saw this person - coast or something anyway - he said that cohabitation is actually the new norm. gives you a trial run basically"
"fine!" he shouted, just tired of your nonsense rambling. "you know what? fine. i know it's not gonna actually happen- finding a house can take months and you gotta pay for it somehow"
you and gator nodded acceptingly, your hands tangled together in your lap, letting your father believe what he wanted as long as it got him to agree with you.
but what he didn't know was that yesterday, after your talk (and a nap) you went on a drive, just looking for a home. and you found one.
It hadn't been planned properly, like a lot of things with gator.
but after the last year with him, nothing much scared you anymore. anything with him felt right.
maybe it was too soon, it had been almost 16 months since your first date, a year since you made it official that one night.
to you it was the right time.
the house wasn't perfect, it needed quite a lot of work. a new paint job, a new carpet, updated kitchen wear and a total refurnish.
but it was yours and gators.
you both paid toward it- him paying more because ‘he’s the man’
he used the money his mother put aside for him, and you used the small amount of saving you'd been collecting since you were a child even though gator was very against it.
for the first time in your life you had something that belonged to you, you had control over your own life.
at your last appointment you were given the keys. it was official.
and even though it took your parents a minute to accept it, through a lot of convincing, it was so worth it.
T.W: Mentions of abuse, injury, mentions of sex but no smut
A.N: First post kinda nervous chat thinking about turning this into a series so pls lmk if u want more!!!
🐊🐊🐊🐊🐊🐊🐊🐊🐊🐊🐊🐊🐊🐊🐊🐊🐊
Gator Tillman is a lot of things.
For the first few years of your life he was the older boy who played cowboys and Indians on the property line of your families ranches. In the years after that he was nothing but a brute, a cruel imitation of his father - or at least he tried to be.
You don’t know when exactly it happened, maybe it was when he started helping your father unload bags of feed when his knees got bad or that one time you saw him pick up trash at the county fair when he thought no one was looking. Maybe it started when he showed up at your back door in the dead of night at 15, bloodied and bruised after doing the opposite of whatever nonsense Roy had him up to that week - your mother stitching his split eyebrow at the kitchen table as you watched from the dark staircase. You don’t know when it started but you remember him holding you as you break down the night of your mother’s funeral, having caught you sneaking outside for a cigarette.
You don’t know when it started.
It’s the ass end of August in Lehigh. The air smells like mud and coneflower and the heat has finally started to subside to something more manageable. You sit perched on the fence segregating the Tillman property from yours, hidden by the great oak trees that loom above you. In the near distance Gator Tillman lines up tin cans - or at least you think they are, you can’t tell from this far away. Walking back to his post in a tight black shirt and dark grey utility cargos he raises his rifle to his shoulder and knocks all 3 from the makeshift altar of wooden pallets.
Show off.
He knows you’re sitting here, having tipped his cap in your direction when he began his assault on the tin cans - shoot em down, line em up, repeat. This time however he doesn’t replace them, setting his rifle against the wooden stack and swaggering across the open plane toward you.
He always tries to make himself look bigger you think. Maybe you don’t see him that way because you’ve known him since he wasn’t towering over you, maybe it’s because you know the horrible truth that Gator Tillman might just be a man.
“You enjoying the show darlin’” It’s not a question.
“If it’s a show I want my money back” you scoff, swinging your left leg from where it rested on the beam to meet your other, dangling below you.
He lets out a lazy smile at that, left hand reaching for whatever fruit scented vape is taking purchase in his pants today, right hand coming to rest just above your knee, thumb absentmindedly stroking the exposed skin at the hem of your sundress.
“You workin’ tonight?” He asks, exhaling an obnoxious cloud of citrus over his shoulder.
You shake your head “m’ not. Got practice at 6 though. Free after then”
“Good. I’ll pick ya up, stay at mine tonight. Roy’s in Minnesota until Thursday”
You nod, never completely at ease with Roy’s presence - even in his absence. If you stay you know he’ll know, he always finds out one way or another. It’s not enough of a deterrent though.
You and Gator have had a thing for the best part of a year now although the stolen glances and phantom touches go back far longer. You have sex, you spend your off time with eachother, you’re kind to eachother mostly, you’d probably go as far as to say he’s the person you care about most in this town bar your father.
But it’s not as simple as being lovers.
He has his role - the dutiful son, fearsome deputy, pillar of all that is the world according to Sherrif Tillman. And you have yours - caring daughter, waitress of the local diner and most importantly a talented figure skater.
Winters in North Dakota are long especially when you’re young and live in a town that time moved on without, you managed to occupy these winters by skating on the frozen lakes. A thing that you quickly discovered you not only enjoyed but had a talent for, and that’s not personal opinion by the way. By the time you were 15 you were being groomed into a polished performer, 2 district titles and now at 19 looking to compete in qualifiers for the Olympics after bringing home silverware at the US Championship in march.
Gator Tillman would jeopardise that.
Not to mention his father thinks you are the antithesis of what a woman is supposed to be - quiet, thoughtful, a homemaker, an honest god fearing all American woman.
I am as much a threat to Gator Tillman’s future as he is to mine.
Not that any of this matters, at least not yet anyway. For now you will ice his cuts and bruises with all of the tenderness of someone who knows him and he will sharpen the blades of your skates and kiss your hairline before he leaves for work in the morning with just the same sentiment.
Summary: Steve’s quiet has never scared you, until it starts feeling like the silence you grew up with.
A/N: Ive been on such an angst train recently I apologise in advance, this wasnt even a planned post but anyway I'll be back to focusing on requests tomorrow, hope you have a lovely day lovelys :)
You'd always hated the quiet.
Not the good kind, not the comfortable, easy silence of a Sunday morning with coffee going cold on the counter, or the kind that settled over the two of you in the car when there was nothing left to say because everything had already been said. That silence you loved. That silence meant safety.
It was the other kind that got under your skin. The kind that showed up when someone you loved was upset and decided, for whatever reason, that the safest thing to do with it was disappear into themselves. You'd grown up around that kind of silence. Your mother used to go quiet for days after a bad shift or whenever she was fed up with you, and you learned to tiptoe around her like the air itself might crack if you breathed too loudly You'd learned early that silence wasn't peace. Silence was a held breath. Silence was the calm right before somebody slammed a door.
So when Steve came through the front door that Tuesday evening and didn't say a word, didn't even glance your way as he dropped his keys in the bowl by the door harder than he needed to, something in your chest immediately pulled tight.
"Hey," you said carefully, looking up from the couch where you'd been half-watching TV, half waiting for him. "Bad day?"
He didn't answer right away. He toed off his shoes, left them lying sideways instead of lining them up the way he usually did, and walked past you toward the kitchen without so much as a glance in your direction.
"Yeah," he finally said, voice flat. "Something like that."
You watched him open the fridge, stare into it for a solid ten seconds without taking anything out, then close it again. He leaned against the counter and rubbed a hand down his face, and you recognized the posture, shoulders curled in, jaw tight, eyes somewhere far away. This was Steve shutting a door on himself. You just didn't know why yet.
"Do you want to talk about it?" you asked, keeping your voice light, testing the water.
"Not really."
Okay. Fine. That was fine. People were allowed to not want to talk. You knew that, logically, you'd read enough, been in therapy long enough, had this exact conversation with yourself enough times to know that someone needing space wasn't the same thing as someone being angry at you. But knowing something and feeling it were two very different animals, and right now the feeling was crawling up the back of your throat, fast and familiar and unwelcome.
You turned back to the TV, but you weren't watching it anymore. You were listening, to the fridge door, to his footsteps, to the specific quality of the quiet coming from the kitchen. It felt heavy. It felt like it was waiting for something.
Steve didn't come sit with you. He grabbed a glass of water, drank about half of it standing at the sink, and then said, "I'm gonna take a shower," and left the room without waiting for a response.
You sat there for a second, feeling small in a way you hated feeling. The rational part of your brain was trying to talk you down, he said he had a bad day, that's all, people are allowed to be tired, this isn't about you, but the other part of you, the part that was eight years old and standing very still in a kitchen that smelled like your mothers perfume and unspoken anger, was already spiraling. Already running through the last twenty-four hours to figure out what you'd done wrong. Had you said something at breakfast? Left a mess somewhere? Forgotten to do something you'd promised?
You heard the shower turn on down the hall, and the silence that followed, real silence now, no water running, no Steve moving around, felt unbearable.
You picked up your phone and put it back down. You picked at a thread on the couch cushion. You told yourself you were being ridiculous, that this was Steve, not your mother, that Steve had never once slammed a door or made you flinch or let a bad mood curdle into something aimed at you. You knew that. You knew that. And still your leg wouldn't stop bouncing, and still your stomach felt like it had a fist in it.
By the time he came out of the shower, hair damp and a plain t-shirt clinging slightly to his shoulders, you'd worked yourself into a low, quiet panic that you were doing your best to keep off your face.
He still didn't say much. He grabbed the remote off the coffee table, sat down on the far end of the couch, not close to you, not touching you, which was so unlike him it made your throat ache, and started flipping through channels without really watching anything.
You couldn't take it anymore.
"Steve."
"Hm?"
"Are you mad at me?"
He looked over at you then, and for a second his face did something complicated, surprise, mostly, and then something softer underneath it. "What? No. Why would I be mad at you?"
"I don't know," you said, and your voice came out smaller than you wanted it to. "You've barely said two words to me since you walked in, you won't sit near me, you keep doing this thing where you go somewhere else in your head, and I just- I don't know what I did, but if I did something, I'd rather you just tell me instead of-" You gestured vaguely at all of him, at the silence, at the space between you on the couch that felt like it had grown into a canyon. "Instead of this."
Steve set the remote down. "Hey. Hey, no- you didn't do anything." He shifted closer, close enough now that his knee brushed yours, and something in you loosened half an inch at the contact. "I'm sorry. I didn't- I wasn't trying to shut you out, I promise. I've just had this thing running in my head all day and I didn't want to bring it into the house and dump it on you the second I walked in."
"I'd rather you dump it on me than disappear," you said, quieter now, some of the panic draining out of your voice and leaving something rawer behind it. "I know that's- I know that's not fair, maybe. You're allowed to need space. I just. I don't do well with quiet like that. When someone's upset and goes silent I always think it means-" You stopped, not sure you wanted to say the rest of it out loud.
"You always think it means what?" Steve asked, gently, the kind of gentle that told you he already had a guess and was giving you room to say it yourself instead of saying it for you.
You picked at the seam of the couch cushion again. "That it's about to turn into something. That the quiet's just- the calm before the storm. Before someone gets mad for real." You shrugged like it didn't matter, even though it very clearly did. "My mom used to go quiet like that. For days sometimes. And it always meant something was coming. So now when someone I care about goes quiet on me, some part of my brain just goes straight to bracing for it. Even when I know that's not- I know that's not you. I know you'd never. It's just automatic."
Steve was quiet again, but it was a different kind of quiet this time, the kind where you could see him actually taking something in instead of pulling away from it. He reached over and took your hand, turning it over in both of his like he was trying to find the right thing to do with it.
"I didn't know that," he said finally. "About your mom. Not like that, not- not the specifics of what it felt like for you."
"I don't really talk about it."
"I get why." He rubbed his thumb slowly over your knuckles. "For what it's worth, and I know it doesn't erase twenty-some years of your brain being wired a certain way, but when I go quiet, it's never building toward anything like that. It's usually the opposite, actually. It's me trying not to say something sharp before I've had a second to shake it off. I'd rather go quiet for twenty minutes than say something I don't mean because I'm in a mood about something that has nothing to do with you."
"I know that, logically," you admitted. "It doesn't always help in the moment."
"No, I bet it doesn't." He tugged your hand a little, pulling you closer until you gave in and let yourself lean into his side, his arm coming around your shoulders easy and familiar. "Can I tell you what today actually was? Since I clearly did a bad job of not making it a whole thing."
"Yeah. I want to know."
He exhaled, long, some of the tension visibly leaving his shoulders now that he'd decided to actually let you in instead of trying to carry it alone. "Robin and I got into it with our manager again. The new guy. He's been riding us all week about the schedule, and today he tried to write me up for something that wasn't even- it doesn't matter, it's stupid, but it put me in a mood, and then I spent the whole drive home rehearsing what I should've said back to him instead of what I actually said, which was nothing, because I just stood there like an idiot. And I didn't want to walk in the door and snap at you over something that's actually about some guy named Gary who thinks a laminated binder makes him important."
You couldn't help the small laugh that came out of you, some of the tightness in your chest finally easing. "Gary."
"Gary," Steve confirmed, with real venom. "Anyway. That's it. That's the whole big mysterious mood. Gary and a binder."
"I built an entire apocalypse in my head over Gary and a binder."
"I'm sorry," he said again, and this time it landed different, softer, more aimed at the actual thing instead of just smoothing it over. "I mean it. I didn't think about what walking in quiet like that would look like from where you were sitting. I'll try to just, say something next time. Even if it's just 'hey, I'm in a mood, it's not about you, give me twenty minutes.' That's not hard. I can do that."
"You don't have to perform being fine the second you walk in the door," you told him, tilting your head up to look at him properly. "I don't need you to be in a good mood all the time. I just need to know I'm not the reason for the bad one. Even just a sentence would do it. 'Rough day, not you, need a minute, that's it, that's all I need to hear."
"Rough day. Not you. Need a minute," Steve repeated, like he was committing it to memory on purpose. "I can absolutely say that sentence. That's an easy sentence."
"Good."
He pressed a kiss to the top of your head, and you felt the last of the knot in your chest finally come undone, replaced by something warm and a little embarrassed at how quickly you'd spiraled over something that, in the end, really had been about a guy named Gary.
"For what it's worth," Steve said after a minute, voice quieter now, more serious, "I hate that your brain does that to you. The bracing thing. I hate that it's from something real, and I hate that I made it worse tonight without meaning to. I don't ever want you sitting out here doing math on what you might've done wrong when the actual answer is just, I had a bad day and forgot how to use my words for twenty minutes."
"You're allowed bad days," you said. "I promise I'm not asking you to never have a mood again. I just, I panic in the silence. That's on me too, a little. It's not all on you."
"Maybe," he allowed. "But I can meet you halfway on it. That's not exactly a hard ask."
You settled further into him, listening to the TV mumble something in the background that neither of you were actually watching, and let yourself just breathe for a second, really breathe, not the shallow, careful breathing you'd been doing since he first walked through the door.
"Hey," Steve said after a while, low, almost teasing now that the weight of the conversation had lifted. "You want to hear the whole thing I wanted to say to Gary, but didn't, because I have a job I'd like to keep?"
"Obviously."
"Okay, so picture this," he started, and you could feel him relaxing into it, into the version of himself that talked with his hands and got a little too invested in his own stories, and you let yourself relax right along with him, the quiet finally turning back into the kind you actually loved, full, easy, safe, his voice filling up the space instead of leaving it hollow.
By the time he finished, badly, dramatically, throwing in a Gary impression that was mostly just Steve talking through his nose, you were laughing for real, and the tight, bracing feeling from earlier felt like something that had happened to a different version of the evening entirely.
"Rough day," you said again, mostly just to hear him say it back.
"Rough day," he agreed, squeezing your hand. "Not you. Definitely not you."
And this time, when the quiet came back around them a little later, settling soft over the room as the TV played to no one and his fingers traced slow, absent patterns against your arm, it didn't feel like the kind you needed to brace for at all.
your invitation to joe & girl next door's wedding has finally arrived.kindly RSVP before august 10.i'll see you at the wedding
pls ignore the animation on cookie's picture, i can't remove it anymore 😭😭. also, it looks better on desktop/laptop hehe 🫶🏼🫶🏼
issy talks: well shit i realized i'm not using canva at its full potential. thank you @oohlillie for checking it first. and, thank you @you8sblog for pushing me to made this xoxo 💗💞
