josie after hours: imagine being a tired wife to Jack, who’s more than a little broken and just a biiit toxic. cw manhandling, mocking, pushing, daddy kink!
he gets a call in the middle of your romantic home dinner date, one of the few days off he has. it’s his job asking him to come in early, saying they can ask anyone else, but they know how much he loves to come in, which would be funny any other day.
when you hear dana’s voice through the call, you roll your eyes, knowing what’s already about to happen. you don’t fight to keep your content smile, because as Jack says let me talk it over with my old lady, he’s already got that remorseful look on his face as he looks to the side, that i’m about to watch my beautiful wife’s heart break in front of me face.
you sigh when he finally asks, but you just shrug, grabbing your plate and going to dump it. you don’t fight, or ask him to stay, not like you would usually. and it shocks him.
“really?” “yeah, go ahead.” you’re tucking your hair back as you turn on the sink. “are you sure?? they said they can ask someone—” “i don’t care Jack, that’s what you love to do. do it.” the words shoot through him, and he’s left standing at the table while you’re already making your way to your room.
you married a doctor, so you knew what you were in for. it just doesn’t hurt to have the days you have with him, only be for you. “baby, i won’t go if you don’t want me to. it’s our day.” “it is, isn’t it?” you’re getting ready for your shower, not facing him.
“yes..it is. don’t be like that, if you don’t want me to go then just say that.” “don’t be like that?? jesus jack just fucking go, i said i don’t care. you don’t have to beg for my forgiveness.” i know what i married. “well clearly i do because you won’t look at me, and you’re getting-ready to go to bed.” he grabs you by the sleeve and pushes you back on the bed right as you’re walking past him, the action putting a tear jerking look on jacks face once he sees yours.
you’re hurt, disappointed more than anything. he sees your eyes gloss over as your brows furrow. “i’m getting ready for bed because you’re gonna go anyway. if i said no, you would’ve continued. they need me honey, i won’t be long baby. and then i’ll have no choice but to say yes. you know you’re gonna go-why do this?” you go to stand, but he’s pushing you back down, a little harder this time.
“i’m a doc-they need me there, i can’t just…what-what do you want from me baby? i’ll—” “make it up to you,” you finish with him, which taunts him, making him sigh as you stare up at him. “you’re leaving in the middle of the dinner i cooked. you’re leaving your wife to go to work, on your off day, and that’s fine. i know what i married. i’ll make it up to myself.”
you’re setting him off on purpose, you know you are. you want him to feel bad, you want him to miss out on the pretty (and expensive) lingerie that’s been riding up your ass all day since you’ve been out together. you want him to imagine the sound of your vibrating wand as he head to his car to leave you. the one you’ve been frequenting almost a month now.
“don’t fucking do that, just stop. you’re being mean.” he follows you into the bathroom, catching the door as you attempt to slam the door. “you’re being fucking mean, you’re leaving me. don’t you have to get changed?” you’re taking off your necklaces and rings in the mirror, you’re practically radiating heat with all the anger inside you. he feels it.
“you’re being inconsiderate. you want those people to die? so i can fuck you, right? that’s what it is?” “go fuck yourself Jack. get out, go to work. that’s what you want. would hate for anyone to miss you.” you spit, turning you back to him as you uncomfortably unzip your dress, the view of what he would’ve been missing front and center.
you’ve got a pretty little lavender set on that tied up at the sides, a pretty bow at the middle of your titties, and a lace hem along the straps. all of Jacks buzzer words. he sighs, your eyes on him as you slip the dress down your thighs.
“baby.” “nuh-uh, don’t fuckin’ baby me. and don’t touch me either, you’re going to work. you don’t get this. i’ll make it up to myself.” you bend to turn on the tub but he’s quicker, shutting it back off from over you and forcing you back up by your neck, making you gasp. “don’t tell me what i can’t fucking touch, i bet i paid for this. i’ll do whatever the hell i want.” he grits, pushing you back into your room roughly.
“oh now you wanna stay, now you want those people to die—” “god just shut your fuckin mouth,” he’s forcing your head into the duvet, his tree trunk of a body holding you there as his hand dips between you and him, the rough hand cupping your clad cunt.
“you’re such a fake.” there’s a laugh on his tongue as he shakes his head, he’s got his three thick fingers grabbing at your soaked panties. “you wanna act all mad at me when you want this, you want me to fuck you so bad. yeah, that’s it?”
he unhands your neck as he pulls your panties down to your knees, and you can barely get back up before he’s pushing you back down on your stomach, not that it took much. you’re not overpowering that man. “sit still, so i can give you what you want. you’re so damn needy, know that?” he bullies his fingers into your cunt, getting a loud and high moan out of you, pushing back against his fingers greedily.
“you’re such an-asshole,” you moan as you look back at him, lip tucked between your teeth. “oh i’m sure, n’ i’m soo mean. and i’m a bad husband for not taking care of my wife, clearly.” he taunts, grabbing at your soft ass before landing a harsh smack against it, making you gasp as you lean into his touch.
“never take care of me, just leave me,” you hear his belt rustling behind you, “you leave me for so long, don’t even care bout me anymore daddy.” you mewl, making him smirk as he pulls his hard cock out, stroking the angered, aching thing. “daddy doesn’t care anymore? wouldn’t have that rock on your finger, or that beautiful porsche if daddy didn’t care, babygirl.”
he’s got your hair in his hands, forcing you to hold yourself up on your palms and meet his eyes. “tell me to stay home. say it.” your eyes bounce between his dick and his hardened, yet amused expression. the fact he found this funny almost pissed you off. “stay, Jack. please, just stay wimme. don’t go.” he nods along to your words, eyes on your soaked hole as he pushes his cock inside, biting down on his lip as he watches himself stretch your pussy open.
you let a drawn out moan escape you, your lashes as you meet him, pushing your hips back and burying him inside you. “want me to stay baby? huh?” he grabs at your tummy as he thrusts into you slowly, he’s inches away from your face with your hair still wrapped around his fist. “think you just want this dick baby, ion’ really think you want me to stay.”
he’s milking this in, milking in how you quickly shake your head, brows furrowed as you moan under him. “n-no, no stay daddy, stay wimme. want you to stay!” “yeah?” he lifts his white tee over his abs as he speeds up, it’s hard, deep inside you, just how you like it. Jack knows how to break you down. “want me to stay? not just because this dick is doin’ you so good? cause you miss me, right?”
his huge hand grabs at your right tit, squeezing down lm the soft flesh, getting a hiss out of you. times like this he wishes you carried, so when he’d squeeze he’d get something out of them. “y-yeah, yeah. miss you so much jacky, miss you all the time,” “know you do baby, don’t i know it,” his voice is ragged as he looks down into your eyes, they’re low and lust filled as he jackrabbits into you, a obscene clapping sound coming from between you both.
“you miss this, you miss this dick. miss getting your fill, getting fucked so good you don’t have to think for the rest of the night. missed how deep it is, how it feels sooo good and don’t stop daddy please,” he’s mocking you, his words coming up high and airy to imitate your many words he’s heard more than his own name.
and you can’t even fight back, because it’s true. you truly missed how he would fuck you so good some nights you’d forget where you were. missed that splitting, and almost fearful feeling of him bullying into you and fucking you like there’s no tomorrow.
“say it, say you missed this dick,” his head tips back, yanking your head back as his hand rakes over your spine and up to your bra’s wings, arching you to the nines. “ohmygod Jack, please i-i missed it, missed your dick so bad, y’fuck me soo good,” he’s got a shitty smirk on his face listenjng to you, his breath heaving as his abs clench and spasm.
he barely knows where to look, does he look at your pussy as it drenches his cock, squeezes around him, and makes those juicy little strings of your arousal around him? does he looks at the beautiful, already fucked out face his wife is making, the one where her eyes are barely open, her mouth is slightly parted and her nose is doing that cute little scrunchy thing? or does he look to god for forgiveness, for a plea to heaven because of how sinful he was making one of his sweet lambs behave?
he chooses his second option.
“you’re so goddamn beautiful baby, i wish you could see yourself. god i love you, you know i love you so much,” he shakes his head, lowering you back down to the mattress and hammering his cock into you. the long, deep strokes he sends through you make a cold sweat wash over your body, your clit feels like it’s buzzing off of your body as you open yourself around Jack, feeling your orgasm approach.
“oh Jack, ohmy-Jack don’t stop, don’t fucking stop,” you’re gasping between the slur of words that fly out of you, pulling the sheets closer to your body, your cheek squishing against your hand. he licks his lips in a cocky smirk, his nails making crescents into your hip with how hard he’s holding you, keeping his fiery pace in check to get you to your climax.
“tell me—” “i love you, iloveyou baby i love you so much, don’t stop i’m gunna—” you’re sputtering under him, teeth clenched as your breath heaves. “mhm, cmon. you got it babygirl, don’t let me stop you. let it aaall out for me baby, know you need it,” his eyes roll back, words heavy and throat aching but he just doesn’t shut the fuck up.
you’re coating his cock with your white, sticky release, the ring around his pubes making a nasty squelching sound that doesn’t reach your ears. you’ve got a lazy smile, your teeth sucking your bottom lip as you moan contently. you feel Jack unhand your hair and tuck it behind your ear, eyes big on your sweet face.
“not goin anywhere, kay? just gonna stay in this pussy all night, all goddamn night. gonna stay with my pretty fuckin w..wife..” he sighs before grabbing at the cover above you, fucking into you fast and deep before letting out a shaky and breathy groan, and you feel his cock twitch into you as he finally releases, brows furrowed and his top lip upturned as he takes in the feeling.
“jesus baby, jeeesusss.” he drawls out, huffing and puffing as he pulls off his shirt, the back and pits are drenched. he pulls out of you slow, one hand at your ass cheek to watch his cum seep out of you, giving it a playful smack before rolling you onto you stomach.
“you gonna stay?” you slur as he undresses, and he nods with a sigh. it hurts him how you sound like you’re waiting for him to say no. “yeah, baby. im gonna stay.” he kisses you lightly, an you realize he didn’t kiss you the whole time. you’re not met with a fight when you deepen the kiss, legs spreading to pull him closer, wrapping your hands around his wet and warm neck.
“i miss you all the time, Jack. just want you when i can. please.” “i know baby, i know. you have me.”
cw: fem!reader, 18+, phone sex (a little dubcon-y but girlie is into it), daddy kink
You’re a little hazy when you wake up. Your lashes stick together, and your lids feel so heavy. The sunlight has only just begun to filter through your curtains, and you can’t quite piece together why you’re awake at this hour.
Until you register your phone ringing.
Now, the list of people able to call you through your sleep focus is very short. Jack is right at the top.
You reach for your phone immediately, but your movements are still rather sluggish. Just before the call is about to go to voicemail, you manage to answer.
“Jackie?” you murmur drowsily, “What’s wrong?”
You hear a faint shifting at the other end of the line and a sigh of relief.
“God, it’s good to hear your voice, baby.”
Jack sounds a little breathless and more tired than you.
You sit up and brush the fine hairs from your forehead, your brows pulled together in worry.
“You okay, Jackie? Bad day?” you ask.
“Something like that, bun. Just finished my shift. I’m in the parking lot right now,” he answers. “Did I wake you? You sound sleepy, I’m sorry.”
“No, no, it’s okay,” you insist.
He’s quiet for a second, and you hear another rustling sound.
“Tell me something, bunny,” Jack requests. “Anything. What did you dream about?”
With your bottom lip pulled between your teeth, you hum as you try to remember.
“I don’t know, Jackie,” you admit, “I think you were there. You usually are. In my dreams, I mean. I think we were at the beach… or at a lake?”
You pull the blanket up to your arms. It’s still much too early to think about so much, but if Jack asks, you deliver.
“Sounds nice,” he mumbles. His voice is hoarse, almost rough like sandpaper. “Keep going.”
Something about the way he speaks makes your tummy flutter.
“Well,” you go on, “There were birds. Green ones.”
“Mhm…”
“They kept circling over us. I don’t think I know any green birds.”
“Me neither.”
You hear him shift again, and this time there is another sound. Like… like fabric moving.
You’re about to question this when Jack suddenly groans.
“Keep talkin’, sweet girl,” he croaked.
“Jackie…?”
“Please. Just talk. That’s all I’m askin’.”
His words are followed by a wet, filthy sound.
You immediately feel the pull in your lower tummy as you begin to realise.
“There- we went swimming,” you go on, a little shakily now, “and saw fish. A bunch of ‘em. Little ones, which were— “
Jack moans softly, which makes you press your thighs together.
“Um…” As you grow more flustered, it gets harder to speak. “They were like rainbows, their scales. The sun made them change colours.”
“Uh huh,” Jack mutters, his voice thin and strangled. “Keep goin’, baby. Just a little longer."
You can’t really focus as you hear the way his hand begins to move faster, slick sounds coming out of the speaker of your phone.
“I… uh, we… we… I don’t remember, Jackie.”
“C’mon, bunny,” he encourages, “You can. Use that pretty little head of yours for me. For Daddy, hm?”
Liquid heat collects at the base of your spine, and you sneak a hand down between your thighs, only applying pressure for now. You’re not allowed to touch without him there.
“Daddy, I don’t remember,” you whine.
“Yeah, you do,” he retorts. “Baby, you do. C’mon, talk to me. Help out your Daddy.”
“We- we sat at the shore,” you continue. You weren’t even sure if it was true or just desperation making you invent things now. “And we saw dragonflies. And you held my hand and told me about your day at work. It was… it was a good day, I think.”
“Mhm.” He inhaled sharply, and you heard fabric rustling again. “So close, bunny. Just a little longer. Daddy’s almost done. Oh, fuck.”
You clench around nothing as he curses, all breathy and needy.
“You.. we just kept sitting and talking. You, um, you kissed my cheek. And then you held me.”
The last word has barely left your mouth when a godless noise spills from his mouth.
“Fuck, bunny, yes. Yes, keep talking with that sweet voice of yours. Please, baby.”
“Daddy,” you whimper, your cunt pulsing now. “I don’t remember anything else. Just you and me at the water and the fishies and the dragonflies and—”
You’re interrupted by the deep, throaty moan that claws itself up from his chest only to fall from his lips like a tidal wave.
“Oh, fuck,” Jack gasps. “Yes. That’s my bunny.”
It’s quiet for a moment, only his heavy breathing and your needy little gasps as you rock into your hand, your hips moving almost involuntarily.
It always takes Jack a few seconds to catch his breath when he cums like that.
“Bunny?” he murmurs then.
“Yeah?” you whisper.
“Get that hand off your cunt right now. She’s mine. And I’m coming over right now to take good care of her.”
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summary steve finds out that falling in love can be really, really easy. you find out what it’s like when somebody wants to take care of you [10.5k]
warnings fem!reader, fluff, mutual pining, getting together, dustins next-door neighbour!reader, sick fic, hurt/comfort, reader is implied to weigh more than nancy, you’re upset one time and steve goes overboard, small s4 spoilers no major plot details, post s3 pre s4, feat. the lunch club, karaoke, rollerblading, sunbathing
𓆩❤︎𓆪
A vast green jungle, so damp the forest floor bathes your ankles in rainwater runoff. The air is thick with humidity and smells green. Earthy, the sweet scent of petrichor tickles your nose, and-
A shadow distends over the yellow pages of your paperback, dark, eating up the image of the amazon and replacing it with reality – a normal summer's day in Hawkins.
Steve Harrington stands in front of you, his body blocking the sun and its warm glow. The light throws a halo around his head and turns the ends of his brown hair golden.
"Watcha reading?" he asks in lieu of ‘hello’.
"Ever read Journey to the Center of the Earth?" you ask him, leaning towards him invitingly.
You love to mess with him like this, watch his cheeks slowly pink as you bend towards your knees with a demure smile playing on your lips.
"Yeah, I did. In middle school," he says, trying his best to play it cool, hands pushing deep into the pockets of his pants.
"Well, it's nothing like that."
The grin he gets when he realises you're messing with him is adorable. He chuckles warmly and pulls a hand through his hair, looking down at the ground and then up at you again with a bashful pinch to his thick eyebrows.
"You're looking for Dustin?" you ask. You haven't seen your young neighbour since this morning. "He ran off earlier with his huge radio thing."
Steve rolls his eyes. "Typical. I paid him fifteen dollars," he says, his frustration clear, "fifteen dollars, Y/N, to fix my Walkman like three weeks ago. Every time I come by he's out. Little shit probably hasn't even looked at it."
You like Steve. He's a great looking guy who's more than nice when he sees you even though you're always pushing his buttons, and his poorly hidden fondness for Dustin is something you find heart-squeezingly attractive. You don't think twice about your next move.
You stand up from your lounger and have to shield your eyes from the sun, tucking your book under your naked arm. "If you want… I have a cassette player I'm not using. I got a Walkman for my birthday." You don't give him an opportunity to say no as you start for the front door.
"Are you sure?" Steve asks. You hold the door open for him, standing at the threshold with a grin.
"Positive. It's collecting dust, at this point."
"I mean, sure, if that's cool. Just until Dustin gets his act together," he says, pushing past you. His hand brushes your hip.
"That's cool," you confirm, walking behind him through your open kitchen and living room. "It's on the left."
Steve pushes into your bedroom. The window's open, breezing around the smell of fresh linens and the hydrangeas in the planter on your sill, shifting the gauzy white curtains.
The suncatcher hanging from the window sprays rainbow kisses over your walls and posters, your laundry basket full of summer dresses and discarded night shirts. The carpet is freshly vacuumed and plush underfoot as you beeline for your desk. Steve hovers by the door before leaning his weight against your bookshelf, eyes taking it in curiously.
"Cyndi Lauper," Steve says, eyes on a big poster of said singer with her iconic orange hair and hat. You raise your eyebrows at him, pleased, and he shrugs. "She's famous."
"You like her?"
"Nah," he says. "But I'll listen to anything. Except Depeche Mode; sharing a player with Robin all summer has sailed that boat."
"Yeah?" you ask, kneeling down in front of your desk to dig through the cabinet underneath. You frown, up to your elbow in bric a brac and forgotten trinkets. "It's in here somewhere."
"Yeah. I mean, maybe not anything. I don't think I have the palate for some of those rock and roll bands. Dustin made me listen to Black Scabbard in the car last week and…"
"Black Sabbath," you correct lightly, pulling out of your cupboard with a relieved huff.
"Right," he says.
You look over your shoulder to find him perusing your bookshelf, his hand running lightly over the shiny glass paper weight you use as a book end. He teases the spine of a hardback book curiously but must feel your gaze, turning to you with a sheepish smile.
"Do you like to read?" you ask.
Steve wrings his hands held at his hip. "Sure, I don't mind it. Bigger fan of movies."
"Right, Family Video must get pretty distracting," you say, walking towards him on light footing to offer the dinged-up cassette player. "She's well loved but she works, I swear."
He takes it from you, fingers brushing the backs of yours. "Thank you."
You shift from one foot to the other — because oh my god there's a boy in my room — before smiling with teeth. You stop. "You're welcome. Want a drink?"
"Uh…"
"I've got pink lemonade."
"Oh, then definitely."
You lead him into the kitchen and install him at the kitchen table with two empty glasses. The carafe of lemonade is beautifully cold from the refrigerator with slices of lemon and strawberry bouncing around the top as you pour it. The condensation wets your fingers.
Steve looks handsome and maybe slightly silly behind your homely oak table, all clean cut and well dressed. You feel bare beside him in your tank top and flowy midi skirt, too much skin.
"Are you hungry? I make a mean BLT," you say, bringing your feet up onto the chair, knees digging into the table.
"I'm good, thanks," he says.
"Are you having a good time of it at FV? They denied my application, but that's 'cos Keith has a vendetta against me for wiping out his score on the Palace's Tempest."
"You're a Tempest girl?"
"Everybody plays Tempest," you say.
Steve gives you a look. "Nerds play Tempest."
"Fine, every nerd plays Tempest," you allow, rolling your eyes. "Lemme guess, you're a Centipede guy. No, worse! You play Pac-Man. I can tell."
His silence is enough to make you giggle in triumph, elated to have sussed him out so quickly.
"How did you know that?" he asks finally.
"You called Black Sabbath 'Black Scabbard'. You're not a nerd."
"I could be."
"But you're not."
You share a steady look over the table. His eyes are bright with mirth, a sleek brown like fresh brewed coffee. You love the shape of them, deepest with the round under eye blanketed in straight black lashes. A red polo stretches across his chest. You find your eyes drawn down the length of his arm to his hand where he's drawing circles around the rim of his glass. He takes it into his hand and you watch his wrist bend, his arm flex as he brings the cup to his lips and a drop of condensation drips onto the table mat.
"I don't look the type?" he asks after a rough swallow. He sounds almost incensed.
"No, of course you don't. King Steve," you croon.
He crosses his arms across his chest and leans back, looking you up and down showfully. "Neither do you."
He's all charming smiles as he raises his chin and shakes his head, lips stretched up in an open-mouthed smile.
"Tempest," he mutters in bemusement.
You burst into laughter, quick to defend yourself when there's a pounding knock at the door. You're still laughing as you stand, calling to Steve as you walk to the door, "Tempest isn't even that nerdy! It's the Dragon's Lair dorks you need to watch out for. Oh, hi baby. What's wrong?"
"You haven't seen Steve, have you? His cars outside," Dustin announces, standing under the porch with his wild curls stuffed under a hat, his pulley cart ditched halfway between your yard and his.
"He's in the kitchen. You want some lemonade? You look frazzled," you offer, brushing your hand over his sunburned shoulder lightly as he scoots right past you.
"Thanks, Y/N." Dustin strides into the kitchen with purpose, glaring at Steve pretty heavily as he takes your seat at the table. "Why are you here?"
"Fucking charming. I came to see you, Henderson, but you're never home. Too busy finding secluded knolls to radio your girlfriend and play karaoke."
"Dick," Dustin says, though he defrosts as you fill a glass for him.
"What do you want?" Steve asks him.
"Why do you assume I want something?"
"Don’t be coy, you're not Madonna. It's tacky."
"Dick," Dustin says again, glaring.
"Dustin, do you want something to eat? You shouldn't go out in the sun all day by yourself, you know? What if you get heat stroke?" you ask.
Steve gives you a strange look like he's puzzled with you. You smile back at him, hand coming down on the back of Dustin's chair easily.
"Steve, I need a ride to Mike's," Dustin says, completely ignoring you.
Steve kicks him under the table. "Manners."
"Can I please have a ride-"
"To her, dipshit. Jeez, what's wrong with you? She asked if you're hungry."
Dustin beams at you innocently, soft cheeks rounding. "No thank you Y/N you're a godsend and I appreciate you very much," he says all in a rush, turning back to Steve, the act entirely dropped. "Now can we go?"
"Christ, fine. I'm gonna get you one of those rewards cards for being a shithead. This incident would be a double stamp, by the way."
"Uh-huh," Dustin says.
The younger teen chugs his glass of lemonade and spins off, calling a thank you over his shoulder. Steve gets up to follow him, your old cassette player held carefully in his hands.
"I'm sorry about him."
"Don't be. I've known him his entire life. He's in a phase," you inform him with a small grin, shrugging as if to say, what you gonna do?
"Long phase. Thank you. For the player and the lemonade."
"You're welcome," you say warmly, walking him to the door.
Dustin's already in the passenger seat, having taken his pulley cart back inside. He makes a hurry up motion from behind his window and Steve mutters expletives to himself, giving you one last smile before he trudges off.
The two boys wave at you through the windshield. You wave back.
When Steve's car has winked from view you take your lemonade and paperback outside again to lie under what's left of the sun. You try your best to fall back into the jungle and conjure its sights and sounds, only you keep finding your thoughts wrapped up around a certain boy's laugh and the face he makes as he does, that startled grin, a fist half raised to his mouth.
-
"Y/N!" A familiar teen voice accompanied by battering knocking at your front door.
You pull it open, still in your pajamas, hair a mess. His knocking had woken you up. You'd had about ten seconds to check you hadn't drooled too violently in your sleep before he was calling your name, and so you hadn't bothered getting dressed.
You wish you had. Dustin stood at the door with Steve Harrington behind him, a happy smile on both their faces.
You try not to flinch as you throw an arm across your chest subconsciously. "Hi?" you ask. "Is everything okay?"
Dustin's dressed for the beautiful weather in shorts and a shirt with sleeves so short it may as well be a tank top, a hat perched familiarly over his cute curls. Steve is dressed in a tormenting pair of jeans paired with a denim jacket. Double denim. He looks hot, physically and figuratively.
"Do you wanna come skating?" Dustin asks urgently.
You blink at him, pulling the edges of your strappy vest down to cover your navel, plaid bottoms low on your hips – you're a mess.
"Skating? I don't have one."
"A skateboard?" Dustin asks, shrugging. "Bring your rollerblades."
You err at the door, leaning your weight against it as you think. "When?"
"Now!" he says.
"I don't want to hold you up," you say, aimed more towards Steve than Dustin.
Steve smiles, hooking cheeks pink with the heat, and is about to talk when Dustin says, "He made me come ask you, he's fine to wait."
You bite back a smirk at Steve's deer-in-the-headlights expression and nod happily. "Alright. Twenty minutes and I'll be ready. If that's okay?"
"Totally," Steve says.
You close the door most of the way and catch a look over his shoulder, finding his pretty friend Robin in one seat and a gaggle of Dustin's friends in the back.
You hear a sharp thwarping sound as you spin away followed by a "What the fuck, dude?" from Dustin and hope that he hasn't tripped over one of your flower pots. You get ready and spend at least ten minutes worrying after your appearance in the mirror before grabbing the skates and jetting into the kitchen. You gather as many impromptu snacks you can find and shove them into a grocery bag, struggling to lock the door behind you in want of a free hand.
Steve jumps out of the driver's side to open the side door for you. You smile gratefully and dump the snacks and your skates in the footwell before climbing in, an empty seat between you and Dustin’s redheaded friend.
You're saved from the awkwardness of seeing people you've met but don't quite know by their ongoing debate, something about which Bruce Springsteen song is best.
“It’s obviously Dancing in the Dark. I don’t really know why we’re still talking about this,” Robin says from the passenger seat.
“You’re just saying that because it’s his most popular,” the girl next to you says.
“Things are popular for a reason.” Robin shrugs.
“Yeah, Max. Plus, popular or not, it’s his best.”
Max scrunches up her entire face. “Better than I’m on Fire?”
There’s a long pause where each child deliberates. Dustin and Mike dissolve into fierce looks.
“Nobodies talking about Born in the USA,” Steve says into the quiet, eyes on the road but head tilted back.
“Shut up, Steve,” Mike says, looking as exhausted as he usually does when you’ve seen him coming in and out of Dustin’s. Though it's been a while, he hasn't changed. Perpetually done with people's shit.
“Disrespectful,” Steve murmurs. His eyes flash to the rear view, catching you red-handed as you stare at him. “What do you think?”
“About what?”
“About Springsteen."
You consider him, his smile, his gaggle of cruel children. “I like Born in the USA,” you say nonchalantly.
“That’s two points,” Steve says triumphantly.
The skatepark is pretty busy because of the good weather. You and Steve end up unpacking your snacks onto a blanket Robin lays out whilst the boys go look for their friend Lucas, who's supposedly already here.
Max doesn't seem pleased with this revelation, sitting down heavily by Steve's picnic basket. Steve offers her a PB&J from the basket and a cold caprisun and she perks up, but not a lot. You want to spend time with Steve, you're not disillusioned into thinking you're anything but a flower under his attention, blooming and wanting, but Max's sad eyes get the better of you.
Too late for introductions, you dive straight in. “What’s in the Walkman?” you ask, nodding at the player sticking out of her jacket pocket, the foam padded headphones around her neck.
“Wild Things Run Fast, Joni Mitchell.” It sounds like a question.
You’ve struck gold immediately. “I love Joni Mitchell! Have you heard her new stuff?”
Max seems alarmed and happy at once, red messy braids swaying as she lifts her chin. “I mean, only what they’ve played on the radio.”
“Her album came out this October, Dog Eat Dog? I have the cassette if you wanna borrow it. It’s amazing.”
“Really?” she asks. She’s peeling the crusts off of her sandwich, one side at a time, dropping them into the small pile of discarded Saran Wrap.
“For sure. You’ve heard Shiny Toys?” Max nods. “It’s all as good as that one. Seriously.”
“Awesome,” she says, taking a huge bite of her sandwhich.
You realise you might’ve come on a little strong and try to backtrack into cool territory again, hand brushing Steve’s ankles as you lean away from the poor girl, smiling sheepishly.
“My mom loves Joni Mitchell,” Robin says.
“Robin," Steve chides lightly.
“What?”
You and Steve share a look that’s so familiar it gives you pins and needles in your hands, something small between the two of you clicking into place. Or at least that’s how you feel.
Max has almost finished her sandwich by the time Mike returns. “Are you ready?” he asks her.
She clambers onto her feet and grabs her skateboard from behind Steve. The two walk away, a distance from Dustin and Lucas, who both seem to have acquired a pair of skates each. Dustin in knee pads and a helmet, Lucas without.
“Why would you say Max listens to mom music?” Steve asks incredulously once they’re out of hearing distance.
Robin shakes her head, similarly incensed. “I didn’t say that.”
“There were so many other things you could’ve said, Robs.” He sounds less mad and more pitying.
"I didn't say that! I said my mom listens to her. She does!"
"Don't take offense. Robin got dropped as a baby," Steve says to you offhandedly.
You know the best course of action here and you take it – in what world would you make an enemy of a boy you might like's best friend who is a girl? Not this one. Plus, Robin seems super nice.
"I'm not offended. My mom loves Joni too," you say cheerily, smiling at Robin, unabashed.
You're slightly disappointed when she looks away towards her lap, until she says, "Projections a bad look on you, Harrington. He has, like, a flat head," she tells you.
Steve starts yammering loudly. "Shut up! My head's perfect, you're being ridiculous. Perfectly round and ordinary, thank you."
"Yeah, I'd definitely say your head's perfectly round," you agree through giggles, reaching for your skates.
You have a funny feeling that a silent conversation is happening as you slide off your shoes and into the skates, lacing up tight, but when you look up Robin's sifting through the accumulated snack pile and Steve's looking the opposite way, towards the kids.
You clear your throat. "Are you guys gonna skate too?"
"Steve is."
"I didn't bring-"
"He's borrowing mine. It's too hot, I can't skate. And I don't have the coordination, anyway."
Steve looks at Robin, at you, Robin again. "I'm not good," he says. You take it for yes.
Steve gets on his skates and straps out of his denim jacket, exposing the distracting lengths of his arms. He's better than he gives himself credit for, steady on his feet. He knows how to stop and start, and you smile to yourself when the two of you skate off towards Dustin and Lucas, following their journey around the skate park, careful to stay clear of the bowls and rails.
"You're good! You said you weren't good!" you say to him.
"I'm not good."
"You're doing great!"
He smiles gratefully, the expression at home over his warm features. He's not really a very smiley guy, you've realised, his lips often pulled up into a grimace or a cruel approximation of a smile, sarcastic. It suits him. You go to say as much, eyes eating up every little detail of him.
"Hey Steve? You should-" and your foot pops over a rock.
You shriek and throw your arm out towards him. Steve catches you with impressive strength and speed as your leg buckles. You've quickly righted yourself and he brings you to a slow but not quite stop. Stopping on skates is easier said than done, especially old skates with the front guards already worn down.
"Are you okay?" he asks.
You've taken his hand without thinking, the two of you widening apart and then coming together like the eclipse of a blinking eye.
You pull your hand away apologetically, the warmth of his palm lingering.
"I'm sorry!" you say.
"Don’t be. Last thing I wanna do is have you crack your head open on my watch. I’m glad you didn’t wipe out."
"Thanks to you."
You slow and stop. Steve does the same, the two of you clumsy for different reasons. He watches as you calm your racing heart.
"Shit, I really thought I was gonna fall. You're a lifesaver." You stare straight into his eyes, their sunlight honey brown, smiling with complete genuineness. He's more than pretty. "Thank you."
Steve swallows and his smile is warmer, somehow, impossibly warmer. Maybe it's the beautiful weather, maybe it's the beautiful boy. You suddenly feel very, very hot.
"I think I might need to sit down."
"Oh, shit," he says, reaching for your arm. You're about to correct his touching – you're not dizzy, just a little nauseous. Only, his hand. His fingers clasped around your elbow, his face fiercely protective.
You let him guide you back to the picnic blanket. One hand around your elbow, the other behind your sun-warmed back, and somehow his hand is the hottest spot.
"Are you okay?" Robin asks, shielding her eyes from the sun. The book in her lap slips shut as she straightens.
"She's okay," Steve says. “Too hot. Budge up."
Robin moves over on the blanket and throws the basket open. Steve reaches in for a capri sun and passes it to you. It's lukewarm, though the day is so hot it's a relief to drink it.
"Steve's really good," you tell her after a noisy suck, the orange plastic straw stabbing your lip. You frown down at it.
"I saw you guys whizzing around. Public menaces, both of you," Robin says, though she smiles as she does. You know she's joking. You don't want to think it in case it's not true, but you feel like maybe she wants to be friends.
"We prefer speed demons," Steve says easily, still kneeling at your side.
"They should lock you up."
You snort and almost squirt juice from your nose, spluttering and coughing as you bend at the waist. Steve pats your back less than gently and then more so as you move your hand towards him.
"I'm okay," you cough, embarrassed at how you must look hacking your lungs out.
Steve's hand, again on your back, rubs a stern line. "Chill out, Y/N. You can't die before dinner."
"We're getting McDonald's," Robin supplies.
"Don't tell the kids," he says, smirking.
He's still rubbing your back. You suspect you might agree to anything while he's this close.
"You sound like such a dad when you say shit like that."
Steve scowls at Robin's words and pulls his hands away, crossing them over his chest. "Don't say that. Babysitter is more than enough, don't you think? Y/N?"
"An older brother?" you suggest to Robin's extreme delight.
She laughs. Steve scrubs at his face with both hands until his eyes are red.
-
Robin's sick and Steve's going crazy by himself, manning the desk at FV with almost no energy and even less enthusiasm. A week since he'd held your hand and he can't seem to stop thinking about it.
He catches himself staring at his own empty palm and clenches his fist, bringing his eyes back to the door in case someone walks in and he has to pull off the headphones of your borrowed cassette player.
Steve had discovered a forgotten cassette inside, listening to it out of curiosity the night you'd given him the player and then every night since then. He felt guilty about keeping it without saying anything but he was only borrowing it, he reasoned. He'd give it back when Dustin fixed his skipping Walkman.
The tape was Van Halen II. And Steve's not stupid, he knows who Van Halen are, but he's never sat and listened through any of their full albums. Now he can't stop, constantly rewinding back to the same song, over and over.
He does so now, fingers clumsy and too big over small buttons until the first line kicks in, powerful and high energy like a burst of fresh air.
Have you seen her?
So fine and pretty.
He grins as it plays, thinking of you instantly. Your smile and your legs, the wind whipping at your skirt and exposing stretches of skin he can't stop remembering. You on your rollerblades, the second time after an emergency PB&J, skating in front of him without looking behind you.
"Don't let me crash into someone, okay?" you'd asked, swaying from one side to the other as you shifted your weight.
"It'll be too late to stop you if I see someone! Turn around!" he'd demanded, though his fondness had peeked through.
You'd thrown your hands out. "You'll have to steer me!"
And so he'd grabbed your hands and you'd laughed like a fool as you skated together, squealing through close calls and bumpy ground.
He thinks of your hands in his, their weight and size, the magnetic pulse he'd felt between them, how happy you'd seemed to be with him.
He was harbouring a crush on you. Too old to deny what it feels like to want a pretty girl, Steve wonders if this is entirely a good idea – letting himself like you when the possibility of rejection feels high. You are, as Dustin had promised him, out of Steve's league. "Don't try your luck, dude."
Steve thought for a second that his thinking about you had summoned your image, your easy walk and the elegant way about your hands and how you held them, in a blue dress with matching strappy mary-jane's, white socks with the ruffle tops. He blinks. No way he could think up anything as pretty.
You push open the door and grin from across the room, a large tupperware of some type in your hands. His eyes move up from your fingers where they clutch plastic, your wrist, your arms. The puff sleeves of your dress are short and cuffed, similar to the matching ruched neckline that shows enough to make him swallow. A necklace lays in the valley of your chest, a silver chain with a blue flower at the end, small but thick. Five round petals, a cutout missing that shows a circle of your chest beneath.
"Steve," you say, like you'd been in mid conversation. "Please tell me you have a sweet tooth."
He pulls the headphones from his head and leaves them around his neck, fixing his hair as casually as he can when he says, "Sure, I like candy."
You set your container down on the counter and crack it open, the rich, buttery smells of its contents quickly filling the room.
"I made penuche for Dustin's mom's birthday, but I made so-" you drag the word out, lips a gloss-sticky 'o', "much of it. I can't eat it all. And she said I wasn't allowed to give it to Dustin 'cos he keeps using the f-word."
His laugh is startled but genuine. "Not the f-word."
The fudge is a light brown, almost pink in the neon tinted lighting. It smells divine, and he's saved from an internal debate about what's cool when you push the tub towards him. "Do you like fudge?" you ask him.
He takes one and you take one, and he tries not to look at you as you eat, or when you scratch gloss and a crumb from the corner of your mouth.
"You’re a modern Martha Stewart," Steve says happily.
"Only on special occasions. Where's Robin?" you ask, elbows braced on the counter and leaning in.
"Sick. Apparently."
"Apparently," you repeat, grinning. "What, she didn't look sick?"
"She talked to me on the phone. She sounded sick," he concedes. "Good things it's Thursday."
You look around the completely empty store. "This is what it usually looks like on a Thursday?"
"It's Hawkins. Half the people here get their VHS from the library, the others drive out to Blockbuster. We get about as much foot traffic as an ice cream stand in September."
"It's 'cos you take too long to get the new ones,'' you say. "No offense."
"The tone of someone personally victimised by a Family Video wait list."
"You got me. I've been trying to get the Breakfast Club for two months!" you complain, scratching your chest lazily.
Steve crosses his arms over his chest until his hands are hidden, rolling his eyes. "Oh, so this is bribery penuche."
You blink at him and then your lips part in horror, pretty eyes widening. "No!"
"It totally is. You're trying to butter me up," he says, suave tone disrupted by the need to giggle at his own pun. "Y/N, how could you? Here I thought we were starting to be friends and you're using me for my video store?"
His mock horror puts you eat ease when you realise he's joking. "I really wanna see that movie," you say dejectedly. You reach for another piece of fudge and bite it in half, your chewing morose. "It feels like everybody saw it at the movies but me."
"Of course they did. Why didn't you?"
You glare at him. "I was busy!"
"For the month it was in theatres?"
"Yes!" you defend yourself from his teasing. "I have things to do!"
"Like what?"
"Like school!"
"Everybody has school."
"You're picking on me after I brought you candy. This is so cruel." You don't sound like you've suffered any cruelty. Steve might say you're really enjoying yourself.
"Sorry, sweetheart."
You glare at his insincere pet name. "Whatever. Oh, hey, how's she treating you?" you ask, eyes on the cassette player. "Steve, you have my Van Halen tape! Thank god, I thought I lost it."
"Right. Sorry, I meant to give it back," he lies.
You shrug your shoulders. "Keep it however long you want to. It's good, right? Which one's your favourite?"
He pulls the headphones out and rewinds back before setting the player in front of you. You raise your eyebrows at him but click play, and the audio starts abruptly, loud and mid quality.
Yes, it's love in the third degree.
You grin, head bobbing, eyes flitting to his with approval written all over your face. You don't seem to hesitate before you sing along under your breath, high pitched but quiet.
"Ooh, baby baby. Won't-cha turn your head my way?"
He feels a little enchanted by you, that same magnetism he'd felt between his hands, can't believe how pretty you are and how sweetly you move. You laugh at yourself as you sing the next line, an intense, almost theatrical look upon your face. Like you're swooning.
"Ooh, baby baby. Ah come on! Take a chance, you're old enough to-" You flare your eyes at him and nod, mouth open encouragingly.
He won't join in, no matter how electric he finds you. You roll your eyes and your shoulders roll in a half-dance as you hum along to the chorus.
Dance the night away.
"You're no fun, Steve," you complain, giggling.
"You're enough for the two of us."
You peer over the counter, still moving with the music as you ask, "What were you doing? Before I came in?"
"Looking through the computer at what's late being returned. Riveting, extremely hard work."
"Do you get, like, secret intel on what new movies are coming in?"
"Sure we do. Wanna see?" he asks.
You creep around the counter and stand by his side. He scrolls through the system and translates acronyms for you. "This is the coming in," he says, drawing a line down a list of movie names. "These are what's being moved back to the headquarters."
"Headquarters," you repeat, leaning in to see the screen more clearly. You browse the new titles idly, slipping closer and closer to the computer.
"You'll burn your retinas."
"Invaders from Mars, Youngblood, Black Moon Rising," you list thoughtfully. You turn on your heel. "I don't know any of those. You got a chic-flicks section?"
You're really close. Steve looks at you, this close, this pretty, his hands itching to touch you. He leans in and your arms fall to your sides, the space between you growing ever smaller.
"We do," he says slowly, eye to eye, almost daring you to look at his mouth instead. He wants you to. He wants to look at yours.
You're steadfast, not impassive but certainly unreadable as you say, "Show me?"
Steve reaches for the mouse behind you like he was always intending to, hiding any smugness he feels when you exhale noticeably. You turn back around, his arm brushing over yours as he sorts through the tag system to show you "ROM-COM INCO".
"These are all the ones we have coming in. You know any of those?"
"Hannah and Her Sisters. I saw that one."
"Finally had some free time?" he asks wryly.
"Shut up, Steve."
"You know… I can keep the Breakfast Club for you. Next time it comes in."
The smile you give him is blinding. "Thanks, Steve."
"Yeah, no problem." He hopes the sudden increase in temperature is mutual.
-
Your backyard is a field of flowers. Maybe dramatic, but Steve's never seen so many, a heavy green spotted in chartreuse, vermillion, bright oranges and pink-white. You lay on a towel in the grass surrounded by them, the sun lighting you up, your skin glowing and perfect.
You're in black, spandex type shorts and a bikini top. Steve feels like a perv for looking, so he clears his throat. You don't budge.
He creeps closer. You're in headphones listening to your Walkman. He can hear the music from where he stands at your backdoor, so it must be loud. He stands over you and hopes his shadow will wake you up. When it still doesn't he gets concerned, kneeling down carefully with his knees digging into your towel.
"Y/N. Hey," he says.
Still nothing.
He pulls your headphones off gently, looking over your face in worry. You must be sleeping.
"Y/N, you shouldn't sleep out here. You'll get sun stroke," he says. He strokes your arm though he shouldn't. He can't help himself, his fingers pressing into the crook of your elbow.
You blink awake and then slam your eyes closed. Steve adjusts himself to block the sun from your face and you manage to pry your eyes open, confused.
"Hello."
"Hey," he says. He can't help the fondness that plays over his smile.
"Shit." Your eyes go wide and you cover your chest with your arm. "I'm naked."
"You're not naked," he says.
"I'm naked. Stop looking at me."
Steve turns away obligingly.
"Stop laughing at me, Harrington."
"Is there anything I'm allowed to do?" he asks, though he does stop laughing.
"I'm so embarrassed. I was sunbathing and I must've fallen asleep."
Steve lets his eyes stray to your naked thigh. He stares at your skin, follows a stretch mark upwards and then swiftly peels his gaze away. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to be a total perv. I can go wait in my car."
"You're not a perv. I'm being a priss. Sorry. I know I'm not, like, a model and I wasn't expecting to have this much skin on show. I don't look like Nancy Wheeler."
You sound more nervous than Steve has ever heard you. Worse, you sound dejected, though you've tried for nonchalance. Steve stares at you until you raise your chin, your fingers pinching meanly at your thighs.
"You're messing with me," he says.
"What?" you ask, incredulous. "I'm not messing with you."
"You gotta know you're beautiful. That's, like, a stone cold fact. A hard truth. You're beautiful. Who cares if you don't look like Nance?"
You sigh, though it's not very believable when you're smiling so much. "She's really pretty."
"So are you."
"You know what I mean, Steve. She's… small."
"She's a small woman," he agrees. "That doesn't make her prettier than you."
"You're sure?" you ask quietly.
Steve means it a hundred percent when he says, "I'm sure."
The two of you sit there for a few seconds. He can hear your breathing and he's wondering if you can hear his.
"What are you doing here?" you ask.
Your hand is still held across your stomach but you're thankfully looking more relaxed. Steve meant what he said, you're beautiful, he couldn't care less that you're taller or that you weigh more than his ex. You're fucking pretty, and seeing you all laid out and sun kissed has made him kind of crazy.
"Steve?" you ask.
"Oh. I brought you The Breakfast Club. Just got it back in this morning," he rushes to say, grabbing the VHS tape from where he'd left it on the ground. The Family Video spine is glaringly ugly compared to you and your flowers.
"Woah, thank you!"
"You're welcome. It's under my name though, so don't keep it late. Can't disprespect the FV name. I'm going for employee of the month."
You giggle. "You are? Are you the top contender?"
"Nope."
You laugh some more, the sound delicate and sweet as spun sugar, in Steve's humble opinion.
"Not that my fellow employees try any harder, but Keith just picks himself every month for the free credits."
You rub your fingers across the front of the box. "I won't be late. I mean, I'll watch it today, I've been so excited to see it."
Steve stands up. "Sorry to disturb your idyllic sunbathing."
"Idyllic," you murmur, smiling. "You're good, Steve. Thank you for the movie."
"You're welcome. I'll see you later?" he asks, shoving his hands deep into the pockets of his jeans, slowly backing away.
"No," you say. He raises his eyebrows and you look sheepish but not shy when you continue, "Do you wanna stay? Watch the movie with me? I have stovetop popcorn and soda and everything."
"What about the great weather? You don't wanna waste it."
You force your hands between your thighs and hunch forward slightly. "I do wanna waste it. I mean, I've had enough for today, don't you think? I'm a half hour from heat stroke."
"You're looking pretty warm," he says. Anything to take you up on your offer without sounding too interested.
-
You're trying not to give Steve the side eye. Trying, but he's very attractive and very close, and he keeps making funny jokes. It's annoying how hot he is.
Steve has slouched back and his jeans have slowly edged down, exposing the flesh of his hip. Not that you've noticed, or anything.
You cram a big handful of popcorn into your mouth and flick your eyes back to the screen. You'd really wanted to see this movie but Steve keeps capturing your attention, again and again, over and over. You can't believe you'd asked him to stay and he had, can't believe he brought the VHS for you in the first place.
That's a dedicated employee right there.
You shuffle closer to him under the guise of sharing your popcorn. Your shoulders touch.
"Thanks," he says. His thigh hits your thigh as he takes a handful.
"Steve," you say softly.
"What?"
"I don't feel well. I think the sun killed me."
He throws his arm around the back of the couch and twists, careful not to upend the popcorn bowl as he looks over you searchingly. You've seen Steve play caretaker before, but being under his watch is different. He's almost a different person as he checks you over.
"You feel sick?" he asks. He holds his hand out between you, his knuckles at your eye level. "Can I?"
You tilt your head back and close your eyes. Steve presses the back of his hand to your forehead and pets down softly, feeling for your temperature.
"You're still really warm. Let's get you cooled down."
Steve springs up and knocks the bowl. You blink, slightly disoriented as he disappears into the kitchen, picking up spilled popcorn off of the couch and eating it with slow chews. Now you think of it, your arms hurt, too.
Steve returns and sits on the edge of the sofa, a bag of peas in his hand. "I raided your freezer. Lean your head back."
"I'm fine," you say, but tilt your head back anyways, gasping when the cold hits you.
"You might actually get heatstroke. Do you know how dangerous heat stroke is? You need to cool down. Where's the A/C?"
"It's on."
Steve feels along your cheek gingerly. "I can't believe you fell asleep outside. What's that about?" He pauses. "Are you sleeping okay?"
"I'm sleeping fine."
"Are you sure?"
His wrist turns and you feel the pad of his fingers rather than the back, the palm of his hand as he cups your face.
You peek through your lashes at him. His eyebrows are pinched and his bottom lip juts out in a concerned pout.
"You can tell me."
The way he says it – well, you imagine you could tell him anything. He sounds warm and worried. This close you can smell his cologne, something heavy with sage, a little bit of lilac hidden under unmistakable bergamot. It's all so comforting and the sun has loosened your tongue.
"Maybe not so much. It's… it's hot. You know? And…"
"What?" he murmurs. Your heart skips as his thumb rubs over your cheek.
You close your eyes like your confession might take form. "I'm kind of lonely, lately," it sounds like a question, "and it's- it keeps me up sometimes. I don't know, it sounds stupid when I say it out loud."
"It doesn't sound stupid."
"No?"
"No, I get it." He pulls away but doesn't move too far, his hand still holding the freezing peas to your forehead, the other brushing against your arm as he drops it in his lap. "These days Dustin doesn't leave me alone. I don't want him to, either. The same with Robs."
You let your head loll to the side. Steve doesn't look shy or scared to tell you, talking almost matter of fact. "But my parents were never home when I was in high school. They still aren't. I felt it more back then."
"Yeah. I don't know. I never see anybody. Besides Dustin," you say. "We have him in common."
"You see me."
"When I'm annoying you at work."
"You don't annoy me." He's stern though he abruptly turns into a conspirator whispering secrets. "Robin's fuse gets shorter with me everyday."
"How come?" you ask, co-conspirator.
"I can't stop watching the door."
You lift your head. Steve takes back his bag of peas and feels along your forehead, now cold enough to ache.
"Here, hold these to your chest. I'd do it for you, but…"
You take the peas and hide a terrible smile, heart racing between your ears. Your nausea has flipped completely into butterflies and they're rabid, knocking at your abdomen insistently.
You're trying to think of a way to make him say nice things again when there's a knock at the door.
"Dustin," you both say.
"Jinx, buy me a soda," Steve says.
You glare at him and he laughs all the way to the door.
"Why are you always here? Where's Y/N?"
"She's got heat stroke."
"I don't!" you call hoarsely.
"You sound like you do," Dustin says. "Can one of you give me a ride?"
"She has heat stroke."
You climb onto the back of the sofa to look down the hallway. Dustin stands at the front door with a huge piece of engineering in his arms that you don't understand, wires and ciricuits and things.
"Remeber when you used to bike everywhere? What happened to that?" Steve asks, sounding majorly pissed. You can't work out why he's so frustrated but it makes you laugh again.
The two boys turn to you with twin looks of confusion.
"I can't bike there, genius. This won't fit in the basket."
You laugh again, twice as loud.
"What's wrong with her?" Dustin asks, shaking his head.
"What don't you understand about heat stroke?
"Potential heat stroke," you interject.
"She fell asleep in the sun. I don't know how long she was out there her brain might be totally jellified, dude."
"You should take her to the hospital."
You clamber onto aching limbs and walk until your behind Steve, reaching for his elbow automatically. "I'm fine, babe. What's your doohickey?"
Dustin smirks and pulls the weight closer to his chest. "Prototype."
"For what?"
"Top secret."
You giggle some more, wobbling with the force of it. Steve sighs and wraps his arm around your back, his hand under your arm to grip you at the ribs.
Dustin gets wide eyes like a looney tunes character. "What's going on here?"
"Nothing," Steve hisses. "Look, let me set Y/N up with the works and I'll drive you where you want to go, you brat."
Dustin drops his suspicion, having got what he wants. "I'll wait in the car. Feel better!"
"That's three stamps on the shithead card, shithead!" Steve calls after him. The two of you watch his retreating figure and then Steve is manhandling you (not too roughly) down the hallway and back onto the sofa.
"I'm not dying, Steve."
Steve puts your popcorn bowl in your lap and the frozen peas back on your chest. He fills your glass either the warming carafe on the coffee table and then bends down to talk to you, entirely too intense.
"Are you good?" he asks.
"Perfect. I don't even feel hot anymore."
He rolls his eyes. "Yeah, okay. Listen, I'm gonna go drop Dustin off, and then I'm gonna call you to make sure you're not dead."
"You don't have to do that, Steve," you say, moving down into the couch, a cushion falling over as you do. He straightens it out, cups your face in his hand so fast you think you've imagined it and then squints at you.
"Don't die of heat stroke."
He starts to walk away and you're startled. Unfairly, you don't want him to go, and you call, "Steve?"
"Yeah?"
"What about The Breakfast Club?"
He grins at you, a lazy, King Steve kind of smile. "I was always gonna leave that here. So you can come 'annoy' me at work when you return it." He pulls a hand through his hair and gives you a once over and then spins on his heel. "Make sure you answer when I call!"
You lose sight of him as he leaves, the couch backing too tall. He shuts the door kindly and you can just about hear the crunch of gravel as his car pulls away.
"He was definitely flirting with me," you say to yourself, pouring a sweet handful of popcorn into your mouth. You're smiling so wide it's hard to chew.
-
Dustin bursts into Family Video with his small entourage, Mike and Lucas, and an urgent look on his face. Steve quickly stops his facade of being busy when he clocks them.
"What? Need to borrow ten dollars?" he asks, rolling his eyes.
"Actually, it's about Y/N," Dustin says.
Steve stretches across the desk on his elbows.
"What about her?" he asks, suspecting a waste of time.
"She was crying her eyes out in her backyard last night."
Steve blinks, feeling a pit open up in his chest. "What? Why?"
"Well…" Dustin says. "I didn't ask."
Steve pictures your pretty face crinkled with tears, sitting on the paving stones outside your house. He wonders what would make you cry, sob, whatever it was. You'd confessed to being lonely though he sort of hopes that the feeling has ebbed now that he's calling you every day. At first, under the guise of checking up on you, but, I don't think I'm at risk of heat stroke anymore Steve. It's been a week and a half.
Better safe than sorry.
"Nancy said she saw her outside outside Bradley's Big Buy last night looking miserable," Mike adds, in one of his worst outfits, a mismatch of colours and long socks, a visor that Steve once tried to bribe Dustin to destroy on a hot day with his magnifying glass. The small burned spot perseveres at the caps edge.
Steve feels weirdly proud at their concern and better, their detective skills. The three of them look like they could solve crimes, a mystery gang. Lucas is the only one dressed well in Steve's opinion, though that might be because he's in similar fashion, a nice polo and blue jeans.
"You don't know what's wrong with her?" Lucas asks.
His pride wanes. "Oh, you guys are here for gossip?" he asks scathingly.
"No!"
"You're her boyfriend, right?"
"Not-" Steve swallows, "exactly."
Robin, who had been listening from her stool a few feet back, strides over and falls into place by his side, braced by her elbows.
"If Steve were her boyfriend, we'd know why she was crying," she says, earning a round of boyish chuckles.
Steve nods and then understands her meaning, feeling stupid for assuming Robin would say something that wasn't mean while at work. "Fuck off, I'm a good boyfriend."
Four sets of eyebrows raise.
"I am! I'm romantic."
"You smashed our trellis and dislodged a drain pipe," Mike says.
Steve pins the dark haired boy with a smarted look.
"Sorry, is that not romantic? Sneaking out to see a girl?"
"Sneaking in to a young woman's bedroom," Robin says dryly.
"Pervert style," Dustin agrees sagely.
"Jesus Christ." Steve turns away from his band of adopted heathens and takes the phone into his hand. "I'm gonna call her."
"And what? Tell her we were spying?" Dustin says.
Steve holds the cold plastic to his neck. "Were you?"
"Girls lie about their feelings, anyway. You're never gonna get a straight answer," Lucas says morosely. "Trust me."
He slams the phone down. "What am I supposed to do?"
They stand in a heavy silence. Steve can feel a headache clipping his heels, approaching fast, stress and a sharp worry for you. He really doesn't see why he can't call you and check in.
"Something nice?" Robin suggests, picking at her nails.
"Like what?" he asks. Though, as soon as he says it, he already has the beginnings of an idea. Whether its a good one or not is anyones guess.
-
Somebody knocks the door and all you can think is, oh god why me?
You're in a bad approximation of pajamas - your comfiest and yet your sloppiest, old and worn and unattractive. Fresh out of a stress-cry shower, you've only just managed to catch your breath.
It's like you told Steve, everything lately feels so lonely. You'd gone grocery shopping by yourself and had known without a doubt that you were moving unseen through the world. Something about deciding between TV dinners. Nobody knew where you were, what you were doing, or where you were going. The only people seeing you were the storegoers of Bradley's Big Buy and your disgruntled cashier. You doubt you'd made a good impression.
It was maybe a silly thing to feel overwhelmed by, but you felt it anyways. Sick with loneliness and then panic. A thousand what ifs had filled your head; you couldn't stop thinking, what if it's like this forever?
What if I feel this lonely forever?
You'd finished grocery shopping with a peculiar numbness weighing you down and then you'd gone home to cry in the garden, comforted and horrified by your flowers. They were pretty and you'd planted them and it didn't matter, you were still alone. A ladybug had crawled over the nearest planter and you'd watched it until you calmed down, knees crossed and elbows digging into your thighs, pins and needles in your hands.
Another insistent knock. You consider ignoring it and curling up into a ball. Something hooks you out of it. What if it's Steve?
If it's Steve, you're gonna feel very embarrassed about your appearance. You check your reflection in the sheen of a photo frame and sigh, rubbing your face with one hand as you open the door.
Steve stands a few feet away, leaning against the side of his car with a pair of shades slipping down his nose. He takes them off.
You're so happy to see him you forget your rumpled outfit.
"Hi," you say, half-shouting to cover the distance.
"Hey beautiful!" Steve shouts, properly, loud and unabashed.
The door digs into your tummy. You don't know what to say. His compliment flusters you from the get go.
"Hi," you say again, laughing under your breath.
"Hey."
"What are you doing here?"
"Somebody told me you weren't feeling well!"
You frown, thoughts racing, and suddenly summon the image of your nosey young neighbour. You take a step back instinctively and Steve must see it because his face goes stony.
"I'm sorry, I know you probably didn't want me to know. But- when I found out you were upset, I couldn't ignore that. You'll have to forgive me."
You try pushing the smile off your face with your hand and stand there scratching your top lip. "No. No, it's okay."
He raises his eyebrows and takes a few big steps towards your house. You step out onto the porch and he closes the space between you, holding his hands out. You take them and he envelopes you, warm hands pulling you along and up the path.
He walks backwards. "Don't let me crash into someone, okay?"
A memory. The two of you hand in hand, ground flashing under your skates.
"Okay," you say weakly.
He squeezes your hands and drops them, a foot from the car. "Stay," and he doesn't finish, turning away from you. He opens the passenger door, the door behind and then the trunk.
The smell is beautiful. A floral wave.
The sight is something else. A carpet of bunches, bell-shaped freesias and carnations, roses in darkest red, chrysanthemums, dahlias, tiny orchids and irises; gorgeous purple irises with white centred petals buffeted by frilly sweetpeas.
"They didn't want to give me the buckets but I told them I had a really pretty girl waiting for me, and if they suffocated in the heat then I was gonna drive right back and complain loudly." He stands by your side and nudges you. "Break out in tears."
"That's a lot of flowers," you mumble.
"Half the store. The other half's on standby."
"Standby?"
"I worried you might not have the space."
"I won't."
Your gaze flits over soft petals and light green stems, thorns and leaves and greenery, baby breath tucked in by plastic wrapping.
"Why did you do this?"
"You…" he laughs at himself. "Okay, so. The day you had heat stroke-"
"I didn't have heat stroke. I had heat exhaustion."
"Semantics. You were lying in the backyard. Just… sleeping. I was waiting for you to look up and see me, and I couldn't- I still can't get the image out of my head. You looked unreal."
You feel hot all over as he searches for words. He's smiling wide as he talks, like he can't believe how happy he is. It's infectious.
He shakes his head. "Anyway, I know you like flowers. Obviously. So."
"So you got me a florists?"
"Half."
You hug your torso. The idea that somebody would do this for you, that Steve would do this for you, is so alien you can't comprehend it.
"They're for me?" you whisper.
"For you. All of them."
You look at him, the flowers, him again, and start to laugh. You throw your hands up to your cheeks and giggle like a little kid.
"Why are you laughing?" he asks, an undeniable affection in his curiosity.
"Why would you do this for me?" you ask in a similar tone.
He purses his lips and shrugs. "You could've called me. I want you to know that."
You scrub your hot cheeks and shift from foot to foot. "I was being silly."
"It's not silly. It's not stupid. And even if it was, I still want you to call me. These are 'call me' flowers. Call me first."
You wrap your hand around the top of the door and lean in for a look at the sea of flowers. Pollen sticks sweet in your nose.
"Do you like them?"
The smallest hint of insecurity. You can't stop laughing, joy warping every word. "Yeah, I love them," you say over your shoulder, feeling as though you've become nothing but a vestibule of breathless wonder.
"I didn't know which one was your favourite."
All of them, you think. Not sure you could pick one, your eyes bump from bouquet to bouquet.
You try to blink them away but tears form quickly, lashes heavy with them as you stand up straight and wipe under your eyes with the back of your index finger.
"Thank you, Steve."
"You're welcome." Steve comes up behind you and takes your shoulder into his hand, thumb rubbing roughly over your shirt. "C'mon, don't cry. I got you all those flowers because I don't want you to cry, not to make it worse."
"They're really pretty," you say, strained, pushing the bottoms of your palms into your eyes to stop from sobbing. That would be dramatic, you argue with yourself, so dramatic, but this is the nicest thing anyone has ever done for you.
"Shit," he mutters.
You tense up as his hand moves across your back to grip your other shoulder and he hugs you to his chest, left hand stroking the length of your upper arm, encouraging your hands from your face.
"You're okay, baby," he says.
You sniffle as his right hand climbs your shoulder to cup your neck. He pulls your face to his mouth and presses a kiss into your temple, warm and tingling, firecrackers under the skin. You turn your face to look at him and he pulls back, his chin jutting down.
The shape of his lips lingers on your forehead, a burn. White hot.
Steve wipes the tear tracks from your face with the side of his hand.
"I know what'll cheer you up," he says.
You miss his touch as soon as he's gone. He leans over the passenger seat, the chair and its footwell both bursting with flowers, and turns on the radio. You watch him click to the cassette player. He turns the volume up high and then pulls out.
Slowly, the song builds into a zinging guitar.
"Oh my god."
"Have you seen her? So fine and so pretty," Steve sings with no hesitation. You're startled by his confidence.
"Fooled me with her style and ease," he continues, holding out his hand.
You take it, listening to him fight his way to the right pitch, his voice cracking.
"And I feel her from across the room-" He takes your second hand, gaze electric. "Yes, it's love in the third degree."
He tugs at your hand, nodding until you join in.
"Ooh, baby, baby," you sing weakly, searching for footing.
"Won't-cha turn your head my way?" he begs.
"Ooh, baby, baby," you both sing, Steve with more passion, pulling your arm one way and another in an awkward dance.
"Come on, take a chance, you're old enough to," and here's where you both go weak and high and enthused all at once, glad the stereo's up so high you can't really hear it when you both shout, "dance the night away!"
It's not quite night yet. You've a lot of dancing to do if you're gonna listen to Van Halen's instructions, the sun a half-disk of gold on the horizon, the sky raspberry pink bleeding up into darkening indigo.
Steve grins at your growing enthusiasm and twirls you around. You only allow him this, too afraid to step on his toes as you come to a stop.
He hums along and you clutch his hand. You covet the other where it's held to his chest, pushing your fingers through his. They fit together perfectly.
"Am I ever gonna get that tape back?" you ask.
"No," he says, laughing loudly. "No way. I love this song."
"I love this song too. That's why I bought the album."
"You said however long I wanted!"
"I didn't think you'd stick around this long," you confess.
"I did," he says. He leans down, stops. "Can I kiss you?"
You nod and beat him to it, hand at his collar as you step on your toes and press your mouth to his. You're both smiling, your eyes closed tight and your lips tight together until he pulls back, pulling his hand from your brushing grip to stroke the side of your face, rough in his rush.
When you come back together it's slower, your lips parted mid-giggle as he moves in. You sigh, a high-pitched and embarrassing sound from the back of your throat that's quickly swallowed by his ardency.
"Stop laughing at me," he admonishes playfully.
"I'm not! I'm not, I'm really happy," you defend yourself, setting back on your heels.
You've forgotten all about your pajamas and the icky feeling in your chest. With Steve's palms to your cheeks like this – like you're something worth being cradled in careful hands – you can't feel anything but happy.
"I don't have enough vases for your flowers," you apologise as he chases you down, dropping kisses over the corner of your mouth and the apple of your cheek.
"Good thing I begged for all those buckets," he says, brown eyes squinting with the force of his cherubic smile. His pert nose flares with a silent laugh.
"Good thing," you agree.
He holds you by the shoulders. "Good thing," he says again.
You descend into another round of laughter that leaves you panting for air, your head dropping into his chest. "A really good thing."
"I didn't go overboard, did I?" he asks, petting the nape of your neck.
"You did."
"Sorry, I-"
You wrap your arms around his waist and squeeze him as hard as you can. He groans lightly as he encircles your shoulders, the tip of his nose a butterfly's wing against your forehead, impossibly light and skipping, back and forth and back again.
"I'm gonna make you flower shortbread," you say eventually, soaking in his warmth, his closeness.
"Yeah?"
"I swear. And more penuche. What's your favourite? I'll make you whatever you want. What do you have a sweet tooth for?"
"Could I get another kiss?" he asks quietly.
You tilt your head back and wait. Steve isn't quite smiling though his eyes boast an emotion you're afraid to name, unbearably fond.
"Are you gonna kiss me again?" you ask into the gap.
"In a sec, just… let me look at you," he says, hand cupping your cheek.
You blink back a stinging wave of tears and smile, tracing over his features greedily.
"You're beautiful," he says.
It’s funny. You were thinking the same thing about him.
reader torturing jack in the ed by giving dick sucking gestures ♡ maybe even notes about how she wants fingers inside of her if they go to the breakroom for just a few minutes ♡ jack feeling rock fucking hard and giving in cuz who is he if he can’t treat his babygirl?
18+ MDNI
jack's just been soooo busy lately. you're not the type of girl to straight up ask him to fuck you, still a little too shy, so you just bide your time. he can't go forever without it, right?
it's been a week since the last time you fucked, and you're going a little insane. it's not like you're even consciously thinking about it, but every mundane thing just seems to turn sexual for you. and jack notices.
he knows you two haven't been intimate in a while, but he hasn't been wanting to overwhelm you, to avoid the risk of coming off like some perverted older guy who can't keep his hands off of you. he's a seasoned attending physician, damn it, he can restrain himself! but he eventually realises what it's doing to you, his poor baby girl, and he feels a little guilty.
he sees the way you absentmindedly bob your head a little while you're sucking on the straw of your iced coffee. he watches your cheeks hollow slightly. and he knows your tongue's curling around it like it does the underside of his dick :(
he even catches you stroking your waterbottle up and down while you chat to a colleague by the nurse's station. it would look innocent enough to anyone else, but jack recognises the subtle way you flick your wrist on the upstroke, and it has him stiffening in his scrubs.
he's starving you of cock, and you're too sweet to tell him :( it gets to the point where even the sight of jack's biceps bulging under his scrubs has you soaking your panties, and you know you just can't take it anymore. you grab a pen and some scrap paper — ripping off a piece of a fudged ECG destined for the recycling anyways — and scribble down a note on the back. you muster up the courage to shove it into the pocket of jack's scrub top when he passes you in the hallway.
he watches you scurry off before he can say anything, an amused smile curling at the corners of his lips. he pulls out the scrap of paper, and reads:
feeling needy :( sorry :( need you so bad, jack, come and meet me in the breakroom when you can? sorry again :(
jack coos internally, then heads straight there. the minute the two of you are alone, he's all over you, trying to make up for lost time.
"no need to apologise, sweetheart," he mumbles as his stubble scratches against your cheek.
he has you soaking his fingers, your juices running down the tanned, freckled length of his arm as your thighs writhe around it. "you're fucking back on it, princess, look at you. can you hear how wet you are? must've been needy, huh?"
"y-yes, been needy a while, needed you so so bad..."
"oh, baby... i could tell you've been needy, just wanted to hear it from you." he curls his fingers right up against your sweet spot, pecks your soft lips as you whimper, then continues, "next time you need daddy, you just come and ask, alright? you're a big girl, need to use your words."
warnings . . . curse words, mean reader, literally a one day time skip from last chapter lol. probably could’ve made it more clear that the “drinking plan” with j just meant a small heist…
“You can’t be grouchy right now.” Pope pulls his face from between your legs, looking up at you with a bored expression.
You sigh dramatically, sitting up and letting your skirt fall back down around your legs, covering you up. The drive back to the city was spent smacking his hand off your thigh when he subconsciously let it drift. He’d glare at you for a moment and relent, but the cycle started all over again. Now, the two of you are in his apartment with your legs spread as you’re perched up on his counter. “How was your night out with J?”
“You were thinking about J while I was—“
You interrupt him with a grimace, “ew! Shut up! Don’t even say that!”
He leans his arms beside you, sighing softly. “Why are you grouchy, then?”
You bite your bottom lip nervously, unsure of how to voice yourself. You know you’re a good person. You don’t view yourself as a loathsome person who no one can get along with. But you often wonder why people like you. Why do they put up with your attitude and anger and worries, just to be around you? And when they do put up with it, it’s hard for you to accept. Even harder to accept when they finally get rid of you.
“Are you hiding something from me?”
He doesn’t look taken aback by your question, his eyebrows furrowed as he takes you in. “Like what?”
“You tell me, Andrew.”
“Andrew?” He’s amused, the corner of his mouth quirked up.
You nod, “yeah, some lame ass advice J told me.” You sigh dramatically once again, “are you cheating on me?”
He huffs, “I’m not cheating on you.” He pauses and you can tell it’s a strain to speak his next words, “you’re the only one I want.”
“Until the next one.” You chime with a scoff.
His grip on your chin isn’t tight, but it’s enough for him to force your eyes onto his. “There’s no next one.”
“Until there is.”
“You’re incredibly—“
“Gorgeous? Smart? Funny?” You interrupt with a small smack to his chest. “You’ll tell me if I annoy you, right?”
“You don’t annoy me.”
“You are such a liar.”
“I don’t lie.”
“He lies—“
“Shut up.” His lips press to yours. It’s a tender kiss, his hands cupping your face as his lips move against yours. It doesn’t last very long, your mouth chasing him when he pulls away. “I can promise you, there’s no one else. You don’t annoy me. You’re not too much for me. You are very pretty. Anything else I need to cover?”
You hum, a grin plastered on your face as you lean your chin on his chest. “Tell me my ass is fat.”
“Your ass is fat.”
You hum, content by how well he obeys. “You’re the only old man in my life who listens to what I say.”
“How many old men do you have in your life?”
“Nunya. Keep eating me out.”
authors note . . . me vs putting in my hyperfixations and rn it’s those shitty vertical movies. love you give me your thoughts
it always feels like pope’s in your stomach when you’re his girl. the memory of his cock stuffing his way into your cunt isn’t something you can usually shake.
it’s similar to the feeling of watching his large, bulky frame bend over to pick something up off the couch and seeing a sliver of his toned back when his shirt rides up. a deep twist, almost like hunger… an empty tummy when you should be satiated.
he was in your guts about 2 hours ago but still… the slow grind, pulsing palms mashing against each other and spreading heat and want and the heady scent of yearning.
when he lifts back up he turns to look at you in surprise, “ya alright?” his flighty eyes drag across you & then the room awkwardly– he can practically feel the heat and pulsing of your belly from where he stands.
vascular arms, tight t-shirt, broad shoulders cutting through the air as he straightens up. your hand presses to your stomach as your half lidded eyes take him in.
press, press, press. but nothing mirrors the sleeve of you cradling his cock closer & closer into your stomach.
depraved, you shake your head and whisper “wanna feel you again.” “n-now?” “now, please.” “b-i… what if you’re still sore?” “don’t care andrew, please now.”
it doesn’t take long for him to decide, especially not when he sees your smaller palm pressing into your stomach in thrusts; mirroring the rhythm he had you in this morning.
scooping you up like an angry bull, breathing heavy through his nose as he walks you into the bedroom and lays you out for the second time this afternoon.
when you said that you were going out shopping with your girlfriends, your uncle jack really thought had have some more time. you had said that you were going to be home later, a few hours jackie! enjoy your alone time!
and really, it was your fault! you were the one who, before leaving, lifted onto your tiptoes in your little pink heels and kissed his cheek. your hand rested on his bicep for balance, and your little acrylics dug slightly into the cotton of his polo. how could you not expect him to be a sick fuck when he had to wipe glittery sticky lip gloss from his reddened cheeks.
so yeah, he’s gonna blame you. it’s just, when you stood on your tiptoes, your knee just brushed by his clothed cock. and maybe it’s not the most moral of reactions, but it’s understandable! you’re just stimuli!!! his cock turning hard and aching in his cargo pants had nothing to do with you, and everything to do with accidental touch!
and it’s just so uncomfortable, so sensitive that when you leave, he gets started on the laundry he planned to do. after throwing the first half of the load into the washing machine, he digs through your pile to find the little red panties that you wore last night. and he knows that you just wore them, because your slick is still damp and cold on their gusset.
he undoes the zipper to his pants, and watches guiltily as his cock springs out when he pulls down his boxers. he wraps your little red panties around his cock. if they were lace, like his favorites of yours, it would be nearly painful as he focuses the cotton around his weeping tip. his head is thrown back against the wall and his eyes are closed.
he is coated in his precum, your slick, and bliss.
he’s so blissful in fact, that he doesn’t even hear the door open and the click click click of your heels on the dark wood floor. what he does hear, though, is your little surprised whimper, and he opens his eyes quickly. he watches your reddening face and your wide eyes flit from his cock to your panties to his face is rapid succession.
he’s suddenly thankful, that he no longer believes in any god. he doesn’t know when he stopped, when he lost his leg, maybe, when he lost his wife. he thinks it’s more so when he watched a child die for the first time. but jesus is he thankful for his lack of faith.
hes sure that he would go straight to hell if he believed, the second he meets your shocked eyes, he’s coming all over your little red cotton panties.
you're waiting up for him when he gets back from his shift, wearing some pretty black sheer babydoll and laying out on the bed. your breath catches when you see him walk through the door— his backpack slung on one broad shoulder, his tummy pressing through his scrubs, sweat beading at his neck and dampening his silver curls. he's never looked sexier. "h-happy father's day, daddy."
jack's exhausted, lidded gaze roves over your body, the way the morning light filters through the blinds and onto your curves. "oh, baby, thank you," he coos as he drops his bag onto the floor. he stalks over to the bed, sliding the sheer material up your stomach and tenderly kissing the warm skin. "mmm... you're the prettiest gift a daddy could ask for."
he wastes no time in parting your thighs. you hear the soft jingle of jack unbuckling his belt and groaning before he sinks his thick cock into your warm, wet cunt.
"fuck, baby," he pants, leaning forward to loom over you. he's pressing a juicy kiss to your lips and whispering against them, "daddy's home."
jack's thrusting deep and hard into your pussy, his heavy balls slapping against your ass, rough hands massaging over your sides while you babble, "dad, dad, dad, dad—"
the way you repeat it like you've gone dumb on his cock, like you're too stupid to be without him, makes jack's eyes roll back. "you keep callin' me dad, 'm gonna fuckin' bust, sweetheart," he grunts, "fuck, y'got so tight when i said that. you want that, hmm? you want dad fillin' you up on his special day? is that your special gift for me, baby?"
you only whimper and nod in return, but that's not good enough for your papa. jack tuts and shakes his head before thrusting harshly into your cunt. he presses his forehead to yours, brows furrowed as he asks again: "... no, answer me, princess, do you want your dad to fill you up?"
you're waiting up for him when he gets back from his shift, wearing some pretty black sheer babydoll and laying out on the bed. your breath catches when you see him walk through the door— his backpack slung on one broad shoulder, his tummy pressing through his scrubs, sweat beading at his neck and dampening his silver curls. he's never looked sexier. "h-happy father's day, daddy."
jack's exhausted, lidded gaze roves over your body, the way the morning light filters through the blinds and onto your curves. "oh, baby, thank you," he coos as he drops his bag onto the floor. he stalks over to the bed, sliding the sheer material up your stomach and tenderly kissing the warm skin. "mmm... you're the prettiest gift a daddy could ask for."
he wastes no time in parting your thighs. you hear the soft jingle of jack unbuckling his belt and groaning before he sinks his thick cock into your warm, wet cunt.
"fuck, baby," he pants, leaning forward to loom over you. he's pressing a juicy kiss to your lips and whispering against them, "daddy's home."
jack's thrusting deep and hard into your pussy, his heavy balls slapping against your ass, rough hands massaging over your sides while you babble, "dad, dad, dad, dad—"
the way you repeat it like you've gone dumb on his cock, like you're too stupid to be without him, makes jack's eyes roll back. "you keep callin' me dad, 'm gonna fuckin' bust, sweetheart," he grunts, "fuck, y'got so tight when i said that. you want that, hmm? you want dad fillin' you up on his special day? is that your special gift for me, baby?"
you only whimper and nod in return, but that's not good enough for your papa. jack tuts and shakes his head before thrusting harshly into your cunt. he presses his forehead to yours, brows furrowed as he asks again: "... no, answer me, princess, do you want your dad to fill you up?"
dreaming about uncle pope with maybe j’s twin or just his sister and you’re so sweet and sad about your mom passing :(( you can’t help but cling to pope because he makes you feel so much closer to your mom, being that he’s julia’s twin and he just makes you feel so safe. and gosh, do you look like your mom. it drives pope wild. he just can’t help himself. of course, smurf hates you for it but that just makes pope cling even harder. he feels so connected to you. it must be fate. he is more than certain of it. and the first time he kisses you when you’re curled up on him, watching a nature documentary, he’s absolutely certain. sparks are flying. he’s never felt so at peace and he gets hard for the first time since getting out of prison. he’d die for you, he just loves you so much. his little angel
ohhhh 😳. . . when your whole family mentally ill. first time trying my hand at this
cw: dddne, incest, uncle!pope, daddy issues, m masturbation, both pope and reader aren't right in the head
pope would be so convinced that after his sister passed away, she sent you as his angel. he didn't think he'd deserve it. too much blood on his hands already, enough sins that would condemn him to hell. he knew he should die for it. he was ready, he's just waiting for the day that a job would finally go sideways for him but this time, he wouldn't surrender. he'd let them hit the target.
but when smurf took you and j home, all of a sudden he found a new purpose in his life: to live for someone and to protect them. he used to think that doing smurf's bidding was all he was good for, but when he saw you looking exactly like julia (maybe even prettier), holding onto your younger brother's hand tightly as if you're afraid to be separated from him. he watched you looking around the house anxiously, not used to the unfamiliar environment.
when your gaze landed on him, pope felt like the air was knocked out of his lungs. your eyes were sad and shiny with unshed tears, but there's a flicker of another emotion in them he couldn't place. smurf introduced you to each other, saying don't mind your uncle. that made your brows furrow in confusion. you turned to pope anyway, held your hand out, and in the sweetest voice he has ever heard, "very nice to meet you, uncle pope. thank you for letting us stay here." that definitely ticked smurf off.
your uncle is a man of very few words but you couldn't seem to stop trailing behind him like a lost duckling. he was the only person who was willing to have a conversation with you and spend time with you — since smurf took a liking to j, you don't see him around much anymore.
you found comfort in watching nature documentaries with your uncle, you sat close to each other on the couch but not enough to make physical contact even when you share a single blanket. you were both in complete silence but it didn't feel uneasy for you. you've heard the things your other uncles said about pope. you ignored them because you thought it's mean to say those things about their own brother. you also didn't believe that pope is creepy, he's just. . . different. you know he likes to stare at people longer than necessary, you know that he watches your every move. regular people would hate it but you don't. you love that someone is looking out for you.
you've never had this with a father. your mother didn't say much about him other than he was everything but good and he didn't love you, so he left. you thought that this must what it feels like to have someone who loves you, someone who will never leave.
one late night watching a nature documentary with you, like any other night — was the first time you spoke since you started this little routine. "uncle pope?"
pope turned his attention from the television to you. "yes, angel?" he didn't mean to blurt out the endearment he's been secretly calling you in his head. it made you smile. turning serious, you quietly asked, "do you love me?"
you're starting to regret asking when he didn't answer right away. you didn't know that it took him twenty something seconds to finally register the question in his head. when he saw your eyes starting to well up, he rushed to console you, "hey hey. of-of course i love you, angel. love you so much. c-c'mere." he pulled you close to his chest in embrace, you let the tears fall. he could feel the front of shirt getting wet.
"i'm sorry, angel. i didn't mean to upset you. you just surprised me, that's all." pope couldn't believe this is happening. he was racking his brain for weeks on how to act on his feelings toward you but you came to him first instead.
"i'm not crying because i'm upset. i'm crying because i'm happy." you raised your head to look at him. your eyes full of love and devotion for him. "i love you too, uncle pope."
he felt his cock twitch at your confession, he was growing hard by the second. after your first introduction when you came to the cody house, he excused himself to take a shower where he jerked himself off at the thought of you, your smell, and the softness of your palm. he felt immediate regret after he came, he slid down to the shower floor as he sobbed for god knows how long.
right now, he couldn't bring himself to feel bad about being aroused. he took your chin gently, leaned close to your face, "angel. . .", he breathed as he softly pressed his lips against yours. you whimpered at the feeling.
you made the first move to lick at his bottom lip, craving more. pope groaned as he pulled away, stopping you (and mostly himself) before things get heated. you scrambled to pull him back in by throwing your arms around his neck and positioning yourself on top of his lap.
"angel, wait. not here. we can't do it here."
you nodded in understanding, you're aware of the nature of your relationship, how wrong it is in the eyes of other people, especially your family. "okay but — can we keep doing this? i don't wanna stop."
pope never wants to stop. nothing and no one could ever get between the two of you. he would kill, he would die, he would do about everything so the two of you would never be apart.
making dadbf!jack ♡ repeat his age to you whilst riding him.
𓊆 cw: SMUT, fauxcest, dad / daddy kink, dadbf!jack wearing his readers, age gap, reader is an adult with a fully developed frontal lobe ! !, dubcon, undertones of reader wanting to baby trap jack, unprotected sex, coercion, creampie 𓊇 ‧₊˚ ┊ 755 words
“say it again, daddy–” squish. squash. every bounce you made on jack’s thick girth was discernible in the quiet stillness of his home office. “p-please say i-it to me–” squelch. “–again.”
you merely snuck in as you were feeling lonely and would like to be in close proximity with him. and by that, it meant nestling into him as you stick his cock inside you. you said in faux confidence that you would stay still as he proceeded to work on his computer.
‘you really think you could last more than a minute like this?’ jack squinted at you through his readers, there was a teasing lilt to his question — as if he could already envision how this was going to end. spoiler: he would be correct.
but you were determined (and stubborn) to prove to him you could. ‘promise – i’ll be good, dad.’
“tell me how old you are.” you mewled, you gripped onto his strong shoulders, ruining the crisp shirt jack got on.
his head was tilted up, groaning to the ceiling. his readers had gone out of alignment, it now sat on the pointiest tip of his nose. his hair unruly from your fingers roughly running across his scalp, and his face flushed and sweaty — he looked absolutely laughable like this. what would his peers or juniors think if they caught their very serious and very professional attending — helpless before a pretty young thing?
there was a large, creamy stain starting to form on jack’s dress pants, and it’s only getting bigger the longer you keep this up.
“oh god. fuck– ff-fifty. i’m fifty.” he almost whined at the end of his response.
“again.” you pressed. the roll of your hips getting faster and more desperate.
“i’m fifty. i’m fifty.” he held you firmly at the soft curve where your hips met your thighs, encouraging your movements. his breathing had become more ragged, his moans and groans getting much louder as he’s nearing his peak.
you begged once more. “say it again, please. dad, please! i’m gonna cum if you tell me again. please. please! i’m gonna cum–”
since you asked so nicely, looking so pretty as you did, jack leaned in close to the shell of your ear. the lightest touch of his lips and the gruffness of his voice made you shiver.
“i’m fifty years old, babydoll. shouldn’t have any business playing around with your dad like this, hm? but you’re a nasty girl. when nasty girls feel achey here–” he pressed the pad of his thumb over your throbbing clit. “–they fuck themselves on their dads’ cock.”
“aahh!” you shrieked at the top of your lungs, the walls of your cunt intensely pulsated around his fat length.
“shit! i’m gonna cum. i’m not wearing a condom – baby, baby i gotta pull out!” he tried to maneuver himself so he could take himself out before he shot his load in you.
but you kept yourself buried deep, using your position to your advantage.
“babydoll–” jack warned you. “get up, young lady.”
“no!”
he wriggled and squirmed beneath you. he should be able to overpower you but if he got up all of a sudden, he’s afraid he might push you down the floor or hurt you in any way. he just desired for you to gently pull out.
“you asking to get spanked?!”
he didn’t mean to raise his voice, but he’s very strict about using practising safe sex. it was already risky enough to let you warm his cock in the first place. he also didn’t want you to feel regret — if something or someone did come to fruition. he didn’t want to put any pressure on you if you were unprepared to step into that chapter of your lives.
“don’t care, daddy. jus’ wanna feel you cum inside me. i need it.” if that was not convincing enough for him, you took hold of his face in your hands to look him in the eyes.
despite the sensitivity of your core, you started to slowly grind on his lap again, mercilessly not giving your lover any other choice.
that made the dam burst, loads and loads of his spend was released in your sex. his cries were sharp, the loudest you’d ever heard from him. you noticed there were actual tears in his eyes, you carefully wiped them away with the tips of your fingers.
“daddy? i reallyyy want a sister, but i don’t care that much at all, to be honest. a healthy sibling would be perfect.” ♡
🐑 : something short, sweet, and icky that's been collecting dust in my drafts for 2 weeks now. i couldn't get it out of my head so might as well drop this lil treat :3 CORRUPT THAT OLD MAN MONDAY !
warnings . . . curse words, grinding, lewd conversation, kidnapping????? unserious ofc, is reader overreacting? maybe but u know the drill. want to point out that it’s been a two week timeskip from the cabin/cath coming back. it may seem like the plot shifted but it’s coming…… mwahahahaha
authors note . . . okay.. well.. hi… love you. tell me ur thoughts and I love you and did I tell you I love you also wait.. they’re being vague cause they’re gonna do criminal stuff… not drunk LOL I just don’t want to rework this LMAOAOA
You ran out on Steve almost three years ago in the middle of a sweet fling, but now you’re back in Hawkins, and there’s a little girl on your hip that looks just like him. fem, 14k
afab reader, second-chance romance, girl!dad steve, slow burn idiots, no upside down au
⋆ ˚｡⋆୨♡୧⋆ ˚｡⋆
You realise how fucked you are pretty quickly.
It’s something in the way the kid is looking at you. He’s staring at you, not unfriendly but piercing, and his gaze keeps flicking to Leah like he’s trying to make sense of her, and his mouth is stuck obnoxiously with his tongue flat and pulled into that cruel letter ‘S’.
You freeze up like you’ve been caught, which doesn’t help.
And the kid spins in his Nike’s and races for the entrance, ditching a basket full of veggies and a pack of gum in the middle of the aisle.
“Okay, Lee,” you say, sweating despite the November chill. “Let’s get going.”
Leah grins in her seat in the shopping cart. “Meemaw’s?” she asks.
“Yeah. Let’s go make sure your meemaw had her dinner.”
Your ears ring all the way home. They don’t stop ringing. You spend the night waiting for a phone call you don’t get, awkward and clammy. There’s a certain way that rich families work in Indiana. You can see the coming hush money or the threat to leave town almost as clearly as you could see the loveless marriage years ago. You and Leah need to get out of dodge before you’re stuck having conversations you never wanted to have.
I mean, who could’ve predicted that? One of Steve’s teenagers recognises you in the grocery store three years after your fling, how’d they even remember?
The phone doesn’t ring, that night.
Or the next.
Maybe Steve didn’t believe the kid. Maybe the kid had an emergency completely unrelated to Leah. Maybe Steve believed it and didn’t care. You deem yourselves safe from harm in a venture to the grocery store when your mom asks for chicken noodle soup.
It’s there you recognise your mistake. Steve Harrington’s shiny BMW sits parked in the bay by the sign for the laundromat and the man himself sits inside with a paperback bent open on his thigh. He’s glaring at it like it killed his whole family.
You move bodily away from him with Leah clasped to your chest, wondering if you can beat him in, but then a chirp sounds near the door and you watch in slow motion as a young teenager brings a radio to his mouth and says, “Code milkshake!”
You hear a curse and can’t help looking back, right at the bimmer, where Steve is looking up through the windshield with a look of frozen trepidation on his face.
—
So.
How did you end up where you are?
You aren’t one for thinking about the past. Don’t like doing it. In fact, you try your very hardest not to think of the past when you can help it. Once Leah was born, that was easy to do. Babies are demanding, they take over your entire life, and your new life in Portland was already busy to begin with. You find thinking of the past incessant and unnecessary, but. Things are happening oh so fast —you had genuinely figured you could get through your homecoming without being spotted. You figured you could leave Leah at home with your mom while you shopped, but meemaw’s stroke has affected more than her body, and you couldn’t leave Leah there in good conscience in case an accident happened.
It’s not like you had many friends, before you left. Any, in fact. Steve was the first guy to ever show any interest in you, and as nice as he’d been in the quiet moments after, he hadn’t exactly brought you roses or promised you anything. You’re the dummy who got pregnant by the ‘washed out’ king of Hawkins High. It was probably going to be one of his peers, and it was never going to be Nancy Wheeler.
Things were obviously more detailed at the time, but you and Steve had come together in a fling. It’s not a relationship that you’d pictured for yourself, but it’s not as though you set your sights on him and thought, yeah, I’m going to fuck him. It was more that he was friendly, and you were both at the same bar at the same time sitting by yourselves, and with a little gin and a ton of mutual loneliness, it’d felt natural to let him kiss you against the hood of his car. When he drove you home, worried you’d get stuck in the rain, you’d offered him into an empty house. Things snowballed from there.
The sex was good. Steve was kind. He was a bit awkward from time to time and he didn’t know what to say without putting his foot in his mouth, but you liked it. Liked him.
Then the test. Then the memory of his Harrington name, how his mom wanted him to marry a socialite and his dad was priming him to get into the family business, whatever that may be. That silly conversation about kids. “I’d never put them through it,” he’d said, naked and tracing a star into your shoulder blades through the sheets, his hair damp at the nape of his neck with sweat, “are you joking? They’d be the loneliest kid ever.”
You remember laughing softly. You’d wanted him to say something different, but you aren’t sure what it is he could’ve said to make it right enough to stay.
In the end, you figured Leah could be part of a brand new start. You applied for a job in the classifieds and uprooted the rest of your life to go to it, and when you finally had your baby, you didn’t let yourself call Steve. What use would that have been, letting him smash the lingering, aching bit of your heart that wanted him to love you? You were smart enough then to recognise that your dream for the future was about as childish as getting knocked up at nineteen.
It hurts now, though, as he gets out of the car, how badly you want him to want you, and how stupid you’ve always been.
Steve shuts the door to the BMW and makes his way in a jog across the parking lot. He breathes your name. You’re nervous, not stupid. You don’t try to hide the baby.
She grumbles on your hip.
Steve stands in front of you. He’s remarkably not shouting at you, but he’s not smiling, either. He looks different than the last time you’d seen him for sure, fuller and broader, lip dark with stubble and his hair shorter (but not short). There’s a funny scar stretching unkindly against his throat, startlingly new to you but clearly healed.
He stands there in quiet.
Leah makes a fawning sound, like she’s tired and excited to see a new person.
“Hi, Steve,” you say, to get sound out in the air.
His eyes fall on Leah. She’s a good mix of you both. Got her dad’s eyes and her mom’s nose and a handful of his beauty marks, small dark freckles that sprouted all over her body a few weeks after she was born.
“Is she mine?” he asks, cutting straight to the fat.
You shift her closer to your chest. He’s impossible to read for once, not a lick of anything on his face as he waits for you to answer. The cold chaps your lips and the late-fall sunshine threatens to blind you where it’s rising from behind him.
“You didn’t want to have a baby,” you say carefully. Each word said with less enthusiasm than the previous.
He doesn’t speak. Leah whines at the pause, her hand spreading against your collarbone in protest.
“I know you didn’t. You said it’d be miserable, and you’d get stuck with a woman you didn’t love to save face, and I knew that. I didn’t see any good in… in making you go through that.”
To your complete and utter surprise, his face softens. His mouth puckers in sympathy and his arm twitches like he’s going to reach for you. His hair curls into his eyes in the cold breeze. He squints against it, gaze falling once again on Leah, who he can’t get enough of. He’s full-blown gawking at her, watching her sigh and sniffle and press her hand into your neck.
“Is she mine?” Steve asks again.
You clear your throat to answer, but you can’t summon the words. Your nod is jerky and embarrassed and annoyed, all at once. Of course she’s his baby. She looks so much like him, and you never let anybody else touch you.
Steve opens his mouth to finally speak and you cut him off. “Well, she’s mine,” you say tightly.
He nods like he understands. He doesn’t even look mad at the insinuation.
“Her name is Leah.” If he’d been angry with you, cruel, even agitated, which maybe he deserves to be, you’re not sure you could offer this to him now. “She… she looks a lot like you, huh?” you ask.
Steve manages a laugh, strained as it may be. “Yeah. Yeah, she does.” He swallows harshly. “I thought if I came by the house you’d turn me away. Uh. Because I thought there must’ve been a reason you didn’t want me to know, but now we’re… here.”
You glance around the parking lot. His tattle of a child has made himself scarce.
“Do you wanna come home with me?” you ask. Mostly for want of something to say.
“Yeah.”
You go to leave, but Steve makes a sound and brings you right back. Without comment, he curls an arm around your shoulder and pulls you into a half-hug, slotting his nose against your temple like he used to, even as you tense up in his embrace.
“I thought you’d be more angry at me than this,” you say under your breath.
“Yeah, that’s not really how I work.” He parts from you awkwardly and points to the car. “I’ll follow you?” he asks.
“Okay.”
“Okay.” He turns very suddenly and makes his way to his car.
You meander to your own car and pop open Leah’s door. “Sorry, Lee,” you murmur, tucking her into her carseat.
“Why?” she murmurs.
“We’re gonna go to meemaw’s, okay?” If your mom could hear you calling her meemaw before her stroke she’d have knocked you up the side of the head, but it’s all Leah’s ever known her as, and meemaw doesn’t have much choice in the matter now. You’d laugh if you didn’t feel sick.
“Okay.”
You kiss her cheek, getting stuck there with your nose in her hair, all manner of panic and awkwardness and I’d-rather-nots thrumming through you. I should’ve stayed in Portland, you think.
Leah kisses your cheek while you’re stooped there. Your misery takes a backseat as you gather your bearings.
You climb into your own seat, close the door, lock it, and shove the keys in the ignition. Steve’s car idles a few spaces behind, waiting for you to go. You cannot put this off much longer, but you’d pictured the moment so differently, there’s a sense of unreality now. Is this happening? Did you really spill the truth to him the very first time he asked?
Where’s your backbone?
Where’s your common sense?
With a groan, you pull the car out of the space and begin the drive to your mom’s house. You were never close with her, as strange as it seems. She was a woman with interests and her kid happened incidentally. It doesn't bother you anymore. You came to Hawkins to take care of her. Nobody else was going to do it for you, but so far she’s been an easy patient. She needs help making dinner and she can’t walk more than the length of the hall without finding herself breathless, but she’s recovering slowly, so long as her mental faculties recoup with her body, she’ll be alright.
You, however, have screwed the entire pooch. You look at Leah in the rearview mirror and worry you’ve ruined her entire life.
“Chill,” you say to yourself quietly, almost missing the road to your mom’s house. Worst comes to worst and we go home to Portland, you tell yourself. Nothing has to change.
“Mommy?”
“Mm?” you ask.
Leah leans forward in her car seat, huffing with annoyance when the belts keep her in place. The jacket she’s wearing has bunched into a lump under her chin. “Off?” she asks.
“Two minutes.”
“Off.”
“Let me park the car, Lee. I’ll take it off of you as soon as we get home.”
She whines long and loud.
“Sorry, sweet girl. Two minutes and we’re there.”
Leah sulks the entire way there. You park in the space in front of the house and hurry out of the car, quick enough to see Steve in the bimmer pulling onto the sidewalk. You open Leah’s door and offer her a huge smile, hoping to cull a tantrum with bubbly affection. “Hi, off?”
“Yes!”
You laugh to yourself and bring her out, even as your heartbeat climbs up your throat. You can hear Steve getting out of his car as you unbuckle Leah from the car seat and drag her out. You sit her in the slight dip of the window and use your stomach to keep her up as your fingers search for the zipper of her coat. You pull it tight down and unzipper her, freeing her of the thing that had been irking her so bad and restoring her good mood.
She exhales dramatically in relief, which has you laughing again. “Is that better?” you ask through it.
“Better,” she echoes.
Leah sits up at the sound of shoes on gravel. Steve’s crossing the drive, hands shoved in his pockets.
“Who?” she asks.
Uhhhh.
“He’s gonna come in and have dinner with us, okay?”
“Y’okay.”
“Yeah?”
Leah nods enthusiastically. You can see Steve grinning in your peripheral vision, and it’s so much like Leah’s smile you find your heart going haywire.
“Okay,” you say, your full attention to Steve. “Is that cool?”
“Can we talk, first?”
You don’t blame him for asking.
“Yeah, we’ll talk first. But… my mom, she’s not doing the best right now, so. Maybe we should talk outside?”
“I’m not going to yell.”
“No, but. If you’re angry, I get it, but she can’t cope with that right now.”
“Are you angry?” he asks.
“No.”
“Then we don’t have anything to worry about,” he says, the sound of his smile palpable as Leah gives one back. “I’m not gonna yell. I promise.”
You show him into the house. It feels like walking yourself to the gallows.
The room is narrow. The sides of your vision start to dissolve as you drop your car keys in the bowl by the door, then walk Leah to the kitchen. You hold her one handed as you palm off her shoes, dropping them and then her on the floor by the kitchen table. “Okay?” you ask her.
She wanders off toward the living room and the sound of TV.
Steve Harrington’s standing in your mom’s rinky dink kitchen waiting for you to talk. You’re standing there useless, taking sips of air that sting, waiting for him to cut the crap and berate you. It would make sense. If he’s upset that you didn’t tell him you were pregnant, or that you were stupid enough to keep her, to get pregnant in the first place, it wouldn’t surprise you. Men are cruel, and Steve had a reputation for popularity. It would make sense for him to be mean to you now.
“How old is she?” he asks finally.
“She’s turning two soon.”
Steve seems to be holding his tongue.
“Just– ask.” You try to look sorry. “Ask me whatever you want.”
“Can I–” He throws a hand out, the first sign that he’s not as genial as he appears. “Can I be her dad?”
You flinch. “What?”
“Like, I want to be her dad. A real dad. I want to be in her life, I want her to know me. Did you think I wouldn’t want that?”
“I didn’t think you wanted kids at all.”
“I want kids.” Steve crosses his arms over his chest. “I always wanted a whole team of them.”
“That’s not what you said.”
“When? When you told me you were having my baby?”
This is more what you’d been expecting. There’s a cruel pleasure in being vindicated. “When you told me you didn’t want kids, Steve. You said you didn’t want a miserable kid in a miserable marriage, what was I supposed to glean from that?”
“Exactly, I didn’t want a miserable kid, which is exactly what I was, and I didn’t want it in an arranged marriage that my mom thought would be good for me.” His anger drains a little. “I never meant– I mean, even if I didn’t, you should’ve told me.”
“She’s my baby.”
“That’s not fair.”
“That’s totally fair, she’s literally mine.”
“It’s not fair to act like I wouldn’t have cared,” he clarifies, frowning at you. It’s so disappointed-looking it pisses you off worse, but you're trying to keep a level head. Nobody here deserves for you to blow up and say words you don’t mean.
You bite your lip. “I’m sorry, Steve, but I wasn’t convinced that you would. I wanted what was best for me and her.”
“I can be best for you both.”
You wait for him to hold it up. To prove what he means.
“If she’s mine, I want to be her dad,” he says.
“If?”
He waves a hand, like he could roll his eyes. He should thank his lucky stars he didn’t. “Not like that, I’m not saying she’s not, I just want to look after her.”
“She’s looked after.”
“I’m not saying she’s not,” he says, uneasy now, shifting to hide a hand in his pocket. He wasn’t expecting you to be difficult, you think. “I’m not saying that. I’m not saying anything about you, I’m asking you if I can do right by you.”
“You might not actually want her, Steve.”
“I haven’t stopped thinking about her since the kids told me. I didn’t get a good look at her, but the idea? Just the idea of her? I wanted it.”
You sigh, frustrated, and set your sights on the fridge. “Can’t believe you had kids posted up at Bradley’s to stalk me,” you murmur.
“I needed to see her for myself.”
“Steve... You’re twenty three. We aren’t married. You don’t have to be anything to her, you don’t have to do right by me, we don’t have to play house until you’re miserable. In a couple of months we’ll go home to Portland and you don’t have to do anything. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you, but you don’t have to worry. You can tell everyone you tried and I said no and you’ll still look good.”
“Why are you being like this?” he asks, leaving little air between your sentence and his. “What are you talking about? I’m asking you if I can keep you guys and you’re trying to run me out?”
“Keep us?” you ask indignantly.
“Yes!” He clears his throat. “I don’t get why you left without telling me and I am angry, but I also don’t understand what it’s like to have to make that decision, and I’m sorry you made it by yourself, and I don’t blame you for running away. Okay? Is that okay?”
He’s so loud, then, so tightly wound and upset, his voice a shade of pleading, that the protests you’d been making die on your lips.
“Yeah,” you say quietly.
“You didn’t think I wanted a baby, and I guess I didn’t give you a reason to think that, but I do want one. I would’ve— if you’d told me, I would’ve lost my mind. I’m still losing it.”
You pull out a chair at the kitchen table to take a wobbly seat. Your heart is racing, that stupid kiddie feeling of being in trouble for hurting him clouded by a lingering sense of mistrust. You’d thought… all these years, that Steve didn’t want kids, or marriage, or anything, and– and– maybe you didn’t run away because of him, maybe it was all you, maybe—
“Hey,” he says, a hand landing between your shoulders, “I’m sorry.”
“For what?” you ask, sharper than you mean to.
“I don’t know. I wanted you to stop freaking out.”
“Well,” you say, licking your lips, your breath coming short and shallow, “it didn’t work.”
Steve Harrington rubs your back. You try desperately to chill out, Leah in the other room, your mom sleeping or listening, probably already wound up from all the ruckus, and Steve, who you haven’t seen in years, who used to kiss all over your face before he’d hug you in the dark of his bedroom, waiting for you to calm down so he can say what he needs to.
A chair pulls out next to yours after a while. Steve sits beside you, resting his hand on your knee.
After a few minutes, you cover his hand with yours.
“She’s beautiful,” he says.
“Looks like her mom,” you mumble.
“Yeah, she does. More like me though.”
You huff a weak laugh.
“Are you gonna throw me out?” Steve asks.
“You want to be her dad?”
For a few seconds, you worry he hasn’t heard you. But he rubs a small back and forth on your leg and says, “Please.”
“Okay. Okay, then. I’m not letting you meet her if you’re not serious, Steve. You have to mean it.” You raise your eyes to his and all his perfect lashes. “Promise?”
He offers his pinky, which is so dumb. This whole scenario is so stupid. Too bad it’s mostly (almost entirely) your own fault.
You shake his pinky. He keeps them tied for a long time.
In a rush, you sniffle yourself dry and usher Leah into the room with a hand on her shoulder. She is so, so small. At least your mom missed the commotion, sleeping sat up in the armchair.
“You promise?” you ask Steve, pausing at the table.
Steve nods emphatically. By the looks of things, he’s all in.
You pull your chair out opposite Steve and scoop Leah into your lap. You hold her wrist in your hand gently and lean down to talk in her ear. “Okay, Lee. I gotta tell you something, okay?”
“Y’okay.”
“This is daddy.”
You can tell he’s not expecting such a straightforward introduction, but after a moment, he cannot hide his smile. Leah looks at him with his almond shaped eyes, all smiles in return.
“Okay? This is daddy, and he’s gonna spend some time with us.”
“Huh?”
You point at Steve, smiling even as your hand trembles between you both. “This is your daddy. He missed you very much and wanted to see you. Can you say hi?”
“Hi,” Leah says, her voice raspy and high.
“Hi, Leah,” he says, ever so slightly choked up. Just barely.
“He was my best friend,” you say, “and he wants to be your best friend, too. Do you want to play a game with daddy?”
“Wam’ play game?” Leah asks Steve.
“Please, I would love to play a game. What game do you like?” he asks.
“Um…” Leah places her hand in his and you could probably weep, but he’s smiling at her with so much love as he waves it up and down you never get there. She shakes her fist up and down in his, giggling when he over exaggerates her strength.
“Woah, strong girl!” he says. “Don’t break my arm!”
Leah gives him a good shake.
—
“I do not understand why you’re so calm. How you’re so calm. This is not how I’ve seen you react to things.”
Steve pushes the shopping cart into Robin’s hip. She squawks and thrusts it at him, the crate of kiddie water bottles he’d balanced on the bottom rung hitting him clean in the ankle.
“How am I supposed to react?” he asks, wincing as he brings his leg up to rub at the new wound.
“Uh, to blow the fuck up?” She tucks her hair behind her ears, staring at him. “I was expecting more whining, if I’m totally honest.”
Steve gets back to the task at hand. The aisle they’re in is pink no matter where you look, full of Barbie dolls and ballerina tutus and teddy bears with hearts in their palms. “What would you want if you were two?” he asks.
Robin offers one of her kinder smiles. “I guess I’d want everything.”
“Well, Y/N’s not gonna like that.”
He wants to take care of you both. He doesn’t want to make you feel like you weren’t doing that already. So. The cart is full of stuff for him mostly, things he’ll need to look after Leah should he ever be allowed to take her by himself, which he assumes he will. He’s got diapers, sippy cups, wet wipes, rash creams, a mountain of clothes he has to remember to keep the receipt for, baby snacks, a changing pad, bath toys. He has a towel like a poncho with a ladybug hood and a great big bottle of bathroom cleaner to shape things up for his baby.
He also got you pajamas. He’s not sure why. He remembers that old pair you used to wear whenever he’d make it to your place with the pink and purple plaid, and he’d been wondering if you kept them, and a desire to see you in them again had come over him and now they’re in the cart. He’s hoping he can sort of slip them in between diapers.
Steve doesn’t want to show you up, but he does want to prove he’s being serious, emotionally and physically —financially. Leah is his baby. Kids are expensive, and she must’ve already cost you a small fortune, and you didn’t want his help but you can bet you’ll be getting it, not singularly because he cared for you (he has to gloss it into that one word, care, things being complicated enough as it stands without remembered notions of falling and love) but because Leah is literally his baby.
He pauses on the spot.
Leah is his girl. He’s allowed to buy her things. It will not be an insult.
He grabs a Barbie with a puppy dog on a leash, a box of stickle bricks, a teddy bear with a big cutesy grin, and purple bunny rabbit to be his best friend.
Robin watches him put it all in the cart in silence.
“Is that enough?” he asks, despite previous internal decisions. She’s his best friend. Everyone needs one.
Robin turns on the spot to look at the shelves behind them, grabbing a box set of storybooks bound with ribbon down the spines. “These ones are from me,” she says, dumping them next to the second jumbo box of diapers.
“I’m not, like, super angry,” he says, getting behind the cart to push for the checkout. “I want kids. I want Leah. This isn’t a bad thing.”
“You kind of missed out on a lot,” Robin says. Carefully, not to be cruel, but to present it to him in case he hasn’t thought about it. Obviously he’s thought about it, but.
“I mean, yeah. But do you remember being a baby?”
“It’s, like, a deep down thing.”
He swallows. “Sure, I don’t like that I didn’t get to be there when Leah was a baby, but… I’m finding it hard to be mad when she was protecting all of us from things we didn’t want, or, that’s what she thought.” Steve gives a jerky shrug. “I’m sure she got enough love from her without me, but I’m gonna make up for whatever she missed out on.”
“Okay. Well, when you explode, I’m literally right here.”
Steve is overcome with the urge to snuggle her in the middle of the store, but he hits her with the shopping cart again and feels the thanks get stuck in his throat. “I’m not gonna explode. I’m happy.”
Steve is thrilled. He has a baby. He has a child. Maybe it’s not the wife and six kids he thought he wanted, but Leah is his baby.
“She’s mine,” he says.
“I know, dingus. You’ve said it a hundred times.”
He parks his cart at the belt behind a grandma buying cat food. “I can’t wait for you to meet her, Rob, she’s–”
“She’s beautiful,” Robin says, rolling her eyes. “We’re way too young for kids, Steven. You were supposed to go to college.”
“I’m still gonna go!”
“With what money?”
Steve will save again. It’s community college.
Robin holds his eye. He avoids it, starts putting things on the checkout belt. “You’re doing the only thing you can do,” she says, “I don’t wanna be friends with a deadbeat, but I wanted you to go. I’m too young to be an Aunt.”
“I’ll going, Rob.”
“Fine. I believe you.”
“Can you help?”
She pulls stuff out of the cart reluctantly.
Together, they pack what can be bagged and take it all to the car. Steve drops Robin off at home without much of a goodbye —either she’ll call him tonight or he’ll call her, ‘cos one way or another, they’re gonna talk. Then he takes the side road to your mom’s house and parks the bimmer behind your old blue Pontiac.
He grabs the toys and the bag of groceries. He’ll have to make another trip for the diapers, but he figures it’s best to see your reaction before he lugs it all up the driveway.
You answer the door. Parenting has been going better than expected considering you kept the baby a secret for two whole years, and you’re already smiling when you see him. Things were awkward that first week, but he’s been coming by every single day after work if he works, bright and early if he doesn’t. He can tell you’re growing more confident in his promises. He’s not gonna realise how big this whole thing is and run. He’s well aware of how world-changing his decision was to stay, but it wasn’t a decision at all.
“Hi, is she awake yet?” he asks. Leah naps every day at noon.
“Mm-hm. She was asking me for daddy all morning,” you say. Secrets you may have kept, but you’re glad for both of them whenever Steve and Leah get along. “I promised you’d be here after dinner.”
“Is it cool that I’m early?”
You eye the bags in his hands. “Sure. I already told you, I’m not gonna dictate anything. You can see her when you want to… What’s that?”
“I was thinking I’d make dinner?” He shakes the lighter bag. “And this is for Leah.”
“Right. Okay.”
You let Steve in. He, despite all things in his body that remember this song and dance and demand he kiss your cheek hello, powers through to the kitchen without making a fool of himself.
“Brought your favourite. Thought Leah would probably like it, since you liked it so much,” he says. “And those pastries you loved.”
“You want me to go grab her?”
“Where is she?”
“She’s sitting with my mom. Don’t think she heard the door, she would’ve come out running by now. She’s a little sleepy.”
“That’s okay. I can put all this away and I’ll go see if she’s awake.”
You cross your arms over your stomach, leaning against the counter. “You didn’t have to get stuff for me.”
“I wanted to.”
“You don’t have to, though. Leah’s your baby, but I’m…”
He feels achy in his jaw. He abandons the bag full of groceries to look at you fully. “If you’d turned up here without Leah, after two years of full radio silence, no letters and no clue where you went, if you came back, I’d want to see you. You know that, right?”
“I…”
“I asked your mom where you went, did you know that?”
“No.”
“Well, she wouldn’t tell me.”
“I don’t think she knew.”
Steve hates how much that annoys him, hates the way he relates to it. He dries his hands on his pants, not sure if he wants to hug you or tip your head with his thumb at chin, forcing you to look at him, to say the things he’s said in his head before bed a couple nights a week for years.
Steve Harrington does not love by halves.
“You’d tell me if you were gonna leave again, right?” he asks.
“We are leaving.”
“I know, I know, but. You’re not gonna disappear in the middle of the night.”
“No, Steve. I’ll tell you before we go home. I promise.”
His shoulders relax. “Okay, then, I’ll keep bringing stuff you like, too. Trade deal.”
“Mutually beneficial. I won't kidnap your baby again and you bring me raspberry turnovers.”
“Exactly.”
You surprise him with a laugh. “Okay.”
“Okay, good,” he says, grinning, wondering if he’s finally paving a path into your lap again.
From the doorway of the kitchen comes a pleased gasp. “Daddy?” Leah asks, her eyes widening in delight, feet stomping on the spot, “Hi, daddy!”
He was supposed to give this up for community college? Steve squats down in a half-second and holds out his hands, ready for an armful of sleepy toddler. Her hair is all puffy and her pajamas big at the neck like she’d wriggled for hours, but she’s soft, smells clean as he wraps his arms around her and she burrows into his neck.
“Hi, Leah,” he says softly.
Leah hums her content.
“Good nap?”
“Yeah.”
“Yeah? Did you have a good dream?”
She laughs as he strokes her back. He must’ve tickled her. “Da-ddy,” she says, a long, pulling word.
She’s so small Steve can’t hug her properly like this, so he hooks her in one arm and stands up to his full height, catching your unreadable expression from over her shoulder. Whatever you’d been thinking fades away, your smile strengthening as Leah pulls out of his neck to wave at you.
“Mommy,” she says, poking at Steve’s neck. “Look. Daddy’s for dinner.”
Steve laughs loudly. “I’m for dinner? You’re gonna eat me? I thought you liked me!” His head falls in a dramatic agony. “Leah wants to cook me up for dinner, I can’t believe it.”
“No!” Leah says, giggling as she grabs his face. She pulls at his cheeks, forcing his head up. “Not eating,” she says, like he’s silly.
Steve shifts her so she’s sitting braced on his lower belly, looking down at her. God, she’s so pretty. She’s perfect. She’s tiny, slim for her age according to you, but she isn’t weak. She holds herself up, her hands confident as they spread over his chest. Steve has to confess that this feeling is the strongest he’s ever experienced. Nothing compares to looking at this little kid who already treats him like he’s the best person she’s ever met, knowing that she’s his. He has to look after her. He gets to be loved by her without hesitation. Leah has no reason to love him, and yet here she is giggling in his arms from the excitement of seeing him. It’s like every day she likes him more, and every day, Steve gets to love her more. It’s so weird, but it's nice.
“I brought you something,” he says, shifting her again so he can cover her back with one arm, using the other to brush a stray bit of lint off of her face. “But– mommy, can she have it now?” he asks.
You flush. Steve recognises this look on you, pleased and startled. He’s seen it on you a hundred different times. You were always that girl who didn’t expect kindness, or to be considered. He remembers how endearing it was to surprise you with a kiss to say thank-you, or picking up the bill no matter how casual dinner felt, or something as small as helping you into your pajamas after you’d both showered. It was heartbreaking, but he’s never been unfamiliar with the bare minimum.
“Yeah, of course she can.”
“Alright,” Steve says, grinning. “Your Aunt Robin sent me with a gift for you, but daddy’s is better, so you can have mine first.” He twists for the bag it’s in and yanks it out, Barbie to him so she can’t see. “It’s only small, but I saw it and I thought you’d like it.”
“Can have?” she asks.
“Depends. Can I have a hug first?” he asks, checking your face to make sure he’s not being weird.
Leah nods erratically and throws herself forward. Steve gets a big kiss right on his smooth-shaven cheek, and he can’t stop himself from beaming, his punched out sigh poorly suppressed as he turns her to give her a much gentler kiss at the very top of her cheek. “Thanks, Lee.”
Her eyes squint with a smile. “Can I have, please?”
Steve brings the box up and tosses it to flip it, brandishing it right way round to her glee.
“Barbie!” she cries.
“With a puppy!”
“Oh gosh.”
Steve bursts out laughing. “Gosh! Should we get the box open? Then you can gosh at the accessories. She has two pairs of shoes, Leah. Two!”
Leah squirms to be put down, hands clenched tightly on each side of the box. You’re already grabbing scissors to get it open.
“Thank you.” You lean over Leah to start the dissection.
“Don’t,” he says, quiet but less shame-faced. “You don’t have to say thanks.”
You shake your head to yourself. “Yeah, well.”
“She deserves it, and it’s not up to you to say thanks. I’m serious.”
“It’s nice of you.”
He doesn’t know how to prove how certain he is about staying. He decides to keep his mouth shut for now, which is hard. Almost slips up that whole evening. You don’t look happy when he doubles back before he leaves that night with the bag of snacks and the huge box of diapers, but he catches you as you and Leah stand on the stoop waving at the bimmer. You’re smiling. A real one, teeth on display for the first time since you came home.
—
“Okay,” you say quietly, “up, baby. And another one. Good job.”
Leah demonstrates a unique level of concentration as she climbs up the stairs with you. You’d have carried her if she didn’t insist she could do it herself with a displeased squeal. Her eyes are nearly closed, her tongue slipping between her lips and a hand thrown out for balance, the other held in your own as she manages two, then three, the few shallow steps that lead into the WSQK building.
“Hi,” you greet a quiet man sitting at the door. “Is Steve in?”
“Think so. Why?”
“I wanted to talk to him, if that’s okay.”
The man gives you a suspicious look that eventually metes. “Sure. Gotta knock the booth before you go in, though, they might be on the air.”
“Sure. Thank you.”
Leah stumbles with you inside. There’s a wide wooden panelled room and smaller glass one within. You knock on it and wait for movement, too scared to look through the panels. You’ve learned that Robin has her very own radio show on the 94.5 called The Morning Squawk, and Steve, through best-friend nepotism, gets to be her sound guy. He has this WSQK van they drive around to do on the road interviews, and they’re both a hundred times happier here than they were rewinding tapes at Family Video.
It’s a pretty firm knot of roots to lay.
The door opens a good fifteen seconds after you’d knocked. You’re immediately greeted by a blondified Robin Buckley, her freckled cheeks slack with surprise. “Uh…”
“Hi, Robin.”
“Hi,” she says.
The last time you saw Robin, you’d been laying on Steve’s couch in his socks and what might’ve been Robin’s own sweatshirt, the three of you arguing on what movie to watch and what candy you were gonna tip into your popcorn. You’d laid your head in Steve’s lap.
“Leah,” you say, clearing your throat as subtly as possible, “say hi, bubby.”
“Hi, bubby,” Leah says.
Robin snorts.
“This is your daddy’s best friend ever, Aunt Robin,” you say, shooting Robin a sorry look as you mouth, “Is that cool?”
Robin culls your misery and manages a real smile. “That’s me, babe.” She bends at the waist. “Oh, you really do look like Steve. Shit, this is so cool.” Her awkwardness has melded to full-bodied delight. “You’re like his twin! Well, you do look like your mommy, duh, but this is trippy! Hey, did you get your books?”
Leah looks up at her with huge eyes.
“Did you like your storybooks?” you ask Leah, kneeling down behind her to hold her shoulder. “Aunt Robin gave you those ones, remember, daddy read one to you about the ugly duckling?”
“The duckies,” Leah says factually.
“Awesome,” Robin says. “I’m so happy you liked them, sweetie. And I’m so happy to meet you.”
You don’t question for a second that she means it.
You pat Leah on the shoulder. “Aunt Robin is your daddy’s best friend in the whole world.”
“Daddy’s here?” she asks Robin.
“Uh, not right now, he had to go get lunch.”
“Oh.”
“But you can totally come in!” she says, opening the door to the booth wide. “I can show you how the radio works! And then Steve– then dad can come back. I bet he’ll be here any second.”
“You’re not busy?” you ask.
“I mean?” Robin laughs, nervously incredulous, “if I ever have kids they’d be her cousins. That’s pretty important. And, like, she’s Steve’s, so? I’d die for her?” Robin scratches a hand through her hair. “Come on, baby Stevie, I’ll show you the keyboard. It’s your dad’s favourite gimmick.”
You hover in the middle of the small room as Robin slides a chair over to the desk with a keyboard and a mic balanced on top of it. She glances at you before she holds her hands out to Leah, and Leah goes into them willingly. Robin pulls her up and settles her in the chair. She can barely see the keys, but she’s already reaching for them as Robin starts to explain which ones do what, toggling a switch that you assume makes sure whatever sounds Leah plays are off air.
You sit yourself down on a loveseat by the door.
“We can play all of this stuff on the radio in the car,” Robin says, “do you listen to the radio?”
“The music, bubby,” you say.
Leah gives a neck-breaking nod.
“Well, me and dad choose what songs to play. Do you have a favourite song?”
“She loves ‘Save it For Later’ by The Beat. She gets super into it,” you say.
“Oh, we have that one! Let’s queue it up, Leah.”
Leah mashes the keyboard in a cacophony of introductions and funny sounds, then a long run of the Rockin’ Robin intro. She finds a sound bite of applause loaded up on the tape deck, hitting it over and over as she giggles.
“Be careful, Lee, don’t break it.”
Her hitting doesn’t slow.
“Lee,” you say more firmly, “baby, stop. You have to be nice. Don’t slap the buttons.”
Leah throws you a glare. “Mommy,” she whines.
“What? You have to be nice to other people’s things. Aunt Robin is letting you play with her keyboard, but it’s important. It’s okay to try all the buttons! But with nice hands. Yeah?”
The ajar door opens fully. “Is my Leah not being nice?” Steve asks, already beaming with all his teeth as he sees her behind the keyboard. “I don’t believe that for a second!”
Leah wiggles her excitement in the depths of the chair. Doesn’t bother calling out for him, there’s no need. Steve laughs, saying hi with a quick hand dropped on your shoulder, the gentlest squeeze anyone’s ever given with his thumb rubbing a half circle before he bends down by Leah’s chair. “Hi,” he says, your heart beating so loudly in your ears that you hardly hear him. “You’re at the radiohouse! Did Rockin’ Robin show you how to play a song? Do you wanna talk on the microphone?”
“Hi,” Leah says.
“Hi.”
“Hug me now?”
Steve’s like butter in the sun. He melts into nothing. “Yeah, babe, right now.”
She slinks forward and he picks her up, standing with a baby on his hip like he’s been doing it all his life.
“I’m gonna play her a song,” Robin says. “My queues almost empty.”
“Okay, thanks,” he says, to which Robin wrinkles her nose.
“Sure,” she says, sending you a look as she heads to her desk. Like, get a load of this idiot.
Steve presses his nose to Leah’s hair and smells her. Then he smiles, patting the small of her back.
Leah looks straight at you and says, “Daddy’s here,” in case you weren’t aware.
Steve blinks away a pained flutter, his brow pulling like he’d been in pain, quickly wiped away and hidden by the time Leah glances at him again.
You think maybe, for a second, he’d wanted to cry.
“Steve?” you ask quietly. “You okay?”
“Yeah. No, yeah.”
“You sure?”
He tugs Leah higher on his hip. “I’m okay,” he tells you, holding your gaze, his left sclera bloodshot but his nearly-tears blinked away. “I’m great, ‘cos Leah’s here,” he adds, pressing his mouth to Leah’s cheek, “at work! She’s a working girl now, we gotta get you on the payroll.”
It’s a little while later, sitting on the couch and waiting for Steve to ask you what it is you’re doing here, when the door opens. Leah perks up in his lap, the headphones she’d been wearing falling down around her neck in a heap that makes her cringe, giving a warbly cry as Steve offers assurances to her.
You’re focused on the teenager standing in the door. It’s the kid.
His eyes widen at the sight of you.
“Lucas Sinclair,” you greet, giving him a stony look. “You ratted me out.”
“Uh– did I?”
“I know it was you.”
Lucas grimaces. “Are we sure it was me?”
“I saw you.”
“Steve could’ve got the information from anyone.”
You glare for a few more seconds, then relax. “I’m messing with you, Lucas. I’m not mad. Even if you are a narc.”
“I am not! I told Dustin and it was Dustin that radioed Steve. He’s the narc. I said we had to wait for proof.”
“Well, thanks for trying.”
Lucas hesitates with you, though he comes further into the room and lets the door shut behind him. “I am sorry. Kind of.”
“We’re working things out.”
Leah tugs the headphones off of her head and out of the outlet in a great show of toddler rage, Steve laughing where he holds her. He grabs the headphones before Leah can throw them at the floor. “Hey!” he admonishes through laughter, “Those aren’t mine, babe. Should we put them on the desk?”
Steve takes them from her and sets them high. He moves the chair, bumping Leah on his knee, forcing her eyes to the new figure in the room. “Look, Lee, it’s your Uncle Lucas.”
Lucas gives an awkward, endearing smile. “Hi.”
“Hi!” Leah says.
“What’s up?” Steve asks.
“Can I get a ride, tonight? I asked my dad but he’s going to that miniature car thing.”
“Where to?”
“Max’s.”
“Why are you being cagey?” Steve asks, lifting an eyebrow.
“I’m not!”
“You so are, dude. What’s happening at Max’s?”
“Nothing! She doesn’t, like, know I’m going, that’s all.”
Steve leans in his chair in what would be a total act of casual derision if he weren’t also holding Leah to his front, his fingers waving patterns into her tummy affectionately. “So I’m gonna be on her shit list for whatever it is you have planned? No deal, dude.”
“I’m not in trouble. She’s not mad at me,” Lucas says.
“For once.”
“She’s not. I have a surprise planned? And it’s gonna get ruined on my bike, so.”
Steve’s suspicion wavers. “What sort of surprise?” he asks.
His smile is nice. Doesn’t it suit him? He’s calm where he sits despite the rumble of noise coming from Robin’s booth and Leah talking to herself in his lap. The red glow of the ON AIR light makes his brown hair nearly purple at the tops but leaves his face untouched, tan fading pale in the fall, his beauty marks the darkest bit of colour to him when you aren’t looking into the well of his eyes. His irises are like wet tree bark. His lashes look long from across the room.
And his biceps don’t look half bad when they’re wrapped around your baby. Her tiny stature emphasises the bulk he’s put on while you were in Portland. You’ve been noticing more of him lately—his weight gain, the change in his muscle, the cut of his hair, those reading glasses he keeps in the console of his car. But there are things about him that didn’t change. He’s pretty happy, as things go. He likes doing things for other people.
Their conversation drifts into focus. “…not too much, right?”
“Nah, I think that’s appropriate. Four years of dating is a long time.”
“Even if you’re broken up for half a year in the middle?”
Steve chuckles. Leah looks up at the sound. “I wouldn’t mention that part,” he says. “Look, I’ll come get you after I’m done here–”
“You’re not coming tonight?” you ask, entirely sincere in asking. Not a lick of judgement in it, but surprise, and a second emotion you aren’t eager to name.
“I was– I was gonna come,” Steve says. “If that’s cool.”
“Oh, sure. Sorry. I thought you were– Yeah, it’s fine,” you say.
Steve looks at you for a long second. “I can’t miss out on dinner,” he says, dipping down to speak in Leah’s ear, “can I? What am I making tonight, Lee, do you remember?”
“S’getti,” she says, with a vindication bordering evil.
Steve presses his lips together. Shrugs at Lucas smugly. “S’getti,” he says. “I’ll be there at six, okay?”
Lucas shoots an “Awesome, thank you, sorry,” over his shoulder as he leaves.
“Thank you sorry,” Leah repeats.
Steve has to lock into work and he doesn’t ask you to leave, moving Leah around in his arms and plugs the headphones in. She enjoys the novelty enough to sit there without complaining, bathed in attention. It’s weird to have Leah with you without having to look after her. Like, she gets uncomfortable and Steve moves her. She whines in his arm and he opens a drawer to uncover a bag of chips. He does ask if it’s alright for her to eat them, but you say yes and he doesn’t need guidance after that. He wipes her dirty face in his sleeve and twists a knob on the keyboard.
He is startlingly capable.
You are startlingly hot.
You pull at your neckline, wishing you’d brought a book to read or a zip tie to garrote yourself with for thinking such stupid shitty thoughts.
—
Steve packs his shit up at five with Leah on his hip, happy to stay with him. You’ve been quiet bordering silent and he hasn’t summoned up the bravery to ask why. He didn’t wanna look a gift horse in the mouth, ‘cos you’re here, and you brought Lee without any begging on his part. He shows her off to everyone they pass on the way out, less subtly to the smiley cleaner Cindy who loves to call him handsome in the morning. Who’s this? she asks.
This is my baby, Leah.
The problem arises when he’s trying to pass Leah to you to part ways in the parking lot.
“I don’t think I’ve ever heard something that loud,” Robin laments, blinking fast. Because, despite years and time to learn, he’s her ride home.
Leah screams another ear-splitter. “No!” she’s shouting. “No, no!”
She sobs.
You try to disentangle her from Steve’s chest. He can feel your individual fingers pressing into his pecs. “Lee, come on!” you say, laughing nervously. “Daddy has stuff to do, we’ll see him for dinner!”
She sobs louder.
Robin shakes her head as though dislodging water from her ears.
“Baby, please,” you say, apparently possessing the patience of a god, “it’s okay, I promise, it’s not long. We’ll be okay for a bit.”
Leah sews her hands in his hair tightly, yanking until it stings. Steve flinches and you immediately stop trying to make Leah disengage.
“Sorry, honey,” you say, and Steve realises with a full body start you’ve spoken to him, your hand resting open on his upper shoulder. It’s an obvious slip of the tongue. You lean forward with a slight stammer, “I– Leah, don’t pull, you’re hurting.”
“Not going,” Leah says.
“Just for now!”
“No!”
You give Steve a wide-eyed frown. “I’m sorry, I don’t know what’s going on. She doesn’t do this… usually.”
“That’s okay, it’s fine, maybe you could come with me?”
You nibble your lip. “I gotta go check on my mom, I haven’t been home all day, I don’t know if she’s eaten yet.”
Steve tries to pass Leah into your arms with renewed purpose. The snap of hair behind his ear gives him pause. “Uh, can she come with me?” Steve asks, loud now, his head angled against her hand. “Ow, Lee!”
Leah stops pulling his hair with a sob.
“I’ll take her with me and I’ll drop Robin off, pick Lucas up early, and we’ll come straight to the house.”
You falter.
The thought of you not trusting him hurts his stomach, but you say, “Steve, can you deal with that? She might not get any happier for a while.”
“Sure I can, you’ve had to do it a hundred times. I’m mostly patient. If she doesn’t calm down, I won’t yell–”
“I didn’t think you would.” You pout, wrinkling your nose. “You’d have to move the car seat–”
“Yeah, I got one.”
“You got a car seat?”
“Installed it last week. Jesus Christ, Leah, not the hair!” He reaches up to force her hand as gently as he can away from his scalp. “Baby, owwww. Not the hair.”
Leah shudders away to check he’s not angry. He can see it on her tiny face, the worry. He brings his hand to her cheek, finds his hand is too big, and has to rub her cheek with his thumb alone. “You wanna come with daddy to drop off your Aunt Robin?” he asks.
“Yeah.”
“Yeah?”
“Come with you,” she says, a crocodile tear rolling down her cheek.
“But mommy has to go home, is that okay?”
Leah shudders again. “Y’okay.”
“Okay. Give mommy a big kiss,” he says, repeating one of your favourite lines when it’s time for Steve to leave.
You get a kiss. You’re startled, he thinks, almost expressionless in how slack you’ve gone, but Steve smiles at you and you smile in turn. “You know how to do the car seat?” you ask.
“Sure. It’s got the two mechanisms, right? Her arm goes through each of the triangle strap thingys?”
“Yeah. Okay. Are you sure you can manage?”
“Are you okay with me taking her?”
You shrug. He can see why Leah does it as much as she does. “I guess I am. I mean, when we go home… like, you’ll have to have her for summers, I guess?” you ask, and you’re as beautiful as you usually are, the awkward twist of you and your tired eyes don’t touch it. You were beautiful when he walked into the sound room and found you in the loveseat, beautiful when you told him you’d stay for now without saying goodbye, beautiful when he spotted you across the parking lot with his surprise on your hip. You’ve always been beautiful. He knows you don’t feel strongly about your looks, but he does, and now you made his girl? And she looks so much like the two of you?
Steve stares at you, not even in hopes of any realisation, but he stares at you and thinks I cannot let this girl go back to Portland without me.
He doesn’t expect you to stay. All he needs is to beg a ride.
Because yes, Steve will become your awkward cling-on. He’ll find a shitty apartment close to you and he’ll build his life around Leah if that’s all he can have.
But it’s not everything he wants.
“You go take care of your mom, and we’ll meet you for dinner at 6? 6:15 at the latest?”
“Okie dokie.”
Steve rolls his eyes to stop from kissing your cheek. “Say see you later, mommy,” he tells Leah.
“See you later, mommy,” Leah says.
You use his shoulder as an anchor to kiss her cheek. He swears you rub his arm as you pull away, but Robin would call that delusional thinking. “See you soon, bug.”
He watches you walk away. Every step is perfect. “Your mom’s such a bombshell,” he murmurs, “holy sugar, she’s everything.” You turn over the top of the car and give him a wave, blowing Leah a kiss. He wants to catch it. He finger waves back.
Then he spins and finds Robin judging him hard.
It takes them twenty whole human minutes to figure out how to get Leah safely secured in her car seat. Then he spends four minutes framing her face in his hands and kissing her cheeks, enamoured beyond anything to see her in the bimmer. Robin laughs at how lame he is and he strokes a hair off of Leah’s forehead rather than feed into her ridicule. His baby laughs up a storm as he chucks her under the chin.
“Steve, I’m gonna starve!” Robin warns.
“Right, right!”
He kisses Leah’s small forehead and clambers out.
Robin talks a big talk, but she bends around in the passenger seat to chatter to Leah the whole way to her neighbourhood. “And then dad got us stuck on the side of the road! It was crazy! I told him we were in trouble and he kept laughing! But nothing is that funny, Leah, nothing. I think it’s ’cos your dad has a bunch of screws loose from that time he slipped on melted ice cream at work.”
“Don’t listen to her, Lee!” Steve protests, laughing at her rolling giggles.
“He busted his head! Luckily I saved him, because I am very very smart and I went to camp–”
“You went to Girl Scout’s sleep away camp, that’s not real camp! You were there for a week.”
“But they taught me what to do when your dingus gets a concussion,” Robin says, in her silky radio voice that Leah’s magnetised to. “And that’s why dad only looks a bit wonky, as opposed to a lot.”
“I’m not wonky, am I, Lee?” Steve asks, checking the rearview for her.
“Wonky?” she asks.
“Does daddy look wonky?”
“Mm,” she says.
“What! That is so mean! Baby, I thought you liked dad?”
She giggles and goes all shy. Robin, bless her clumsy, alternative, mixed-up huge heart, goes soft as taffy against the seat. “We don’t like him at all, do we?” she asks, reaching out to rub Leah’s arm. Steve nearly hits a curb trying to watch. “Stinky dad. You can be my girl instead, if mom wants to share. I don’t mind your Harrington blood.”
He drops Robin off, but her mom comes out and wants to meet Leah and that’s a whole thing. She’s squarely heartbroken when she first sees her, going, “Aw,” and “Oh,” as her eyes fill with tears.
“Mom!” Robin says.
“Sorry, but she’s beautiful. Well done, Stevie.”
He murmurs a Thank you, Mrs. Buckley and gets the usual It’s Melissa, Steve.
It takes another ten minutes to get Leah in the car after her quick trip. He heads straight for Lucas’ and finds him freaking out about the bouquet he got Max —Erica told him to put salt in the water to keep them fresh. Steve drives him to the florists ten minutes before they close and they end up with two smaller bunches combined into a vibrant hodgepodge.
Steve buys a handful of daisies for Leah, tucking one behind her ear.
Max likes her flowers, but she’s far more interested in the baby. Lucas stands behind her rubbing his mouth.
“She does look like you,” Max says thoughtfully.
“Right? She has my eyes.”
“Yeah.” Max leans into the car. “Hi, Steve’s baby,” she says quietly.
“This is your Aunt Max,” Steve says.
Leah, who has taken all these new aunts and uncles in her stride (or is too young to get what the hell is going on), offers Max a huge smile with her tiny baby teeth. “Hi Am’ Max,” she says.
Max grins despite herself. “Hi. Are you having a good day?”
“Yessss.”
“Yeah?” She glares at Steve momentarily before standing in front of him, like she’s annoyed he’s seen her being normal, like he doesn’t catch her in a good mood all the time. “Don’t worry, you don’t have to lie. Did you have dinner?”
“Max, I am perfectly capable of looking after her.”
“I’m just checking!” She shakes Leah’s hand nicely. “This party had enough boys,” she says.
Steve ruffles Max’s hair, unbound and bouncing behind her. He’s lucky he makes it to the car with his hand.
Steve sighs when they’re on the road to your place. “Okie dokie,” he says, clenching the steering wheel to listen to the leather creak, “let’s go see your mom. It’s only–” He checks his watch. Blinks big and wide. It’s 6:37PM already, and it’s a five minute drive to your side of Hawkins. “Oh, my god. You’re mom is gonna kill me dead.”
“Kill?”
“Kiss!” he says, cringing. “Yep, she’s gonna kiss me! No other words.”
“Y’okay.”
“Who taught you to say that so cutely?” he asks, fully stressed now, the tightness in his voice surprising a giggle out of Leah. “Stop laughing!”
She giggles worse.
He can’t be more anxious as he pulls up to the house. He climbs out of the car, grabs Leah from her car seat, and in his rush to get her home before you murder him, slams his head so hard into the roof of the car he sees stars.
“Oh, fuck,” he says, holding Leah to his chest as his vision fades out.
Your laugh sounds out from behind him. “Every parent has to do it, Steve, I’m sorry to say,” you call, jogging down the path to the car. “I was wondering where you guys went. It’s… Steve?”
He blinks hard as he stands up, his arms around Leah shaky as his head pounds and pounds and pounds. “Sorry,” he says.
“Steve, what’s wrong?” You rest your arm behind his shoulders to hold him. “Hey, are you okay? Do you need to sit down?”
He urges you to take Leah.
The pain is radiating from the centre of his skull outward, into each eye and down the nape of his neck. It’s such a sudden sharpness he loses his breath, spotty vision fading in and out as he curls into himself.
“Lee, can you go inside, baby?” he hears you ask. There are a few steps, your dark shadows on the ground drifting further away before one returns, all alone. “Steve, what happened? How hard did you hit your head?” you ask softly.
“It’s– I got that–” Every word pulls at the nausea brewing in his stomach. “I’m gonna–”
Steve gags. He aims for the grass. Everything goes white.
—
Steve does a valiant job of keeping himself upright long enough for you to sit him down inside, but after that, he’s useless.
“Okay, it’s okay,” you’re saying, a ringing in your ears you can’t cope with, “it’s alright, Steve, you’re okay. Come forward, honey, let me see–”
You aren’t sure he’s conscious, but he slumps forward regardless to expose the back of his head. You feel through his hair and pull your hand out quick to check for blood on your fingertips, but they come away clean.
“Daddy?” Leah asks, wandering into the living room with her little smile and a daisy drooping behind her ear.
“How was meemaw, bub?” you ask.
“Sleeping.”
“Why don’t you go snuggle with her for a minute? I’ll bring you a buppy?”
Leah hugs your leg from behind. “Buppy?”
“Yeah, do you want one?”
Leah shoots for the bedroom. You take her absence as an opportunity to pull Steve’s head up, meeting his droopy gaze. “Steve, baby,” you say, so softly it’d be a wonder if he could hear you, “are you okay?”
He groans. “Just a migraine.”
“Are you sure?”
“Feels like one.”
“You get them a lot?”
“More since you left.”
You swallow roughly. “I’m gonna call an ambulance.”
“No.” At that, he sits up, holds his own head up to plead, “You don’t have to. I’m fine, this just happens sometimes. After I hit my head at the mall, I get these killer migraines.”
“You hit your head, though. I think you have a concussion.”
“Not my first one.”
You hold his cheek in your hand. Your thumb brushes over his beauty marks. “No?” you ask.
“Had three.”
“You never told me.”
“I know. Didn’t want you to think I was– some loser? I don’t know. I don’t know, I don’t know why it was hard to be honest with you, guess I thought– it’s not like it’s ever done any good before. I always say the wrong thing.”
You get on your knees in front of him. To cope with the strain of looking up at him, but more to see him face to face. “Steve, you nearly yacked in my yard. I think we’re past appearances.”
Steve covers his mouth with a big hand.
You tuck as much of his hair behind his ears as you can. “Can you look at me? I want to check your pupils.”
He opens his eyes properly, pouring his gaze into yours without hesitation. You check the size of each pupil and find them normal, though the longer he looks, the bigger they become. “I think there’s something wrong, Steve. Your eyes are blown.”
“It’s fine. It’s not ‘cos I hit my head. It’s a headache.”
“You almost knocked yourself out. You’re throwing up. What if I don’t call the ambulance and Leah’s dad dies on my couch?”
“I don’t need an ambulance. I barely puked, it was all spit.”
“Steve.”
“I’m serious. I didn’t even go for the first two concussions, and the third one, they said this could happen. Turns out that taking a couple of bad knocks to the head makes you fragile, I’m fine.” He cups your cheek. “Jesus, don’t feel sorry for me–”
“I do feel sorry. I’m so sorry.”
Seconds of stringy silence follow. He squints at you through the pain. “It’s okay,” he says, his own thumb rubbing at your veins. “I’m sorry, too.”
You pull his hand off your face. Not without care.
“…Can I please call an ambulance?” you ask, uneasy.
“I don’t need one.”
“How do you know?” you whisper.
He turns his hand in your grip to hold yours. His eyes are brown and teary with pain, but they’re so familiar. “I just do. Can you trust me, please?”
You try to stand. Steve squeezes your hand in his and makes you sit on the couch beside him as his eyes shutter closed and his head tips back, the column of his throat there and pale and working as he swallows his pain. You stare at the length of it with your hand too hot in his grip, wondering when it’s acceptable to pull your hand away, and if you’d even want to when the time came.
You told me you didn’t want this, you think, your two joined hands rising and falling where he’s pulled them to his chest. You swear you can see his heart in his chest. The gentle bump-bump of it against skin. A miserable wife.
“Can I get you anything?”
He croaks a hum. “Mm, no.”
“Are you sure? I have aspirin.”
His fingers flex. “It’ll go away.”
“When?”
“It depends. It can take a few hours, sometimes, but I don’t get the worst of the pain for long.” His voice is hoarse with its quiet.
“The other times?”
“They can last for days.”
You’d seen the physical change in Steve. He went weak and sweaty in seconds. His nausea was obviously extreme. You can feel the tremor in his hand as he talks like every word spurs pain.
“It won’t, though,” he says. “Don’t worry. I need five minutes and I can make dinner.”
“Uh, no you can’t. You can sit right here until you feel better, thanks.”
He sinks impossibly further into your mom’s old couch. “Okay. Sorry.”
“It’s okay.” You lower your tone. “I don’t mind. I’m sorry if you thought I would.”
“I didn’t mean to–”
“To what? Give yourself a concussion on the roof of the car? I gathered that.”
“Didn’t mean for it to become your problem,” he says.
“You’re not a problem, Steve. I promise.”
You fight for better judgement and lose, letting yourself caress a piece of hair away from his pale neck.
“I think I really screwed up,” he says. “Think I made out all the wrong things. You didn’t think you could tell me about the baby–”
“We don’t have to do this again–”
“Yeah, we do. We do. Because I made you think I wouldn’t want you. I lied to protect my ego and I could’ve had everything I wanted,” —his brow pulls tight and glared, his jaw rigid— “and I hurt you.”
“I hurt myself. You didn’t make me run away, Steve. I did it all alone. I’m good at that.”
“I don’t want you to be alone.”
“I don’t want you to live a life that you hate.”
“I don’t. I won’t. How could I ever hate anything about her?”
You have to give him that. But. “I didn’t tell you for a bunch of reasons, Steve,” you confess, hardly wanting to let it out. “I was scared of everything, you and your parents, making you into the reluctant husband, or– or at the least the reluctant father. I didn’t want to deal with it. And I didn’t wanna be that stupid girl who got knocked up by the prom king. I ran away and nobody had to know.”
“It wouldn’t have been like that.”
“I realise that now.”
His head lolls to see you. He pulls his lashes apart enough to peek through them, that dark hedging a line you’d like to count. You tip your head toward his and face him across the couch cushions, hands joined and hot as a hearth.
“It was never messing around, to me,” he says quietly. Sweat wets the hair at his temples.
“You don’t have to–”
“I got my heart stomped on pretty hard over and over and I stopped trying. I put all my cards on the table every time. But with you, I couldn’t do it again. I thought I couldn’t, so I acted less into you than I was.”
You remember all his kisses and tight armed hugs, his affectionate nudges, his nose lined to your temple as he bore down. It hadn’t felt like less. But you’d never thought it was more, either.
“I pretended we were this summer fling, told you I didn’t want kids, that I wanted to live in the city and get a full time job at a firm with a company car, like that stuff mattered.” He frowns at you deeply. “I’m sorry. I wish I could change it.”
His throat bobs.
“S’it still hurting?” you murmur.
“So much,” he murmurs too, holding your hand against his heart. “I can’t get it to stop.”
“I can’t do this with you.”
He shakes his head minutely. “M’not asking you for anything you can’t give me. I’m just sorry.”
You want him to lean in and align his mouth to yours. You imagine it vividly, the press and taste of him, the scratch of the stubble on his upper lip and his hand slipping behind your neck, squeezing your nape gently, his thumb at the hinge of your jaw trying to open your mouth. You want him so badly it’s a palpable ache in your teeth, like he’s already kissed you harsh and quick, that clack of a collision and the subsequent metallic on your tongue.
But you aren’t lying. You can’t do this.
A thudding noise echoes from your mom’s room, compelling you up and away from his warm touch. Your hand sings with pins and needles as it falls out of his.
“Lee?” you call. “Sorry. I have to go make sure she’s okay.”
He frowns again as he pinches the bridge of his nose. “That’s fine. I’ll be here.”
—
The bedroom throw blankets haven’t changed since you were here last. Your mom didn’t waste much time turning it into a guest room, but the sheets and blankets are the same, soft with wear in your hands as you lay them out. Leah waits for you to finish before climbing into bed, her bottle teat bitten between her teeth. It slips out of her hand with a rush of air as she slips into the pillows. You pick it up and offer it to her again, your shoulders aflame with the weight of an uncommon gaze.
“What side do you sleep on?”
Steve, at half-mast but less obviously pained, takes his time answering.
“Left.”
“Left side’s all yours.”
He shuffles forward in a polo and a pair of his old sweatpants. You, in a horrible stroke of great luck, had them in the bottom of the chest of drawers.
“Make room for me?” he asks Leah.
She grins around her bottle.
You’re pretty sure that if Steve can’t open his eyes for more than ten seconds at a time, he can’t drive, and you don’t want him to fall asleep at home and never wake up. Hence your impromptu sleepover. The bed is a queen and you have a shared child as a buffer, but you’re already annoyed with yourself. Your arms keep remembering what it felt like to stretch out over him whenever he ended up on his front. It is not helpful.
You put the big light out and the nightlight on, a ladybug on a mushroom that glows a warm orange on Steve’s side of the room. In your own sweatpants and a vest, you climb into the right side of the bed and nearly fall straight back out at the lack of space.
Steve curls an arm around Leah tentatively, encouraging her into his side to make room for you.
“You okay?” he asks Leah quietly.
“You okay, daddy?” she asks.
“I’m fine, beautiful. I’m good.”
“Sleep?” she asks.
“With you, if that’s cool?”
“Cool,” she says decidedly.
When you lie down, Leah immediately rolls out of Steve’s grip and makes herself comfortable in the curves of you, her nose digging hard in your arm, the bottle warm on your chest.
“I’ll move her when she falls asleep,” you whisper, nodding to the foldout cot next to the bed with its padded interior.
Sleeping in the same bed as Steve Harrington is a long gone artefact of the past. It’s odd to be face to face with him, to smell him so close, the toothpaste on his breath and the salty, earthy sting of sweat mixed with allspice. You don’t strictly mind it, but you didn’t think you’d ever be this close again. It hurries the heart. You miss him like a slap.
Refusing to think on it is the best way forward.
“You sure you’re okay?” you ask him under your breath.
Leah suckles at her bottle, breaking the quiet, though it’s a monotone sort of sound. Steve doesn’t answer. You glance at him and find him dozing already, not a blanket over him nor a sheet untucked.
“Steve.”
He blinks to attention. “Huh?”
“Pull the blanket up over yourself.”
He must like your tone. You’d gone soft by accident, too used to lulling Leah to sleep via sweetness and dulcet murmuring. He kicks it down and then pulls it up to his ribs, a tight white parcel with the pink throw laid over his feet.
“It’ll be cold tonight. Does that make the migraines worse?” you ask.
“No. I’ll be okay.”
You let him fall asleep. Leah snuggles under your chin. This isn’t the daydream. You aren’t being cuddled and coddled by warm kisses along the side of your face, his big arm around you, your baby between you. Steve keeps a good distance and he’s exhausted.
Leah takes a lot longer to fall, but when she does it’s for keeps. You give her ten minutes tucked up on your chest but decide to move her when you feel your own eyes drifting shut. A rush of unnecessary shushing and a soft kiss later, you creep toward the bed and lay down on your side. Steve sleeps as your mirror, one cheek and eye hidden by the pillow, the sheets pulled haphazard over his hip. You yank them from under you and pull them up to cover him to the shoulder, tempted to tuck his hair behind his ear again. It’s long enough.
“Can feel you staring,” he whispers.
Your heart leaps in shock, though thankfully you don’t jump. “Hm?”
“Staring at me.”
“Trying to gauge whether you died in your sleep.”
“Still ‘live.”
You do reach for him, then, stricken by how badly you want to take care of him. “I can see that.”
He peeks down at your hand on his cheek and grins dopily. “Missed you,” he says.
“Missed you, too.”
You wouldn’t tell him if it weren’t dark, if he weren’t in pain.
“You did?” he asks.
“I always miss you,” you say. You pull your hand away like it’s him that’s said the wrong thing, annoyed at your own boldness, moving onto your back to stare at the ceiling.
He feels at your wrist, up your arm. Steve slides his palm over your stomach and holds it there. When you’re starting to think he might’ve fallen asleep again, your breath aching in your throat to be expelled, he presses down carefully and sighs. “I wish I got to see it. Don’t know why you were alone.”
“I wasn't.”
“Would’ve looked after you, though.”
“Steve…”
“I would’ve.”
“I know.” You know now. You could’ve stayed here and had him look after you, but it’s not what you wanted. “I wanted… more, than that.”
He stares at you across the pillows. Your breath catches as he brings his hand up to your cheek and encourages your head toward him, as he lifts himself up off the pillows to bear down over you.
“Do you still want that?” he asks.
You laugh, weak and weary. “Not when you’re concussed.”
He laughs in your face. It’s quiet to leave Leah sleeping, and to stop from hurting himself again, but it’s a genuine laugh of joy leaning over you. His hair falls in his face and he’s beautiful. All freckled and gold in the dim amber light sunning in from behind him.
“I am not concussed,” he says, leaning down.
You don’t kiss. Won’t lift your lips to his where he waits, though waiting might not be the right word. It’s like he’s alright with anything you’re about to do, or not do, sharing your breath.
“I don’t believe you,” you tease lightly.
He’s moved so much to be over you. It is unquestionably the position of a man who’s going to kiss you.
You press your forehead to his chin.
“We should sleep,” you say, because you shouldn’t kiss.
Portland feels very, very far away as he trails his fingers down the front of you and takes a handful of your hip.
“I’m not concussed,” he says, though it’s not asking for anything; Steve’s already pulling away. He sits up and slightly away from you, rubbing a wave into your abdomen lovingly, like you never went to Portland at all. Like it’s the sleepover after a night spent kissing slow and watching shit TV. “Get some sleep, angel,” he adds, so quietly you’d doubt he spoke if you hadn’t watched his mouth shape the words.
—
In the morning, you wake to find Leah chest to chest with Steve, his hair like water on your pillows.
“An’ my hand an’ my nose as my mouth,” she says factually.
“And your ears,” he says back to her quietly, stroking a path from her shoulders to her lower back and up again. “Your eyebrows, and your hair, and your neck.”
“Yeah.”
“Your tummy, and your legs, and your little toes.”
“Am’ my toes,” she says.
“Even your toes are pretty,” Steve agrees. “‘Cos duh. Leah’s the prettiest girl I ever met, right?” His voice drops low enough to rattle hoarsely. “Just as pretty as mommy. I didn’t know that was possible.”
You hide your face in the pillows, pretending to sleep.
This is not going to go how you’d first thought.
—
thank you for reading!! so excited I love steve and I know he could be bitchier and angrier here but I’ve decided to make him whipped instead cos he’s cute when he’s in love and if it’s not implied enough he’s still whipped for the reader lol. hope you enjoyed it thank you very much for reading and taking the time
just remembered that shawn can play the guitar (and used to be in a band) and now i want washed-up 90s grunge rockstar jack abbot.
18+ MDNI | cw: age gap, jack calls reader "little girl"
jack abbot often felt like his glory days had long passed him. he felt like he'd wasted his younger years on meaningless hookups and substance-fuelled parties when he should've been trying to settle down like some of his bandmates had. he'd resigned himself to living with the regret lodged under his skin.
and then jack met you.
you're younger than him — way younger than him. you remind him of the kind of girl he used to wink at on stage during a show, then pluck out of the crowd afterwards and lead to the back of his tour bus.
"you were probably in diapers when i was touring, angel," jack sighs, smoke funneling through his nose with the exhale. he stares at the ceiling, the grey in his hair catching the soft light of the bedside lamp.
"you know, i used to have groupies," he remarks casually, "they’d crawl all over me after shows, begging for a piece of me, and i'd just fuckin' let 'em. back when my voice wasn’t wrecked, and my fingers could play three hours straight without cramping up." jack chuckles dryly as he flicks ash into an old soda can on the nightstand.
"now all I get is some middle-aged guy stopping me on the sidewalk and yelling dude! you were our fuckin' hero! while his wife rolls her eyes behind him."
god knows how a sweet young woman like you ended up here: laid out in his bed wearing just his worn old band tee. he feels his cock start to chub at the sight, and he smiles to himself. at least that's one thing he hasn't yet lost to age.
jack’s eyes soften as he takes in your form. they travel up your legs to the gentle curve of your hips, the swell of your tits, and then up to your pretty face. your skin is still smooth, while his has its fair share of lines. jack reaches out, his calloused fingers brushing along your jawline.
"those girls, they're probably moms now. i'm sure they've got husbands, and minivans, and PTA meetings..." his thumb traces the curve of your cheekbone gently as he speaks.
"... but you, you’re right here. my pretty, perfect girl."
a part of him still can't believe someone so young and beautiful isn't put off by him being older. no one, not even any of the groupies from his youth, has ever looked at his body the way you do. you seem to adore his crows feet, his smile lines, the softness around his stomach, the fact that he doesn't look like some 25-year-old frat boy anymore.
"hell, there's a chance i might not even live to see you get your first wrinkle." jack muses in a low rumble. he stubs his cigarette out before he tugs you closer, wrapping an arm around your waist. he pulls you into his lap, settling you against his chest so you can feel the steady beat of his heart against your cheek.
"my little girl." the words roll sweetly off his tongue, and he hums under his breath as he presses a kiss to the top of your head. "my good little girl."
his hands, warm and rough from decades of being shredded by guitar strings, slide up your sides before they dip teasingly under the faded band tee to caress your stomach. "you want me to touch you, angel? tell me where."
cw: very big gross age gap (19 & 50), somnophilia on both sides, sub/dom dynamics, established relationship, cockwarming, fauxcest (again! yes i know i love it!), slight exhibitionism, lowkey toxic abbot, dingy reader again..
dad bf abbot who loves you very much, but has many strict rules for you, including a bed time. he has to. don’t get him wrong he’s very lenient with you, so he comprises with 10:30, but you still weren’t satisfied. so, when he told you, you whined out ‘whyyyy?’ but to jack you have to understand.. you’re only nineteen, a literal kiddo to him.. so you need all of your beauty sleep & rest you can get. which is exactly why you will not be having a job with him. your only job is to look pretty for him & be his sweet little girl.
dad bf abbot who doesn’t like when you try to do things on his own.. infact he’ll say- “why didn’t you come get me..? let dad help you out okay?” and you'll reply- “i’m a big girl, dad! i can do a few things on my own..” he frowns & grumbles at that. if he can’t do things for you then why is he even here?
dad bf abbot who doesn’t care about the weird stares you two get in public. everyone can clearly see his age spots, greying hair, silver beard, & facial wrinkles- but then they see you.. the cute young girl clinging to his arm with glowing skin & a pretty smile. so when they all see the way you kiss him right on his lips they all wonder, ‘how did he even get someone like her..?’
dad bf abbot who actually doesn’t even let you refer to him as jack, only daddy or dad. but you don’t have a problem with that. it makes you feel safe & protected with him. plus you love all the nicknames he’s gives you. “my girl.” “baby.” “bun.” “doll.” “kiddo.” “princess.”
dad bf abbot who spoils you insanely. like i said he loves having you all dolled up, so, he pays for your nails, makeup, heels & all things girly you love. ask him to paint your toes? he does it. asks him can yall go to the mall? he takes you happily. asking him to help you satisfy yourself when you’re needy?.. he’s working his big cock into you before you know it.
dad bf abbot who can never give you normal kisses. everytime you try to stand on your tippy toes to wrap your arms around him & give him a little peck, jack holds the back your head to push his lips onto yours so he can lick into your mouth & taste your sweet tongue. you immediately love the way his scratchy grey stubble feels on your face- so gruff & jagged. he grunts when he sucks onto your plush lips & laps up your face- planting sloppy kisses everywhere- making you whimper & whine because of him, feeling yourself slipping from the way he’s trying to slowly devour you whole.
dad bf abbot who you gave your first kiss & virginity to actually. when you first told him how inexperienced you were he was so, so fucking hesitant to do anything with you- (he swears he has a conscience) but, the way you looked into his eyes with a hungry need in them & with a heightened lilt in your voice, you managed to convince him so easily- “i trust you, daddy.. i just want you to make me yours.. please.”
dad bf abbot who actually really gross when he’s fucking you. he says shit like- “yeah? you like it when dirty old cock is in your young little pussy hm, kid?” or or “i love fucking stealing your innocence baby.. makes me feel like a filthy pervert.” you don’t do anything but moan & squeal in delight.. loving the way to talks to you with his deep gravely voice.
dad bf abbot who gropes you in public sometimes. taking a handful of your tit or simply going under your skirt & cupping your fat, warm mound. & it looks so filthy from an outliers standpoint.. an old man touching & taking advantage of a young girl.. he hopes no one will ever catch him, or someone might accidentally call the cops.
dad bf abbot who loves the way you suck his cock- flaccid or hard. the way he’s woken up out of his sleep because his little girl was feeling needy- even though she’s supposed to be sleeping. once he gains more consciousness he starts to get hard & throb in your mouth. you moan at way your lips began to widen around him, nose brushing up against his grey pubes. jack tuts at you. “couldn’t even wait for your dad to get up hm?… naughty little girl.”
but it’s also because dad bf abbot likes to do the same to you. on the days he comes home slightly early from his shifts at the crack of dawn & you’re still asleep, he can’t help but to be aroused at your sleeping form. so, he gently crawls on top of you & wastes not a second before pushing his cock into your unprepped hole. vision slightly blury but you can see jack’s shirtless form thrusting above you- and feel him inside you. he’s groaning at the feeling of your pussy stretching around him. when he finally sees your eyes open- he greets you. “morning, my girl. ready for a good day with your dad hm?”
dad bf abbot who loves when you shyly ask to cockwarm him. “m’ feelin so empty..” you say with watery eyes & a shakey tone in your voice. jack wastes no time with pulling out his cock & pressing it into your bare, warm pussy up under your sheer night gown.. you can’t do anything but sigh in relief when you feel him stuffing your cunt to the brim. infact you lay your head on his chest.. drifting off slowly. jack quietly chuckles while stroking your head. he really loves it when you’re clingy like this towards him.
dad bf abbot who really loves & cares about you despite your large age gap. hence why he acts like a dad towards you, because no one can protect & care for you like he can.
a/n: want a dadbf so bad!! im basically just writing out my dreams & thoughts here lol ! hope yall like it <33
oh & i had to use that most recent pic of shawn.. he looks so sexy :0
eeee love ur writing! it’s actually insane <333 if ur taking requests for best friends dad, i was thinking about ur bsf begging you to go on a double date (jack is only letting her go out if you can be there to chaperone) so you oblige but the guy you’re paired up with doesn’t even bat an eye at you. feeling needy and subby you cry to jackie :( he seethes at how ur date passed up such a perfect little girl 🤍
the double date
a/n: holy shit .. 800 followers?!?! thank yall sm 🥹 also i guess this piggy backs onto my first best friends dad fic, but omg yes i actually really like this trope. this is basically their second time fucking too lol cw: fauxcest, cunnilingus, age gap
you were somewhat excited for the date too, hoping to finally get somewhere in your dry dating life. you even talked about it all day with jack, asking what type of things do guys like, what type of colors do they like on women the most, things like that. he even helped you pick out a nice dress, when you tried it on for him, you asked what did he think, he looked at you with a deep intensity in his eyes, eyes flickering down to the way your.. womanly frame fits perfectly with the dress.
your young, supple figure has jack speechless- so when you see the way he hesitates, making you second guess everything you’re doing right now, he’s snapping out of his thoughts to reassure you.“i think it looks beautiful on you, sweetie.” he loves the way you brighten immediately at his words— his praise has way too much of an effect on you.
jack sees the way you’re so eager. eager for love. eager to be taken care of. eager for a leadership figure in your life. you need to be protected and guided— he can do that for you. he wants to be that for you. so, when his daughter asks go on a date with a guy, but she's doing double date with you, —his eye twitches. the first thing he asks is who are these guys? your friend says two college guys from off campus. his mouth twitches downward now, he knows how college boys can be, he was once one before.
when he sees you stand next your friend looking highly in compliance— like you're not even ready to do this, just wanting to appease your friend, he asks how you feel about it & you hesitate. you then say you’re excited & it might be fun! he knows you’re lying, but you & him both see how excited your best friend is. so he says yes, partially glad you’ll be there with her tonight.
when the time rolls around and you & your friend are preparing to leave— jack pulls you into his room privately for a quick talk. he can visibly see your nervousness, so he tries to calm you down, “hey, kid, why are you shaking? don't be nervous, you look gorgeous.” you ignore the sly compliment and voice out to him that’s not the problem. “t-that’s not the problem, dad. i-i just dont know how this is going to be. i haven't had good experiences with peers, let alone boys my age. they're just so mean to me, i don't understand why..?” jack’s entire body immediately tenses up for you.
he fucking hates it— how these little boys treat beautiful girls these days, just thinking with their dicks and finding the easiest lay possible, not even realizing the prettiest gift is right in their face. but he's going to be optimistic for you— and for himself too. “listen here.” he grabs a hold of your face with both his hands to forces you to make eye contact with him. “go out there and be your pretty, adorable, self on this date okay? this guy would be a fuckin lunatic to not like someone as selfless as you.” his words make you smile, which makes him smile. he likes seeing this face on you instead. “and if all else fails, you back here to me, and we’ll settle any problem you have, alright?” his voice suddenly gets serious. every bone in your body feels like you have to obey him.
you nod at him again. when he leans in & kisses the top of your head, you suddenly feel your anxiety slowing down. but feel it slowly come back up again when you hear your friend calling your name. fuck. time to go. you back away from jacks space and head towards the door, feeling the comfort of him trailing behind you. so when you leave out of the door and into the car, you suddenly feel cold & tense again, but you tell yourself it’s all gonna be okay, it’s all gonna be okay...
when you both arrive at the restaurant, your friend spots the two guys instantly— you already want to get this over with. when your friend goes over to her date— she introduces you to yours. it’s some random guy from a random class that you aren't even in, you honestly forgot his name a few seconds right after he said it, but you still replied back with your name anyways. you’re sure he forgot yours too with the way he can't even take his eyes of your best friend, switching to you every two seconds to make it seem like he’s interested. when you two head into the restaurant, your date is fucking trying to open the door for your friend like she doesn't already have a date, leaving you in the dust having open the door for yourself.
when you all finally find a booth to sit at, the dates sit from across the both of you— and once again your date isn't even glancing at you. what the fuck??? is this a fucking humiliation ritual that your best friend set you up to because what is going on? you feel your confidence slipping away by the minute. and every time the guy even gives you a stare for longer than five minutes- his face begins to morph into a pile of disgust. you try to contain back your tears as much as you can— you just tried to think of jack & how he’s waiting for you after all this.
speaking of jack, he was silently, patiently waiting for you to come back from this double date. he was reluctant to let you both go and was worried, but as he waited his thoughts kept wondering to you, wanting to know if you’re okay, if the guy is treating you right, & how you’re feeling. he knows how you’re such a sensitive little thing. he likes to think that he’s to the only one who gets you— there is no one who can love you better than he can. you’re his girl. his cute, adorable, but fucking tempting— little girl.
you don’t even know how much you tempted him tonight, in that magenta-colored bandage dress that just hugged every part of your body just right, cupped your fat breasts perfectly— just enough for him to look down into your cleavage. hell, no boy will be able to handle your body right, only your daddy knows you, knows how and where you like to be touched. fuck. he needs to stop thinking like this. right now. but he knows. he knows how pliant you’d be for him, you’re already such a deprate thing for his attention, imagine how desperate you’d be for his thick co—
there were three loud knocks on the door that snapped jack out of his thoughts. it was the additional three more than made him get up and open the door, and what he what he saw was more upsetting that anything. it’s you, shaking in your little purple dress, trying to hold in your sobs, fat tears streaming down your face. you're so down in your sorrows you don't even realize the door opening before jack pulls you hard into his embrace, trying to console you. “hey- hey princess, breathe.. breathe... bad date?”
you begin to sob into his chest harder. you try to voice out your problems— but you're so hurt right now. “h-h-he—” jack's still trying to calm you down. “deep breaths, my girl.” you wanted to tell him where your best friend was too, that she was just sitting in the car on the phone still enjoying extra time with her date, but those words never made it out of your mouth. “he-he ignored me the entire time! i really thought this would be different..” then you asked the most heart wrenching question, it made jack want to cry with you. “no one will ever love me.. will they, dad?” that settles it. jack can't see you like this anymore.
“babygirl, no. look at me. i love you. me. your daddy loves you. and that’s all that matters. fuck all those other stupid boys out there, they can't treat you right bun, they can't see how much of shining star you are. say the word and i’ll do it. i’ll make sure he’ll never hurt you again.”
you don’t really care about the guy anymore. you never really did, all you’re thinking about is jack now.. your sniffles and sobs have gone down from his mini-monologue, and all that fills your brain is how warm is his hard chest feels against your head and torso. you look at up at him through your lashes with red rimmed eyes as you thank him for making you feel marginally better about yourself. “it’s okay.. thank you daddy, you made me feel all better.” you hear your voice begin to slur.. oh god.. you hate how he turns you to mush so easily..
jack hears it too, so he just couldn't help himself when he presses his lips against yours, hard, loving your surprised moan into his mouth. you reciprocate to him quickly, and he loves it. “fuck, there's my sweet girl.” he grumbles onto your skin while peppering sloppy kisses all over you face. you submit your body to him completely, going limp in his hands as his kisses you dumb. “i'm sorry kiddo, i just wanna make you feel good. something these shitty boys in your generation can't seem to comprehend.”
he drops farther down past your jaw, kissing and sucking faintly onto your neck, licking stripes here and there to see what you like— you like the way his hands are teasing between your thighs, grabbing the fat of them both. he wants to go to the forbidden place between your legs, he just needs your permission to go there. you’ll practically let him do anything to you when you've become subby and needy, so he just needs simple confirmation from you. “do you want it again baby? want dad’s cock to make you feel good? i promise i’ll take all of your worries away my girl, i’ll only bring you happiness and pleasure." you whimper in reply, center leaking because now jack has his finger slightly carressing your clit through the fabric of your damp panties. “dad, please. make me feel good, again.” with the bucking up of your hips into his finger and the verbal confirmation, that’s all it takes for him to make you his.
he carries you swiftly to his bedroom before setting you down gently onto his large bed— giving you one last kiss onto your mouth. god, he can’t get enough of your sweet lips, but now he wants to see more of you. “take your dress off, bunny.” you slide your dress above your head, clad in your lace bra and panties- with a visible wet patch showing. jack knows he's hard, throbbing even— but he wants to absorb you, tease you before taking you entirely. all you do is swing your legs back and forth as you patiently wait for him to use you as he pleases.
as he approaches you to stand right infront of you, he places his hand on your face, thick thumb brushing against your lower lip, you immediately catch it into your mouth. jack praises you for catching on quick. “mm, good fucking girl.” you feel your hole gush again. god, you need your daddy so badly. you want to swirl and lick around the salty digit. but he has it pressed down onto your down tounge - making tiny circles into the muscle. you squirm and shake, whining around his finger— needing more friction. “i’m sorry bun, i’ll stop teasing.. want more?” you nod eagerly around his finger. he lifts the pressure up slightly and you immediately begin licking and drooling all over him- like a dumb little baby.
“you’ve been needing this, huh little girl? just needed dad to give you some little extra attention, hm?” you gurgle on his thumb and his thrusts it in and out of your mouth. when he pulls it out of your needy mouth- there's one long line of spit that connects until jack breaks it apart. filthy thing. he thinks as he takes in your desperate form.
“now, take your panties off..” he commands you again, and you oblige. you love the way he looks at you as show him your bare, glistening pussy. fuck.. before he puts his cock in you, he has to taste that pretty cunt.. you just look so cute baring all yourself to him. he gets down on his knees gently, but when you see him hold back a grunt, you get a little worried. “daddy.. are you okay? is it your fake leg?” jack chuckles at that.
you just had the worst date of your life and you're worried about wether or not he's comfortable kneeling on his prosthetic. jesus fucking christ— he loves your selfless, adorable, sexy, self. “no, no kiddo, ‘m just fine. now will you let daddy taste your pretty little flower?” his breath is brushing against your inner thighs as he speaks, slowly planting little kisses in between. you shiver slightly but giggle at the feeling of his stubble scratching and poking at you. “daddy!! it tickles!” you babble out, but your laughs quickly become moans and you feel him like a stripe from sopping hole all the way up the your swollen clit and sucks. your hands fly to his silver locks, keeping him held in between your legs.
he knows how much you love his fingers, so he shoves one thick finger into your cunt, while still kissing all over your needy clit, preening with the way your pussy sucks in his finger so easily— soaking the edge of his palm with your slick. your walls are so hot, gripping his finger like you need more. don’t worry, daddy's gonna fill you all up.
as he's thrusting his finger in & out of your cunt, all you hear are his smacks and slurps as he makes out with your pussy. biting the edges of your outer lips— massaging your clit with his warm, wet tongue before press down onto your swollen bud entirely. it's not long before you feel yourself trembling and more slick than normal gushing out of your filled hole.
“d-dad.. i think its c-coming out.. t-think im cumming.” you see jack brows curl up is surprise. fuck, already? jack needs to fuck you more often, you orgasm tolerance can't be this low, he only has one finger in you. that and he wants to live between your wet thighs. he can't get enough of how sweet your pussy tastes, god— these stupid boys don't know what the fuck they're missing. “sweet personality, and a sweet cunt. those boys wouldn't know what to do with my girl, only your dad knows how to treat you right.” you wanted to reply to him, but you felt your orgasm come down over your entire body— kicking your legs back and forth around jacks head as you spurt out hot liquid around his finger. jacks lapping up all your fluids, not wanting to waste a single drop of you.
“dada.. y-you made me go everywhere..” you mumble as your chest heaves up and down. jack breaks away from your pussy and pulls his soaking finger out- making you whimper slightly, you can see how the lower part of his face is glistening and you feel slightly guilty, but it's on him for devouring your pussy like that. “i’m sorry doll, you just tasted so good, i couldn’t help myself. now..” he grabbed your limp wrist before sliding his hand with yours— taking your hand and palming right against his hard cock. you gasp at how big it feels. “are you gonna let daddy put this in you?” you nod rapidly but he needs you to be verbal. “speak, kid.” he drags your hand up against his hard shaft again, you can feel the way it’s throbbing. “y-yes.. stuff me with your cock, dad.. p-please.” your eyes begin to water. you need it so bad. but have patience, jacks not gonna torture you for long.
he lifts up the plain black shirt, now seeing his naked torso—brown & greyish hairs littered at the center of his chest. you feel your pussy begin to leak once more as he removes his pants, freeing his stiff cock, god, you know he's been inside you only one other time but fuck, you remember how big he was in you, how he could barely fit, and it worries you a little. but it’s like jack’s reading your mind because he then reassures you.
“don't be scared.. i’ll go slow.. just like last time..” jack then takes your other wrist and pairs it with the other before raising your hands above your head. before you can protest, he's kissing your hot mouth again—reaching for your pink muscle. he his has your right where he wants you. he's preparing to fill you with his dick, feeling his fat tip prod against your dripping center. you moan in his mouth, back arching— slightly squirming up under him, jack can't help but to press more of his cock into you.
jacks groaning into your mouth too— he can't help it with way your cunt's stretching around him. you feel so fucking good up under his solid frame, he wants it to stay like this forever. he’s halfway into your cunt when he asks if you're okay. you babble out it's so big.. but you want him to keep pushing, so he does. you gush with each new inch in you, you feel somewhat relieved when he finally bottoms out in you, feeling his balls brush against your damp asshole. but now you want him to move. you don't have to tell him before his you feel his cock slide gently against your walls, creating a rhythm. it takes ten seconds for him to find a speed but he’s slamming in & out of your hot pussy, tip slapping against your womb.
“does that feel good, princess? you like the way daddy feels inside you?” you squeal out in approval, hole gripping and convulsing around his thick cock. that date is long gone from your mind, all you're thinking about is the hot pleasure your daddy is giving you between you legs. all jack wants to do is fill you up with the hot seed, that's flowing towards the tip of his cock.
“that’s my good little girl. fuck, you gonna let daddy cum inside you? i think you want it. say you fucking want it baby..”
a/n: @goldieloxxxx i hope u like! i typed wayyy more than i intended to but your trope was godly so i had to!!
Daddy gets harder when i cry and whine. He likes it when im scared and i hurt. He shushes me and kisses my tears while raping me. "shh, stop crying, princess. You're gonna make me cum."
this is so perv!abbot taking advantage of the new student intern. one day hours before your shift, he finally traps you in a dark corner, taking you however way he wants. he loves the vice grip your young cunt has on his aged cock. when he hears your small whimpers & sniffles, he feels himself grow an inch thicker inside you. "awe, don't cry, bunny. daddy's gonna make you feel so good, just as long as you don't go to HR, okay?
