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For Your Own Good

Pairing: Steve Harrington x Reader

Synopsis: Tutoring Steve Harrington was supposed to be simple. It wasn’t supposed to involve late nights, soft confessions, or his protectiveness turning sharp when Billy Hargrove starts paying you the wrong kind of attention. Tags: angst with a happy ending, Steve Harrington character study, protective Steve Harrington, Billy Hargrove unwanted attention, tutoring AU, hurt/comfort, mutual pining, emotional intimacy, jealousy, self-sacrifice,

Warnings: canon-typical violence, harassment, physical assault, blood/injury, emotional distress

Words: ~24k

Detention smelled like old pencil shavings, floor polish, and the faint, tragic sweetness of someone’s contraband bubblegum.

You sat near the front because you always sat near the front. It wasn’t some noble commitment to education so much as it was a commitment to being left alone. The back of the classroom was loud, chairs scraping, whispers turning into laughs, the occasional thwack of a paper football. The front was quieter, safer. Predictable.

Mr. Hargreaves, History teacher, moustache like a warning sign, stood at the chalkboard with the kind of posture that said he’d seen every brand of teenage nonsense and had decided, years ago, to hate it all equally.

Behind you, the back row was a full-time circus.

Steve Harrington’s voice was the easiest to pick out. It wasn’t the loudest, exactly, but it carried like he was used to rooms tilting toward him. He had that effortless, lazy confidence that made people listen even when he wasn’t saying anything worth listening to.

“Dude,” Tommy H. whispered, too loud to qualify as whispering, “you think Hargreaves can smell fear?”

Steve snorted. “Yeah, and your fear smells like Aqua Net and regret.”

A couple of boys laughed. One of the girls, one of the ones who always had a fresh lip gloss and a fresh opinion, giggled like Steve had handed her something personally.

You kept your eyes on your notebook. Not that you were taking notes. It was detention, not class. But giving your hands something to do was easier than giving them away to nerves.

Your only real interaction with Steve Harrington to date had been… well.

Not interaction, exactly. More like… accidents.

Like the time you’d looked up from your locker and caught him watching you from across the hallway, leaning against the trophy case with a basketball under his arm like he’d been born glued to it. His eyes had met yours, hazel and bright and a little too sharp, and you’d broken the contact immediately, heat rising up your neck like you’d been caught doing something wrong.

Or the time in class when you’d turned a page and found him looking at you over his shoulder, chin propped on his palm like he was bored by the entire concept of the world. You’d blinked, and he’d smirked, as if the eye contact was a joke you didn’t understand. You’d stared resolutely at the textbook until your eyes went dry.

It wasn’t that you were shy, exactly. You could speak up when you needed to. You could tell off a boy who thought “quiet” meant “weak.” You could stand between a kid and a bully without your knees giving out.

But Steve Harrington was… Steve Harrington.

He wasn't just popular; he was a gravitational anomaly. His presence didn’t just draw attention—it warped the very social fabric of a room, bending conversations, glances, and intentions toward him like light around a star. People like you didn't orbit celestial bodies like that. You stayed in your own quiet, predictable lane, on your own sensible path, where the gravity was weaker but the footing was sure.

Mr. Hargreaves, a man whose patience had been weathered thin by decades of adolescent indifference, slapped a dog-eared attendance sheet onto his desk with a sound like a gunshot. “All right,” he announced, his voice a dry monotone that cut through the low buzz of whispered conversations. “Since some of you have mistaken detention for a social hour, we’re going to be productive. Shockingly.”

A synchronized groan of protest rolled through the back row, a chorus of discontent.

“Mr. Harrington,” Hargreaves said, not even bothering to look up from his paperwork.

The legs of Steve’s chair gave a protesting squeak as he shifted. “Yeah?” His tone was all easygoing recognition, as if he’d been called upon to settle a bet, not reprimanded.

“You can start,” the teacher continued, finally lifting his gaze, “by not speaking unless spoken to.”

A ripple of muted snickers traveled through the room. Steve’s own laugh was a low, warm rumble, utterly unbothered, as if he’d just been paid a charming compliment. “Sorry,” he said, the word dripping with a performative remorse that suggested he was anything but. “I’ll try. It’s a medical condition, honestly. Terminal charisma. The doctors are baffled.”

Mr. Hargreaves finally looked up fully. His eyes, magnified behind thick glasses, landed on Steve with the dull, heavy pressure of a thumb pressing down on an insect. “Your medical condition can write me a two-page reflection on the importance of respecting classroom environments. Single-spaced.”

Steve leaned back in his chair, the picture of relaxed insolence, stretching his arms behind his head as if detention were a beachside lounge chair. “Two pages? Wow. You’re really worried about my emotional development, huh. That’s… touching.”

“Three pages,” Mr. Hargreaves corrected instantly, his voice devoid of all humor.

The class erupted in a collective, drawn-out ‘Ooooh’ of vicarious schadenfreude.

Steve placed a hand over his heart, his expression one of wounded nobility. “Cruel and unusual punishment. You know, I’m pretty sure that’s illegal. I might have to call my lawyer.”

“And yet,” Hargreaves said, turning back to his desk, “here we are.”

He picked up a precarious stack of worksheets and tapped them sharply against the wood, aligning them into a punishingly neat pile. “Now. Since we’re already in the business of consequences, I’m going to address another pressing issue.” His gaze, flat and assessing, swept the room. It lingered for a discomfiting second on various faces, and your stomach tightened involuntarily. You hated being looked at in groups, it felt like being drafted into a team you never tried out for, suddenly responsible for the collective reputation of ‘students.’

“Midterms are in three weeks,” Mr. Hargreaves declared, as if announcing a plague. “Some of you are doing fine. Some of you are… decidedly not.” His eyes flicked like a whip toward the back row once more. “And because I would like to avoid the soul-crushing monotony of summer school paperwork, I’m implementing a peer tutoring system.”

The groans this time were louder, a symphony of despair.

“Tutoring?” someone muttered, the word soaked in disgust.

Steve’s voice, smooth and carrying, floated forward like a perfectly folded paper airplane. “This feels like communism, sir. Sharing the wealth of knowledge and all that. Very collectivist.”

“Sit up, Harrington.”

Steve made an exaggerated, slow-motion show of straightening his spine, his movements fluid with mocking precision. “Yes, sir. Posture is the foundation of learning, sir.”

Mr. Hargreaves ignored him, plowing onward. “I have a list. High-performing students will be paired with those who are struggling. This is not optional. This is not a debate. This is me choosing peace for myself in June. You are welcome.”

You held your breath, though you weren't sure why. You were, unfortunately and undeniably, a high-performing student. It wasn't a badge you wore with pride; it was a quiet, persistent fact of your existence, like your eye color or your heartbeat. Work diligently, get good grades, go home. It was a system designed to keep your life manageable, your future predictable. You could already feel the subtle ripple in the room, the collective shift of eyes darting toward the known academic achievers, as if they had just been declared communal property.

Mr. Hargreaves lifted a sheet of paper and began reading names in his dry, administrative drone.

“Karen Richards, you’re with Mark Ellison.”

A boy near the middle of the room slumped dramatically in his seat, as if sentenced to hard labor.

“Diane Cooper, Jeff Williams.”

Somebody in the back muttered, “Good luck, Jeff,” and was instantly shushed by a neighbor.

He read a few more pairs. The reactions were a spectrum of human resignation: some looked vaguely smug, some utterly defeated, some simply wished for the floor to open up and end their misery.

You kept your face a careful, neutral mask, but your fingers tightened around your pen, leaving slight indents in your skin.

Then—

“__________…”

Your heart performed a clumsy, sideways stutter in your chest.

The teacher paused, adjusting his glasses as he found the matching name. “…Steve Harrington.”

For one full, suspended second, the room went utterly quiet. It was the kind of silence that is thick with stunned potential, the silence that precedes an eruption, when something is so perfectly, ironically funny that everyone is collectively deciding if they’re allowed to laugh.

Then the dam broke.

Laughter burst out, sharp and uncontained, bouncing off the cinderblock walls. It wasn't malicious, necessarily; it was the sound of cosmic irony being acknowledged at top volume.

Steve turned in his seat immediately, the motion fluid and attention-commanding. He craned his neck, his eyes scanning the rows until they landed squarely on you. You felt the weight of his gaze like a physical spotlight, hot and inescapable, even before you reluctantly looked up from the safe harbor of your notebook.

You forced yourself to meet his eyes. It was a tactical error.

Steve Harrington’s expression was a masterclass in controlled reaction. Amusement and genuine surprise blended seamlessly, lifting his brows and curving his mouth. It was the look of a king who has just been handed an intriguing, unexpected puzzle, a gift he hadn’t known to ask for, but was immediately pleased to receive. His lips tilted into a slow, spreading grin that seemed to hold a private joke meant just for the two of you.

You stared back, your own face deliberately flat, a fortress of neutrality. You refused, absolutely refused, to give him the satisfaction of seeing you flustered. You would not blush, you would not smile nervously, you would not look away.

His grin only widened, the spark in his eyes intensifying. Your silent defiance wasn't a rebuff; it was entertainment. A challenge. It made the whole situation more interesting.

Mr. Hargreaves slammed a meaty hand on his desk. “Enough! If you have something to say, say it quietly or write it down. In your three-page reflection, Harrington.”

Steve’s grin didn’t falter. He turned back around with a leisurely, unhurried confidence that spoke of a lifetime never spent worrying about whether he was liked. He simply was, and the world adjusted accordingly.

You looked back down at the clean, blue lines of your notebook, your vision momentarily swimming. You concentrated on the steady, silent mantra in your mind, pretending with every fiber of your being that your pulse wasn't hammering a wild, dramatic rhythm against your ribs.

Great. The word echoed in your skull, bleak and flat. Just… phenomenally, spectacularly great.

The rest of detention limped by, a slow, excruciating punishment measured not in minutes but in the agonizing, audible ticks of the wall clock above Mr. Hargreaves’ desk. Each tick was a tiny hammer on the silence, each tock a confirmation of your sentence. The room hummed with low, whispered commentary, a current of gossip you couldn't quite tune out. You heard your name, now permanently twinned with his, passed between classmates like a piece of contraband candy, sweet, scandalous, and meant to be savored. A voice, sharp and acidic, cut through the haze behind you: “Harrington’s gonna flirt his way to a B, easy.” Another, laced with a grudging admiration, answered, “Man can flirt his way to whatever he wants. That’s his whole thing.”

You didn’t turn. You didn’t flinch. You kept your eyes fixed on a random chip in the laminate of your desk, your posture rigid. Your job wasn’t to react. Your job was to be invisible until the clock ran out.

When the bell finally, mercifully, released its shrill cry and Mr. Hargreaves dismissed everyone with a weary, defeated wave, you moved with a speed born of pure self-preservation. You gathered your notebooks and pens in a frantic, silent flurry, shoving them into your bag, hoping to dissolve into the hallway’s chaotic stream before the inevitable could happen.

“Hey.”

His voice. Not from across the room, but close. Beside you. It was a low, warm sound that seemed to bypass your ears and vibrate directly in your chest.

You froze, your fingers stalling on the zipper of your bag. Slowly, as if moving through syrup, you turned.

Steve Harrington had somehow transformed the mundane act of loitering in a classroom doorway into a deliberate, effortless composition. He leaned one shoulder against the frame, his body a study in casual angles. His hands were shoved deep into the pockets of his faded jeans, and his letterman jacket hung open, the rich red leather a stark contrast to the drab beige of the walls. He looked like he’d been placed there by a director, a perfect, living snapshot of charismatic nonchalance. There was a faint, bruise-colored shadow beneath his left eye, not dramatic, but enough to sand away a layer of his polished perfection, making him look less like an icon and more like a person who might walk into a door or take an errant elbow during gym. It made him real, and that was somehow more disarming.

He smiled at you, a slow, knowing curve of his lips that suggested you were both participants in a delightful, shared secret.

You did not smile back. Not out of intentional rudeness, but out of a profound mistrust of your own facial expressions. Your face had a history of betraying you, of flushing at inopportune moments, of eyes widening with unguarded surprise. You kept it carefully, painfully neutral.

“What?” you asked, aiming for a tone of detached curiosity and landing somewhere near flat annoyance.

Steve’s brows lifted a fraction, a flicker of genuine surprise, or perhaps appreciation, that you hadn’t immediately softened under his gaze. “We’re, uh…” He gestured lazily with his chin toward the crumpled paper still clutched in Mr. Hargreaves’ hand. “Apparently a team now. Academically speaking.”

“I heard,” you said, the words clipped and final.

He laughed, a soft, breathy sound. “Okay. Ouch.”

You blinked. “What?”

“That was cold,” he clarified, his grin tilting into something crooked, almost self-deprecating. “I’m Steve, by the way. In case you’ve been living under a very quiet, studious rock.”

You knew his name. The entire ecosystem of Hawkins High knew his name. It was a fundamental fact, like the location of the gym or the taste of cafeteria pizza. But you refused to grant him the satisfaction of the acknowledgment.

“I know who you are,” you stated, turning back to your bag to give your hands a purpose. “We’re in the same class. Have been for two years.”

He made a dramatic, wounded face, pressing a hand to his chest. “Wow. So you have noticed me. I’m flattered. Truly.”

You stared at him, your gaze level and unimpressed. “Is this… how you talk to everyone?”

Steve’s eyes, a warm, intelligent brown, crinkled at the corners. “Depends,” he said, as if considering a complex equation.

“On what?”

“On whether they look like they’re about to throw a textbook at my head.”

“I’m not about to throw a textbook,” you said, finally swinging your bag onto your shoulder. The weight was a comfort. “I’m just trying to leave.”

“Right.” He pushed off the doorframe with a graceful, unhurried motion, stepping aside and sweeping a hand out in a mock-gallant gesture, as if opening a stage curtain for the leading lady. “After you.”

You hesitated for a fraction of a second, a silent war between pride and prudence, before walking past him. The air in the doorway seemed charged, buzzing with his proximity. To your mild horror, he fell into step beside you as you entered the hallway, matching your pace with an easy, infuriating familiarity. It felt less like an invitation and more like an annexation, as if he’d decided your personal space was now communal property.

He was too good at this. At taking up space without asking.

“That pairing,” Steve announced, as if continuing a conversation you’d been having, “is a mistake. Just so we’re clear.”

You glanced at him from the corner of your eye. “Why? Because you’re above needing help?”

“No,” he said quickly, then seemed to catch himself, his expression shifting into one of careless amusement. He shrugged, the movement emphasizing the breadth of his shoulders under the leather jacket. “I mean—yeah, sure. Because I’m perfect and brilliant and definitely not failing Mr. Hargreaves’ history class. Obviously.”

The sheer, bald-faced audacity of his lie, delivered with such cheerful conviction, was almost impressive. Against your will, the corner of your mouth twitched. It was a tiny, treacherous movement, a mere ghost of a smile, but you fought it down, clenching your jaw.

Steve noticed. Of course he did. His eyes brightened instantly, like a hunter spotting movement in the brush. A spark of pure, triumphant delight flashed within them.

“I’m serious,” you said, clearing your throat to erase any trace of amusement. The sound was too loud in the emptying hall. “If you don’t show up to our sessions, I’m going to tell Mr. Hargreaves. Immediately.”

Steve placed a hand over his heart again, his expression one of profound betrayal. “You’d narc on me? To Hargreaves? That’s cold-blooded.”

“It’s not ‘narcing,’” you corrected, your voice firm. “It’s reporting a failure to participate in a mandatory academic program. It’s consequences.”

“God,” he sighed, the sound long-suffering and theatrical. “You say that like a grown-up. With a briefcase and everything.”

“I am a grown-up,” you retorted, then instantly wished you could snatch the words back from the air. They sounded childish even to your own ears.

Steve’s grin widened, a predator sensing weakness. “You’re a grown-up?” he repeated, his voice dripping with mock awe. “In high school? Wow. That’s… a rare specimen. Should I be calling you ‘ma’am’?”

You stopped at your locker, a sanctuary of cold, painted metal. He stopped too, leaning his shoulder against the locker next to yours as if he had a standing reservation there. The hallway around you was draining of life, the sounds of slamming lockers and retreating footsteps growing fainter, leaving you in a bubble of unsettling quiet.

You spun your combination lock with practiced, furious speed, a code you could do in your sleep.

Steve watched your hands.

Not in a way that felt intrusive or creepy, but with a focused, open curiosity. It was as if he’d never seen someone open a locker before and found the mundane ritual fascinating. As if by observing the small, ordinary mechanics of your life, the twist of your wrist, the click of the lock, the way you neatly arranged your books, he could decipher the larger, more complicated puzzle of you.

It made your skin feel hyper-sensitive, as if every nerve ending was standing at attention.

“So,” Steve said, breaking the silence you were desperately trying to cultivate, “when do we embark on this… noble academic journey?”

You opened your locker door, using it as a shield between you. “When are you free?”

Steve blinked, as if the question itself was a novelty. “Me? I’m always free.” He said it like it was a point of pride, a testament to his desirable social flexibility.

You turned your head slowly to look at him over the edge of the locker door. “That’s not something to brag about, Harrington. It suggests a profound lack of commitment.”

He barked a laugh, sharp and surprised. “Okay. Fair. That’s… a solid point.”

You grabbed the strap of your bag and slammed your locker shut with more force than necessary. The metallic bang was satisfyingly final. “I’m free after school on Tuesdays and Thursdays. In the library.”

Steve’s expression flickered. For a split second, the mask of easygoing charm slipped. His eyes darted away, his brow furrowing just slightly. It was a look of rapid, internal calculation, not about his schedule, but about what it meant to have this obligation, this structure, imposed upon a life that was famously unstructured. It was the brief, vulnerable glimpse of a boy realizing he might have to show up, physically and mentally, for something he couldn’t charm his way through.

Then, as quickly as it appeared, the crack was sealed over. He smoothed his features back into an approximation of his usual grin.

“Tuesdays and Thursdays,” he repeated, nodding as if confirming a business meeting. “Cool. Cool, cool. I can do that. I can be… scholarly. I have the posture for it.” He straightened up, affecting a comically rigid, intellectual pose.

“Great,” you said, already starting to walk away. “Library. Four o’clock. Bring your textbook. And a pen. That can write.”

Steve made a face like you’d just asked him to bring a live, venomous snake. “Textbook. Right. Totally. The big green one with the… depressing pictures.”

You were walking, and he was following again, his longer strides easily keeping pace with your determined, faster ones.

“Do I have to bring anything else?” he asked, his tone light, teasing. “Like… an apple? For you? Teachers love apples. It’s a known thing.”

“I’m not your teacher,” you said, not breaking stride.

“Yeah,” he agreed, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial murmur beside you, “but you’re gonna be telling me what to do, right? That’s kind of the same thing.”

You stopped so abruptly your bag swung forward on your shoulder. Turning to face him, you crossed your arms over your chest. “I’m going to help you understand the material. You are going to do the work. There’s a difference.”

Steve held up his hands in a gesture of surrender, but his eyes were still laughing. “Okay, okay. Relax. I’m just saying, this is kind of a power dynamic. You have the knowledge. I have the… charming personality. It’s a partnership.”

You stared at him, your face a masterpiece of deadpan delivery.

Steve stared back, his grin still firmly in place, but his eyes had changed. They were no longer just amused; they were searching, scanning your face for a crack, a clue, a way in.

And it struck you then, sharp and sudden as a paper cut: he was performing. Not just for you, but for himself. The jokes, the charm, the exaggerated nonchalance, it was a deflector shield. If he kept everything light, kept everything a game, he wouldn’t have to admit, even to himself, that he might be nervous. That he might be in over his head. You’d seen that behavior before, in people who were scared of being seen as vulnerable. You’d just never seen it crafted so skillfully, worn so comfortably, by Steve Harrington.

“You don’t have to make jokes,” you said, your voice quieter now, losing its defensive edge.

His grin faltered, just a millimeter. A flicker of uncertainty in the brown depths of his eyes. “I’m not making jokes.”

“Yes,” you said softly, holding his gaze. “You are.”

He recovered with a shrug, but the motion was stiffer now, less fluid. The performance was becoming work. “It’s what I do,” he said, a simple statement of fact that felt, for the first time, like a confession.

“And why do you do it?” you asked. The question was out before you could censor it, born of a curiosity that had now sharpened into something more pointed.

Steve’s eyes sharpened, the playful light in them hardening into something more alert, more guarded. It was the look of someone who’d just felt another person step onto a private, well-trodden path. His mouth opened, undoubtedly to fire back another quip, another deflection, and then he hesitated.

There it was again. That tiny, revealing crack in the foundation.

You knew you shouldn’t have pushed. You didn’t know him. This wasn’t your business. But something about the dissonance, the arrogant posture clashing with that fleeting glimpse of the boy working the levers behind the curtain, had hooked you. It made him… curiously human.

Steve exhaled a long, controlled breath through his nose, then leaned back against the lockers again, crossing his arms loosely over his chest. It was a pose meant to reclaim territory, to re-establish cool. “You always interrogate your tutoring clients?” he asked, his tone aiming for lightness but landing somewhere closer to wary.

“Only when they’re being deliberately distracting,” you said.

Steve’s eyebrows lifted. “Distracting,” he repeated, as if tasting the word.

“Mm-hmm.”

He smiled again, but this one was different. It was slower. More thoughtful. Less an automatic reflex and more a conscious choice.

He tilted his head, the movement considering, and studied you with an open, unabashed curiosity that had entirely replaced the lazy confidence he’d been wearing all afternoon. It was as if he’d decided the charming barrage hadn’t worked, and now he was switching tactics to simple, direct observation.

“So,” he said, his voice dropping to a low, almost intimate rumble in the quiet hallway. A small, challenging smile played on his lips. “Is this the part where you tell me I’m doing everything wrong?”

The question carried just enough challenge to make your spine straighten. His voice was smooth, casual—but his eyes weren’t joking. They stayed on you, steady, like he was bracing for something.

Then you met his eyes.

“No,” you said evenly. “This is the part where you decide whether you’re actually going to try.”

For a heartbeat, Steve looked caught off guard.

The grin that followed was slower, brighter, like you’d just nudged him into a game he hadn’t realised he wanted to play.

“Wow,” he said. “Direct. I respect that.”

He spread his hands, easy and open, the picture of confidence. “I try plenty. I just… prefer to do it my own way.”

“Your own way isn’t working,” you said, not unkindly.

Something flickered across his face—too quick to be a full expression. Not anger. Not offence. More like recognition.

You shifted your bag higher on your shoulder. “Tuesday. Four o’clock. Library.”

Steve nodded, but his attention lingered like he hadn’t quite moved on yet.

“Tuesday,” he echoed.

You took a step away.

“Hey.”

You stopped, not turning around right away. “Yeah?”

The hallway had emptied almost completely. When you finally looked back, Steve’s posture had changed. He still looked like Steve Harrington, confident, charming, infuriatingly put-together, but there was something more careful in his eyes now, like he was choosing his words instead of tossing them out.

“Don’t,” he said, then paused, exhaling softly. “Don’t go easy on me.”

It wasn’t delivered with a grin. There was no joke hiding behind it. Just honesty, bare and a little exposed.

You studied him for a second, then nodded once. “I won’t.”

The relief that crossed his face was subtle, but it was there. He watched you like your answer mattered more than he wanted it to.

You turned and walked away before the moment could stretch into something fragile.

And when you glanced back, just once, you saw him still leaning against the lockers, gaze fixed on the space you’d left behind, brow faintly furrowed.

By the third tutoring session, Steve Harrington stopped pretending he didn’t care.

He still acted like he didn’t—leaning back in his chair, tapping his pencil against the table, sighing dramatically whenever you asked him to actually read something—but the effort underneath it all was unmistakable.

You noticed because you noticed things.

The library became your first routine. Tuesdays and Thursdays, four o’clock sharp. You always arrived early, spreading your notes out neatly, lining up your pens by colour because it helped you think. Steve arrived late the first time—five minutes, then ten—but by the second week, he started showing up on time. Not early. Never early. But on time, hair still damp from a rushed shower, jacket half-zipped like he’d thrown it on mid-stride.

“Wow,” he said one afternoon, dropping into the chair across from you. “You always this organised, or are you trying to intimidate me?”

You didn’t look up from your notes. “If my handwriting intimidates you, we have bigger problems.”

He laughed, a warm, easy sound that carried a little too far in the quiet library. The librarian shot him a warning look over her glasses.

Steve leaned closer to you, lowering his voice theatrically. “See? You’re already getting me in trouble.”

You slid his textbook toward him. “Page eighty-six.”

He stared at it like it might bite. “You know, I’ve been thinking.”

That alone made you glance up.

“Dangerous, I know,” he added quickly. “But I think my brain just… doesn’t like history.”

“That’s not how brains work,” you said.

“Mine does.” He tapped his temple. “Selective listening.”

You raised an eyebrow. He grinned, unbothered.

“Read,” you said.

He groaned, but he did it. Slowly. Haltingly. He stumbled over dates and names, but when you corrected him, he repeated them back, careful this time. You caught the way his shoulders tensed whenever he got something wrong, and the way he relaxed when you nodded instead of sighing.

He pretended not to notice your reactions.

You pretended not to notice his effort.

After the library came empty classrooms. When the weather turned colder and the library started closing earlier, you commandeered a spare room down the hall from the science wing. It smelled faintly of chalk dust and disinfectant, and the windows rattled when the wind picked up.

Steve liked it better there.

“No judgemental librarians,” he said, spinning a chair backward and straddling it like he belonged in the space. “Feels more… authentic.”

“You mean louder,” you said.

“Exactly.”

He still joked constantly. Still found ways to lean too close when he asked questions, to stretch his legs into your space like he was testing boundaries. You didn’t clock it as flirting—just Steve being Steve. You chalked it up to his inability to sit still, to the way he filled rooms without trying.

But you noticed other things.

Like how he started bringing the right notebook without being reminded. How he underlined things you’d mentioned before. How he stopped rolling his eyes when you corrected him—and started nodding instead, jaw set in concentration.

One day the suggestion came out of Steve’s mouth like it hadn’t been rehearsed.

“Okay, hear me out.”

You glanced up from your notes, pen hovering mid-word. “That sentence never leads anywhere good.”

Steve leaned back in his chair, balancing on two legs like he trusted the floor more than he should’ve. “I’m just saying. The library closes early today. And that classroom smells like someone’s been microwaving regret in there.”

“That’s science wing,” you said. “It’s supposed to smell like that.”

He grimaced. “Yeah, well. My brain doesn’t work under chemical warfare.”

You rolled your eyes, but you were already packing up your notebook. “Then we’ll meet earlier tomorrow.”

“Or,” Steve said quickly, dropping the chair legs back to the floor with a soft thud, “we could just… go somewhere else.”

You paused. “Where?”

He shrugged, too casual. “My place is a disaster. Like, medically concerning. So that’s out.”

You waited.

Steve shifted in his seat, eyes darting briefly to the window, then back to you. “What about yours?”

The question hung there, light but deliberate.

You frowned slightly. “My parents are out late.”

“That’s… fine,” he said quickly, then added, “I mean, if that’s fine. Totally fine if it’s not. I’m not trying to, you know, invade your personal sanctuary or whatever.”

You studied him for a second. He looked oddly earnest, like he was trying very hard not to mess something up.

“It’s quiet,” you said slowly. “And small.”

Steve brightened. “Perfect. I thrive in small, quiet environments.”

“That’s a lie.”

“Okay,” he admitted. “But I want to thrive.”

You sighed, already resigned. “Fine. But we’re actually studying.”

“Absolutely.” He held up two fingers. “Scout’s honour.”

You didn’t believe him. But you grabbed your bag anyway.

Your house was dark when you unlocked the door, the kind of quiet that settled in once everyone else had left for the evening. You flicked on the hall light and kicked your shoes off by the mat.

“Whoa,” Steve said softly, stepping inside like the place might echo. “This is… nice.”

“It’s just a house,” you said, locking the door behind him.

“Yeah, but.” He shrugged, lowering his voice instinctively. “It feels… calm.”

You led him toward the kitchen, the warm overhead light spilling across the worn wooden table. You set your bag down in its usual place, books following, pen placed neatly on top like a marker.

Steve didn’t follow right away.

You glanced back to find him hovering in the hallway, suddenly very aware of himself. His eyes drifted over the closed doors, the framed photos on the walls, the quiet hum of a lived-in home. Family photos on the fridge. A mug drying by the sink. The faint, comforting smell of dinner lingering in the air.

“Hey,” you said. “You coming?”

“Yeah, yeah,” he said quickly, tearing his gaze away. Then, as if he couldn’t help himself, he tilted his head, lips twitching. “So, uh… do I get the full tour, or is that a second-date privilege?”

You paused. “There is no date.”

“Right, right,” he said easily. “Strictly academic.” He gestured vaguely down the hall. “Still. Just curious. Like, purely hypothetical, are we talking secret rock band poster phase? Or aggressively neat bedroom?”

You stared at him.

His grin widened. “Because if there’s embarrassing childhood decor, I feel like that’s important information.”

“No,” you said flatly. “You are not peeking into my room.”

Steve immediately raised his hands. “Whoa. Okay. Boundary respected. I wasn’t gonna peek peek.”

“That sounded exactly like peeking.”

“I was thinking more like… accidental glimpse,” he said. “I trip, door’s open—boom. Knowledge.”

You didn’t move. Didn’t smile.

He laughed under his breath and shook his head. “Kidding. I’m kidding. Mostly.”

“Kitchen,” you said, turning away. “Now.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he replied, mock-serious as he finally followed you. “Wow. Invite a guy into your home and immediately start bossing him around.”

You pulled out a chair. “Sit.”

He did, still smiling, but quieter now, like the joke had served its purpose and could be put away.

The kitchen felt smaller with him in it. More personal. Steve took it all in without comment, like he was suddenly aware he’d crossed into something private.

“This is… really you,” he said after a moment.

You glanced at him. “It’s a kitchen.”

“Yeah,” he said softly. “But still.”

You slid his textbook across the table. “Same chapter.”

He eyed it. “You’re ruthless.”

“I warned you.”

He flipped the book open, then looked up again. “Your parents really cool with this?”

“With studying?” you asked.

“With me,” he said, gesturing vaguely at himself. “I have a reputation.”

You met his gaze evenly. “So do I.”

That caught him off guard.

For a second, the grin faded, not completely, but enough to reveal something real underneath. Then it returned, gentler.

“Okay,” he said. “Fair.”

For a while, it was just pages turning and pencil scratching. Steve fidgeted, tapping his foot against the table leg, humming under his breath until you shot him a look and he zipped his lips theatrically.

“Sorry,” he whispered. “Habit.”

“You don’t have to whisper,” you said.

“Feels like I should.”

At one point, he leaned closer to look at your notes, his arm brushing yours. You stiffened instinctively, not from fear, just awareness.

“Sorry,” he said immediately, pulling back. “Too close?”

“It’s fine,” you said, even though your heartbeat had kicked up a notch.

He nodded, like he was filing that information away.

After a while, he pushed his book aside and stretched, arms lifting over his head. “Okay. I officially hate the Founding Fathers.”

“They hate you too,” you said.

He laughed, loud and unguarded, then winced and glanced toward the hallway. “Right. Quiet house.”

You smiled despite yourself.

“Hey,” Steve said suddenly, more serious. “Thanks. For this. I know you didn’t have to.”

You looked at him sitting at your kitchen table, elbows resting where your family ate dinner every night, hair falling into his eyes like he hadn’t bothered to fix it this time.

“It’s just studying,” you said.

“Yeah,” he agreed. “But still.”

The house hummed softly around you, refrigerator clicking on and off, the clock ticking above the sink.

“You know,” he said, clearing his throat, “I thought this was gonna be weird.”

“And?” you asked.

“And it’s not,” he said. “It’s just… nice.”

You nodded. You’d been thinking the same thing.

“Okay,” you said, tapping the table lightly. “Back to work.”

He groaned but picked up his pencil. “You’re really not going easy on me.”

You met his eyes. “I told you I wouldn’t.”

He smiled, small, genuine, and bent back over the page.

And if he stayed a little longer than necessary that night, if he lingered in the doorway when it was time to leave, neither of you said anything about it.

The house didn’t seem to mind.

And neither did he.

He was different here, less performative. Still funny, still charming, but quieter. More present. He joked under his breath instead of projecting to an audience. When he laughed, it was softer, like he wasn’t expecting anyone else to hear.

And then there were the moments you weren’t supposed to see.

The first time was in the hallway outside the classroom. You’d forgotten your notebook and gone back to grab it, only to find Steve crouched down in front of a freshman whose locker had jammed.

“Okay, no, don’t yank it,” Steve said, calm but firm. “You’re just gonna make it mad.”

The kid looked on the verge of tears. “I’m gonna be late.”

“You’re fine.” Steve twisted the handle gently, then gave it a sharp tap with his palm. The locker popped open. “See? Easy.”

The kid stared at him like he’d just witnessed magic. “Thanks.”

Steve ruffled his hair without thinking. “Yeah, yeah. Go.”

When Steve straightened and saw you watching, he froze for half a second.

Then he smirked. “What? Community service hours.”

You didn’t say anything. You just smiled, small and genuine.

The smirk faltered.

Another time, one of his friends—Tommy, you thought—made a crude comment about a girl passing by. You were close enough to hear it, close enough to see Steve’s reaction.

He didn’t laugh.

Instead, he said, “Dude. Knock it off.”

Tommy scoffed. “Relax.”

“I’m serious,” Steve said, voice sharper now. “It’s not funny.”

Tommy rolled his eyes and walked off.

Steve noticed you again then, standing a few feet away with your books clutched to your chest. He shrugged like it hadn’t mattered.

“Guy’s an idiot,” he said lightly.

You nodded. You remembered.

Steve covered these moments with humour like it was instinct. Like kindness embarrassed him more than cruelty ever had. Whenever you looked at him too long, like you might be piecing something together, he cracked a joke. Whenever you thanked him, he waved it off.

“You’re gonna make me sound like a saint,” he said once, when you thanked him for walking you to your car after a late session.

“I said thank you,” you replied. “Not ‘I worship you.’”

“Slippery slope,” he said. “First it’s gratitude, next thing you know, I’m babysitting the entire town.”

You frowned. “Babysitting?”

He grimaced like he’d said something accidentally. “Just—forget it. Long story.”

You didn’t push. You just stored it away.

Because that was how you cared. Quietly. By noticing. By remembering.

And Steve, whether he realised it or not, started watching you the same way.

Not openly. Not boldly. But in the pauses. In the way his eyes flicked to you when he got something right, like he was checking your reaction. In the way he straightened when you praised him, like your approval weighed more than his friends’ laughter.

One afternoon, you corrected a date he’d written down wrong.

“Actually,” you said gently, tapping the page, “it’s 1776, not 1786.”

Steve stared at the paper. Then at you.

“Oh,” he said. “Yeah. That makes more sense.”

He erased it carefully and rewrote the number, slower this time.

When he looked up, you were still watching, not judging, just attentive.

Something in his expression shifted. Not big. Not dramatic. Just… thoughtful.

“Hey,” he said, quieter than usual.

“Yes?”

“Do you—” He stopped, then shook his head with a laugh. “Never mind.”

You waited anyway.

He glanced at you again, then away. “You’re really good at this.”

“Tutoring?”

“No,” he said. “Not making people feel stupid.”

The words landed heavier than he’d intended. You could tell by the way he swallowed after.

You softened your voice without thinking. “You’re not stupid.”

He scoffed. “You don’t know that.”

“I do,” you said. “You just learn differently.”

Steve studied you like he was trying to decide whether to believe that.

Then he smiled, small, unguarded, gone too quickly.

“Yeah,” he said. “Guess I do.”

When you packed up that day, he lingered, pretending to fiddle with his notebook while you slid your pens back into place.

“Hey,” he said casually. “Same time Thursday?”

“Yes,” you said.

“Cool. Cool.” He slung his bag over his shoulder, then paused. “Thanks. For, uh. Not giving up on me.”

You looked at him, really looked at him, and realised something quietly important.

Steve Harrington was trying.

And he didn’t even know how much that mattered to you yet.

You watched him walk away down the hallway, joking loudly with a passing friend, the mask sliding back into place like muscle memory.

The first thing you noticed was the car.

It cut into the student parking lot like a challenge, engine loud, music spilling out with the confidence of someone who expected to be watched. Heads turned automatically. Conversations dipped, then picked back up in whispers as the Camaro rolled to a stop.

You slowed only long enough to register the driver’s door opening.

Billy Hargrove stepped out like the world was already his.

Tall. Broad shoulders. A faded denim jacket thrown over a sleeveless shirt despite the chill, collar tugged up like the weather was something that happened to other people. Dark hair perfectly messy in a way that felt practiced rather than accidental. He paused by the car, scanning the lot slowly, deliberately, like he was deciding what belonged to him and what didn’t.

A group of girls near the curb started whispering immediately. A couple of guys straightened, suddenly aware of their posture. Someone behind you muttered, “Who the hell is that?”

You didn’t stop. New kids showed up all the time. Loud ones, quiet ones, kids who lasted a week before Hawkins swallowed them whole and moved on.

Billy didn’t look like someone who got swallowed.

You pushed through the school doors and let the noise of the hallway take over. Lockers slammed. Shoes squeaked. The smell of cheap cologne and cafeteria food hung heavy in the air. You found your locker, spun the combination, and focused on the familiar click-click-click, grounding, reliable.

Then the hallway shifted.

Not dramatically. Subtly. Like a current passing through a crowd.

People stepped aside without being asked.

You glanced up just in time to see Billy walking down the hall like he’d been there for years. His gaze flicked from face to face with lazy interest. A couple of teachers watched him with immediate suspicion. He didn’t care.

He stopped near the trophy case, said something to a group of guys, Tommy, among them, that made them laugh a little too eagerly.

You turned back to your locker. Not your circus. Not your—

“Hey.”

The voice was closer than it should’ve been.

You shut your locker harder than necessary.

The metal clang echoed down the hallway, sharp and final. You kept your eyes forward, expression carefully neutral, refusing to give him the satisfaction of catching you off guard.

It worked.

Billy noticed anyway.

He stepped into your space like he’d already decided this conversation was happening. Not rushed. Not hesitant. Just one smooth, confident movement.

“Afternoon,” he said, voice low and lazy.

You turned only enough to acknowledge him, nothing more. “I’m busy.”

Billy smiled like that was exactly the answer he’d hoped for. He took one step closer, just one, but it was enough to make the air feel smaller, heavier. The scent of cigarettes clung to him, sharp and stale beneath whatever cologne he’d layered on top.

“Maybe I do,” he said.

Your jaw tightened.

“Then you should find someone else,” you replied evenly.

Billy’s eyes dragged over you again, slower this time, like he was waiting for you to flinch. You didn’t. You met his gaze just long enough to make it clear you weren’t impressed, then shifted your bag strap higher on your shoulder.

That seemed to amuse him more than anything else.

“What’s your name?” he asked.

You hesitated, not out of fear, but because you didn’t owe him anything. The hallway had gone quieter around you, people pretending not to listen while absolutely listening.

You gave him only your first name.

Billy repeated it like he was tasting it. “Pretty.”

You didn’t respond.

The silence stretched. Uncomfortable. Intentional.

Billy chuckled under his breath. “I like that,” he said. “Most people don’t make me work this hard.”

“That’s not my problem,” you said.

His smile sharpened. “We’ll see.”

You stepped around him before he could block you, brushing past with deliberate confidence. He didn’t stop you. He didn’t need to.

You could feel his attention cling anyway, heavy, lingering, like a hand at your wrist even after you’d pulled away.

And as you walked down the hall, spine straight and expression calm, you had the unsettling sense that Billy Hargrove didn’t see resistance as a warning.

He saw it as an invitation.

You ducked into the girls’ bathroom two minutes later, more irritated than rattled. The door swung shut behind you with a hollow thud, muffling the noise of the hallway. You exhaled, leaning briefly against the counter as you ran cold water over your hands.

Stupid. You hadn’t done anything wrong.

“__________.”

You startled, spinning toward the door.

Steve Harrington stood just inside the bathroom, one hand braced against the doorframe like he’d followed you in without thinking and only realised where he was once he’d already crossed the line. His hair was a mess like he’d dragged a hand through it too many times. His expression was tight—jaw clenched, eyes sharp with something dangerously close to panic.

“What were you doing with him?” he demanded.

Your irritation flared instantly.

“What?” you snapped. “Excuse me?”

Steve took a step closer, lowering his voice. “Billy. What was that?”

“I was existing,” you said flatly. “He came up to me.”

Steve scoffed, running a hand through his hair. “He doesn’t just come up to people.”

“And yet,” you said, gesturing between you, “here we are.”

Steve stopped short, chest rising as he tried to rein himself in. “You shouldn’t talk to him.”

The words hit wrong. Too sharp. Too familiar.

“And you don’t get to tell me that,” you shot back.

“I’m serious,” he said, stepping closer again. “There’s something—he’s not—he’s bad news.”

You crossed your arms. “Then say that. Don’t corner me in a bathroom and act like I did something wrong.”

Steve’s mouth opened, then shut again. You could see it, the conflict, the frustration, the words he wasn’t saying stacking up behind his eyes.

“I’m trying to keep you safe,” he said finally.

Your chest tightened. Not with gratitude. With anger.

“By deciding for me?” you asked quietly. “By not trusting me enough to explain?”

Steve’s shoulders sagged just a fraction, like the fight drained out of him all at once. “You don’t understand.”

“Then help me understand,” you said. “Because right now it feels like you’re mad at me instead of him.”

Silence settled between you, heavy and unresolved.

Steve looked away first.

“Just… stay away from him,” he muttered. “Please.”

The please almost softened you. Almost.

You stepped past him, opening the bathroom door. “I don’t like being talked to like I’m stupid,” you said over your shoulder. “Especially not by you.”

The door swung shut between you.

Steve stayed where he was, staring at it like he’d just lost something important, and hadn’t realised how easily that could happen.

By lunchtime, the rumours had already started.

You were halfway through eating when a folded flyer slid onto the table in front of you.

You looked up to find Carol standing there, perfectly lip-glossed and already bored. She dropped another flyer onto the table beside you, then another onto the table behind you.

“House party,” she said, like it explained everything. “Harrington’s place. Friday.”

You glanced down at the paper. Someone had taken the time to draw flames around the words HARRINGTON HOUSE in aggressive marker.

“No parents,” Carol added. “Obviously.”

She drifted away before you could answer.

You stared at the flyer for a moment longer than necessary, then folded it in half and slid it into your bag. You didn’t go to house parties. You never had. Too loud. Too many people. Too many expectations.

“Please tell me you’re not throwing that away.”

Steve dropped into the seat across from you like gravity had personally invited him. He looked… distracted. Less polished than usual. Like his mind was somewhere else and his body had followed out of habit.

“I wasn’t,” you said. “I was ignoring it.”

Steve winced. “Worse.”

You raised an eyebrow. “Why?”

“Because,” he said, leaning forward, lowering his voice like this was confidential, “this party is kind of… important.”

“Important how?” you asked.

“Well.” He gestured vaguely around the cafeteria. “King Steve has an image to maintain.”

You snorted despite yourself.

“There it is,” he said, brightening. “That sound. That’s why you should come.”

You shook your head. “I don’t do house parties.”

Steve’s smile softened, turning almost sheepish. “You don’t do them yet.”

“That’s not comforting.”

“Okay, look,” he said, dropping the theatrics. “I’ll make it better. You can stick with me. I’ll keep people from bothering you. You can leave whenever you want. I’ll even—” he grimaced “—turn the music down if it gets too bad.”

“You would never,” you said.

“I would,” he insisted. “Once. For you.”

You studied him. He was watching your face closely, like this mattered more than he wanted to admit.

“I don’t belong there,” you said quietly.

Steve frowned. “That’s not true.”

“It is,” you replied. “Those parties aren’t for people like me.”

Steve leaned back in his chair, jaw tightening. Then he leaned forward again, elbows on the table, eyes steady on yours.

“They are if I want you there.”

The words slipped out before he could dress them up as a joke.

He blinked. Cleared his throat. “I mean—uh. It’d be less boring.”

You tilted your head. “You don’t look bored lately.”

Steve’s mouth twitched. “Yeah. Funny how that works.”

There was a beat. Just long enough to feel something settle between you.

“Please,” he added, softer now. “Just… come for a bit. For me.”

You exhaled slowly, fingers brushing the strap of your bag where the invitation waited.

“I’ll think about it,” you said.

Steve grinned like he’d just won something anyway. “That’s all I ask.”

As he stood to leave, he paused, glancing back over his shoulder.

“And, uh,” he added casually, “if anyone gives you trouble? You tell me.”

You smiled faintly. “You always like playing hero?”

Steve hesitated.

“Only when it matters,” he said.

The promise of the party hits you long before the door even swings open, a deep, subcutaneous thrum of bass that leaks through the solid wood and the old Harrington siding. It rattles the porch planks beneath your feet, traveling up through the soles of your shoes to vibrate in the hollow of your chest, a second heartbeat that’s too loud, too eager. You freeze on the threshold, fingers instinctively plucking at the hem of your top—a nervous, futile gesture, as if you could rearrange your very decision to come. For one last, fleeting second, the fantasy of retreat flickers: you could turn around, walk back to the quiet of your car, and pretend this reckless yes was never uttered.

But it’s too late now. The decision has been made, and the house is waiting.

You push inside, and the wall of sound doesn’t just greet you, it swallows you. It’s a physical, smothering thing. The roar of a hundred overlapping conversations, shrieks of laughter sharp enough to cut, the thudding backbeat of a song swallowed by the crowd. Bodies are packed in a hot, shifting mosaic of denim and bright fabric, leaving you to navigate through a labyrinth of elbows and shoulders. The air is thick and hazy, carrying the sour-sweet tang of spilled beer, the chemical bite of cheap vodka, and beneath it all, the warm, damp smell of too many people in a closed space. Someone jostles your shoulder hard, moving past without a glance or an apology. From across the room, a voice you barely recognize shouts a variation of your name, the syllables wrong, turning you into someone else entirely.

You swallow, the motion dry and difficult, and adjust the collar of your jacket for the third time since entering. A sudden, piercing self-consciousness descends. You are a map of vulnerabilities: your hands feel awkward and oversized, your posture a confessed sin, the very rhythm of your breath seems out of sync with the room. Everyone else melts into the chaos with a practiced ease, a belonging that looks as natural as breathing. You feel transparent, a sketch among finished paintings.

Then—

Steve sees you.

He’s a fixed point in the swirling chaos, across the crowded living room, a red cup held loosely in his hand. He’s mid-laugh, a bright, easy smile directed at a guy clapping him on the back. And then his gaze, sweeping the room, snags. On you. The smile doesn’t vanish, but it falters, softens, reshapes itself into something quieter and infinitely more focused. It’s not a dramatic, movie-style double-take. It’s a subtle shift, a gentle zoom lens effect. The noise around him seems to mute, the people blur into vague, colorful shapes. For a second, pure, unguarded relief flashes in his eyes, a quick, bright spark he doesn’t manage to bank in time.

He moves without hesitation. Excusing himself with a nod, he begins weaving through the press of bodies, his path urgent and direct. He doesn’t saunter; he aims for you. When he finally reaches you, slightly breathless as if he’d sprinted the last few feet, his grin is wide and a little winded.

“You came,” he says, his voice pitched low, a secret meant only for your ear. The words aren’t a tease or a casual greeting. They are a statement of genuine, gratified surprise.

You manage a nod, your own voice fighting its way through the lump in your throat. “I said I’d think about it.”

Steve huffs a laugh, his eyes crinkling at the corners. “Yeah, well. I was hoping thinking would work in my favour.”

The connection feels fragile, a bubble of calm in the storm. But the party is a living thing, and it asserts its claim. A heavy hand claps down on Steve’s shoulder, making him wince.

“Harrington! Stop hogging the new recruit. Beer pong throne’s waiting, and we need a king.”

Steve rolls his eyes toward the ceiling, the party king weariness settling on his features. “Of course it is.” His attention snaps back to you, swift and serious. “Don’t move. I’ll be back before you can blink.”

“That’s optimistic,” you murmur, already feeling the crowd pressing in.

He points a finger at you, the gesture playful but his eyes earnest. “Stay. Right. There.”

And then he is absorbed again, his back disappearing into the vibrant, swallowing mass.

You let out a slow, controlled exhale, the brief anchor gone. Almost immediately, the vacuum is filled. A red cup is thrust into your free hand.

“Drink!” commands a girl with smudged eyeliner and a brilliant smile, her words a shout against the music.

You stare down at the cloudy, suspicious liquid. Hesitation is a luxury here, and it’s spotted instantly.

From beside her, another girl with crossed arms snorts, her voice dripping with derisive amusement. “She’s probably too much of a pussy to drink it.”

The words land like a lit match on dry tinder. Your jaw tightens, a hot flush of defiance rising in your chest. Without another thought—without thinking at all—you lift the cup to your lips and throw the contents back in a few swift, burning gulps.

Fire races down your throat, exploding in your stomach, harsh and medicinal. You cough, eyes swimming with involuntary tears. The girls around you erupt in a chorus of approving shouts.

“Holy shit! Okay then!” “Damn, she went for it!”

You hand the empty cup back, your pulse hammering not just from the alcohol’s immediate, scorching shock, but from the sudden, chemical unraveling of your coiled nerves. A dangerous looseness seeps into your limbs. A simulated boldness.

The music shifts, a faster song with a driving, insistent rhythm taking over. Hands reach for you, pulling you toward the makeshift dance floor in the center of the room. You give in, letting the beat move you, operating on instinct rather than confidence. The strobe light fractures the scene into snapshots, laughing faces, thrown-back heads, glinting cans. For a few minutes, the self-consciousness dissolves. You are just a body in motion, anonymous in the dark.

Almost.

You feel it before you see it, a pressure, a pinpoint of cold awareness on the back of your neck. A stare that doesn’t flicker or wander. Too steady. Too intent.

Your dancing slows. You glance, almost against your will, toward the shadowy margins of the room.

And your stomach plummets.

Billy Hargrove is propped against the archway to the kitchen like a lion at rest, owning the shade. His denim jacket hangs open, his muscular arms are crossed over his chest, and a cigarette dangles, forgotten, from his fingers, a long curl of smoke rising toward the ceiling. His eyes are not just on you; they are locked on you. Blue, intense, and utterly unapologetic.

He doesn’t look away when your eyes meet. Doesn’t offer a smirk or a nod of acknowledgment. Just holds the gaze, cool and assessing, as if dissecting every hesitant step you took onto the dance floor.

A cold ripple, antithetical to the room’s heat, cascades over your skin. You try to turn back to the music, to shake off the chill, but the feeling metastasizes. It’s a primal signal, a deep-seated knowledge that the predator has sighted the herd, and you are the one who has strayed. The air in the room turns gluey and suffocating. The laughter sounds suddenly shrill, the bodies too close, pressing in.

You have to get out.

Abandoning the dance floor, you push through the thicket of people, a new and frantic urgency in your movements. The back door, fresh air, solitude, just five minutes to let your heart settle back into its proper rhythm.

You stumble onto the relative quiet of the back porch, the cool night air a shock against your flushed skin. You drag in a deep, trembling breath, gripping the wooden railing.

The creak of the door behind you is soft, but it echoes like a gunshot in the sudden quiet. Slow, deliberate footsteps follow you out onto the porch.

The voice that cuts through the cool night air is a low, smooth drawl, designed to crawl under your skin. It carries no urgency, only a taunting, predatory amusement.

“Running away already?”

You don’t turn. Your fingers tighten on the rough wood of the porch railing, the splinters biting into your palms. “I needed air,” you say, the words clipped, aiming for a neutrality you don’t feel.

“Uh-huh.” The soft scuff of his boots on the weathered boards tells you he’s moved closer. The scent hits you anew, not just the ghost of tobacco, but the fresh, acrid bite of a recently lit cigarette, mixed with leather, cheap beer, and something purely, unsettlingly male. “Didn’t peg you for the party type,” he continues, his voice a rumble just over your shoulder.

A brittle, humorless laugh escapes you, fueled by the liquid courage still simmering in your blood. It makes your tongue reckless. “Didn’t think you were a mind reader, Hargrove.”

You can hear the shift in his silence, a pleased, intrigued pause. When you finally steel yourself to glance his way, Billy is grinning. It’s a slow, deliberate unfurling of expression, all white teeth and calculated charm. His head tilts, eyes raking over you with renewed interest.

“There it is,” he murmurs, as if he’s uncovered a secret. “You’re more fun like this.”

“Like what?” you challenge, turning fully to face him now, crossing your arms against the chill and his gaze. “Not ignoring you?”

He gives a loose, one-shouldered shrug, the denim of his jacket pulling taut. “Not pretending you don’t want the attention.” His eyes hold yours, blue and unblinking, issuing a challenge of their own.

Your pulse, already unsteady, kicks into a frantic drum against your ribs. “You don’t get to decide what I want,” you fire back, the words hotter than you intended.

Billy’s grin doesn’t falter. He closes the remaining distance between you in one fluid, invasive step. The night seems to shrink around him. Before you can react, his fingers brush against your forearm, a touch that is deceptively light, yet it brands your skin through your sleeve. It lingers, a hairsbreadth too long, a silent test of boundaries.

You freeze, a half-second of stunned inaction that feels like a lifetime. It’s all the opening he needs to read as consent.

And suddenly,

“Hey.”

Steve’s voice slices through the tension, sharp and clear as shattered glass. It isn’t loud, but it carries a command that instantly redraws the lines on the porch.

He’s there, framed in the golden light spilling from the kitchen door, his body a tense line. His jaw is clenched, a muscle ticking in his cheek, and his eyes, usually so warm and easy, are laser-focused, zeroing in instantly on the point where Billy’s fingers still ghost your skin. The distant thump of the bass becomes irrelevant. The world narrows to this triangle of charged silence.

“Back off,” Steve says. The words are simple, flat, and utterly devoid of their usual friendly cadence.

Billy doesn’t flinch, doesn’t remove his hand. He merely turns his head, the smirk on his face deepening into something smug and victorious. “Relax, Harrington. We’re just talking. No laws against that.”

Steve moves then. He doesn’t ask permission; he doesn’t even look at you to gauge your reaction. He simply steps forward, inserting his body squarely between you and Billy, a human shield made of simmering anger and frayed loyalty. “You don’t touch people who don’t want it,” he grinds out, his shoulders squaring.

Billy’s smile turns razor-edged. “She didn’t say that.” He lets the implication hang, his gaze sliding past Steve to pin you again. “Did you?”

Heat, shameful and fierce, floods up your spine, burning the tips of your ears. The objectification, the presumption, the sheer audacity of being spoken for, it combusts inside you.

“I can handle myself,” you snap, the words exploding into the space between them.

The effect is immediate. Both heads swivel toward you. Steve’s expression fractures, the protective anger melting into pure, wounded surprise, then into something that looks painfully like hurt. It’s as if you’ve shoved him away after he took a blow meant for you.

Billy’s eyes, in stark contrast, gleam with dark, appreciative delight. He’s found the spark he was looking for.

“I don’t need you jumping in,” you continue, your voice finding a steadiness that your trembling hands betray. You look at Steve, then at Billy, refusing to cede ground to either. “Either of you.”

Steve’s throat works as he swallows. “I was just—” he starts, his voice softer, confused.

“I know,” you cut him off, not unkindly but firmly. The hurt in his eyes makes your chest ache, but the principle is a fire you can’t snuff out. “But I didn’t ask.”

A thick, uncomfortable silence descends, broken only by the ragged sigh of the wind in the trees. You have dismantled their confrontation and made it about something else entirely.

Billy is the first to break it. A low, appreciative chuckle escapes him. “Damn,” he breathes, shaking his head slowly. “I like you even more now.”

Steve shoots him a look of pure, unadulterated venom, a promise of violence held in check by sheer will.

It’s your cue to exit. You take a deliberate step back, then another, reclaiming the territory of your own personal space. “I’m going back inside,” you announce, your tone leaving no room for debate.

Billy lifts his hands, palms out, in a gesture of mocking surrender. “Your call, sweetheart.”

You don’t wait for Steve. You don’t offer him a conciliatory glance. You turn on your heel and push through the door, letting the wall of sound and heat wash over you once more.

But as you disappear into the throbbing heart of the party, you can feel it, the weight of a gaze anchored to your back. It’s Steve’s. Heavy with confusion, with a fear he hasn’t yet named, and with that stubborn, protective instinct that is already, irrevocably, tipping into something deeper, more complicated, and far more dangerous.

And for the first time that chaotic night, a crystal-clear thought pierces through the alcohol and the noise: coming to the Harrington house wasn't the risky choice. The real danger was never the party itself, but the unpredictable currents of want and defiance it would unleash, currents that have already begun to pull you all toward a reckoning.

Either way, the night is far from over. You move through the crowd, a new, brittle energy crackling under your skin, and without breaking stride, you pluck a freshly filled red cup from a passing tray. The first sip is less a taste and more a decision, to feel everything, or to feel nothing at all. You drain it, and let the burn chart a new course through the chaos.

You don't slow down after that second cup, but you don't rush either. You move through the crowd with a new, liquid rhythm, a current pulling you deeper into the warm, noisy heart of the party. You take another cup from a passing tray, vodka, you think, something clear and vicious, and you drink it not as a challenge, but as a choice. The burn is an old acquaintance now, traveling a familiar path to settle like a low, persistent flame in your chest. It melts the last icy shards of adrenaline, turning the nervous hum under your skin into a gentle, manageable buzz.

The music transforms. It’s no longer an assault; it’s a current you can ride. The bass lines feel like they’re moving through you, not just around you. Your limbs are lighter, your thoughts less carefully corralled. They drift closer to the surface, shimmering and less afraid.

You talk more. To a guy wearing a faded band tee about a song you only half-know. To a girl who compliments your shoes. The words come easier, your laughter rings out louder at a joke that’s only mildly funny. You dance again, not with abandon, not yet, but with a reclaiming of your own physical space. You are present in your body, moving through the strobe-lit dark, feeling less like a specimen under observation and more like a participant in the night's strange, collective dream.

And then you feel it. A shift in the atmospheric pressure of the room.

Not Billy’s predatory, pinprick focus. This is different.

Steve.

You don’t have to scan the room to know he’s there. There’s a gravity to his attention now, a pull you’ve only just begun to calibrate. It’s steadier than the thumping bass, a fixed point in the swirling chaos. When you finally turn your head, he’s leaning against the doorframe that leads toward the darkened stairs, a half-full cup dangling forgotten from his fingertips.

He isn’t smiling his easy, party-host smile. He isn’t scowling with protective anger either. He’s just… watching. His gaze is so intensely focused on you that it makes your stomach perform a slow, dizzying flip. It isn’t jealousy, not precisely. It’s a concern held in such taut check that it vibrates with its own energy. He’s standing monumentally still, as if any movement might startle you, or might betray the depth of his own unease.

When your eyes finally meet across the humid air, something visible unlocks in him. A tension you hadn’t fully registered releases from his shoulders. He pushes off the wall, not with his usual confident swagger, but with a deliberate purpose. He meets you halfway, carving a path through the dancers until he’s close enough that he doesn’t have to shout, but not so close as to crowd you.

“You okay?” he asks.

Two words, simple and unadorned. They are quiet, careful, and they land with more weight than any dramatic interrogation could.

You blink, your head tilting slightly as the world tilts with it. The vodka lets you see him from a new, unfiltered angle—the genuine worry etched in the faint lines around his eyes, the way he’s holding his own body with a stiffness that speaks of withheld action.

“I’m fine,” you say automatically. Then you pause, actually considering the question. The buzz in your veins is warm, the knot in your chest is gone. “Actually… yeah. I am.”

Steve’s brows knit together. His eyes perform a quick, professional scan of your face, checking your pupils, the looseness of your smile, the way you’re gripping your cup a little too tightly. It’s the look of someone who has seen one too many bad nights unfold.

“You’ve had a bit,” he observes, his voice gentle, devoid of accusation but full of implication.

You snort, a short, sharp sound. “Is that Harrington math or actual concern?”

He winces, just a flicker. Not because you’re wrong, but because the two are so entangled in him he can’t separate them. “I’m not judging,” he says quickly, taking a half-step back as if to prove it. “I just—”

“You just worry,” you cut in. The words aren’t unkind, but they aren’t soft either. They are an observation laid bare. “A lot.”

Steve exhales a long breath through his nose, his hand coming up to rub the tense muscles at the back of his neck. “Someone has to,” he says, and it sounds like a mantra he’s worn thin.

You laugh again, but this time it’s hollow, a dry sound in your throat. “Do they?”

His eyes snap up to yours, sharp and startled. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

You take a small, deliberate sip, letting the silence stretch for a beat. The alcohol grants you a perilous, clarifying honesty. “It means,” you say, choosing each word as if placing a stone on a scale, “that you keep acting like things happen to me instead of around me. Like I’m not in the room making my own choices, even the stupid ones.”

Steve’s mouth opens, then closes on a rebuttal that doesn’t come.

“That’s not fair,” he finally manages, but it lacks conviction.

“Isn’t it?” you press, the warmth in your chest fueling your resolve. “You stepped in back there like I was scenery. Like the conversation was between you and him, and I was just the subject.”

“He touched you,” Steve snaps, the words cracking like a whip. He immediately lowers his voice, a flush of frustration coloring his cheeks. “He crossed a line.”

“I know he did,” you say, holding his gaze steadily. “And I was handling it.”

Steve’s jaw tightens, a muscle feathering. “After,” he says, the single word heavy with meaning. After you froze. After he’d already made his point.

It lands. The truth of it settles in your chest, a cold, uncomfortable weight beneath the warmth of the vodka. The party noise, the laughter, the shrieks, the pounding music, swells around you like a turbulent sea, but in the eye of the storm between you and Steve, there is a profound, insulated silence.

“I didn’t ask you to,” you say, your voice dropping to match the quiet.

Steve looks at you then, and the defensiveness, the anger, it all drains away, leaving something raw and exposed. Just… hurt. “I wasn’t trying to be the hero,” he says, the words soft and earnest. “I just didn’t want you dealing with that alone.”

Your voice softens despite the armor you’re trying to hold onto. “I wasn’t alone.”

He flinches.

It’s not a dramatic motion. Just a slight recoil, as if the words were a physical tap on a fresh bruise. Enough to tell you everything.

“That’s not what it felt like,” he whispers, and the admission seems to cost him.

You study him in the fractured light. The deep crease between his brows, the way his hand flexes nervously around his cup, the uncharacteristic uncertainty in his posture. The "King of Hawkins High" is nowhere to be seen.

“You don’t get to decide when I need help,” you say finally. The statement comes out clear and steady, sharper than you intended, a line drawn in the sand.

Steve’s eyes flicker with a vulnerable, wounded light. “I wasn’t deciding,” he insists, but the certainty is crumbling. “I was just… trying to keep you safe.”

You shake your head slowly, sadly. “You don’t keep people safe by stepping over them, Steve. You keep them safe by standing with them.”

The sentence hangs in the air between you, dangerous and irrevocably true.

Steve swallows hard. “You think I was stepping over you.”

“I think,” you say, measuring the words with deliberate care, “that you didn’t trust me to handle it. And that feels worse than whatever Billy was doing.”

“That’s not—” he begins, but you lift a hand, stopping him.

“And before you say it,” you continue, a little breathless now from the emotion, “I know you meant well. I do. I see it. But intent doesn’t erase how it feels.”

Steve goes utterly quiet.

For a long, suspended moment, he just looks at you. It’s not the look of someone formulating a counter-argument. It’s the look of someone genuinely listening, of pieces being rearranged behind his eyes. He’s recalibrating. He’s seeing the delicate, often invisible line between protection and control, and realizing, with dawning horror, that his instincts have been leading him to toe it without his conscious consent.

“You’re different,” he says softly, almost to himself.

You huff a small, tired laugh. “I’ve always been like this. You’re just actually paying attention now.”

That earns you a faint, wry smile, but it doesn’t reach the concern still clouding his eyes. “Are you sure you’re okay?” he asks again, the question even quieter now, stripped bare.

“Yes,” you affirm. “And if I’m not… I’ll tell you. You have to trust that I will.”

Steve nods, slow and deliberate, as if he’s agreeing to a much larger, more important treaty. “Okay.”

Neither of you moves. The charged silence stretches, filled with unspoken apologies and new understandings.

“KING! We need you back on the throne, man! Game’s falling apart without you!” a voice booms from across the room, followed by a chorus of agreeing shouts.

Steve doesn’t even glance in their direction. His eyes stay locked on yours.

“I’m busy,” he calls back, his voice flat, firm, and utterly unmistakable.

A beat of surprised silence rolls through his immediate crowd, followed by a few confused laughs and muttered questions. The party, for a second, recalibrates around his absence.

You just blink at him, surprised. Steve shifts his weight, suddenly looking less sure of himself now that he’s commanded the room’s attention only to dismiss it. Up close, in this fragile pocket of privacy you’ve carved out, he looks younger. Less polished, more real. The veneer is gone.

“I, uh—” He clears his throat, his eyes darting past you for a half-second before returning, full of a nervous resolve. “I was gonna head out soon anyway.”

It’s a lie. A generous, face-saving revision of the night’s script. You both know the party is his domain, and leaving it early is an abdication.

He rubs the back of his neck again, the gesture familiar and endearing in its anxiety. “I just wanted to check if you… if you wanted a ride home. Later. Whenever.”

You study him, the warm buzz in your veins making his earnestness feel profound, softening the hard edges of the night. “You’re leaving your own party?”

He huffs a quiet, self-deprecating laugh. “I’ve thrown enough of these to know the exact moment they stop being fun and start just being… loud.”

There’s something new in the way he looks at you now. It’s not the protective, possessive gaze from the porch. It’s careful. Concerned. Deeply present.

“And,” he adds, his voice lowering into a space meant only for you, “I don’t really love the idea of you walking home alone like this.”

“Like what?” you tease gently, a small smile touching your lips.

He mirrors it, a small, fond quirk at the corner of his mouth. “Like someone who just confidently out-drank half the varsity basketball team.”

You laugh, and the sound is genuine, lighter than anything you’ve felt all night. It feels like a release.

“I’m fine,” you assure him. “But… yeah. I’d like that. A ride.”

Relief, pure and unguarded, flickers across his face before he can compose his features. “Yeah?” he asks, as if he needs the confirmation to believe it.

“Yeah.”

Steve nods, a little too quickly, then immediately backpedals, the old uncertainty resurfacing. “No pressure,” he stammers. “I mean, if you want to stay longer, or if someone else is giving you a lift, or—”

“Steve,” you interrupt, your voice soft but firm.

He stops, his ramble cut short.

“I said yes.”

That, finally, seems to settle him. The tension fully leaves his shoulders, replaced by a simple, hopeful resolve. “Okay,” he says, and this time his smile reaches his eyes, real and unguarded. “Okay. Let me just grab my keys and my jacket.”

He takes a step away, then pauses, turning back. His expression is solemn, sincere. “Thanks for coming tonight. Seriously.”

You tilt your head, a playful glint in your eye. “You literally begged.”

He laughs, a warm, rich sound. “Still. It meant something.”

The drive home is quieter than you’d anticipated, not with the weight of unsaid things, but with a soft, shared exhaustion. It’s a comfortable silence, the kind that doesn’t demand filling. Steve pulls the BMW away from the chaotic curb, the thumping bass of the Harrington house shrinking into a distant, rhythmic pulse, then dissolving entirely into the still Hawkins night. After a moment, his hand reaches out, not toward you, but toward the radio. He twists the dial with practiced familiarity, bypassing the stations playing party hits until he finds one crackling with static at the edges, bleeding a slow, melancholy guitar riff into the car’s interior. It’s a song from another decade, meant for open windows and long, contemplative roads.

Neither of you comments on it. The choice hangs in the air, understood.

Streetlights become a metronome, sliding past the windows in golden intervals. Each one illuminates Steve’s profile in a fleeting, cinematic flash: the strong line of his nose, the curve of his lower lip, his hands resting steady and capable on the wheel. The tightness has left his jaw; the party-host mask is gone, shed somewhere on the Harrington driveway. What’s left is just Steve, a little tired, a little sobered, beautifully real in the dashboard’s glow. The hum of the engine, the whisper of tires on asphalt, the faint radio melody, they blend into a lullaby for the overstimulated soul.

Your head lolls back against the plush headrest, eyelids heavy. The alcohol has completed its transformation from a sharp stimulant into a warm, woolly haze. It cradles your bones, makes your limbs feel deliciously detached and weightless. In the periphery, you sense Steve’s glance, a quick, sidelong sweep to check on you. You catch him in the act and offer a faint, sleepy smile. He looks away instantly, feigning deep interest in the empty road ahead, but you see the way the corner of his mouth lifts in a reluctant, pleased echo.

When the car finally glides to a stop outside your dark house, he cuts the engine but leaves the radio playing, a thin, gentle thread of sound connecting you. It feels like an acknowledgment that stepping out of this capsule, back into the real world, requires a moment of preparation.

“Home,” Steve says, his voice soft, almost reverent in the new quiet.

You nod, the movement slow. Your hand finds the door handle, the chrome cool under your palm. The second your feet meet the solid earth of your front walk, the world executes a slow, graceful tilt. The ground seems to swell gently toward you.

“Oh—”

The sound is out before you can stop it, a soft, surprised exhale. You haven’t even begun to stumble when you hear the decisive thunk of his car door. Steve is already there, having moved with a quiet urgency, rounding the front of the BMW. His hands come up, hovering near your elbows, a portrait of restrained readiness.

“Hey—hey,” he says, his voice low and calm. “You good?”

“I’m fine, Steve,” you insist, laughing a breathless, embarrassed laugh as you force your spine straight. You make a shooing motion with your hand. “Promise. Go back to the car.”

He hesitates, his brow furrowed in clear disbelief, but he takes a measured step back, granting you the space to prove it.

You manage five steps. The walkway is familiar, but tonight the pavement has developed a subtle, malicious camber. Your foot catches on the raised edge of a flagstone. With a small, helpless gasp, you pitch forward, the world tipping past the point of no return.

“Nope.”

The word is uttered with flat, undeniable finality. In two long, sure strides, Steve is at your side. His arm slides around your waist—not tentatively, but with a firm, confident warmth that stops your fall mid-arc. You let out a soft oof, your hands coming up to brace against the solid wall of his chest. You can feel the soft cotton of his shirt, the steady beat of his heart beneath.

“Okay, okay,” you concede, laughing into his shoulder, your cheeks burning with a mix of intoxication and chagrin. “That one didn’t count.”

Steve exhales a laugh that is mostly relief, shaking his head as he adjusts his hold. “Yeah, no way. I’m invoking best-friend—or, okay, driver—privileges.”

His movement is seamless. He guides your arm up and over his shoulders, his own arm locking securely around your waist, taking your weight without a hint of strain. It feels instinctive, practiced in the way only true caretaking can be. It feels, impossibly, like you belong right there.

You lean into him, letting your head rest against his shoulder more than you strictly need to. The scent of his cologne, faint beneath the smell of night air and party, is calming.

“_______,” he murmurs, his voice dropping to a hushed, conspiratorial tone as he steers you toward the front door. “We have to be quiet. Your parents are definitely sleeping.”

You nod, suddenly and immensely serious. “Yes, sir,” you whisper back, the words overly precise. Then the absurdity of it hits you, and a giggle escapes, muffled against his shirt.

Steve bites his lip, trying to stern his expression, but the smile breaks through, lighting up his eyes in the dark.

The old porch wood groans a quiet protest under your combined weight. He stops, holding you steady as you fumble in your pocket for your keys. His hand at your waist gives a gentle, reassuring squeeze. When the lock finally clicks and the door swings inward, the profound silence of the sleeping house envelops you, cool and still.

You step across the threshold carefully, Steve’s support unwavering until you are firmly planted on the entryway rug.

“There,” you announce softly, giving his arm a pat. “See? Made it. Told you.”

He doesn’t release you immediately. He watches you for a beat longer, his eyes tracing your face in the dim light from the street. They are warm, fond, and still etched with a trace of that stubborn, endearing worry. Finally, he nods.

“Text me when you’re in bed,” he instructs quietly, his voice a soft rumble in the hall.

You tilt your head, your own eyes heavy-lidded but sparkling with mischief. “You gonna tuck me in, too, Harrington?”

Steve lets out a short, choked laugh, shaking his head as he follows you into the hallway, his steps silent on the carpet. “You’re crazy, you know that?”

“Mm,” you hum, swaying gently toward the wall. “I’ve heard that before.”

“Yeah,” he says, his hand shooting out to steady you by the elbow, guiding you back to center. “Shockingly, I’m a believer now.”

He ushers you gently into your room, the door clicking shut behind him with a sound so soft it seems to absorb into the walls. Steve pauses just inside, his gaze doing a slow, involuntary sweep of the space.

Your room is… a map of you.

The soft, buttery light from a small ceramic lamp on the nightstand. Band posters and art prints tacked up with careful precision, but not obsessively aligned. A worn, beloved stuffed rabbit peeking out from under a pile of pillows, as if hiding from judgment. Your desk is a curated chaos, a mosaic of ticket stubs tucked into the frame of a mirror, a chipped mug bursting with colorful pens, a precarious stack of well-loved paperback novels, their corners dog-eared to mark your progress. It’s a space that is neither aggressively girly nor austerely minimalist. It’s warm. It’s layered. It’s you.

Steve swallows, a sudden, strange tightness in his throat.

You, meanwhile, are blissfully unaware of his quiet audit. You’ve beelined for the bed, executing a move that is part graceful collapse, part tactical maneuver. You kick off your shoes and fall face-first onto the comforter with a deep, soul-satisfying sigh, immediately wrapping your arms around a pillow and nuzzling into it.

“Wow,” Steve murmurs, amusement thick in his voice. “Out like a light.”

“M’not asleep,” you mumble, the words smothered by cotton and down. “Just… resting my eyes. Strategically.”

He smiles, a private, tender thing, and sits carefully on the very edge of the mattress. It dips slightly under his weight, a gentle valley forming between you. You feel the shift in the universe, a slight, sleepy roll toward the new gravitational center he creates.

“Hey,” you murmur after a moment, your voice slurred and soft as worn velvet. “Thanks for tonight.”

Steve glances down at the crown of your head. “For driving you home? That’s a pretty low bar for gratitude.”

You turn your face just enough to peer at him with one heavy-lidded eye. “No. For the fun. And for not… staying mad at me.”

“I wasn’t mad,” he corrects gently, his hand resting on the comforter near your shoulder. “I was worried. There’s a difference.”

“Still,” you sigh, already drifting back toward the pull of sleep. “Thank you.”

He’s quiet, letting the silence breathe. Then, lightly, he adds, “Anytime. Though, for the record, maybe we pace the drinks next time? Just a thought.”

You make a vague, dismissive noise that vibrates through the pillow. “You’re such a mom, Steve.”

He snorts. “Yeah. I know.”

Then, softer, the bravado gone: “Seriously, though. I’m glad you came.”

The words land differently this time. They bypass the haze, shimmering with a sincerity that makes your sleepy heart give a sluggish, thick thump.

Before he can say anything else, you move. It’s a slow, dreamlike reach—your hand rising, fingers seeking. They find his hair, the strands soft and slightly mussed. You hum, a contented sound deep in your throat, and run your fingers through it once, twice, in a slow, rhythmic, utterly intimate caress. It’s an action of pure, unthinking affection, as natural as breathing.

Steve freezes.

Your touch is a brand of warmth. It’s gentle. It’s trusting. It unravels something tightly wound inside him.

With a final, sighing breath, you let your hand fall back to the bed, palm upturned. Your breathing deepens, evens out, sleep claiming you utterly and without preamble.

Steve doesn’t move for a long minute. He just sits there, anchored to the spot by the weight of the moment, watching you.

Watching the slow, steady rise and fall of your shoulders. The way all the guardedness, all the sharp wit and defiant pride, melts from your face, leaving only a peaceful, unlined openness. How devastatingly beautiful you are like this, not put together, not performing, but simply existing. Real and vulnerable and his to protect, if only for this silent moment.

He feels it then, an irrevocable shift deep within his chest. A locking into place. A settling of dust he didn’t even know was unsettled.

With movements as careful as if he were handling something infinitely precious, he stands. He pulls the blanket up from where it’s tangled at your feet, draping it over you with a tenderness that aches. He smooths it down, tucking the edges loosely around your shoulders. He hesitates, his hand hovering near your cheek. Then, with the backs of his fingers, he brushes a stray strand of hair from your forehead, his touch so feather-light it’s almost a prayer.

“Goodnight,” he whispers, the word barely a breath.

You don’t hear him. You are far away in dreams.

But he lingers in the doorway, silhouetted by the hall light, for much longer than is reasonable. He watches the gentle rhythm of your sleep, memorizing the scene, letting the terrifying, wonderful truth wash over him completely, without dilution or denial.

Somewhere between the deafening noise of the party and the profound quiet of this room, between a challenge issued on a porch and a touch granted in trust, Steve Harrington has fallen.

He’s fallen hard, and he’s fallen for you.

Monday arrives not with an alarm, but with the slow, throbbing ache of a consequence you’d briefly managed to forget. It settles behind your eyes, a dull pound that syncs with your heartbeat. Your mouth tastes like stale cotton and regret, and your head is filled with a fuzzy, static-filled fog. But cutting through the haze are crystalline shards of memory, replaying on a loop: the solid, steadying pressure of Steve’s arm around your waist, the conspiratorial hush of his voice in your dark hallway, the way the mattress dipped under his weight as he sat on the edge of your bed, an intrusion that felt like a belonging. The space between you had been rewritten that night, the rules erased and redrawn in something far softer, and infinitely more dangerous.

By the time you push through the heavy front doors of Hawkins High, you’ve crafted a plan. You will be a ghost of normalcy. You will move through the halls as if the party was a collective dream, a shared hallucination no one will be gauche enough to mention. You will be bland, uninteresting, and above all, untouchable.

It is an excellent, foolproof plan.

It lasts approximately seven minutes.

The first sign isn’t a shout or a pointed finger. It’s a low-grade hum, a change in the social atmosphere. It’s in the way conversations seem to stutter and dip as you pass, not into silence, but into a lower, more intentional register. It’s the flicker of eyes—not staring, but tilting, tracking your progress with a newfound, speculative interest. A junior from your chemistry class, a girl you’ve never spoken to, catches your eye in the crowded hall and offers a slow, approving nod. “Hey,” she says, her tone implying a shared secret. You’ve been voted into a club without your consent.

You ignore it. You perfect the art of looking straight ahead, of seeing nothing. You make it to your locker, a metal sanctuary in the chaos.

And then you see the second sign.

A folded square of notebook paper, neon yellow and obnoxious, is shoved into the air vent slits of your locker door. It isn’t tucked discreetly; it’s jammed in there, a flag planted on stolen land.

Your hand freezes on the combination lock. It’s just paper. It’s stupid. But a cold, intuitive dread pools in your stomach. You pull it free, the paper rough against your fingertips. Unfolding it feels like disarming a bomb.

The message is short, written in a slashing, aggressive script that digs into the paper, each letter leaning forward as if trying to escape the page:

Nice party. You clean up well.

No name. No signature needed.

The handwriting is a violence in itself, jagged, impatient, all hard angles and implied threat. It doesn’t feel like a note; it feels like a trespass.

A hot, sharp irritation, clean and bright, slices through your morning fog. You don’t blush; you burn with a quiet, furious indignity. How dare he. How dare Billy Hargrove infiltrate your Monday, your locker, your peace? He doesn’t get to litter the edges of your life with his presence. Without a second thought, you crumple the note into a tight, angry ball and shove it deep into your bag, as if burying evidence.

“Morning.”

The voice, so close, makes you jump. You slam your locker shut with a metallic clang that echoes too loudly in the hall.

Steve stands a few feet away, leaning casually against the neighboring lockers. His hair is still damp from a shower, dark waves falling across his forehead, and his leather jacket hangs open over a faded tee. He looks like he sprinted to make the bell, but his eyes are clear, alert, and already fixed on you. They perform that same familiar, worrying scan, over your face, your posture, searching for cracks. When he finds none, a visible relief softens his features.

Then his gaze drops, snagging on your hand, still clenched in a white-knuckled fist around the strap of your bag.

“What’s wrong?” he asks, the casual greeting vanishing. His voice is immediate, intense.

You blink, forcing neutrality. “Nothing.”

He doesn’t even entertain the lie. His head tilts, a familiar, stubborn concern etching lines between his brows. “Something’s wrong,” he states, taking a step closer. The hallway noise seems to fade around him. “Did he—”

“Did who?” you cut in, though you both know.

Steve’s jaw hardens, a clean, tight line. A muscle feathers along the ridge of it, a tiny tremor of restrained energy. “Billy,” he says, and the name is a stone dropped into the still water between you. Spoken in that low, graveled register he reserves for warnings and middle-of-the-night truths, it sends a cold, unwelcome current straight through your system.

“No,” you say, the word coming too quickly, too defensively. “Nothing happened.”

His shoulders drop a fraction, a minor release of immediate tension, but the sharpness doesn’t leave his eyes. They remain fixed on you, bright and unblinking, the eyes of a goalkeeper in a permanent state of anticipation, braced for a shot he is convinced, in his bones, is coming. “Are you sure?” he presses, the question not one of doubt in you, but of deep, ingrained suspicion of the world’s inherent threat.

You inhale slowly, drawing the school’s recycled air deep into your lungs, using the count of four to steady the erratic tempo of your pulse. “Yes.”

He studies you in a silence that feels both intimate and agonizing. You can see the calculation behind his gaze, the silent war between what he wants to say and what he feels he must do. It’s a familiar conflict now, etched in the slight furrow of his brow. Then he delivers it, not as a suggestion between equals, not as a shared strategy, but as a verdict handed down from a bench you never agreed to. His voice drops into that firm, unmistakably protective register that leaves no room for debate.

“Stay away from him today.”

It’s the tone that does it. Not the sentiment, which might have been offered as concern, but the unyielding finality of it. The unspoken premise that his assessment of risk is absolute, and his authority to manage it, unquestionable.

“Steve.” Your voice is quiet, a single syllable woven with warning and disappointment.

He mistakes it for a request for emphasis. “I’m serious.”

“I heard you,” you say, each word measured and even, a calm surface over roiling water. “I’m asking why.”

He pauses.

The hesitation is brief, a stutter in the rhythm of the hallway’s chaos, but it yawns into a chasm between you. In that silent gap, you see everything: the ghost of past confrontations in his eyes, the weight of unspoken rules, the shadow of a game he’s been playing on a field you can’t even see. Explaining would mean drawing back a curtain on a stage where he has been both actor and stagehand, and he isn’t ready for you to see the machinery.

His mouth opens, forming the ghost of a word, then closes on nothing. His fingers flex at his sides, empty hands curling and uncurling as if grasping for an answer that keeps slipping away.

“You don’t need a reason,” he says finally, and the words sound hollow even to him, a defensive mantra that has worn thin.

You stare at him, the cold from the crumpled note in your bag seeming to seep into your very bones. “I do, actually.”

Steve exhales a tight, frustrated breath through his nose, the sound of a man trying to leash his own fear. “Look—he’s not—” He cuts himself off, his jaw tightening again, a visible wall going up. “He’s bad news, okay? The kind that leaves a mark. Just… trust me.”

There it is.

The refrain. The emotional shortcut he falls back on when the path of true communication seems too treacherous.

Trust me.

But trust is not a blindfold to be willingly worn. It is a bridge, and it is built, painstakingly, with the bricks of shared context and the mortar of mutual understanding. He is asking you to cross a chasm while refusing to show you the plans, to assure you the foundation is solid while hiding the cracks he sees from his side.

Your chest tightens into a familiar, aching knot. “You keep saying that.”

His brows knit together, frustration and a flicker of desperation darkening his features. “Because it’s true.”

“That doesn’t mean anything,” you snap, the heat rising before you quell it, lowering your voice as a cluster of freshmen giggle past. “It just means you want me to listen without understanding. To follow your lead without knowing the destination or the danger. It’s not a reason; it’s a request for obedience.”

Steve’s expression fractures. First, a flash of genuine, wounded hurt, as if you’ve questioned not his judgment, but his very character. Then, almost instantly, something defensive and weary slams into place, the practiced mask of the protector locking down. “I’m trying to keep you safe,” he says, the words ground out like a worn prayer, a mantra that has become both his purpose and his prison.

“You said that already,” you reply, and your voice softens despite the sting, because you can see the cost. The exhaustion is a tangible presence in the shadows beneath his eyes, in the slight slump of his usually proud shoulders. This self-appointed role of guardian is a weight he carries alone, and it is bending him. “And I told you, you don’t get to decide what ‘safe’ looks like for me. You don’t get to build the cage, however well-intentioned, and call it shelter. A cage denies the sky, Steve. Even a gilded one.”

His jaw clenches so tightly you fear he might crack a tooth. He looks away, his breath hitching in a ragged, suppressed sound, visibly wrestling with a torrent of words—fear, anger, pleading—that he knows would only make things worse.

When he looks back, the rawness is gone, replaced by a strained, deliberate calm. His voice is lower, steadier, but it carries the distinct chill of controlled desperation.

“Fine,” he says, the word quiet and utterly resigned. “Then just… don’t engage with him. Please.”

It is not an order this time. It is a boundary drawn with a trembling hand. A plea, stripped of all authority, naked in its vulnerability.

You search his face, looking past the worry for the truth that must be fueling it. “That’s still not an explanation, Steve. It’s just a different phrasing of the same request.”

“I know,” he admits, the confession bursting out of him, too fast and full of self-directed anger. “And I hate that. I hate how it sounds. I hate standing here sounding like I’m telling you what to do.”

“Then tell me,” you urge, your voice dropping to a whisper, a final lifeline thrown across the growing divide.

Steve hesitates.

And in that suspended, breathless moment, everything becomes devastatingly clear. The truth is not absent. It is present, a living, breathing thing he is consciously, actively, holding back. There is a specific reason. A history. An incident. A knowledge he possesses and is choosing, with full awareness, to withhold.

His hands curl into loose fists at his sides, then release, a physical echo of his internal struggle. He opens his mouth—you see the shape of a confession, the first syllable almost forming—and then he consciously, decisively, shuts it down. The words are swallowed back, locked away.

“I can’t,” he finally says.

The raw, unvarnished honesty of it lands with a force that steals your breath. It is not a evasion. It is a surrender. An admission of a limit he cannot, or will not, cross.

You nod slowly, the movement stiff and formal, an acknowledgment of a door being firmly closed in your face. “So you don’t trust me,” you state, the words a bleak conclusion, not an accusation.

“That’s not—” He lurches forward a half-step, genuine panic flashing in his eyes, erasing the practiced calm. “That’s not what this is. It’s the opposite.”

“Then what is it?” you ask, your voice achingly quiet, giving him one last, clear chance.

Steve swallows, his gaze locking onto yours with an intensity that feels almost physical. He leans in slightly, his voice dropping to a hushed, urgent whisper meant for you alone in the echoing hallway. “It’s me… trying to keep one last, ugly thing from touching you. To be a buffer between you and something rotten. And if you knew—if you had the full, unfiltered picture—you might make a choice. A brave, stubborn, you kind of choice. And I wouldn’t be able to stop it. I wouldn’t be able to stop you.”

The words aren’t cruel. They are worse. They are fear and fierce, possessive care twisted into a single, suffocating knot. A confession that his need to protect has completely outpaced his ability to truly partner.

The ache in your chest sharpens into a precise, heartbreaking pain. “So you trust me with your past,” you say, your voice miraculously steady even as it threatens to fracture. “With your failures. With the quiet confessions at my kitchen table. With the vulnerability of being in my room when the world was shut out.” You list the intimacies like sacred, earned treasures. “But you don’t trust me with this reality. Not with the truth of what’s happening right now, right here, to us.”

He looks at you as if you’ve reached inside his chest and laid bare his most fragile, guarded secret. “_______—” Your name is a broken sound, a plea and an apology.

You shake your head once, a small, definitive motion that silences him. “I don’t need every classified file, Steve. I don’t need to dissect every shadow. I just need to know that you see me standing beside you, not behind you. That you’re not deciding for me what I am, or am not, strong enough to face.”

His eyes shine, glassy with unshed tears he would never let fall here. His jaw works, a muscle ticking furiously as he battles the torrent of emotion fighting for release.

He says nothing.

And in that profound, chosen silence, you receive the only answer that matters.

You take a deliberate step back, physically creating a foot of space where, just moments before, there had been the aching potential for closeness. The air between you turns cold and still.

“I can’t keep doing this,” you say, the words soft, final, and infinitely weary. “Feeling like I’m trusted with the curated pieces of you, the fun companion, the comforting presence, but not with the raw truth that affects us both. It makes everything else feel… conditional. Like a loan of your trust.”

“Please,” Steve breathes, the word stripped of all pride, raw and exposed. It hangs in the space between you, a single thread holding a great weight.

You pause, feeling the pull of that thread, the ache to simply turn back and accept the partial version of things because the alternative is this cold distance.

But you don’t.

“When you’re ready to be honest,” you say, your voice firm yet not unkind, carrying the echo of the care you still feel, “really, fully honest… I’ll be ready to listen.”

Then you turn, and you walk away.

You don’t run. You don’t storm off in a performance of righteous anger. You simply leave, because to stay any longer would be to silently ratify a version of love that demands ignorance as its price, a partnership where one person holds the map and the other is simply told to follow.

Behind you, Steve does not follow.

He doesn’t call your name. He doesn’t rush to close the gap. He remains rooted in the spot, a statue of conflicted intention.

And that absolute stillness, that resigned letting-go, hurts almost more than a heated pursuit ever could.

Billy Hargrove is wrong all day.

Not loud-wrong. Not aggressive-wrong. Not the familiar, swaggering menace you’ve learned how to clock and avoid with practiced ease. This isn’t the Billy who takes up space on purpose, who makes noise because noise means control.

He’s quiet.

Too quiet.

In first period, he sits without slouching, spine unnaturally straight, shoulders squared like he’s bracing for impact that never comes. His hands are folded flat on the desk, fingers perfectly still, as if he’s been instructed to keep them that way and is terrified of breaking a rule he doesn’t fully understand.

It’s unsettling. Billy never sits like that.

When the teacher calls on him, there’s a delay, just long enough to make the room shift uncomfortably. He looks at her too long before answering, eyes fixed and unblinking, like he’s processing the concept of authority rather than responding to it. When he finally speaks, his voice is calm. Flat. Almost polite.

That might be the worst part.

A group of students laughs behind him at something stupid and inconsequential. Billy’s head turns toward the sound, slow and precise, like a radar dish swiveling to lock onto a signal. He doesn’t smile. He doesn’t react. He just watches until the laughter fades, then turns back to face the front of the room.

You feel it in your spine.

Every time you shift in your seat, his gaze follows.

Not openly. Not obviously. It’s subtle enough that you almost convince yourself you’re imagining it, until you glance up and catch his eyes already on you. They don’t flick away when you notice. They don’t sharpen or soften.

They just… stay.

There’s no appraisal there. No hunger. No challenge.

Just attention.

Like you’re a variable in an equation he hasn’t solved yet.

By second period, the unease has sunk beneath your skin. You keep your head down, focus on your notes, tell yourself you’re being paranoid. Billy is many things, but quiet isn’t a crime.

Still, you can feel him.

Waiting.

Across the hallway between classes, Billy stands alone near the lockers, not leaning, not posturing. Students move around him without acknowledging his presence, like their instincts are telling them to give him space even if they don’t know why.

You don’t look at him.

You can feel the moment he notices you’ve passed.

Steve does too.

You catch him watching Billy from across the hall, his usual easy posture gone rigid. His jaw tightens in that familiar way, like he’s biting back something he doesn’t want to say out loud. His eyes track Billy’s movements with a sharpness that makes your stomach drop.

You leave school unsettled, nerves humming beneath your skin, but you tell yourself you’re overreacting. You’re tired. You’re still angry. You don’t want to give Steve the satisfaction of being right about something he won’t explain.

You stop at Starcourt on the way home because you need something ordinary.

Groceries. Toothpaste. A carton of milk you don’t technically need. Something small and practical to anchor yourself to the world you understand. The mall is busy without being crowded, families drifting between stores, teenagers loitering with sodas in hand, the low, constant hum of fluorescent lights buzzing overhead like the mall itself is breathing.

Normal. Safe. Predictable.

You let yourself believe it.

You move through the aisles on autopilot, fingers brushing familiar packaging, the cold air of the freezer section raising goosebumps on your arms. Muzak crackles faintly through the speakers. Somewhere, a child laughs. Somewhere else, a cashier argues about coupons.

The world is blissfully unaware of the tight knot lodged beneath your ribs.

By the time you exit the mall, the sky has begun to bruise. Purple bleeding into orange, dusk settling like a held breath. The parking lot stretches wide and open, asphalt still warm from the day, rows of cars catching the dying light in dull flashes.

You adjust the bags in your hands and head for your car.

You’re halfway there when the air changes.

It’s subtle. A pressure shift. The feeling you get when someone stands too close behind you—but sharper. Focused. Like a fingertip pressing between your shoulder blades.

From the long, navy-blue shadow between two parked trucks, Billy Hargrove steps into the last of the dusk’s glow.

He doesn’t emerge; he unfolds. He moves with a languid, terrifying certainty, as if he’s been a part of the landscape the entire time, a statue waiting for the light to hit him just right so he could step down from his plinth. As if he’d been waiting, perfectly still, for the exact moment the universe would deliver you into this empty pocket of the world, alone.

The performative costume is gone. No worn denim jacket, no cigarette prop. Just a simple, cheap white t-shirt, stretched drum-tight across the hard plane of his chest and shoulders. The fabric pulls taut over the coiled power of his arms, whispering of muscle held in a state of permanent, aggressive tension. He looks contained, but not calm. He looks like a spring compressed to its absolute limit, every line of his body straining against some unseen, internal leash. His eyes, reflecting the bruised sky, hold none of the mall’s indifference. They are fixed, intent, and utterly, terrifyingly present. He has not happened upon you. He has arrived.

“You really do like to play games, don’t you?”

The voice slides into the space behind you like a blade, cold, sharp, and intimately invasive. It doesn’t just reach your ears; it slithers down your spine.

You freeze.

Your heart doesn’t just beat faster; it slams against your ribcage once, a single, violent contraction so powerful it feels like it punches the air straight from your lungs. The plastic grocery bags grow impossibly heavy, their handles like biting wires in your clenched fists.

Your pulse spikes, a frantic drum against your throat. “Billy. I don’t want to talk to you.”

He smiles.

It’s a slow, careful peeling back of lips. Utterly empty. A mockery of warmth that dies long before it reaches his eyes, which remain flat, watchful, and chillingly intent.

“Why do you play so hard to get, ______?” he asks, his voice a low, almost gentle croon that somehow makes the words more vile.

Every instinct in your body screams a single, primal command: RUN. You take an involuntary step back, your shoes scuffing loudly against the gritty asphalt. “What—”

“Couldn’t you just submit,” he continues, stepping forward in perfect time with your retreat. His voice lowers, thickens, something wet and furious curling underneath the honeyed tone, “like all the others? Would make things so much easier for you.”

Your stomach twists violently, a wave of nausea rising with the bile of fear. “That’s not—” you stammer, backing away again, the plastic bags slipping in your sweaty grip.

Billy moves. It’s not a rush. Not a lunge. It’s a sudden, efficient annihilation of the space between you, too fast for your eyes to properly track. One moment he’s several feet away; the next, his hand snaps out with the speed of a striking snake.

His fingers clamp around your wrist.

The grip is crushing, absolute. It’s not the hold of a person; it’s the bite of a mechanical vice. A sharp, sickening pain radiates from the bones. The grocery bags tear from your other hand, hitting the pavement with a crash. A can of soup rolls away with a lonely, metallic clatter.

You gasp, the sound thin and desperate.

His skin is cold. Not just cool from the evening air. It is a deep, unnatural cold, as if he’s been standing in a shadow that leaches all warmth from the world.

“You don’t get to say no,” he hisses, the gentle pretense evaporating. His breath smells of stale smoke and something else, something metallic and wrong.

And then his face changes. Not dramatically. Not into some storybook monster.

It shifts in small, profoundly wrong ways. His pupils blow wide, swallowing the icy blue of his irises until his eyes are almost entirely black, depthless pools. His jaw jerks sideways in a quick, spastic twitch, once, twice, as if something inside the shell of him is yanking on the strings, struggling to fit behind the mask of skin and bone. The expression is one of intense, internal conflict, but the hand on your wrist only tightens further, until white-hot bolts of pain shoot in jagged lines up your arm.

You scream.

It’s a raw, unfiltered sound of pure terror. Adrenaline, sharp and clarifying, tears through the panic. You shove at the solid wall of his chest with both hands, twisting your body with all your strength, your foot kicking out blindly. For one miraculous second, you manage to wrench your wrist free from that icy, iron grip.

You duck on instinct. His fist swings through the space where your head had been.

It doesn’t whistle through air; it crushes it.

The blow connects with the driver’s side door of a parked sedan.

The sound is a sickening, catastrophic CRUNCH of buckling metal and shattering safety glass. The door panel caves inward, a grotesque dimple of ruined steel. The car’s alarm erupts in a frantic, whooping wail, strobe lights flashing across the asphalt.

You stare, blood freezing in your veins.

That should have shattered every bone in his hand. That should have been impossible.

Not human.

The thought detonates in your mind, and with it, a panic that is hot, dizzying, and total. It vaporizes all thought, leaving only the ancient, mammalian imperative to flee.

You run.

Your shoes slip on the pavement as you bolt, veering wildly between the rows of cars. Your lungs burn, clawing for air that doesn’t seem to reach them. Your heart hammers so violently it blurs your vision, turning the world into a shaky, impressionist painting of color and shadow.

Behind you, Billy laughs.

It’s not loud. Not gleeful. It’s a low, wet, broken sound—a chuckle that seems to come not from his throat, but from somewhere deeper, darker. It’s the sound of something that finds your terror amusing.

Fingers, cold and strong, snag the back of your jacket. They yank with violent, effortless force, pulling you completely off your feet. You are a doll in his grip. You hit the ground hard, the impact jolting through your teeth. The rough asphalt shreds the skin of your palms as you try to break your fall. The pain is bright, sharp, and grounding.

You roll, instinct taking over, your foot lashing out in a blind, frantic kick. Your heel connects solidly with his kneecap.

He barely stumbles. It’s like kicking a brick wall.

A ragged, sob-like gasp tears from your throat. You scramble backward on your elbows and heels, putting precious inches between you, just in time to see his open hand slam down, palm flat, where your head had been.

CRACK.

The sound is horribly final. A spiderweb of fractures erupts in the asphalt beneath his hand.

Your vision tunnels, darkness pressing in at the edges. The world shrinks to this patch of broken ground, the wailing car alarm, and him.

Your scrabbling hand finds purchase on something long, cold, and heavy—a tire iron, abandoned near a car’s flat tire. Your fingers close around the gritty metal. Without thought, without hope, you swing it with every ounce of desperate strength you have left.

It connects with his shoulder with a solid, sickening THWACK that vibrates up your arm, rattling your very bones.

Billy… barely reacts.

He turns toward you slowly, deliberately, his head tilting to one side at an angle that is just a few degrees past natural. His black, depthless eyes rake over you, your heaving chest, your bleeding hands, the useless weapon in your grip, with something akin to clinical curiosity. There is no anger, no pain. Just a chilling, fascinated assessment.

He looks like a scientist observing a trapped insect that has, against all odds, managed to sting him. He looks like he’s calculating, with detached interest, exactly how much force it will take to finally, definitively, end your resistance.

“GET AWAY FROM HER!”

The shout doesn’t just cut through the air, it splits the night open like an axe through rotted wood. It’s raw, ragged, and forged from pure, undiluted terror.

Steve Harrington crashes into Billy Hargrove not like a man, but like a force of nature. He comes from the side, a blur of motion and desperation, his shoulder driving into Billy’s chest with the full, reckless weight of his body. The impact is a visceral, punishing thud that echoes off the cars, knocking the air from both of them in a synchronized, choked gasp. Billy, caught off guard for the first time all evening, is driven backward, his boots scraping twin streaks of protest across the asphalt, surprise, real, human surprise, flashing across his distorted features.

Steve doesn’t pause. He doesn’t check his own injuries. The momentum of the collision is just a prelude. He uses it, stepping into the space he’s carved out, his body pivoting to plant itself as an immovable object between you and the threat. His arms fly out to the sides, not in a heroic pose, but in a primal, instinctive spread—a human shield making itself as wide as possible. His stance is wide, knees bent, every muscle corded. He is a wall. He is a barricade. He is the only thing that matters.

“Run!” The command is ripped from his throat, hurled over his shoulder at you. It’s not a suggestion. It’s a plea and an order fused together. “NOW!”

Your legs are stone. Rooted. Paralyzed.

Billy regains his footing, the surprise melting into something molten and vicious. A low, guttural snarl tears from his lips, his face contorting, lips peeling back from teeth that seem too white in the fading light.

“Wrong choice,” he growls, the words dripping with a promise of pain.

And then he moves.

He hits Steve.

It’s not a punch; it’s a demolition. Billy’s fist connects with Steve’s jaw with a sickening, wet crack of bone on bone. The sound is horribly intimate, echoing in the vast, empty lot. Steve’s head snaps sideways. A spray of saliva and blood catches the dull gleam of a distant security light. He doesn’t cry out; he just goes down, his body folding under the force, skidding across the rough asphalt with a sound like tearing cloth.

Something flies from his grip, clattering and spinning across the pavement.

The bat.

Your eyes track it dumbly as it rolls in a wobbly arc, coming to a stop near your feet, its familiar, nail-studded wood looking absurdly ordinary against the oil-stained ground.

Billy is on him instantly.

The speed is inhuman. He doesn’t pounce; he flows onto Steve, a tide of relentless violence. His fists rise and fall in brutal, piston-like arcs. Each impact lands with a dreadful, meaty finality. Thud. Thud. THUD. Steve, dazed but fighting, tries to roll, tries to curl into a protective ball, his arms coming up to guard his head. But Billy doesn’t tire. He doesn’t need to breathe. It’s as if some external, malignant force is lending strength to every blow, making gravity his ally.

You scream Steve’s name.

The sound is torn from a place deeper than your lungs, raw and guttural, shredding your throat. You scramble to your feet, your legs trembling violently. Your heart is a frantic, caged bird trying to beat its way out of your chest, the pulse thundering in your ears so loudly it drowns out the car alarm. Your vision tunnels, the edges blurring into a swimming darkness, the world collapsing to the horrifying diorama of violence on the ground.

Steve is losing. Badly.

He blocks what he can, his forearms taking brutal punishment, already darkening with welts and cuts. What he can’t block, he absorbs. A fist slips past his guard, connecting with a sickening crunch against his ribs. He arches off the ground, a pained groan escaping his bloodied lips. Another blow splits the skin above his eyebrow, and blood, shockingly bright and red, blooms instantly, streaming down into his eye, painting half his face in a grotesque mask.

Still, he fights back.

Every movement is wild, desperate, fueled by a stubborn, unkillable fire. He swings a weak, looping punch that glances off Billy’s arm. He tries to buck him off. It’s futile, but the message in every ragged breath, every pained gasp, every defiant snarl, is screaming the same thing, over and over:

Not her. Not her. Not her.

“STOP!” you scream again, your voice breaking into a sob, the word dissolving into the night air, useless as confetti against a hurricane.

Billy seems to grow larger, his muscles bunching under the white cotton with an unnatural, rippling tension. He rears back, his fist lifting high, cocking for a blow that has no purpose but annihilation. It’s a killing strike, aimed at the vulnerable curve of Steve’s temple.

Thought evaporates.

Instinct takes over—an instinct older than fear, fiercer than panic.

Your hands, scraped and bleeding, find the cold, rough wood of the bat on the ground. Your fingers close around the grip, sticky with Steve’s blood. It feels impossibly heavy, a log of deadweight. But also solid. Real. A tooth of the real world in this nightmare.

A terrifying, feral clarity descends. The dizzying fear sharpens into a single, white-hot point of purpose.

You lurch forward, your body moving without your mind’s permission.

You swing.

You put everything into it, the terror of the note, the chill of his grip, the sound of crushing metal, the sight of Steve’s blood. You put every ounce of your weight, every shred of your fury, every desperate atom of your love into the arc.

The bat cuts through the air with a terrible, whistling sound.

It connects.

The impact is not a thud, but a hollow, resonant CRACK, like splitting a dense, frozen log. The vibration judders up your arms, rattling your teeth.

Billy’s head jerks sideways with a violent, whip-like snap. His body goes rigid for a split, suspended second. His black, endless eyes, wide with a shock that isn’t pain, but profound, outraged interruption, find yours. In that fleeting moment, you see a bottomless fury, a universe of wrongness focused solely on you.

Then the connection between his will and his body seems to sever.

He collapses.

It isn’t a graceful fall. It’s a total, boneless slump. He hits the asphalt like a sack of wet cement, limbs splayed at awkward, unnatural angles, his face turned toward the bruised sky.

Silence.

It crashes down, heavier and more profound than any noise. The only sounds are your own ragged, sobbing breaths, the fading echo of the car alarm, and a low, pained groan from Steve.

The world rushes back in a dizzying, nauseating wave, the cold air, the smell of gasoline and blood, the distant hum of the mall. You stand there, the bat now a dead weight in your trembling hands, staring at the two bodies on the ground: one still, one struggling to move.

The silence is deafening. It rings in your ears, a high-pitched tone of pure, undiluted shock.

Your arms tremble violently, a post-storm quake that travels from your shoulders to your fingertips. The bat slips from your numb, blood-slicked grasp and hits the asphalt with a dull, hollow clang that seems to echo the finality of the moment.

“Steve—” you gasp, the sound tearing from a raw throat as you drop to your knees beside him, the rough pavement biting through your jeans.

He’s breathing. Shallow, wet, rattling breaths, but they are there. His eyes flutter beneath bruised lids, struggling to focus on your face through the mask of blood streaking from his temple down his cheek, a vivid red river against his pale skin.

“Hey,” he rasps, the word barely a whisper, a thread of sound spun from pain and sheer will. His gaze, clouded with concussion, finally finds yours. “You… okay?”

The question—absurd, selfless, utterly Steve shatters what little composure you have left. A choked sob escapes you, tears welling hot and immediate, blurring his broken form.

“You absolute idiot,” you weep, the words mangled by emotion. Your hands flutter uselessly over him, finally pressing against the solid, trembling plane of his shoulder. “You’re bleeding everywhere. You could’ve—he could’ve killed you.”

“Yeah,” he murmurs, so faint you have to lean in to hear. A ghost of a smile, more a twitch of his split lip, touches his mouth despite the agony etched in every line of his face. “Worth it.”

Getting him to your car is an ordeal etched in fire and fear. You half-drag, half-carry his dead weight, every step sending white-hot pulses of agony through your screaming muscles and bruised spine. Steve sags into you, his arm a heavy, unsteady bar over your shoulders, his body shaking not just from injury, but from the sheer, draining effort of remaining conscious. Each shallow, ragged breath he takes ghosts warm and uneven against the side of your neck, a terrifying metronome counting the seconds he remains with you.

“You’re okay,” you whisper into his hair, the mantra as much for yourself as for him. Your voice is a thin, desperate thread in the vast, silent parking lot. “I’ve got you. I’ve got you, just hold on.”

Your shoes, slick with a grimy mixture of spilled soda, oil, and his blood, slip on the pavement. You stumble, his weight almost pulling you both down. Your fingers clutch desperately at the bloodied leather of his jacket, bunching the material in your fists as you adjust your grip, your muscles shrieking in protest, your heart a wild, frantic drum against your ribs threatening to break free.

The memory hits you then, unbidden and cruel in its contrast.

The way he carried you once, just days ago, yet a lifetime away. So slow, so careful, as if you were made of the most delicate glass. One arm a firm, secure band around your back, the other cradling the bend of your knees, his voice a low, soothing rumble in the dark hallway telling you it was okay to lean on him, that he had you. You’d laughed then, hazy with drink and trust, letting your head loll against his shoulder, believing completely in his strength.

The irony of it burns now, acrid and sharp.

This time, it is you who holds him together. Your arms, now trembling with a different kind of weakness, are the only thing keeping him from crumbling to the ground.

You reach your car, fumbling for your keys with fingers that feel thick and foreign. They slip twice, clattering against the door handle, before you finally manage to fit the key into the lock. The click is deafeningly loud. Getting him into the passenger seat is a clumsy, frantic ballet of bracing and easing. You cradle his head, guiding it carefully against the headrest, murmuring his name over and over like a protective incantation.

"Steve. Steve. Almost there."

Blood smears across the pale upholstery in stark, Rorschach blooms. It coats your hands, drying sticky and dark under your nails. It is on everything, a brutal, undeniable testament.

He groans as you buckle the seatbelt across his chest, his eyes fluttering open. For a second, through the haze of pain, his gaze finds yours and holds, a startling, lucid connection.

“Hey,” he murmurs, his voice a hoarse scrape. A feeble attempt at a smile touches his ruined mouth. “You did good.”

Your throat closes completely, a solid wall of grief and love and terror. Fresh tears spill over, hot and silent.

“Don’t,” you beg, your voice breaking into pieces. “Just—don’t talk. Please.”

You slide into the driver’s seat on legs that feel like water. The leather is cold beneath your trembling palms. Your hands clamp around the steering wheel, knuckles bleaching white as you force yourself to take one deep breath, then another, fighting the dizzying tide of shock.

The only sound in the car is Steve’s breathing, shallow, uneven, a fragile rhythm in the dark.

And then it hits you.

Not like the fear, a lightning strike of adrenaline. Not like the panic, a cold flood.

This comes slower. Heavier. A deep, settling ache that displaces the shock.

He knew.

The realization unfolds with dreadful clarity. The way he found you, not by chance, not searching frantically, but with direct, horrifying purpose. As if he’d been anticipating this exact horror all along, a shadow he’d been trying to outrun or intercept. The way he didn’t hesitate for a single second, not when he saw Billy, not when he put his own body between you and those fists. He stepped into the violence as if it were a script he’d already read, a price he’d already agreed to pay.

Steve knew something was fundamentally, terribly wrong with Billy Hargrove.

And suddenly, the heated argument in the hallway plays back in your mind with a new, devastating soundtrack. His tight jaw, his clipped warnings, the raw desperation woven through every stay away from him, it wasn’t about control. It wasn’t about a lack of trust in you.

It was fear.

A bone-deep, history-informed terror he didn’t know how to articulate without unleashing the very monster he was trying to shield you from.

Your grip on the steering wheel loosens, just a fraction, as the fight drains out of you, replaced by a profound, sorrowful understanding.

He hadn’t been trying to build a cage around you.

He’d been trying, clumsily and imperfectly, with the only tools his battered heart knew how to use, to keep you out of reach of a darkness he recognized.

You survived.

Not just because you were brave enough to swing a bat.

But because Steve Harrington showed up anyway.

Because he’d been watching, waiting, a silent guardian orbiting your periphery, ready at a moment’s notice to throw himself into the grinding gears of that darkness if it meant you could walk away.

Your chest tightens, a complex knot of emotion burning behind your eyes as you glance at him slumped in the seat beside you. Blood is drying in a cruel corona at his temple. One hand lies curled weakly in his lap, already swelling. He looks young. Broken. Beautifully, terribly human.

The secret he kept didn’t almost get you killed.

The secret he kept is the precise, awful reason you are both still breathing.

And that realization doesn’t erase the hurt of his silence, it sharpens it, hones it into something quieter, more intimate, and infinitely more painful.

Because if Steve had found a way to trust you with the terrifying, ugly truth…

Maybe he wouldn’t be sitting beside you now, bleeding and broken, paying for that silence with his own flesh and blood.

You turn the key. The engine sputters to life, a mundane sound in the aftermath of chaos.

As you pull the car out of the Starcourt parking lot, leaving the scene of the violence swallowed by the night, one truth settles in your chest, heavy and undeniable as a stone:

You’re not angry that he tried to protect you.

You’re shattered that he ever felt he had to do it alone.

The hospital is quieter than you expect. Not silent, it’s a space that never truly sleeps, but subdued, a world muffled in soft noise and dimmed concern. Machines hum a low, continuous hymn from other rooms. Rubber-soled shoes squeak with purposeful gentleness somewhere down the polished linoleum hall. Behind a drawn floral curtain, a nurse murmurs steady, practiced reassurances in a voice meant to soothe. Even the fluorescent lights, usually so harsh and revealing, have been dialed down to a muted, almost apologetic glow, as if they, too, understand that this hour demands something softer than truth.

Steve lies in the narrow bed, a landscape of white sheets and bleached cotton. His left arm is a careful sculpture of gauze and tape, resting atop the blanket. A thin, stark bandage cuts across his temple, a white flag against the purple swelling beneath. His chest rises and falls in a steady, medicated rhythm now, thank God, thank everything, but the sight of him so still, so deliberately still, makes a quiet, persistent ache settle deep in your throat.

You perch on the stiff, unforgiving plastic chair beside his bed, the only anchor in the sterile sea of the room. You don’t leave.

You should be exhausted. A bone-deep, system-failure kind of tired. And you are. Your clothes carry the acrid scent of asphalt fear and sharp hospital antiseptic. Your hands, scrubbed raw at the sink until they tingled, still feel phantom-sticky, no matter how hard you’ve washed. But every time your heavy eyelids start to drift shut, every time you consider resting your head back against the cold wall, your gaze snaps back to him—to the steady pulse in his throat, to the faint twitch of his fingers, as if your vigil alone is the thread keeping him tethered here. So you sit.

You watch the slow, rhythmic rise and fall of his chest beneath the hospital gown. You listen to the metronomic beep-beep-beep of the heart monitor, a sound that has become both lifeline and lament. You replay the fractured day on a loop in your mind, the note, the argument, the parking lot, the crack of the bat, until the memories lose their sharp edges and blur into a single, prolonged smear of terror and adrenaline.

At some point deep in the night, a nurse with kind eyes and a quiet step enters to check his vitals. She smiles softly at you, her clipboard held like a shield against her chest.

“You can grab some coffee from the vending machine down the hall, sweetie,” she offers, her voice a gentle nudge. “He’s stable. Sleeping soundly. You don’t have to stay glued to that chair.”

“I’m okay,” you reply, the words coming a little too quickly, too tightly.

Her eyes, wise and weary, flick between your face and Steve’s still form, then back to you. Her smile deepens, becoming something knowing and warm. “Girlfriend?”

You blink, thrown. “Oh— no. I mean, we’re not—”

She chuckles softly, a sound like rustling pages. “Honey, you’ve been holding his hand for the last three hours. Pretty convincingly.”

You look down, startled.

You hadn’t even realized.

Somehow, while you were lost in the watchful silence, your fingers had woven themselves between his. Your palm rests against the back of his bandaged hand, your knuckles brushing the familiar, vulnerable curve of his palm. The contact feels as natural as breathing, as essential as the IV drip feeding into his other arm. Like your hand belongs exactly there.

A slow, warm flush climbs your cheeks. “I’m just… staying,” you murmur, lamely.

“Well,” she says, her tone softening into something approaching reverence, “he’s lucky to have you.”

She slips out as quietly as she came, the door clicking shut with a hushed finality.

You don’t let go.

Steve wakes just before dawn.

It’s not a dramatic awakening. No gasps, no jolting upright. It’s subtle, a slight hitch in his previously even breathing, a faint, pained furrow appearing between his brows. But you notice instantly. Your body jolts upright in the chair, the legs scraping a jarringly loud protest against the floor.

“Steve?” you whisper, your voice gravelly from disuse and emotion.

His eyelashes flutter, dark against his pale skin. His dry, cracked lips part. “Ow,” he croaks, the single syllable rough and genuine.

A wave of relief so potent it’s dizzying crashes through you. A sound escapes you—half a laugh, half a sob, entirely unguarded. “Hi,” you manage, your own voice trembling. “Welcome back.”

He squints at the speckled acoustic tiles of the ceiling, processing, then turns his head slowly, carefully, on the pillow. His eyes, clouded with pain and medication, drift, struggle to focus—and then land on your face.

And they soften. All the tension, all the guardedness he usually carries, melts away, leaving something open and unbearably tender.

“Oh,” he murmurs, the word filled with a quiet, wondrous realization. “You stayed.”

Your throat constricts painfully. “Of course I did.”

He swallows with visible effort, his jaw working. “Good,” he rasps, a ghost of his old smirk touching his mouth. “‘Cause I was gonna be real mad if you didn’t.”

You snort, the familiar, fond irritation bubbling up despite everything. “You got beaten half to death in a parking lot, and that’s your priority?”

“Hey,” he says weakly, but his eyes are shining. “Consistency matters.”

You shake your head, a real smile breaking through the fatigue and fear, even as fresh tears burn behind your eyes.

For a long moment, you just look at each other in the pre-dawn grey of the room. The unspoken things hang heavy in the air between you, weightier than any monitor or IV stand.

Then Steve exhales, a long, careful, deliberate breath, as if he’s gathering courage from the very bottom of his lungs.

“I’m sorry,” he says, quietly. So quietly.

The apology isn’t rushed. It isn’t defensive or wrapped in a joke. It is simple, stark, and utterly honest.

“I should’ve told you,” he continues, his gaze unwavering. “I knew something was wrong. I knew he wasn’t… himself. Not for a while. And I still didn’t tell you.” His voice cracks, just a hairline fracture of sound that speaks volumes. “I thought I could handle it alone. I thought if I just kept you far enough away, I could keep you safe without ever having to scare you with the… the realness of it.”

You hold his gaze, letting him speak, letting the truth he’d hoarded finally find air.

“And?” you prompt gently.

“And I was wrong,” he admits. No excuses. No deflection. Just the raw, humble admission. “I should’ve trusted you. I should’ve given you the choice. I was so afraid of you choosing to walk toward the danger that I didn’t realize I was already pushing you away.”

Your fingers, still laced with his, tighten gently. An anchor. A forgiveness.

“I don’t forgive you because you jumped in front of me,” you say, your voice soft but clear in the quiet room. “I forgive you because you’re sitting here right now, bleeding through your bandages, and you’re owning it. All of it.”

Steve lets out a shaky breath that sounds like the beginning of a release. “Yeah. Well. Growth. Apparently I’m doing that now. It’s… uncomfortable.”

You smile, a real one that reaches your eyes. “Terrifying.”

He huffs a pained laugh, then grows serious again, his thumb moving in a faint, unconscious stroke across your knuckle. “I didn’t tell you because… I didn’t want to be the guy who only matters when things get bad. The crisis guy. The fighter. I wanted you to like me when I was just… me. When I wasn’t bleeding or bruised or playing hero.”

Your chest aches with the sweetness and the sorrow of it.

“I liked you at my kitchen table,” you tell him, the memory vivid and warm. “With your stupid, nervous pencil tapping and your fake, overconfident grin.”

He groans faintly, a blush tinting the skin above his bandage. “God, I knew you clocked that.”

“You joke when you’re scared,” you continue, building the portrait of him you’ve been assembling in your heart. “You try to protect people when you don’t know how to just ask them to be careful. And you care so damn much it makes you reckless. It makes you walk into parking lots against things you don’t understand.”

Steve watches you, his eyes wide and soft, as if you’re reading from a book of his own secret history.

“I fell for you anyway,” you finish, the confession hanging softly in the space between you. “Maybe even because of it.”

Silence stretches, but it’s a comfortable, understanding quiet, filled with the hum of healing.

Then Steve smiles—not the dazzling, performative King of Hawkins grin, not the defensive jock’s smirk—but something smaller, softer, and completely unguarded. It transforms his battered face.

“You flirting with me right now,” he asks, his voice a gentle, hopeful rasp, “or are you?”

You laugh, the sound warm and real and free, and you lean closer, bridging the space the chair had created. “You finally noticed.”

He squeezes your hand, the grip weak but full of intention. “Guess I’m a slow learner.”

Outside the narrow hospital window, the world begins to lighten. Pale, tentative gold spills across the white sheets, gilding the edges of the blanket, washing over his tired face and your clasped hands. Steve watches the sunrise for a moment, a quiet peace settling over his features. Then he looks back at you, his eyes clear and certain.

“I’m still gonna want to protect you,” he says, the vow simple and true. “It’s in my wiring. But I’m gonna ask first. And I’m gonna listen. And I’m gonna trust you to stand next to me, not behind me. To be my partner in the weird, scary stuff. Not my… not my problem to solve.”

Your heart feels full, not with giddy lightness, but with a steady, chosen weight. Like you’ve both been looking for solid ground and have finally found it, together.

“Good,” you say, your own voice firm with promise. “Because I’m not going anywhere.”

Steve’s smile deepens, crinkling the corners of his eyes. It’s the smile of a boy who has finally put down a burden he was never meant to carry alone.

“Yeah,” he murmurs, his gaze holding yours with a promise as sure as the rising sun. “Me neither.”

#(not proofread)

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