hiii!! can i get a chocolate bowl with fudge and cherries please? thank youuu😋
thank you for your order!! i hope you enjoy!!
order #24: steve harrington, angst, enemies to lovers, drunk
Steve's Apology
|| ao3 || steve harrington masterlist || 400 celebration!! || requests are open!! || an: this went through like three different drafts, so i really hope you guys like the end result LMAO || part 2 ||
summary: You and Steve were once best friends, until popularity got to his head. Now, Robin is trying to bring her two best friends back together. (wc: 2.2k)
You had never been Steve’s biggest fan back in high school. Not necessarily because he was a bad person, though high school did seem to change him quite a bit, but because there was a time when the two of you were the best of friends. The two of you did everything together, were partners for every group project, sat next to each other in every class, every lunch, every ride to school and home on the bus. The two of you had been practically inseparable for most of your lives. Until his freshman year of high school, when he had become friends with Tommy Hagan and Carol Perkins. He had tried to keep you in his life, at least for a little bit. But it wasn’t long before the newfound popularity seemed to get to his head, and he had forgotten about you.
But Steve had graduated already, and you and your new friend Robin Buckley were about to as well. And though she was very close with your old best friend, you had successfully managed to not have to see or interact with him. Until Robin tried to bring the both of you to the same party to “finally close old wounds,” and so her two best friends could become friends again.
“Robin, I love you, but I really don’t want to see Steve again,” you say, plucking a carrot out of the girl’s lunch container as she lets out a small groan.
“Come on,” she says through a sigh. “Steve’s changed since high school, I promise. And he said he wants to see you to apologize.”
“If I say he’s forgiven, will you both leave it alone?” You ask light-heartedly.
Robin only rolls her eyes before letting out an exasperated sigh. “Please? It’d mean a lot to me if my two best friends didn’t hate each other. I want to go out with both of you on my birthday and not worry about any past tension.”
Now it’s your turn to sigh. “I don’t hate him,” you mumble with a small smile.
“Really?” Robin asks in a tone that tells you that she does not believe you one bit.
“Alright, alright,” you say through a laugh and a roll of your eyes. “I’ll go to the stupid party, happy?”
Robin nods her head yes exaggeratedly before moving to eat the sandwich she had packed herself for lunch. “Very,” she mumbles through a mouthful.
***
Steve and Robin had been at the party for a total of fifteen minutes before they finally caught sight of you. A stumbling, drunk, you.
“Didn’t the party start an hour ago? Why is she already wasted?” Steve asks as the two of them make their way towards you.
Robin only shrugs. “Maybe she’s nervous?” She suggests, before tapping you on your shoulder to get your attention.
“Hi, Robin!” you exclaimed when you saw your friend, quickly pulling her into a hug.
She, awkwardly, hugs you back with an amused laugh before gesturing to Steve when you eventually pull away. “You remember Steve, right?”
Your smile quickly vanishes, turning sour as you look at Steve.
“Uh, hi,” he says through an awkward cough. He hadn’t spoken to you in years, but he had seen you around, small-town perks. Even kept tabs on you through Robin (or, at least, what she was willing to tell him before jokingly calling him a weirdo for asking so many questions about his old friend). And though he was sure you probably wouldn’t think too favorably of him after all this time (especially after Robin told him that she had to practically beg you to say yes to seeing him again), he wasn’t expecting such a bitter look on your face. Though he probably should have expected it. He couldn’t blame you for being upset at him for abandoning you for his new “cooler” friends. Especially when he himself was upset at the fact that he had abandoned you for two people who now meant nothing to him. Who probably meant nothing to him back then, too.
“Ho– how are you?” Steve asked, scratching at the back of his neck with what he hoped to be a friendly, not at all nervous or awkward, smile.
“I’m fine,” you mumble coldly before reaching for a cup to take a sip of it.
Robin’s quick to stop you, taking it out of your hands with a scrunched-up face despite your drunken protests.
“No, who knows whose drink this is, it’s probably gross," she mumbles at your pout. "I’ll get you a new one.”
You sigh, crossing your arms, but nod at your friend in reluctant agreement.
Robin smiles widely at that. “Great!” She exclaims before gently pulling Steve a couple of feet away from you. “I’m gonna get her another beer, can you watch her? And try to get her to like you again? My birthdays in a few months and–“
“And you want to hang out with both of us, yeah, yeah, I got it,” Steve nods along in agreement. Though the slight annoyance in his voice was quite obvious to anyone who knew him as well as Robin did. “How am I supposed to get her to like me if she’s like this?” Steve asks, gesturing a hand to you, who had your arms crossed and currently looked like you were trying to set him on fire with your gaze alone.
If looks could kill.
“Please,” Robin pleads again as Steve lets out a sigh, dragging a frustrated hand down his face.
“Alright, alright,” he mumbled, placing his hands on his friend’s arms and gently maneuvering her towards the kitchen.“Just don’t take too long.”
Robin gave a mock salute before quickly making her way towards the kitchen, before Steve could change his mind, or you could complain. She was really lucky she was one of Steve’s only friends.
Steve let out one final sigh before making his way back to you. He called out your name, and you were quick to shoot daggers at him yet again.
Great. This was going great.
“Look,” he murmured softly, “I know I was a dick to you, and I don’t expect you to forgive me for any of it. I mean, hell, I wouldn’t forgive myself either if I were in your shoes. But I do want to apologize, because you didn’t deserve me being such a shitty friend to you. And, if I could go back and change it all, I would. In a heartbeat.”
Steve wasn’t even sure if you were even listening to him. The minute he had started talking, you turned your gaze to the side, suddenly finding the nearby lamp very interesting as you spent the entirety of his apology staring at it.
He couldn’t blame you. He really couldn’t. He knows he messed up, he knows he was a dick, but he had let Robin’s initial optimism get hold of him and let himself believe that maybe you would forgive him. That maybe, the two of you could be friends again, and that you, him, and Robin could all hang out together sometime. It was wishful thinking, it really was.
“I never understood why you stopped talking to me,” you mumbled, words slightly slurred together as you still refused to look at Steve. But, you were talking to him, and that was honesty way more than he had ever expected.
“I was stupid,” he replied when you never said anything else. “And, I’m sorry. So sorry. If I could go back and change it all, I would,” he repeats.
He sighs when you don’t respond. Just keep staring at that lampshade like it was the most interesting thing you had ever seen in the world.
He stretched his neck to see if he could spot Robin in the crowd, see if she could help the two of you find some middle ground, or at least bring back that cheery person you were when you first saw her. He hates to think that he was the reason why your mood turned so sour so quickly. That you were likely this sad and upset when he first distanced himself from you all those years ago. It made his stomach churn uncomfortably.
But, maybe he deserved that– to be uncomfortable in the mess he had started back in his freshman year because he was too preoccupied with trying to be deemed cool. Maybe if he hadn’t cared then, you, him, and Robin could all be friends. Or, maybe he would have acted on his feelings from back then, and the two of you would have been dating because he–
“You know I really liked you in middle school,” you murmur, finally pulling your gaze away from the stupid lampshade to look up at him.
Oh.
He really was an idiot back then, wasn’t he?
He finally caught sight of Robin, only to see her in a very animated conversation with a certain redhead.
Fuck.
“You did?” He asks, swallowing past the sudden lump in his throat.
You nod in all seriousness, though your movements are slightly slow and sluggish. “I did,” you answer. “I thought you found out and maybe that’s why you stopped talking to me.”
Steve wasn't sure if that was you or the alcohol talking, but never had wished a hole would open up beneath him and swallow him whole more than right now. Because he never wanted you to think something like that. Not when he had spent most of his eighth-grade year wishing you liked him back. Not when he invited you to the eighth-grade prom even though you were a year below him. Not when he overanalyzed everything to figure out if you had liked him back.
Steve loved Robin; he really, truly did. With all his heart. But he didn’t know if he could do this anymore. How was he supposed to look at you, look at those eyes, and explain that no, actually, he had liked you too. And that he was just a stupid, stupid boy in ninth grade who never deserved the girl in front of him in the first place. Back then or now.
“That’s not why I stopped talking to you,” Steve murmured through a sad sigh. “In fact, I wish I had known that you did like me, cause I liked you too back then.”
Your eyes go comically wide at that, and it’s almost enough to pull a smile out of Steve.
“What?” You ask, suddenly sounding far less sulky and moody than before. That did get a smile out of Steve, because it had been far too long since he had seen that smile, and he couldn’t believe he had forgotten the funny feeling it did to his stomach when he saw it. All these years later, and he was still a goner for that smile.
“I did,” Steve responds through a laugh, nodding his head. “A lot,” he adds, “It was kind of embarrassing.”
“Woah,” you mumble under your breath as Robin finally makes her way back towards the two of you, thank god.
“Sorry I took so long, I got lost,” Robin mumbles, handing you a red solo cup as Steve nods, unconvinced. “How are things going here?”
Before Steve gets much of a chance to reply, you’re pulling Robin a few feet away from him, stumbling while you do so, and whispering something in her ear that causes Robin’s eyes to go wide as she laughs directly at him.
“You’re such a dingus,” Robin laughs, and Steve can’t help but roll his eyes cause he already knows exactly what you told her, and it’s causing his face and neck to burn.
“Shut up,” Steve mumbles as Robin shakes her head no and gently pulls you closer to Steve again.
“It’s just too funny, man,” she laughs as you take a sip of your drink.
***
Steve didn’t really think you would ever forgive him. Not only because he hadn’t expected you to, but also because you were drunk for the entirety of his apology. Which, looking back on now, he totally gets. If he could have been drunk to get through his apology without feeling worried or overthinking everything, he just might have done it.
But you deserved better than a drunken apology, so maybe it was good he didn’t go that route. Even if, looking back now, it was incredibly tempting.
Steve was in the middle of making himself breakfast when he heard the phone ringing. So, with a sigh and a quick wish that his pancakes wouldn’t burn while he was on the phone, he walked over to it and picked it up. “Harrington residence,” he answered.
“She wants to hang out,” Robin said, voice slightly crackly through the phone. “The three of us, on Thursday, when we’re done with our shift. She wants to go to the arcade.”
It’s funny how you could have thought you had gotten over a crush on someone years ago, only for your heart to start racing wildly in your chest at the thought of hanging out with that someone. At the thought of seeing that someone again.
“Uh, that sounds great,” Steve said, slightly breathlessly as he squeezed the phone around his hand. “Thursday’s great!”
