The First Move
Characters: Steven Grant x Female Reader (with a small cameo from ultimate wingman Marc Spector)
Words: 3.6k
Warnings/Tags: Explicit sexual content (18+ MINORS DNI), kinda subby Steven/dominant female dynamic, oral sex (male receiving), unprotected P in V, creampie
Author’s Note: I haven’t written anything in three billion years but here’s this thing I wrote. It’s about as canon-divergent as I can physically cope with, set before Steven meets Marc for the first time but he’s there. It’s a little fluffier than what I usually dive into but I’m still a whore so of course smut comes with the meal. (The Marc-focused part 2 of this story can be found here!)
~
“Earl grey, two sugars?” you asked sweetly to the man stepping towards the counter. Steven, undoubtedly your most cherished regular, a name you’d learned from the small badge he continually seemed to forget about taking off outside the confines of his job.
He let out a muted kind of laugh, nodding, not able to have his eyes reach yours.
Oh. Today was a no eye-contact day.
You tried your best to hold back your concern whilst processing his payment, not needing to say the price out loud. “I’ll have it ready for you in a jiffy.”
There was the whisper of an appreciative smile in his lips, but it quickly faded as he walked away, his stare securely trained to the floor. Steven was here every Friday evening, his order never straying from the one single beverage as he sat at his usual table. A window seat, watching the night play out before him in passersby.
In the months since his first visit to this tiny little café, you’d come to spend each week looking forward to this moment, when the clock struck 5:15, expectant of his kind face and curled hair coming through the door. Every interaction was different, and slightly unpredictable. Initially he was simply… cautious. Almost excessively reserved, barely able to fixate his pupils on any part of you. Slowly, you could see the familiarity and comfort grow. He began to return your smiles, speak with words and not movements, linger in conversation rather than want to flee from it.
On the good days, where the anxiety that always appeared to cling to him relaxed its hold, you would delicately initiate some casual conversation. His work, his hobbies, his family – each fragment of information willingly given a precious piece of his puzzle you felt a bizarre impulse to solve. The day he’d posed his own question back had left you nearly too flustered to answer properly. All he’d asked is how long you’d been working here, and you’d never been more excited.
You hoped one day he’d ask a very specific question. If he could see you at a different time, in a different setting. Amongst other people, or alone. Whatever he wanted, whatever he felt most comfortable with. Your fear of pushing him too far out that zone stopped you from asking the question yourself. You just hoped he would, when he was ready.
So now, seeing Steven almost completely revert to his old self, was a little disheartening. He’d slipped back into this kind of state a few times – on the bad days - but never quite this far. Glancing over while you readied the small tea set, he seemed troubled, a flustered kind of kinetic energy seeming to radiate from his sitting figure.
“Busy day at the art gallery?” you asked softy while setting down the porcelain teapot at his front.
Your voice had startled him, breaking him out of a peculiar trance. And he still couldn’t look at you. “Busy. Yeah. Always busy.”
You could have easily walked away, his dismissive answer a clear sign he wasn’t in the mood for a chat today. But a heavy feeling in your chest made you linger, noting the crumpled way in which Steven sat into his chair, like he wanted to appear as small as possible. Something was wrong.
“Is everything okay?”
His head turned, finally lifting his face to meet yours. His expression was tense, forcefully blank, lips set in a hard line. There was only slightly more emotion to be seen in his eyes, a subtle fear within them you were sure you’d never encountered before.
“Fine. Just fine,” he stumbled out, the words coming out unnaturally fast. “Thanks for the tea. It looks… hot.”
There was a twitch of disgust he had at his own comment, and it made you relieved. The Steven you’d come to know was still there, underneath the shroud of distress covering every inch of him right now.
“Just let me know if there’s anything else you need, okay?”
You hoped he would see past the face value of your words, that he might see you as a safe haven in a world you also found a little too overwhelming at times. And while your offer was never claimed as the evening wore on, you’d occasionally peered over to see him quietly studying your movements. Each time you met his gaze with the the same warm smile before he quickly redirected himself away to his long cold tea.
It was difficult not to let the disappointment swallow you whole when Steven, quite uncharacteristically, didn’t even look your way before briskly setting off home. Usually you would have been filled with a bubbly warmth as the door bells tingled, right after the recurring “Laters, gators!” farewell you’d become so accustomed to. Without it, the tinkling metal sound was positively jarring. It made you worry. Did something happen? Had you done something wrong? Was this little fixation you’d centered on one man hopelessly one sided?
These questions continued to control most of your attention as closing time finally arrived, with you being the sole person left under the dimmed lights. With the coffee machine cleaned and prepped for a new morning you’d be waking to greet, you were about to take the keys into your hand when a shrill tone rung into the silent space. The telephone. Who the hell is calling here at this time of night?
It was out of genuine curiosity you scuffled over to the handset instead of letting it go to voicemail, not having a recognizable number show on the small display. Force of habit made your voice delve into its higher pitch as you spouted off the usual greeting with your name, the other line initially filled with a bizarre static alongside its silence.
“Hello?” you repeated. “Is there anyone there?”
Again, nothing. Just static.
“Look we’re already closed, and I’d really like to go home-”
“You need to make the first move.”
The voice stilted you off balance, frozen into as much stillness as the room around you. It was deep, blazoned with intention and… American? What the hell?
“I’m sorry, I think you’ve got the wrong number-”
“With Steven. You’re gonna need to make the first move,” the voice reiterated, somewhat forcefully. “He’s not going to do it himself.”
The mention of his name made you physically recoil, peering around in the almost darkness. “Who the hell is this? Have you been watching me?”
“I’m a… friend of Steven’s. And I’m just trying to… help.”
You should have been more concerned about the complete stranger making it his business to call your workplace at 10pm on a Friday evening with such a cryptic message, but there was suddenly a prospect of hope weaving its way around your chest.
“Wait, has he talked to you about me?”
A pleased exhale crinkled through the speaker. “In his own way, yeah. It’s… kinda complicated. And not important. Look, you’ve both waited long enough, and you and I both know he’s not exactly the brave type.”
To his credit, the stranger must actually know Steven to make this kind of comment, a frustratingly correct one at that. “Who says I’ve been waiting? You don’t even know if I’m interested in him like that.”
“You haven’t hung up yet,” the voice said succinctly. “I think that says a lot.”
Damn. He’d got you. Prick.
“Okay, let’s say I am,” you conceded, leaning into the counter. “What are you implying I do about it?”
“I already told you – make the first move. How you do that? Well, that’s your choice. But I can’t keep watching him slowly turn insane for not being able to ask you on a simple god damn date.”
The heart rhythm that followed was loud in your ears, thumping through your limbs. “Is that true? He’s wanted to ask me out, all this time?”
“He’s wanted to do more than that, trust me,” the stranger grumbled, almost in a huff.
“Excuse me?”
“Don’t worry about it.” A piercing alarm rung out on the other line. “Shit. Time’s up. Okay, I’m going to give you his address. What you do next is your decision, but let me tell you, being bold wouldn’t be the worst option.”
The voice didn’t give you time to reply before he was rattling off a street and apartment number, having to hastily write it over your forearm as the monotone beep of an ended call repeated over and over.
The air felt colder as you set the phone down, little wisps of ice creeping over your skin in direct contrast to the heat beginning to flourish from your insides.
He needed you to be bold? Oh, you could be bold.
*
Steven woke with a jolt, the restraints at his ankles making a rattling sound against the hardwood bedposts. Shit, he’d fallen asleep again. Maybe he should’ve made that switch to coffee by now.
Ugh, no, the heart palpitations weren’t worth it.
To his relief, the sky outside his window was still draped in blackness. Maybe his body hadn’t had enough time to try and wander yet. A quick glance at his phone screen told him it was just past 10:30pm, long after a safeguard alarm should have woken him from any accidental nap. Once again the memory of deactivating it wasn’t one his brain allowed him to keep.
It was getting harder to keep himself awake, that was clear. Every night he was drifting off sooner and sooner, always working at half capacity during waking hours without the restful sleep he couldn’t trust himself to have. Short bursts like these seemed to stave off most symptoms of exhaustion, but there was always that lingering headache quietly thumping inside his skull, the same one making his brow furrow as he unshackled himself from his makeshift snare.
A new deepened purple was noticeable under his eyes as he opened the mirrored cabinet of his bathroom, selecting the mildest form of painkillers in his meagre stock. He didn’t need anything making him more drowsy, even when the peace of slumber was the only thing he wanted right now.
Well, except for you.
The thought made his throat tight. All week he’d spent building up courage, rehearsing the perfect lines, curating a persona much more confident than what he knew he was. Casual. Relaxed. Maybe even a little suave.
It all went to bollocks the moment he stepped through the door. One little tinkle of that stupid bell and all his willpower came crumbling down. He couldn’t help it. It was the story of his life. Too chicken shit to even ask a nice girl out to dinner. Could have been simple. Easy. But it never was.
Knock knock knock.
The sound was startling, making Steven jump with an audible peep. A visitor? This late?
Oh who was he kidding, having a visitor ever was a shock in its own right.
Tentatively he tread over to the triple locked door, stripping off the undisturbed tape lining the frame. A breath sat heavy in his lungs as he stood there, heart thrumming to a quickened beat, releasing the exhale in a single, measured progression. Only when there was no more to give, he opened the door.
You.
It was you.
Standing in his hallway. There to see him.
Ahh, right… So he’d never actually woken up. Just stuck in another vivid dream. Seemed about right.
The realisation was deflating, even while his mind instinctively burst with those happy little chemicals it always shot out at the sight of you. It was interesting though, how sharp your visage looked compared to other times you’d shown up in his dreaming, wearing an expression of eager impatience.
“Hi,” you greeted, your voice unusually clear. And positively giddy. “I hope this is okay. Me just showing up here.”
Knowing you were just a figment of his mind’s conjuring caused him not to question your presence, or how you came to find his address, instead starting to feel a grateful smile spread across his face. “Yeah. Yeah definitely it’s fine. Brilliant actually.”
Your face radiated even more joy, almost a little disbelieving. “It is?”
In his dreaming Steven was starkly more honest than his real life, making it an easy task to answer, “There’s no one else I’d be happier openin’ my door to.”
There was a change in your features after he said the words, a change maybe only Steven would have been able to recognise after so much time looking to you from afar. Jaw tightened, eyebrows cinched ever so slightly. An expression of certainty, of conviction.
Two sets of fingers reached out to grab at his shirt, feet stumbling under him as a hurried connection occurred between your lips and his.
A kiss. You were kissing him. And it felt so… real?
Seconds moved on while Steven’s mind desperately tried to catch up, your mouth beginning to move over his with a fragile balance of hesitancy and greed. It took far longer than he would have preferred to respond in the same way, eventually syncing into the rhythm you’d set, the rigidity in his limbs settling into an embrace with yours. This certainly wasn’t the first time he’d imagined your first kiss, awake or otherwise, but there was something wholly distinct about the one he was experiencing now.
There was heat radiating from where his skin touched yours. A minty tang when his tongue slipped into your mouth. Your distinctive floral perfume sweeping his senses with every inhale.
When a hand slipped over the line of his cheekbone, nails softly scratching into his hair to pull his face closer, it finally clicked.
He broke away from you with a jerk, clutching at your upper arms. “Hold on a minute, you’re real?”
You seemed to need a moment to collect yourself, frankly looking a little dizzy from the sudden retraction. “What? What do you mean I’m real?”
“You’re here? Right now? At my apartment?”
Your nose wrinkled as you scrutinized his utter disbelief. “You literally just opened the door to me.”
“But… But I…” There was that same annoying delay Steven suffered from his brain to his mouth, his thoughts too jumbled to properly curate a sentence. “I thought… I thought that I was dreaming. I dream lot you know. And with you showin’ up here, I just assumed…” He shook you, needing to feel the full weight of you wobble back and forth. “But you’re here. You’re… really here. Right?”
For long, worrying, seconds your expression remained in its state of questioning alarm, blinking a few times to let your eyes focus again. As the narrowing pupils flitted over Steven’s face, he saw how a tempered smirk began to appear.
“Would you like me to show you that I’m real?”
In all honestly, he wasn’t entirely sure what you meant. But the tempting sparkle in your stare had him quickly nodding along to your offer. Immediately you had his heels skidding along the dusty, wood floor, maneuvering him backwards towards the unmade bed.
He might have worried you could notice the pysch-ward shackles still loitering at his bed posts, or the thick layer of sand crunching under your shoes, yet your attention was acutely fixed on pushing him into the mattress to sit, leaning down to secure him in an even more decadent kiss than the first.
Steven didn’t quite know what to do with his hands, having the odd reflex to claw them into your flesh but refraining from doing so in the fear of being, as most in his life would recite, a little too much. So he did his best to smother those reckless instincts, settling to merely drift his palms up your thighs to feel the curve, almost making to your rear when you began to sink down to the floor.
Fucking hell, you were on your knees. Between his. Trying to unlock his belt.
Impulse took over again as his own hands flew down to aid in your effort, working in tandem to unlock and shimmy down his starched trousers, his boxers being clutched along with them until he was on show for you. Fully and completely. So hard it hurt.
He might have let this kind of vulnerable state – one in which it’d been years since he’d faced – jump to overwhelm him, turning to escape in any way possible. But with you, gaping at his erection like it had taken the wind right out your lungs, the fear was purged from his body in a rolling wave, humbly sitting in anticipation for your next action.
Every nerve in his body lit up a spark when you gripped a hand around the base of his cock, already pulling a frantic rasp out his chest when the tip of your tongue swirled around the head. The sound swiftly transformed into a heated groan when you slithered your lips down the breadth of his shaft, enveloping as much length of him as you could adequately handle.
Up and down you started to move, slow by any usual means but quick enough for Steven to shudder through each breath he took, pangs of pleasure ricocheting through his lower limbs. Truly he wasn’t sure how he kept it together, watching your lips glide up and down his now glistening dick, your tongue swirling at the underside in a way he didn’t know existed until this very minute.
In fact, no, he couldn’t keep it together.
“F-fuck,” he choked. “Jesus fucking christ. I need to… I don’t want this to be over until…”
With a subtle gasp you retreated, wiping away the spittle from your chin, looking up to Steven with a single question coded in your stare.
Again his agreement wasn’t verbal, just a rushed bob of his head, very nearly the epitome of subservience. That’s all he wanted to be for you. The vessel of your pleasure.
Just as he answered without words, you responded with your movements, standing only to slink down the pants you wore, stripping off the rest of your ensemble as you straddled onto his lap. Gods, he wished he might have had the chance to glide a thumb over your bare nipple, but you were already reaching down…
And there it was, heaven.
Or as close as he’d felt it.
A moan of synchronicity occurred as you slid down to the hilt of Steven’s cock, clenching around it as you leaned in to kiss him, both palms clutching at his jaw. Nothing could have prepared him for the way you began to grind yourself over his full length, your hips determining their own unique pattern and pace.
Thrills of ecstasy began to riddle through him as your whines became louder with each stoke, each one gliding over with an impossibly smooth friction. No matter how hard he wanted to fight it, the point of no return dragged even closer.
He tried to think of anything that might stave off the inevitable climax. Sand. Mummified human remains. The annoying little beep his barcode scanner made during inventory nights ringing over and over-
“It’s… okay. Just let go,” you hummed into his ear.
“It hasn’t… Shit… It’s not been long enough,” he heaved, occasionally interrupted with shuddering moans he had no control over keeping tamed. “For you… It’s not been long enough for you.”
He could feel the crease of your smile at his cheek, in addition to a pronounced tightening around him down below. “Please Steven. Just let it happen. I want it. I need it.”
Your words, the sincerity in which you spoke them, broke apart all the resolve he had. Every muscle seemed to flex as a somewhat violent orgasm ruptured from his core outwards, continuing flashes of pleasure rolling in aftershocks as he emptied himself inside you. There were hissing curses he didn’t quite himself speak when your thrusting didn’t immediately slow, milking every ounce of fluid from him to your deepest part.
Oh god, was he supposed to do that? No one had ever let him do that before. It was so… warm. In fact, his whole body felt a similar kind of mellowed heat. This sort of afterglow was different to the ones following solo endeavors. More potent and endlessly more relieving.
And here he was laying there like a knob, not affording you the same sensation.
Steven frantically reached up grab onto your torso, unable to properly find his footing with his legs dangled over the edge of the bed.
“Hey woah! What are you doing?” you shot out, propping yourself up to look down over him.
“I was tryin’ to, you know, switch us around. Since it’s, well, your turn. And I don’t want to keep you waiting. I just… want to make you feel as good as you made me…”
The grin that spread across your lips made his chest thump. You looked touched. Usually he hated this kind of reaction in people, where they looked at him like some adorable, naïve soul. Although on you it made him feel… treasured.
“Don’t worry about it. It’s really not necessary.”
“It is to me,” he said unwaveringly. “I mean, it just wouldn’t feel right if I didn’t return the favour.”
Again your cheeks plumped with a smile, irises practically dazzling around their widened pupils. You grazed a set of fingers at his hairline, setting some the unruly curls back into place. “You could return it in a different way, while we take a break first?”
“How do you mean?”
“I like… tea.”
Steven let out a roughened chuckle, leaning up on his elbows. “Well I’m not the tea connoisseur of the room, but I think I can handle a brew. How do you take it?”
“Earl grey. Two sugars.”
~
If you read this, thank you! I love you with my whole heart.
Tagging a few I adore and thought might want to give this a read:
@tlcwrites @roanniom @foxilayde @blackberries45 @hopeamarsu @caillea @princessxkenobi @mariesackler @sacklerscumrag