Wishful Dreaming: Six
Summary: Heading into college, you were looking to spread your wings. Make some friends. Start a new life. What you aren't going to do? Let a boy run your life ever again. Even if that boy is Steve Harrington.
Word Count: 3.9k
Pairing: Modern!College!Steve Harrington x Reader
AN: I fear I love him bad...... like I forgot how obsessed with this story I am
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Were you friends with Steve Harrington?
No, you wouldn’t say the two of you were friends.
In the month since the incident that Eddie had so poetically called ‘The Dick-off’ in which Steve had “accidentally” antagonized Billy, you would suppose that someone else might call the two of you friends. Robin had made it her personal mission to get the two of you into the same spaces.
That meant you had been added to a handful of group chats, some of which hadn’t been active in years with the members of Robin’s friend group. You were dragged along to Eddie’s infamous movie nights, shoved into a bean bag where you were practically in Robin’s lap for some new horror film and then had your seat stolen by the host of the evening, leaving the only available seat on the loveseat next to the only person in the group you couldn’t seem to find your footing with.
Steve.
The first outing Robin had dragged you into, just a study session with her at the library, she hadn’t mentioned that he would be there. Being Robin, she knew that you wouldn’t have agreed if you had. You couldn’t figure out her best friend, and while it infuriated you to no end, it also made for any interaction the two of you had for it to end in you floundering around awkwardly and him trying not to smile.
He noticed you glancing around the library before you noticed him. It was packed, some sort of event going on in one of the rec rooms that you couldn’t remember, but it had been the reason Robin was so insistent on that being the day you went out. Nobody was stupid enough to cause a scene in front of that many people.
He just looked away and nudged his bag out of the chair next to him, grabbing your attention while pretending to not take his eyes off of the equations spread out in front of him. He had learned that you weren’t one for any sort of public declarations, but he could offer you a seat. That much you would take.
When you did, he took it for the victory it was.
After that, it was like you had unknowingly opened the gates to Steve Harrington appearing in your space without much thought. He wasn’t tiptoeing around you, not like you were him. He was dropping into the seat next to you without a word any chance he got. He waved instead of nodding every time he saw you. His eyes would scan any room he entered for yours in the same way he was always looking for Robin.
When you responded to Eddie’s invite to lunch today with a ‘maybe’, he immediately responded saying he would be there despite him ignoring the three messages above it that were undoubtedly sent to get his attention (like Jonathan asking if there was going to be anyone on the pitch to let him in for his photography assignment).
Steve had publicly accepted you into the group. To anyone else, that would be a declaration of friendship at the very least. An offering that people practically begged for and yet, you couldn’t say the two of you were friends.
You and Robin were friends. You and Nancy were quickly becoming friends. Jonathan was now sitting next to you in any class the two of you had together after you helped him figure out a new filter on his camera. Eddie was bound and determined to steal Robin’s spot away from her, which he informed her of every chance he got.
You were making friends. Slowly but surely, you were allowing yourself to push into that space and yet there was something about Steve that was keeping you at arms length.
You were allies at best, something you told Robin anytime she asked why you couldn’t just admit that the two of you were friends. That her dream of incorporating you all into the same pool had worked and that you weren’t completely indifferent to Steve. It was easy to admit about everyone else, but you didn’t have the same feeling about them as you did about him.
The stupid fluttering in your stomach every time you made eye contact certainly didn’t help.
Him walking into your room now, even if he knows Robin won’t be there, dropping onto her bed with a sigh and asking if you would be willing to make him disappear so he never had to look at an interest formula again. An entirely new box of extra butter popcorn sitting on the counter at Eddie’s house after your first movie night with an off-handed comment about how now you didn’t just have to pick through a bowl to find all the yellow pieces.
You’re almost entirely sure he was responsible for the new pack of gum that had found its way into the pocket of your bag, not the tropical flavor that Robin always gets you but a berry one.
Robin was on an endless crusade to make you admit that Steve wasn’t simply just being a nice guy because he had to, but because he wanted to. She was pushing for you to openly accept the friendship that you knew was being extended to you, you just didn’t know what to do with it.
And Steve?
Steve had made it his mission to make sure you knew that you could move around campus freely.
Being associated with him had certainly come with a new level of fame that you weren’t quite sure how to deal with. Everywhere you went, people were smiling at you or trying to open doors for you. You had gone from someone who could go nearly an entire day without someone other than Robin waving at you to people calling your name and waving like you had known them your entire life.
Not to mention the endless ping of follow requests that had you turning the vibrate off on your phone in class now.
While it certainly made you feel weird, you had quickly come to realize that the curiosity now associated with you and your new friend group had turned into a shield of sorts. There was nothing you could do without somebody noticing now, people always looking if you were in the room, eyes looking around you in hopes that you would be accompanied by the school’s most prominent student.
Which meant no matter where you went, you may catch Billy off on the sidelines, but he knew better than to approach you. He had caught your eye quite a few times, sometimes with a glare, other times with a smirk.
But he wouldn’t approach.
Steve Harrington had metaphorically pissed on your leg to the entire school and as stupid as it seems to you that of course that was the only thing that would work, it certainly helped with the agoraphobia you had somewhat developed.
You didn’t go out by yourself very often, usually just heading to your class and back to your dorm. If there was a group outing, you would leave your room as close to the meeting time as possible, more often than not running into Jonathan who was notoriously late or Eddie who somehow was always sleeping through an alarm.
You weren’t scared of Billy.
You just certainly weren’t looking to run into him alone either.
Because you hadn’t answered with a ‘yes’ to Eddie’s lunch proposal, you knew Robin was heading straight there after her anatomy class which meant that you would be alone on your trek there once you had decided that you were going. Nancy had declined, needing to work on her article for the upcoming quiz bowl event being held this weekend, and Jonathan had just responded to your ‘maybe’ with an emoji which is the same for him as him answering with the word himself.
Walking into the cafeteria, you should have remembered that Eddie Munson is a handful of really great things, but amongst those really great things is his knack for being late to any and everything. Anytime of the day, without fail, even if he makes the plans himself, he somehow manages to show up late.
Last week for movie night, he was asleep when you and Robin had arrived and it was being held quite literally in his bedroom.
So, you shouldn’t have been shocked to step into the bustling room and your eyes not catching a head of dark curls immediately. Except you had seemingly forgotten that your notoriously late friend was of course going to be notoriously late and your roommate was also going to be walking from the other side of campus, which meant that you were alone.
Except, you’re not alone. You’re in a public space, full of faces you don’t know, but a majority of them offering you polite or even overly enthused smiles as you walk through the line while the reality that you are perfectly fine settles into your chest.
You’re okay.
Billy Hargrove is a nuisance that you’re not sure how to deal with, but he doesn’t get to have you locked away in some cobblestone tower because you don’t know what his next move is going to be.
You move through the line mindlessly anyways, your eyes flickering up every few seconds to look for Robin. As you reach out to grab your dessert selection, your head shoots up for just a second because you could swear you hear Eddie cursing as the door bangs open again.
It’s not Eddie, but it’s a curly head all the same. Except it’s the wrong color and it has your fingers snatching a piece of cake without looking and you moving quickly to the table your friends usually slide into in the back corner.
You’re not stupid enough to think that he isn’t looking out for you somehow. Back home, Billy had ways of finding you that rivalled anyone else on the planet. You’re not even sure you were able to find yourself as efficiently as the blonde had.
Now, he knows how to bide his time, and he’s been trying to let you know that. Know that eventually the two of you are going to have to have it out because he is simply capable of willing it into existence. Bending the universe to his want and whim is a talent that he is keenly aware of how to use.
You sink into your chair, refusing to let yourself be spooked out of the life that you ended up here for to begin with. You had come here to start over, and he wasn’t going to bully you out of it. There’s no point in looking because you can feel his eyes burning into the side of your face as he moves through the room, clapping team mates on the shoulder as he does with the same charismatic smile that makes your stomach churn.
He’s going to approach you because you are alone and this is neutral territory. You not immediately turning on your heel and leaving is a challenge that not even he is willing to turn down. If there is one thing you hate, it is making a scene, and he has always known how to take advantage of that.
In the blur of him inching closer in your peripheral, you somehow miss the approaching body that throws themself into the seat next to you with a loud huff, pristine sneaker smacking into the side of your foot with a thud as their tray drops down next to you.
Freshly showered and eerily calm is the Steve Harrington now sitting next to you, damp hair curling around the backs of his ears like he hadn’t had time to brush it before he came. Very rarely was his hair not perfectly tamed, but you had found that you much preferred it-
Nope.
You push the thought away as Steve kicks his bag under his seat, shouldering his jacket off to fall onto the back of the chair.
He catches you looking over his shoulder, your eyes looking at Billy’s now still body just a few feet away and you watch something flicker in his face before he’s turning in the direction you have just averted your eyes from and flipping the bird to the blonde across from him, a fake enthused expression on his face that anyone else would perceive as a joke between teammates, but you know better by now.
Billy doesn’t launch himself across the room in a fit of rage. He doesn’t even return the gesture. He just laughs. A hollow, unexpected laugh that has you looking up at the sound in disbelief.
Wrong move.
The second your eyes meet, he gives you the slightest disapproving shake of his head and he is planting himself in a seat across the room, dropping his arm across the back of some girl's chair as he decides that he is going to distract himself with something.
When you look away, you’re shocked to find that Steve says nothing. In fact, he’s not even looking at you, but his eyes are focused on your tray with his eyebrows pinched together like something is more wrong with your food choices than the boy sitting across the room trying to vie for your attention.
“Why the hell did you get carrot cake?”
That’s the question that he decides on asking you, brown eyes flickering up to yours like you’ve committed some kind of war crime. The second you glance down at the treat you had snatched up in your retreat, you realize you might as well have.
You hate carrot cake.
Despise it would be a better word for it. You’ve tried it a million different ways by many different people, but you’ve never been able to get your tongue to agree with the flavor. It’s not something that would have ended up on your plate even if you were trying to be nice to someone hosting an event.
You know that.
Steve Harrington, however, shouldn’t know that.
Except he’s looking at you as if he is more sure than you are that grabbing the cake was an act of insanity and not pleasure which is undoubtedly strange because you’ve seen Steve eat the very cake sitting on your plate right now in the handful of times that the two of you have eaten here together.
You’re about 99% sure that the picture on Robin’s desk of his 17th birthday is him sitting in front of a carrot cake. In fact, you’re not sure you’ve ever seen him eat any of the other options on the dessert bar besides the carefully cut square in front of you.
He likes carrot cake. You’d even go out on a limb and say he loves it, but he is sitting next to you looking at the piece on your plate like it’s the most vile thing he has ever seen and you’re not sure why he should know that about you.
“I got a little-”
You don’t even get the sentence out before he is reaching onto your plate, snatching the cake off of yours and replacing it with his own selection, which is surprisingly chocolate and exactly what you thought you had been grabbing in the moments leading up to this.
“You don’t have to switch,” You assure him, trying to offer him the piece back which he waves off immediately. “You picked-”
“I got that one,” Steve jabs his fork at the cake in your hand, “Because Evelyn mentioned they were on their last chocolate and that was the last one. I was going to make Robin box it up for you in case you really weren’t coming. Besides, I’m already eating this one.”
He finishes the sentence with a dramatic bite, frosting smearing slightly in the corner of his mouth as he tries to make his point in refusing his original selection.
You feel the heat creeping up the back of your neck at the realization that while you have been analyzing Steve, he has been watching you right back.
“I busted ass to get here and that moron isn’t even here?” Robin drops into the seat across from you, a piece of hair looped straight upwards at the end of her bobby pin that you are reaching out to fix the moment you notice it.
Your hand bumps with Steve’s, who still has his fork in his left hand and his right now hanging awkwardly in the air with yours as the two of you realize you had both been reaching out to fix the problem without a word.
He concedes, dropping his hand back to the table with what you swear is the tiniest hint of a smirk at your immediate attempt to retreat.
You can’t leave the piece where it is out, so you fix it in seconds while Robin rambles about nearly tripping over the sidewalk trying to make it here before the drinks were out in the soda machine again because they will leave them out for hours.
“Someone else was miraculously right on time if that makes you feel any better,” Steve says before dropping another bite of carrot cake into his mouth.
For a moment, you think he is talking about himself because he had indeed sat down at a time someone could only describe as perfect. Always the knight in shining armor, managing to appear exactly when you need him to. Except, he’s motioning with his head to the blonde visitor across the room and you watch as Robin realizes who he is actually talking about.
Robin’s face scrunches up in disgust, letting her straw drop into her cup without her usual attempt to blow the excess wrapper across the table at the boy next to you.
“Oh ew,” She says rolling her eyes when her sight catches Billy’s before she is turning back and swatting at Steve’s hand that is about to take another bite of cake. “No dessert before your food.”
Steve tugs his tray out of her reach, nearly pulling it onto his lap to prove his point as he shoves another bite into his mouth.
“You’re not my mother,” He grumbles out around bits of food, earning him Robin’s signature look of sticking her tongue out and mocking his face in dramatic fashion before she is turning to you.
“He’s going to start taking your maybe’s as definitely yes from now on if you keep this up,” She says as her only acknowledgement of you choosing to be here.
It’s her way of saying she’s glad you are here without calling too much attention to it. Even if the he in question isn’t even sitting at the table with you yet.
Eddie was overly enthused to have you as part of the group, it’s a big part of who he is as a person. He loves his friends, and you were added right in without a second of hesitation from him. If your hesitation to really throw yourself into the friend group had been noticed, it certainly hadn’t affected his open arm welcome into his life.
He invited you to everything. His band shows, study sessions, movie nights. Hell, he had even included you into the invite for his orthodontist appointment because he wasn’t scared of many things, but the dentist somehow topped the list.
You had never met someone so excited to have their invitations rejected, but Eddie wasn’t like most people anyways. He just smiled or would send you a cheery text back that sounded almost vaguely threatening if you didn’t know any better that he would get you next time.
Robin yelps in surprise, breaking your train of thought as you feel the back of Steve’s sneaker retreat back into its spot right next to yours. He’s usually extremely careful in avoiding your personal space, today’s shoe bumps excluded, so you look up in just enough time to see the warning look he is shooting the girl across from you before his attention shoots to the tray dropping down across from him.
“My humblest apologies,” Eddie breathes out as he slides into the seat, jacket already halfway off his shoulders and dropping on the back of the seat without much help. “I may have rested my eyes for a second too long.”
Robin is reaching down to rub her shin, an irritated look sent towards Steve who just offers her a shrug.
“We need to get you a boat alarm or something,” You quip, earning a laugh from the target of your statement.
“The man slept through SWAT tearing through his house, I doubt he would even notice.”
Steve’s comment is thrown out like it’s not the craziest thing you’ve ever heard. Casual, like there’s no real truth behind it, but from the dramatic eye roll that Eddie gives, you realize that the lore drop you just received is something that gets joked about often.
“It was one time-”
“Most people go their entire lives without getting swatted,” Robin points out, taking a sip of her drink.
“I didn’t call them!” Eddie shoots back, flicking his straw wrapper at Robin, who lets it glide into her arm with a laugh. His eyes turn to you, who is so utterly lost that you don’t even know where to start and he rubs a hand over his face. “I was like 16 and I was playing an online DnD game. It was nothing.”
“You told someone you were going to blow up their entire town,” Robin interjects.
Eddie huffs out a breath, reaching back and tossing his mess of curls up into a bun like he does when he gets flustered about something.
“It was a game-”
“You said you were going to end their entire lineage,” Steve adds, putting his hands up at the glare the boy sends his way.
“I didn’t know that he was the governor’s son or I obviously wouldn’t have-”
“Oh shit.”
Eddie’s focus turns to you as you breathe out a laugh because of course Eddie would find himself in a situation like that. You didn’t know high school Eddie, but you certainly wouldn’t be surprised if he somehow had gotten himself on a list just last week because of how intently he talks about his campaigns.
You don’t want to laugh because you feel like it’s a bit mean, but you can’t help it. You’re not laughing at him, but at the situation that only Eddie Munson would be able to find himself in. Not only did he manage to get himself noticed, but he of course picked probably the worst target you could think of.
Maybe it’s the luck of it all that you find so funny, or maybe it’s the protest coming from him about how they stole his computer for months trying to make sure that he wasn’t some kind of vigilante, but you find a warmth sitting in your chest that you haven’t felt in a very long time.
If you could be part of any group, you would want to be part of this one.
So, you’ve decided you are.
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