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@takeme2yourtrees
take me to your breakfasts your sunsets your bad dreams your shoes your nouns - margaret atwood
day - 23, asian/latina, occasional writer, steve harrington and public transit enjoyer
masterlist. about/faq. ao3. requests are: OPEN!
MINORS DNI - under 18/ageless blogs will be blocked ✎ cw for dubcon, noncon and stepcest, will be tagged accordingly
lucky star
Steve harrington x fem!reader
summary: In the summer of 1985, Steve Harrington is stuck working at Scoops Ahoy, juggling melting ice cream, teasing coworkers, and bruised pride at Starcourt Mall. Everything shifts when he realizes the new aerobics instructor across the way is impossible to ignore.
It was the summer of 1985. “Everybody Wants to Rule the World” by Tears for Fears played softly in the background, and Starcourt Mall shone like the newest jewel in Hawkins.
The air conditioning blasting at full power made the unbearable Indiana heat easier to tolerate. The polished floors squeaked under the sneakers of teenagers flooding the mall, neon lights from the storefronts made everything feel electric, and the constant smell of sweet pretzels and freshly scooped ice cream clung to the skin whether you wanted it to or not.
“Enjoy your ice cream,” Steve repeated for what felt like the thousandth time that week, flashing a smile so forced it cost him the tip from a cute girl—and any chance of getting her number.
For him, working at Scoops Ahoy was a strange mix of social humiliation and resignation: the ridiculous uniform, the sailor hat that made every girl who walked in look at him like he was a joke, and the occasional teasing from former classmates—along with Robin’s relentless commentary on how pathetic his flirting attempts were.
“Why the hell is it so crowded today?” Robin complained, dropping her head onto the counter. “I’ve rung up over a hundred sprinkle cones since our shift started.”
“The pool’s closed today,” Steve explained flatly, eyes fixed on the door as if silently begging no one else to come in.
“That explains a lot,” Robin said, her voice drowned out by the laughter of a group of women walking into the shop.
Steve recognized them immediately and knew that if there was a god, he was absolutely laughing at him right now.
“Mrs. Smith, it’s so nice to see you,” he said, putting on the best good-boy smile he had.
“Oh, Stevie—” Robin choked on her laughter, covering it with an exaggerated cough that made Steve glare at her.
Mrs. Smith was his mother’s friend; they’d been in the same book club for as long as he could remember—which meant she’d spent plenty of afternoons sitting in his living room, wine glass in hand, not a book in sight.
“We just wanted to say hello,” she explained, her companions nodding along. They were all dressed in outrageously colored tights, leg warmers, and headbands, making Steve suppress a look of confusion and mild horror. “Your mother told us you work here, so we had to come see you.”
Steve laughed awkwardly and scratched the back of his neck.
“Well, we’ll be going,” Mrs. Smith said, dropping a twenty into the tip jar before smiling her way out with the others. “If you see your mother, tell her not to be late. Class starts in fifteen minutes.”
Robin’s laughter broke the brief silence that followed. Steve could only nod, unsure what to say—he had no idea what class they were talking about, or why anyone would willingly dress like that in public. Which, admittedly, was ironic considering what he was wearing.
“Your mommy’s friends came to check on you, Stevie?” Robin teased, far too pleased with herself.
“Shut up.”
That only made Robin laugh louder.
“Why the hell would my mom be here?” Steve muttered, ignoring Robin as he stepped out from behind the counter and walked toward the door.
When he peeked outside, like it was fate playing a cruel joke, he saw his mother walking toward him—dressed exactly like Mrs. Smith and the rest of her friends.
“Mom?” he asked, visibly confused.
“Steve!” Mrs. Harrington said brightly, arms full of shopping bags, which she immediately handed to him. “Perfect timing. Take these home for me. I’ve got my aerobics class.”
…What?
Robin followed him out, taking advantage of the lack of customers, and found Steve standing there, arms full of bags, watching his mother walk away with a deep frown.
Confused and curious, they followed her—and when they saw where she went, everything clicked: a brightly lit aerobics studio that caught the attention of everyone passing by.
The town’s mothers were already there, wearing shiny leotards and headbands, ready to sweat and gossip. But they weren’t the ones drawing the attention of the teenage boys conveniently seated near the large glass window—certainly not Steve’s, who felt like the ground shifted beneath him.
It was you.
The instructor.
Steve’s former classmate, once the star cheerleader, with a confident smile and perfect posture that had never captivated him—until now. You were exactly the kind of girl mothers adored: future sorority president at some outrageously expensive college your family could easily afford, future perfect wife to some rich finance guy, future queen of something—what, didn’t really matter.
Steve completely forgot he was supposed to be working. Your high, perfectly styled hair made you impossible to ignore, and the precise way you moved toward the group only drew more attention to your outfit—something straight out of Cosmopolitan: a tight gray cotton sports top that left your stomach bare, unapologetic, layered beneath a navy blue leotard with wide straps that hugged your body with near-military precision. The high-cut hips made your legs look endlessly long.
And those legs, covered in taut gray tights that hid absolutely nothing, completely short-circuited Steve’s brain.
“Hey!” Robin’s voice and a sharp shove to his shoulder snapped him back to reality.
“We have work. Stop drooling.”
Steve walked back to Scoops Ahoy as if nothing had happened, though his mind was still glued to the other side of the glass. The sailor hat suddenly itched, and the uniform felt ridiculously childish compared to… well, that.
“I’m putting a mirror on the counter,” Robin said as she went back to work. “That way you can drool over yourself instead of your mom’s aerobics instructor.”
“I wasn’t drooling,” Steve muttered, dropping his mom’s bags behind the counter and scooping ice cream with unnecessary force.
“Steve,” Robin said, rolling her eyes, “you were three seconds away from face-planting into the glass like a kid at a toy store.”
He didn’t answer. His traitorous eyes drifted to the clock. Time crawled by cruelly, like it knew exactly how to torture him. Outside, the music still filtered in—muted, but steady, like a heartbeat.
Reflected in the metal counter, Steve saw you again.
You moved with absolute confidence, counting steps, clapping sharply to set the rhythm. The mothers followed you with varying degrees of grace, including Mrs. Harrington, who was far too focused on not tripping to notice her son standing just feet away, questioning every life choice he’d ever made.
“I can’t believe my mom does this,” Steve whispered.
“Aerobics?” Robin said, nudging him aside to serve ice cream herself. “Trust me, that’s the least traumatic thing moms do when they think no one’s watching.”
Steve laughed softly, nervous and distracted, glancing at the clock again. Five twelve. His shift ended at six, and if he played his cards right, he could casually wait outside the studio when class ended—maybe talk to you, or at least see you up close.
And then it happened.
Mid-turn, mid-count, your eyes flicked to the side for just a second. The glass reflected lights, movement, people passing—but still, you saw him. The boy in the blue-and-white uniform pretending to be very busy serving ice cream.
Steve felt the hit straight to his chest and would’ve smiled like a lovesick schoolgirl if Robin hadn’t noticed and started laughing, pointing at him.
He immediately looked away, clearing his throat, fixing a cone that didn’t need fixing, yanking off the stupid sailor hat and tossing it at Robin just to make her stop.
“Oh, she saw you,” Robin whispered, amused. “She definitely caught you staring like a weirdo.”
“Shut up,” Steve said, though this time without much conviction, unconsciously fixing his hair.
“She saw you, Steve. And she didn’t make the ‘wow, the former popular guy now sells ice cream’ face. That’s a good sign.”
He swallowed.
“So what am I supposed to do with that?”
Robin shrugged.
“No idea, Harrington. You’re the expert with girls—not me.”
The studio kept pulsing with music, Steve’s eyes locked on the fogging glass. Boys stopped pretending to check their watches just to look at you, which made perfect sense to him.
[…]
At six o’clock sharp, Steve nearly sighed with relief, tossing the cleaning rag aside.
“Free,” he breathed, like he’d just run a marathon.
Robin watched him from the counter, that familiar knowing smile on her face.
“You leaving, or are you gonna spend another fifteen minutes pretending to clean just to see her again?”
Steve rolled his eyes, grabbing his mom’s bags.
“My shift’s over. No need to pretend when I can go do it directly,” he said smugly, already walking off with the plan he’d been building for the past hour.
He left Scoops Ahoy before Robin could add anything else, running a hand through his hair—messy enough to look effortless, neat enough to look intentional.
Hair mattered. A lot
He leaned against the wall outside the studio, holding his mom’s bags like he’d been there all along.
The music slowed. The mothers stretched, laughing, panting. You moved among them, correcting posture, lowering a shoulder here, adjusting a hip there, always patient.
Steve waited.
Not because he’d planned it meticulously—admitting that would mean admitting he cared too much—but he stayed, pretending to read a crooked electronics ad. The sailor hat was gone, but the uniform wasn’t.
He’d have to make it work.
The music stopped. The glass door opened. Mothers poured out, sweaty and cheerful.
Steve spotted his mom immediately, laughing with Mrs. Smith.
“See you at home, sweetheart,” she said, kissing his cheek and snatching the bags away. “Don’t be late.”
And just like that, she was gone.
Steve swallowed, resisting the urge to scream—his devoted-son act had completely fallen apart.
Then you stepped out.
Gym bag on your shoulder, water bottle in hand. Your hair was less styled now, damp strands clinging to your skin, making you dangerously attractive. Less poster, more real. More… sexy.
Steve straightened.
Now or never.
“Great workout,” he said smoothly, hands in his pockets, pushing off the wall.
You turned, surprised, then smiled when you recognized him.
“Thanks,” you said, brushing your hair back, eyes flicking over him. “Survive your shift?”
“Barely,” he smiled. “You’d be shocked how many sprinkles people ask for.”
You laughed—short, genuine—and Steve knew he’d passed the first test.
Everyone knew: make a girl laugh, and your chances skyrocket.
“I didn’t know you taught here,” he said, running a hand through his hair. “I mean, I knew you were a cheerleader, a great dancer and all—but this is different.”
“It is,” you nodded. “I like it. It’s temporary, but I really like it.”
“Temporary?” he asked.
“Yeah,” you laughed, adjusting your bag. “Just something to keep me busy over the summer.”
Steve nodded.
“I don’t think the studio’s gonna want to lose its best instructor once summer’s over.”
“Best instructor?” you raised an eyebrow, sipping your water. “That sounds dangerously like a compliment.”
He smiled, leaning into his well-practiced charm.
“It is.”
Your cheeks flushed, a soft giggle slipping out.
The silence that followed wasn’t awkward—just charged.
Steve noticed.
And used it.
“My mom adores you,” he added casually, though it was a calculated move. “She hasn’t stopped talking about the class.”
“Really?” you asked, surprised and proud.
“I swear,” he laughed. “She keeps mentioning the beautiful instructor—and now I get why.”
Your heart raced. You looked down, escaping his brown eyes. Steve Harrington was good at this. He knew it.
“Stop,” you said, embarrassed.
You walked toward the exit, Steve falling into step beside you, careful not to crowd your space. Neon lights reflected off the glass, bathing everything in pinks and blues.
“So,” you said, breaking the silence. “You working Scoops Ahoy all summer?”
“That’s the plan,” he chuckled. “Ice cream, ridiculous hat, sailor suit.”
“The hat’s mandatory?” you asked, biting your lip to keep from laughing.
“Unfortunately,” he sighed. “Part of the punishment.”
“Well, if it helps… you look pretty good in it.”
Steve knew then—he had a shot.
Outside, the heat lingered as the sky turned orange.
He stopped.
This was it.
“Hey…” he started, scratching his neck. “This might sound abrupt, but… would you go out with me Saturday?”
“What?” you asked, making sure you’d heard right.
“Saturday,” he repeated, more confident now. “No uniform, no hat. Just you and me.”
You raised an eyebrow, smiling.
“Is that a formal invitation, Harrington?”
“As formal as I get,” he grinned.
You laughed.
“So what does one do on a Saturday with Steve Harrington?”
“Depends,” he shrugged, pretending nonchalance while his eyes gave him away. “But it definitely starts with me picking you up for dinner. Maybe a walk through Starcourt when it’s quieter.”
You bit your lip, dramatic on purpose. Steve noticed—and forced himself not to grin too soon.
“Alright,” you finally said. “Saturday sounds good.”
Steve felt something like victory.
“Great,” he nodded once you reached your car. “Six thirty.”
“That early?” you asked.
“Well…” he sighed, leaning against your car. “I’ve got lost time to make up for—not talking to you in high school.”
Your cheeks burned again.
“So it’s a date.”
“It’s a date.”
The silence after was soft. Promising.
“See you Saturday,” you said, getting into your car.
Steve stepped back, smiling—waiting until you drove off before sprinting to his own car like a kid who’d just gotten a brand-new toy.
love will tear us apart (masterlist)
steve harrington x reader fanfiction | strangers to lovers | college! reader | damaged! (but soft) steve | 90s | upside down events didn’t happen | slow burn | angst | eventual smut | some fluff | secrets | emotional baggage | trauma | tension | mutual pining
c/w: detailed in each chapter. mainly tension. secrets. violence description. wounds description. alcohol consumption words: 79k summary: steve harrington arrives in the city carrying too many secrets for someone supposedly looking for a new beggining. between your friends' warnings, the pressure of your final semester and the ghosts you can barely outrun yourself, getting involved with him should be easy to avoid. turns out, it isn't. a/n: ongoing series. comment/reply to be added to the taglist. english is not my first lenguage + this is my first time sharing my work around here, so be patient with me !!
୨୧ teaser
୨୧ chapter one: another one bites the dust
୨୧ chapter two: you can't go on thinking nothing's wrong
୨୧ chapter three: every now and then i fall apart
୨୧ chapter four: i could drink a case of you
୨୧ chapter five: for nobody else gave me a thrill
୨୧ chapter six: everybody wants to rule the world
୨୧ chapter seven... (coming soon)
⋆⭒˚.⋆ likes, reblogs and comments are appreciated !! thank you for reading. ⋆⭒˚.⋆
⭑ AO3 ⭑
BIG, TOUGH DEPUTY
pairing: gator tillman x fem!sex worker!reader
summary: you've heard about him — the man who on the outside, seems unbreakable but turns into a mess under the covers. you never thought you'd spot him at a hotel bar. what begins as a fun way to tease a tillman turns into a strange alliance that could only be carved in lehigh. in exchange for payment for your services, you use your insider knowledge of the darkside of lehigh to help gator on a case. simple...right?
warnings/tags: 18+mdni, client to lovers?, smut, switch!gator, gator learning to not live up to his dad's expectations, angst, morally grey characters, sex work and related issues (discussions of sa, control and dub con), drugs and drug dealers, toxic love, stalking, misogyny and slut shaming, murder and cover up, violence
status: ongoing
taglist (comment on series masterlist to be added): @thesecretoftheswan, @aecd27 , @bells-bookshelf, @st4rg1rl88, @wolfiee10, @haydensheartt, @kristywidget97, @louisbelongstome28, @beth-mirrorball, @s3xytosomeone, @scaramou, @purplequeen64-stuff, @bluezzzzzz, @lacyiris, @deeplightblue, @steviaorsugar, @literal-tv-menace, @mysticbellie, @artismytherapy05, @bluegardenn, @pinkiepieshepardspie, @maaaachiii
⊹ ࣪ ˖𓂇⊹ ࣪ ˖ chapters
chapter one: big, tough deputy chapter two: playthings chapter three: walk of shame chapter four: blurred lines chapter five: knights and damsels chapter six: the hunt, the kill
speaking of self-indulgent reader inserts, i have no idea what the plot of this would be but i need to write steve x chicagoan!reader
reader inserts are always portrayed to be wide-eyed and oblivious to city life and i always just read it like lol that would never happen
prob steve and robin move to chicago and he meets reader but i have no idea what else would happen so feel free to send ideas if u guys have any
writing steve x "weird"!reader and it is so self indulgent i am so excited guys AAAAAAA it's so self indulgent but i'm the author i can do whatever i want
harringtonsdiary sleepover!
mean! steve | king steve| steve harrington x reader | smut | fake dating
warnings: a little blackmail, drinking, fake dating, steve lowkey high key a pervert ://, choking, oral sex f receiving, porn with little to no plot summary: steve has you fake date him so nancy will take him seriously words: 3.1k for u mary <3
The polaroid is a 3x3 inch piece of cardstock and it has ruined your entire autumn.
You were standing at your locker on a Tuesday morning trying to find your calc notes and realized with the specific, sinking horror of someone watching a car roll slowly into a ditch that you had put it in the wrong locker.
Jacob Weir's locker is number 142.
Steve Harrington's locker is number 141.
The polaroid was meant to go to Jacob Weir, a boy you were seeing occasionally. It wasn’t a nude, per say. But it was you on all fours at the edge of Lisa's pool, laughing at something off-frame, your bikini top doing an absolutely terrible job of containing anything, the way the wet fabric clung and the angle of the shot made the whole thing look approximately one thousand times more provocative than it had felt in the moment. Your tits practically the star of the picture. Your back arched. The late July sun catching the water on your skin.
Lisa had called it a good photo.
Lisa had been right, which was the problem.
You'd stood there doing the math for approximately four seconds before the parking lot after practice, and Steve Harrington leaning against the hood of your car with his arms crossed and his hair doing that thing and the polaroid held up between two fingers like a tiny, devastating flag.
You'd reached for it. He'd lifted it higher, eyebrows raised, mouth pulling into a smirk that you would like to formally describe as insufferable.
"Nuh-uh." His eyes had moved over you with an ease that made your back teeth press together. "Why don't we have a chat in your car."
It wasn't a question.
And now it's been a month, and you're arriving at Tina’s party as Steve Harrington's girlfriend, in a pink blouse and a baby blue skirt and a white belt you'd picked because the note he'd slipped in your locker said wear something cute and you'd decided immediately that you were going to do the opposite and then stood in front of your mirror for twenty minutes and put on the outfit anyway, which you are choosing not to examine.
The deal is simple. You play the part until Nancy Wheeler is convinced Steve can handle something real. He gives back the polaroid. You never speak of it again.
Simple.
.-.-.-.
Carol has her hands up Tommy's sleeves before you've cleared the driveway.
You watch her press a kiss to his cheek from the backseat, then another to the corner of his jaw, and you look out the window at the dark passing streets and remind yourself that you are here for the polaroid and the polaroid only.
Steve hasn't said a word since he picked you up.
You'd come outside and he'd looked at you— a long, sweeping once-over that started at your heels and ended at your face— and something had moved through his expression that you couldn't name before he looked away and told you to get in. His jaw has been set the entire ride. You can see it in the rearview mirror when you let yourself look, which you do, occasionally, because the alternative is watching Carol perform open-mouth kisses on Tommy's earlobe and you have your limits.
His eyes find yours in the mirror once.
You look away first. You don't think about the color of them.
The party is loud. Wall to wall bodies, something with too much bass shaking the floorboards, Beer. Cologne. Weed. You've been here enough times to know where the good drinks are, which rooms to avoid, and how long it takes before the ratio of drunk to sober tips past the point of no return.
Steve's hand finds your waist the moment you're through the door.
This is normal. This is part of it. You know the weight of his hand by now— the span of his palm, the way his fingers settle into the curve like they're finding something familiar— and you have told yourself on numerous occasions that your body's response to it is purely physiological and entirely involuntary and completely meaningless.
You are three drinks in and he still hasn't left your side.
This is not normal. This is not part of it.
Normally by now he's done a loop of the room looking for Nancy, and you've found someone adequately charming to lean against a wall with, and you reconvene by the door at the end of the night looking suitably couple-ish for anyone who might report back. That's the arrangement. That's what works.
Instead Steve Harrington is standing beside you with his jaw clenched and his cup gripped tight and his hand on your waist like it was bolted there, and every time someone comes too close his fingers tighten incrementally, and you have been watching this happen for forty minutes with the growing and uncomfortable suspicion that Nancy Wheeler has nothing to do with it.
You slip away when he gets cornered by someone from the basketball team.
.-.-.-.
There’s a bathroom upstairs, down a hall you've never been down before, past a door you're fairly certain is Tina’s parents' room and therefore firmly off limits. You slip inside anyway and turn the lock and stand over the sink with your hands braced on the porcelain and breathe.
The past two weeks have been strange.
Strange at school, strange at his games, strange at every party you've stood beside him at with his hand on your waist and his jaw set tight. He's been grouchier— shorter with Tommy, quieter in general, a low-grade irritability— but at the same time he's been closer. Always at your locker before you get there. Always finding you in a crowd before you've had the chance to find him. He'll pull you in and kiss you deep, the kind of kiss that takes a second to recover from, and then walk away with his brow furrowed like he's annoyed at himself for something.
You've told yourself it's Nancy. That she wasn't at the last party he invited her to. That the plan isn't working and he's frustrated and taking it out on the nearest available person, which happens to be you.
You've told yourself this enough times that you almost believe it.
Almost, except for the part where you don't know why it bothers you— the Nancy thing. The way his eyes move across a room sometimes, still searching. You notice it and something tightens in your chest and you look away and you don't examine it because there is nothing there worth examining.
Because here is the thing you have been carefully not saying out loud: you like it.
You like his hand on your waist even when no one is watching. You like catching him looking at your chest a beat too long, his eyes flicking up to yours, his jaw tightening like he's irritated with himself. You like the parties where he pulls you close and kisses you for an audience— pretending, completely pretending, putting on a show— his tongue licking into your mouth, his hand sliding from your waist up your ribs, his thumb brushing your tit before his whole hand closes over it like he forgot he was supposed to stop.
You have no idea how any of this is convincing Nancy Wheeler of anything.
You stopped trying to work out the logistics, because the truth is the perks of this arrangement have stopped feeling like perks and started feeling like something you'd miss. Like last Tuesday in the lunch line when he squeezed your ass and looked away immediately, pretending he hadn't. Like the note waiting in your locker at the end of that same day, his handwriting loose and unbothered across the paper:
nice jeans.
You'd stood at your locker holding it for longer than you'd like to admit.
You run cold water over your wrists and look at yourself in the mirror and give yourself a brief, stern talk about the nature of fake relationships and the importance of not reading into things, and you feel considerably better by the time you turn the tap off.
You open the door.
Steve is leaning against the wall across the hall, head tipped back, looking at the ceiling.
He hears the door and his eyes drop to you immediately. You watch them move— your shoes, your legs, the skirt, the blouse, back up to your face— and something in them shifts in the low light, darkens, the way his eyes have been doing for the past two weeks and that you have been studiously not thinking about.
He pushes off the wall.
He doesn't crowd you exactly. He moves into the hallway with the calm ease of someone who isn't worried about the outcome, and you take a step back, and then another, and then your back finds the wall and Steve Harrington is standing close enough that you can smell him— beer and cigarettes underneath his cologne, something warm and musky underneath that.
His lip twitches at the corner.
"Nancy show up yet," you ask. Your voice comes out steadier than you feel.
He licks his lips. Drags the bottom one inward, slow. Shakes his head. "Dunno." A beat. "Came to find you."
"Why?"
He doesn't answer that. His eyes drop to your blouse, back up. "I like your shirt," he says. "It's cute."
"Uh. Thanks—"
"Your skirt too." He reaches out and takes a small bit of the fabric between his fingers, rubbing it. "Super pretty."
"Steve."
The heat that crawls up your neck has no business being there. The warmth pooling low in your stomach has even less business being there. You think, with some desperation, fucking hell.
He puts one hand flat against the wall beside your head, tilting down until he's level with you, until you can see the faint thread of green in his irises that you have never been close enough to notice before, until his breath ghosts warm against your lips.
"I bet everything you're wearing is cute." His voice has gone low, a murmur, almost conversational, like he's observing the weather. "Hm?"
His free hand finds the hem of your skirt.
He moves slowly, watching your face the whole time, his eyes wide and searching, asking a question he won't say out loud. His brow is slightly furrowed. There's something almost careful in the way he does it— for all his swagger, for all the smirk he wears like a second jacket— and when you don't stop him, when you stay exactly where you are and say nothing, he lifts the skirt.
He tilts his head sideways. Leans to look.
The smirk that spreads across his face is slow and deeply, personally offensive.
"Would you look at that." He sounds genuinely pleased with himself. "I was right."
He hooks one finger into the waistband of your baby blue satin thong with a lace trim–– and snaps it back against your hip, light, and your breath catches on the way in and you hope very much that he doesn't notice. He puts your skirt back down. His hand finds your hip and he steps closer, hooking one finger at the front of your blouse, tugging it forward, his eyes dropping to take a long unhurried look at your tits.
"Damn." His tongue touches his upper lip. "Better than your little polaroid, honey."
What a pervert. The thought arrives sharp and immediate and accompanied by a heat in your face that makes a complete mockery of it. Who does he think he is. This isn't part of the deal. You have no right, Harrington, none.
“You are so sick, Harrington. Bet you get off looking at my polaroid, too.”
He laughs. Soft, low, like he can hear all of the other thoughts. His nose nudges yours, then the corner of your lips, then your cheek— not quite a kiss, something more patient than that, something that knows it doesn't have to rush— and you feel his eyelashes brush your temple.
"And what about it?"
Up close his eyes are downturned at the corners. Soft in a way that the smirk tries to hide. He looks a little drunk, maybe, but his gaze is steady on yours and there is something swimming in it that makes your heart do something inconvenient and embarrassing, the specific ache of what if he means it, what if it's you, what if it's been you rising uninvited through your chest.
His lips graze yours.
You close the distance.
The kiss goes molten immediately.
His hand leaves your blouse and finds your jaw instead, tilting you up, and yours grab the front of his shirt and pull, and the careful patience evaporates all at once into something urgent and graceless and honest. His mouth is hot and tastes like beer and he kisses the way you'd spent a month pretending you weren't thinking about— thorough and consuming, his tongue licking into your mouth slow at first and then deeper, a soft groan vibrating in his chest that you feel through your palms.
You make a sound against him. He swallows it.
His hands move— your waist, your hips, the backs of your thighs— and he hoists you up against the wall in one smooth motion, his hands gripping full and certain into the flesh of your ass, your legs finding his hips on instinct. The kiss goes sloppy and wetter, his mouth pulling at your bottom lip, releasing it with a sound, your fingers digging into his shoulders and then into his hair and pulling, a gasp torn out of him that he presses back into your mouth.
You feel him hard against you.
Your hips roll forward before you make a decision about it, grinding down, and his whole body tightens, a sharp inhale through his nose, his grip tightening on your ass.
His fingers find the waistband of your panties with both hands. He finds the weak point in the lace— a moment of searching— and pulls, the fabric giving with a snap, and he drops it somewhere on the hallway floor like it's nothing.
You pull back enough to get a hand on his jaw. Make him look at you. Your brows draw together. "Hey." Breathless. "That was my favorite thong."
Steve rolls his hips into you, slow, watching your face when he does it. His hand comes up to your throat— warm, loose, his palm broad against your pulse— and he tilts his head.
"Yeah?" His thumb strokes once across your jaw. "I'll buy you a new one. It's okay."
"What if it isn't?"
The words come out lower than you mean them to, your voice catching on the involuntary moan that rides underneath them as he rolls his hips again.
His fingers tighten at your throat, gentle. He can feel you swallow. "It will be," he says, "because I said so."
He kisses you again, slow and deep, his tongue moving against yours, his thumb stroking idle circles against your hip. Your hands are in his hair. His hands are everywhere, your thigh, your waist, pulling your blouse down at the neckline until your tits are spilling over the edge of your bra and his mouth leaves yours to press hot and open against them, his tongue tracing the lace, his lips closing around the skin there, and you grind against his cock in a slow rolling rhythm while his fingers finally slide between your bodies and find your clit.
"Steve—"
He looks up at you from your chest with dark eyes and says nothing and goes back to what he was doing.
The pressure builds in slow tightening waves, his fingers moving in patient unhurried circles while his mouth works across your chest, your throat, back to your jaw, and you are grinding against his hand and trying very hard not to say anything that you can't take back.
He lowers himself.
One knee, then both, his hands sliding down your thighs as he goes, guiding your legs over his shoulders with the ease of someone who has thought about how this would work. The skirt falls around his head. His hands grip the backs of your thighs to hold you up, and his mouth finds you and the sound you make would absolutely carry downstairs if you didn't get your hand to your mouth fast enough.
You bite down on your knuckles.
Your other hand fists in his hair through the fabric of your skirt.
He takes his time. That's the thing— the devastating, completely unfair thing— he takes his time with it, like he has nowhere else to be, like there isn't a party thirty feet below you, like your legs aren't already shaking around his shoulders. His mouth is warm and thorough and he makes sounds against you that transmit directly through your nervous system, and you feel the tension winding tighter and tighter, your knuckles white against your mouth, until it builds and snaps in a long rolling wave that you breathe through as quietly as you've ever done anything in your life.
He presses a soft kiss to your cunt afterward. Another to the inside of your thigh, gentle.
He sets you down.
You both stand in the hallway breathing. His hair is a disaster. Your blouse is crooked. You look at each other in the low light and the flush on his cheeks is high and dark and his lips are swollen and his eyes, when they find yours, are soft in the way you've been trying not to look at all night.
Your gaze drops.
The wet spot on the front of his jeans is visible even in the dim light of the hallway. Wet from you, or him, or both. You reach out and press your palm against it, slow, and watch his eyes fall shut, his hips bucking forward into your hand on instinct, a small oversensitive whimper escaping his mouth that he clearly did not plan to make.
You let the corner of your mouth pull up.
"I think," you say quietly, "you should tell Tommy and Carol to find a ride home."
He opens his eyes. And there he is— the other Steve, the one underneath the smirk and the swagger— looking at you with wide, dopey, wondering eyes like he can't quite believe you're standing in front of him.
"Why?"
You lean up until your lips are at the corner of his mouth.
"Because I said so."
You squeeze your hand.
His breath punches out of him. His forehead drops to your shoulder.
You smile at the wall over his back and say nothing and let him stand there for a moment, and think about how the polaroid is starting to feel like the least interesting part of this arrangement.
the faucet
Steve Harrington x female reader
NSFW/MDNI - three cheers for the return of handy!Steve!
wc: 5.7k
@splodencible, I hope this is okay! I’m not sure I stuck fully to the ask but the spirit of it is there, I think.
You couldn’t take much more. Two days of an endlessly leaking faucet had eaten into your week and taken a chunk out of your sanity besides. You’d tried fixing it yourself, but whatever you’d done had only made the dripping louder and faster, until you were half-convinced the noise was following you from room to room. The solution had, surprisingly, come from your workmate Max - who you’d called earlier in a state of desperation, expecting sympathy, but who had hung up and appeared at your door instead.
“You can’t just leave it,” she’d said, standing in your bathroom doorway with her arms crossed and her nose wrinkled at the sound of the dripping. Drip. Drip. Drip. Forty-eight hours of it had started to feel like a slow form of psychological warfare. “I know someone, actually. He does this. Handyman stuff.”
“You know a handyman?”
“Yeah, he… He’s more of a - he kind of fell into it.” She waved a hand. “He’s good, though. Reliable. He’ll fix it.” She pulled the phonebook off your counter, flipped it open, ran her finger down a column. “There. Harrington Handyman Services.”
She held the heavy book out. You took it.
HARRINGTON HANDYMAN SERVICES
No job too small. Faucets, fixtures, fitting, and more.
Hawkins and surrounding areas.
Call Steve: 555-0142
The ad had a cheerful, slightly crooked quality to it, like whoever made it had done it themselves on a budget. You liked that. You called.
It rang twice.
“Harrington Handyman, this is Steve.”
You opened your mouth and closed it again.
The voice was - well. It was a whole lot of voice. Low and easy, the kind that came with its own weight, like he had all the time in the world and was choosing to spend it on you. A little rough at the edges in a way that suggested it was probably even better first thing in the morning.
You swallowed, hard.
“Hello?” he said, and somehow that was worse.
“Hi,” you managed. “I have a - I need a - my faucet is dripping.”
You heard, rather than saw, the widening of Max’s eyes.
“Okay,” he said. Just that. Just okay, warm and understanding like you’d told him something genuinely interesting. “How long’s it been going?”
“Two days.”
A low whistle, almost sympathetic. “Yeah, that’ll drive you crazy. What’s the manufacturer, do you know? On the fixture.”
“I… no. It’s, um. Chrome. And round. Think it’s the original install.”
There was a pause that somehow did not feel like judgment. “That’s alright, I’ll figure it out when I get there. Are you in Hawkins?”
“Yes. On Maple. Number forty-two.”
“Perfect. I’ve got a job this morning but I can be there by two, two-thirty? Does that work?”
Two-thirty. You looked at your bathroom door. Forty-eight hours of dripping and the prospect of a couple more suddenly felt very manageable.
“That works,” you smiled. “That works great.”
“Great,” he said, and you could have sworn there was a smile in it. “See you then.”
He hung up.
You stood in your hallway holding the phone for probably fifteen seconds longer than was strictly necessary.
“Why didn’t you warn me about the voice?” You left the phone on the wall and stood in the living room doorway.
”What voice?” Max blinked up at you from the magazine she was busy pretending to read.
“Max. Come on.”
She bit her lip, trying and failing to hide the grin that threatened to explode across her face. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“Maxine.”
“He’s just a person. With a voice. Like most people.”
“It’s not a normal voice and you know it. I genuinely wasn’t sure if I’d called the right number.”
“What other number would you have… oh my god, did you think you’d called a sex line?!”
“I didn’t think anything. I just. It was unexpected. He sounds like…” You stopped, because there was no good way to finish that sentence that didn’t commit you to something embarrassing. “He sounds like a voice.”
“God, it’s just Steve. Jesus.”
“Steve the handyman. Coming to service my faucet.”
“Uh huh. That’s what we’re calling it.” Max was quiet for a moment. You could hear her trying not to laugh. “What time is he coming over?”
“Two-thirty.”
“Cool. I’ll wait.”
“You will not.”
She planted herself on your couch with no intention to move, and you knew you were stuck with her until Steve the handyman’s arrival.
****************
She was still on your couch with another magazine and a look of elaborate innocence by the time the knock came at the door. You pointed at her and told her to stay quiet. She mimed locking her mouth and winked over the top of the magazine.
You opened the door.
And.
Well.
The voice, it turned out, had come attached to a person who had clearly been assembled with more than his fair share of the best parts in the man factory. He was tall, broad shouldered, and toned without being overly muscular. He was holding a red toolbox in one hand and had the other tucked in the pocket of his too-tight jeans, and he was looking at you with dark hazel eyes and a slight squint like the afternoon sun was in them. He had the kind of hair that looked like it had started the day with some intention and then given up, and he was - he was just standing there on your door step, like this was a normal thing, like people looked like this while holding toolboxes in Hawkins, Indiana on a random Thursday afternoon.
“Hey,” he said. The voice, in person. “You called about a dripping faucet?”
Behind you, you heard the extremely unsubtle sound of Max laughing into a cushion.
“Yes, yeah, hi,” you said, more flustered than you’d like. “Come in.”
He came in. He saw Max and his whole face shifted into something warmer and more familiar. “Mayfield. What are you doing here?”
“Moral support,” she grinned back at him.
“For the faucet?”
“No. Her.”
He looked at you, then back at Max, visibly uncertain whether he’d missed something. “Okay,” he said, and accepted this, and looked at you again. “Bathroom?”
“Down the hall,” you said.
He followed you. Max did not follow, but you felt her watching, and you knew for certain that she was grinning.
****************
He crouched in front of the sink, set his toolbox down, and got to work with the immediate, focused competence of someone who had done this several hundred times. His hands were big, but they worked delicately. He turned the faucet, listened to it, turned it back.
“Washer,” he said over his shoulder. “Easy fix.” He glanced up at you. “Ten minutes, maybe.”
You were leaning against the doorframe. You were doing this casually, you felt, with a completely normal amount of leaning. “Great.”
He opened the toolbox and started raking through the insides. “Have you lived here long? On Maple?”
You were staring at his hands as they searched through the tools. “Almost two years.”
“Maple’s a nice street.” He found what he was looking for, and turned back to the sink. “I grew up a few blocks over. Loch Nora.”
“Oh.” You knew leafy Loch Nora. Everyone did, at least by reputation; big houses set back from the road, the kind with circular driveways and sprinkler systems on timers. “Real nice over there.”
“Eh, it was alright.” He said it without weight, just factual, like he’d made his peace with it some time ago. He’d unscrewed something and was peering into the fixture now, and you watched his hands work without meaning to. They were careful hands, despite their size. He had a small scar across the back of his right one that you found yourself wondering about before you caught yourself doing it.
“Do you work in town?”
“Yeah, at the library. I used to commute in from Hartford City, before I found this place.”
He looked up at that. Not the quick, polite glance he’d been giving you, but an actual look, like you’d said something that caught him off guard in a way he didn’t mind. “No kidding. You’ve been in the library this whole time.”
“Yeah, for a little while now. Good way to get to know a town.” You leaned a little further into the doorframe, and shifted your weight. “I haven’t seen you in there, though.”
He made a small sound, somewhere between a laugh and an acknowledgment, then turned back to the sink. “I’ve been working through the same novel since nineteen ninety-one.”
“From the library?”
He rubbed the back of his neck. “Technically…”
You did the math. “Two years of late fees. That’s going to be… wow.”
“Oh, for sure, probably why I haven’t brought it back in.” He didn’t sound especially worried about it. He was doing something to the fixture with a focus that should not have been as interesting to watch as it was.
“Put in a good word for me?” he said, after a moment. He glanced back at you over his shoulder, and there was something in it - not quite a smile, just the suggestion of one, easy and familiar the same way everything about him seemed to be.
You considered the faucet. The two days. The dripping.
“Get that thing to stop,” you said, “and I’ll wipe your record completely.”
The suggestion of a smile became an actual one. He turned back to the sink.
“Deal,” he said, and went back to work.
It was unfair, you thought, watching his hands move. It was genuinely unfair that he could just… exist, like this. Crouched on your bathroom floor fixing a faucet and making easy conversation and looking like that, apparently completely unaware of any of it. Just a man with a set of skills doing a job. It was making you feel slightly insane.
He replaced the washer. He reassembled the faucet. He turned the water back on, watched it run, and watched it not drip once he’d turned it off again.
“There you go,” he said, and stood up, and he was tall and perfect-haired again, right there in your small bathroom, and he was close enough that you got the full effect of him - warm and solid and smelling faintly like sawdust and something else underneath that, something that had no business being in a handyman context.
It made your mouth water.
“Thank you,” you said. You sounded normal. You were fairly sure you sounded normal.
“No problem.” He picked up the toolbox. “Should hold fine now. If it starts again within the month, call me back and I won’t charge you.”
“That’s a good policy.”
“I’ve had it come back and bite me before.” He said it ruefully, the ghost of some earlier, more harried version of himself in the words. “Better to just -” He shrugged. “Do it right.”
****************
He followed you back down the hall. Max was still on the couch, concentrating hard on the magazine and definitely not watching the two of you at all.
At the door, you paid him - cash, he’d said on the phone, or check - and he folded the bills into his back pocket with the ease of someone who did this every day.
“Thanks for calling,” he smiled at you from the door step.
“Thanks for coming,” you said.
He was already half-turned when something made him stop. He looked back at you, and there was something different in it now, something that hadn’t quite been there before, or had been there and you’d misread it.
“You free on Saturday?” he asked, squinting into the sun again.
You blinked. “Sorry?”
“There’s a diner on the road near Marion that just opened. It’s supposed to be good.” He said it steadily, like he’d been thinking about it for slightly longer than the last five seconds. “I figured I’d ask, maybe you’d want to come?”
Behind you, noisily, Max turned a page.
You looked at Steve Harrington, standing in your doorway with his toolbox and his voice and his complete, total obliviousness to the minor lust-fuelled crisis he’d caused in your bathroom for the last twenty minutes.
“Y-yeah,” you croaked through your suddenly dry throat. “I’m free. On Saturday.”
The smile came back, different this time, a little less easy. More like it meant something.
“Great. I’ll call you,” he said.
“You’ve got my number?”
“Caller ID on the business line. It helps.”
“It helps with business, or with dates?”
His grin was infectious. “Both, now.”
He went down the path to his truck, and waved once he got there. You closed the door before you could say anything else.
“You knew,” you said, a finger pointed in Max’s direction.
She was lazing sideways on your couch with her legs over the armrest, the picture of someone who had absolutely nothing to hide. The grin she was failing to suppress suggested otherwise. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“The voice, Max. You knew about the voice. You knew how I’d… react.”
“God, he’s just Steve.”
“Max -”
“He literally is. That’s the whole thing about him. He’s just Steve.” She said it like this settled the matter, like just Steve was a reasonable descriptor for whatever had just happened in your house that afternoon.
You stared at her. She inspected her thumbnail.
“How have you two never met, actually?” she said, after a moment, tilting her head. “You’ve been in Hawkins for two years? He grew up here. How is that even possible? How can you live in Hawkins and not know Steve? It makes no sense.”
“I don’t know, it just -”
“Are you sure? You’re absolutely sure you never crossed paths, not even once?”
“Believe me, I’d remember if I’d seen that ass before.”
Max pointed at you. “Don’t be gross. He’s like my pseudo big brother or something.”
“I’m not being gross, I’m being honest.”
“There’s overlap.” She swung her legs off the couch and sat up properly, and now she was grinning properly too, not even trying to hide it anymore. “So. Saturday. You have a date.”
You put your face in your hands.
****************
On Saturday morning, he called you at ten.
“Hey,” he said. “It’s Steve.”
“I know,” you said, which was true and also slightly more than you’d meant to give away. “Hi, Steve.”
The silence stretched, just a little. Not awkward. Just enough to mean something.
When he spoke again the smile was back in his voice, and this time you knew exactly what it looked like. “Can I pick you up at seven?”
You had been standing in your kitchen in your pyjamas eating toast. You were now somehow very aware of that fact, like he could see you through the phone line, like the voice alone was enough to make you feel slightly caught out.
“Seven works,” you said, voice squeaking slightly.
“Good - great, I mean. See you tonight.”
“See you tonight.”
The line clicked. You stood there a moment with the handset against your collarbone, looking at nothing in particular, and thought about the fact that you had eight hours to do something about your hair.
Then you called Max.
****************
The diner on Route 15 was small and warm and smelled like coffee and pie. Steve held the door. He asked what you liked to eat and really listened when you told him. He told you about the job he’d gone to after yours on Thursday - a furnace situation on the east side that turned out to be something much simpler than anyone expected - and he told it with a dry, almost self-deprecating sense of humour that made you laugh twice before the food even came.
He was, you realised - somewhere between the cheese sticks you’d shared and the burgers the waitress had brought out after - surprisingly easy to be with. The voice made more sense in person, made sense as part of someone who’d learned not to rush things, who’d maybe had a chapter or two before this one that had taught him the value of slowing down. There were edges to him you could sense without being able to see, things you didn’t know yet. None of them made you want to pull back.
He walked you to your door a little before eleven.
He stood close, closer than strictly necessary, and he was looking at you the way he’d looked at the faucet - careful and attentive, like he’d figured something out and was deciding what to do with the information.
“You good?” he asked. You caught the way the tip of his tongue flicked over his bottom lip.
“Very,” you answered.
He kissed you, and it was nothing like the easy, laid back manner he’d had all evening - or maybe it was exactly that, just turned toward something different. His hand found the side of your face, tilted it up, and he took his time with it the way he seemed to take his time with everything, slow and thorough, like he was fixing something and wanted to do it right.
And, did he ever kiss you right.
When he finally pulled back you were holding the lapels of his denim jacket without entirely remembering deciding to do that.
“D’you want to come in?” you asked.
He looked at you for a moment, then nodded. “Yeah. Yeah, I do.”
****************
He was, it turned out, exactly as competent at everything else as he was at fixing faucets.
He took his time with the jackets first, yours and then his, like there was no reason to rush any of it, like the night was long and he’d already decided how he wanted to spend it. It should have felt presumptuous, but with him it didn’t. It felt like the most natural thing in the world, the way everything with him seemed to.
His hands were the same as they’d been in the bathroom - certain, delicate - except now they were at your waist, your shoulders, the small of your back, exploring over your clothes with a quiet, focused attention that made your brain go briefly and completely blank.
“You’re staring,” he grinned, before leaning in to press his mouth to your collarbone.
“You’re right here, looking like…” you tried, gesturing over his body with your hands. “What else am I supposed to do?”
That earned you the smile. Not the easy one, not the professional one. The other one, the one that had appeared at your doorstep when you’d said yes to Saturday, except closer now and considerably more dangerous at this range.
He kissed your lips again, slower this time, one hand cradling the back of your head, fingers lost in your hair, and you stopped being clever about anything for a while after that.
You led him upstairs to your bedroom, and he was thorough about it. About all of it. You divested him of his clothes and guided him to lay back on your bed and he settled himself in the middle like he’d been there before. You undressed for him, took your time with it, slipped the light cotton dress you’d agonised over at your wardrobe that afternoon off your shoulders and down until it fell, pooling at your feet. He watched your every move, lower lip caught between his teeth when your bra joined your dress on the floor and your hands cupped your breasts, pressing them together, pinching your nipples between your fingers.
You watched him palm himself through his boxers as your thumbs hooked into the elastic of your underwear, pushing the scrap of lace over your hips and down to your thighs before it fell to your feet.
“Jesus, honey…”, he almost whined as you crawled up his legs, settling on his thighs and resting your hand over his, squeezing around his fingers to feel the thick ridge of his cock hidden beneath the blue cotton boxers.
“Patience,” you murmured, stroking your hand over him, pressing your fingertips into the damp spot forming.
He looked up at you through his lashes. “Easy for you to say.”
You smiled at him, and watched something shift in his expression - that careful attentiveness tipping into something with considerably more heat behind it. His hands found your hips, steadying, not pushing, just holding you there like you were something worth keeping still for a moment.
You leaned down and kissed him, and he made a low groan against your mouth that you felt in your core.
He rolled you over with an easy certainty, got an arm under you, settled his weight and then just… looked at you. Taking his time about it. You were beginning to think it was the thing he was best at, this easygoing quality, this absolute refusal to be rushed, and under the circumstances it was making you feel slightly desperate.
“Steve,” you whispered, pawing at his chest, drawing one leg up beside him.
“Yeah,” he said, like he already knew.
He hooked a hand under your knee and pulled it higher, opening you to him, and ground himself against you. Even through the fabric of his boxers you could feel the heat of him, the thick press of him that left you gasping.
“What do you need? C’mon, you can tell me…”. He drew back, just enough to look at you, his thumb stroking your thigh.
You slid a hand between your bodies, your fingertips brushing the elastic at his waist. “I need these to go.”
He grinned down at you, and shook his head gently. “What was it you said… ‘patience’, right?”
“That was… that was different,” you said.
“Was it?” He pressed his mouth to your jaw, your throat, and down, slow and teasing, like he had all the time in the world and your lack of patience was not his problem. You felt him smile against your skin. “Seems pretty similar from where I’m standing.”
“You’re not standing.”
“Figure of speech.”
You made a sound that was not entirely dignified. His mouth had found your nipple and was doing something that made it very difficult to form a counterargument. He sucked it into hardness, brushed his lips over the peak, and laved his tongue against it, peppering kisses around the swell of your breast before returning to suck and kiss at your nipple.
“Steve…”
“Mm?”
“I will never call you for a plumbing emergency again.”
He pulled back from your breast, reluctantly, and laughed. Then he pushed himself up on one hand and looked down at you, and the laugh faded into something quieter. He brushed your hair back from your face with his free hand, just once, just gently, and the tenderness of it caught you off guard after everything else.
“Yeah, you will.”
He kissed you once more, soft, and then he sat back on his heels and hooked his thumbs into the waistband of his boxers and took care of that particular problem, holding your gaze while he did it like he wanted to see your face. You swallowed.
He was - well. The voice had been a reasonable preview of the rest of him, as it turned out. All of him, long and deliciously thick, the head flushed a rosy pink, the slit glistening already.
He settled back over you, relaxed as ever, and whatever clever thing you’d been about to say next went completely out of your head.
He took his time, even then, adjusting your legs until you were spread open beneath him and he looked, his gaze lingering like he was drinking in the sight of you. His fingertips grazed over your inner thigh, teasing until he pressed the flat of his hand against your pussy. He held it there for a moment, feeling the warmth of you, before his thumb moved through your folds, gathering your arousal from your hole then moving up to circle it around your clit before he brought his thumb to his mouth and sucked it clean.
He shut his eyes and moaned.
“Okay… okay, gonna need a little more…”, was the only warning you got before he moved, arms slipping under your thighs and his face diving into your cunt. He lapped at you, dragging the tip of his tongue through your folds just like he’d done with his thumb, flicking over and over your clit until you gasped and arched against him. He pulled you tighter to him, his hands at your hips, one reaching around to press against your stomach, holding you in place. He flattened his tongue and dragged it over you, lapping up your slick arousal before it had a chance to leave your body, moaning into you as you bucked against his face. He took your lips between his, sucking on each one gently, before his tongue delved inside for more. His thumb returned, circling and pressing and flicking, finding the rhythm that made you press yourself into him.
He took his time, and then some.
”Steve… Steve…”, you keened, your climax rushing and rapid, ready to consume you.
He lifted his glistening face and replaced his tongue with two fingers, then three, plunging and pressing into you, the noise slick and sloppy while his thumb teased the hood of your clit, drawing it back before he quickened his thumb over it, making you cry out.
You were close, right on the edge, clenching around his fingers as he pressed deep inside.
“Come on, beautiful, you’re so close I can feel it…”. He lifted his gaze from his working hands to your flushed face and flashed a bright, enraptured smile. “Wanna feel you.”
That was all you needed. You felt every muscle contract and release as your pleasure crested, your head tipped back into the pillows while Steve worked you through your orgasm. You caught the tone of his voice, but not the words he was saying, just the sound of him enough to leave you reeling. You clenched your legs around his hands as you came down, holding him in place but effectively ceasing his movements, the overstimulation of it almost too much to bear. Slowly, he leaned back and withdrew his hands from you, and once again licked his fingers clean.
“God, you’re too much…”, you whispered, wrecked, reaching for him.
“Need me to stop? We can stop.” He looked so serious suddenly, even as you pulled on his wrist to draw him down to you.
You shook your head, and laced your fingers with his. “Don’t you dare.”
You reached over to your nightstand, pulling open the drawer, and grasped until you found one of the small foil packets from the box you’d bought on a whim the month before. You were careful, opening it slowly, pinching the tip and rolling it onto him, letting him adjust the condom until it was comfortable. He kissed you again, warm and eager, bracing himself on his forearm as he held himself against you.
“C’mon, Steve. I’m done being patient,” you whispered.
A smile illuminated his face. “God, I’m so glad you said that.”
The patience and restraint he’d demonstrated all evening fell away in a flash. He surged forward, pressing himself into you until his hips were flush with yours, until there was no further he could go. It burned, bright and hot and delicious, and you both sighed as your bodies adjusted to each other. He held himself in place for a moment, giving you the grace to adjust to his more than sizable intrusion, before he drew his cock back again. He snapped his hips forward, again, and back, again, finding a brisk deep rhythm that left you clinging to his broad shoulders.
He was everywhere.
Inside you, above you, his breath against your skin and beads of sweat falling from his brow to yours. He sighed your name as you tightened your legs around his waist and tilted your hips, dragged your nails down the muscular expanse of his back. He kept moving until a whim took him and he rolled onto his back, taking you with him, stretching his body out below you as you rode him, more than matching the pace he’d set. His thumb found your sensitive clit again and you gasped out his name, his other hand reaching up to tease a nipple.
“Gonna come for me again, huh?” he grunted, brow furrowing as he snapped his hips up to meet yours.
You nodded, it was all you could do, your heartbeat thundering in your chest, your throat tight, the pleasure overwhelming you.
“Wanna… wanna feel you, Steve, wanna feel you come too…”
He hissed out a jesus, fuck as you rolled your hips against him and arched your back. You lifted yourself up and he grasped your hips, holding you in place as he looked down at you, the tip of his cock still inside. “Christ, you’re making a mess of me, I love it…”.
You chanced a glance down and caught the ring of white at the base of his cock, soaking into the thick thatch of hair there, and you whimpered, more turned on than you’d ever felt. He pulled you back down onto him and rolled you both onto your sides and the change in angle, in depth, in pace, made the breath catch in your throat. He hoisted your leg high against his side, his weight resting on his forearm as he leaned up, guiding himself deeper and deeper into you, slower now. He rocked into you over and over, barely pulling out, then rolled you onto your back again.
“I’m… m’not gonna last long”, he sighed, forehead against yours.
“That’s okay… that’s okay, wanna feel you…”
“Yeah?”
You nodded against him, and hummed in approval as you caught his lips with yours.
He settled down on his forearms, his hands at your face, thumbs grazing over your cheekbones as he quickened his pace again. He was relentless, snapping his hips hard and fast, your headboard hitting the wall with each rough thrust in. Your second orgasm snuck up on you in a sudden explosion, colours bursting behind your eyes as you squeezed them shut, gasping and arching up into him as wave upon wave of pleasure tore through you. You turned your head, just enough to kiss his wrist, and his thumb hooked in between your lips. You sucked, nipping your teeth against him, and that was enough to send him over the edge. He cried out your name with a rough, ragged moan, pushing his hips as hard as he could into yours, his whole body pulled tight as his cock twitched and pulsed inside you, spilling his release into the condom.
“Fuck… fuck… holy…”. The words spilled from his lips, the breath held in his chest, and only with his eventual exhale did he relax against you. He adjusted himself enough to lay his head on your chest, and you wrapped your arms around his shoulders, holding him in place. His scattered kisses over your breasts, teasing each nipple in turn until you squirmed beneath him, giggling at the sensation.
He said your name once, later, low and a little rough, like something he’d been holding onto since before he’d had reason to. You felt it more than heard it. Thought, somewhere in the back of your mind that was still capable of thought, that you owed Max a very serious apology for every time you’d rolled your eyes when she’d called him just Steve.
There was nothing just about any of this.
“Hey,” he murmured, eventually, lifting his heavy head enough to meet your eyes.
“Hey,” you said, offering him a shy smile.
His hand found yours, and held on, like there was nowhere else it needed to be.
“Can I ask you something?” you whispered, stroking your thumb over the back of his hand, following the scar you’d spotted on Thursday.
“Mm.”
“How long have you known Max?”
“Since high school. Why?”
“Did she call you before I did?”
He grinned, and dropped his forehead to your chest.
“She might have mentioned someone on Maple had a dripping faucet,” he said, carefully.
You lifted your head and looked down at him, tugging his hair until he looked up at you. He had the expression of a man who had just realised he’d said slightly more than he intended to.
“She set us up,” you stated, plainly.
“She… I mean, she said you might need help with something. I was in the area.” He seemed to be choosing his words. “I didn’t know it was going to - I wasn’t expecting anything like this. This isn’t what we do, just to be clear. I don’t ask her to scout out potential… dates, for me.” He looked at you, and the careful expression gave way to something more honest. “You opened the door and I thought, okay, Max was right.”
“Right about what?”
He smiled, slow and a little rueful. “That I should ask you out.”
You looked at him for a long moment. Then you let go of his hair, and wrapped your arms around his shoulders again, and held him close.
Downstairs, the faucet was silent. Fixed right, just like he’d promised. You watched him get up to dispose of the condom, then he came back to bed, and his head found your chest once more.
“Is this okay?”, he half-whispered, voice suddenly heavy with fatigue.
“This is very okay, Steve.” You scratched your nails against his scalp and felt him press into your touch in response.
You were going to have to do something very nice for Max. Or possibly something very annoying, depending on how you decided to play it.
You fell asleep thinking about which.
What are you working on for the Stobin x Reader fic? I’m obsessed with the snippets you’ve been posting!
platonic!stobin x fem!reader (18+, MDNI) okay okay nobody judge me. @snoopyracing is the one who outlined it, i just woke up, saw it, and said "hold my beer." also incredibly unedited bc if i read through it again i will spontaneously combust cw: degradation (but, like, loving?), d/s elements, oral (f receiving), tit play, rough sex, semi-public sex (in a bathroom at someone's house party), bi/queer!reader, one instance of pussy spanking, reader has pullable hair but that's the extent of the description, creampie wc: 2k || divider by @/saradika-graphics || main masterlist
You don’t actually know the name of the guy you’re dancing with, just that he’s tall and mildly attractive and brought you a new drink when your cup ran dry. The bass from the speakers makes the floor vibrate as his hands settle on your hips, spinning you around as he leans in close to your ear, “You look very pretty tonight.”
You glance down at the outfit that Robin and Steve picked out — a flimsy skirt, an even flimsier top with thin straps that does nothing to hide your peaking nipples — and smile. Because even if Robin has long since disappeared and Steve was more interested in catching up with some guy he was on the basketball team with, at least someone appreciates how nice you look.
(And can you blame yourself? Neither Steve nor Robin told you that you looked pretty when they grabbed you from your apartment.)
“Thank you,” you say with a big smile, tracing your hand down the guy’s polo. “You look pretty nice yourself.”
He grins like you just said the funniest thing. “Yeah?”
“I mean, this color looks great on you,” you say, nodding emphatically. Tracing your palm down to his bicep, you add, “And, like, hugs you in all the right places.”
“Yeah, well,” the guy says, his hand on your waist coming up to just under your tit. “Can’t say that this top isn’t doing anything for me either.”
You hum appreciatively, casting your gaze across the crowd to see if Steve or Robin are paying attention. Because as much fun as it is flirting, you don’t actually want the guy’s hand cupping your tit through your shirt — not when Steve’s been tweaking your nipples all evening, even going so far as to pull you into a room for a minute to mouth at your breasts before sending you back out with the top clinging to your spit soaked chest. Not when there’s two people here who you’d much rather have playing with you.
But—
You don’t see them.
Steve’s not in the corner he was in just minutes prior, and Robin — well, you haven’t seen her in nearly an hour, anyway, but you’ve gone to enough of these parties to know that one of them is always keeping an eye on you.
(And not because they don’t trust you, but they’re not exactly stupid about the reality of sending you into a crowd wearing next to nothing.)
Your head swivels, the guy in front of you completely forgotten as you search for your friends, panic beginning to bubble in your alcohol soaked stomach, because you actually don’t want this guy to be flirting with you, not if you have the option for something better, not if—
“Hey, babe!”
You sag with relief when the sound of Robin’s voice precedes her lithe hand smoothing across your back, her fingers digging into your waist as she not-so-subtly pulls you from the guy.
“I was going to head to the bathroom real quick — walk with me?”
You glance up at Robin through your lashes and nod, not sparing the guy a backwards glance as she drags you through the party, parting the crowd like the Red Sea and manhandling you up the stairs.
A shiver runs up your spine when she leans in real close and whispers, “That was really stupid of you, babe.”
You stumble, barely catching yourself on the rail, and look back to see a heated expression in her eyes. “What was stupid?” you ask innocently.
Her fingers tightening on your waist is the only response you get.
She throws open a door to your left and shoves you in, and you’re entirely unsurprised to find Steve leaning against the wall of a bathroom with his arms crossed and a stern furrow to his brows, but you don’t even have time to pout (or worse, beg for forgiveness) before the door is slammed shut and Robin’s spinning you around, pushing you up onto the counter next to the sink as her lips press into yours.
You think into the kiss immediately, intoxicated by the taste of her vanilla chapstick as you bring your hands up to her face, desperate to keep her there as long as possible. But because it’s Robin, she clearly has other plans, which are only made all the more evident when your legs are parted and the little skirt she’d pressed into your hands just hours prior get flipped up.
Steve makes a discontented sound when the cool air hits your bare pussy.
Robin pulls back, glancing down as she gathers your wetness on the tip of her fingers, letting out a harsh noise as she asks, “Can’t stop yourself from being a little slut, huh? Get some drinks in you and you’ll throw yourself at anything that gives you attention? Flirting with that asshole knowing that you didn’t have any panties on… and it made you so wet, huh, baby? Did it make you wet knowing that you were being a bad girl?”
You nod dumbly, suddenly dizzy with need when she circles your aching clit, and Steve winds his hand through your hair, tilting your head back to look at him when he demands, “Did we or did we not tell you to stop letting your dumb little pussy do the thinking for you?”
“You did,” you breathe out with a sigh, Robin’s fingers slipping inside your entrance.
“And did you listen?” Steve continues.
You shake your head, and his grip tightens — a warning, because you know he needs a verbal response — and you force out, “No, Steve. I didn’t listen.”
A nip on your thigh draws your attention down as Robin hovers close to your weeping pussy.
“Looks like you need another lesson,” she says, twisting her fingers until your hips are jerking off the counter, a whine spilling from your lips. “Since it didn’t stick the first time.”
You don’t have time to process her lowering her mouth to your clit before Steve’s yanking your stop down, letting your tits pour out into the cold air. His lips descend to one nipple — cruelly as his teeth scrape against the sensitive bud — as he pinches your other one between two big fingers, teasing and rolling and tugging like they aren’t already sore from his earlier ministrations. A choked moan is forced from your chest when he sucks your breast further into his mouth, pulling back and releasing it with a wet pop before doing the same to your other breast.
And Robin, clearly, isn’t happy that he’s distracting you from her when she flicks her tongue over your clit, and Steve has the foresight to slap a hand over your mouth before you’re too loud as a pathetic whine is pulled from your lungs. She sighs into your pussy, pressing down until her nose is nudging your clit, her tongue dipping inside and gathering the wetness there before pulling back, making a show of how much you’re gushing around her before diving back in with reckless abandon, not bothering to be quiet as she tongue fucks your sensitive pussy, rubbing your clit with a rough thumb in a way that you protest even if all three of you know that you love it when they’re mean to you.
Between that, and Robin’s mouth, and Steve sucking bruises into the sensitive skin of your breasts, it doesn’t take long for your orgasm to overwhelm you, coming out in muffled, choked cries as you shake and shake and shake against their combined hold, burying your face into Steve’s neck as Robin holds your core even tighter to your face, lapping up every last drop until your whines finally quiet.
With one last kiss given to your clit, she releases your pussy, her fingers coming up to spread your wetness across your cheek as she pulls you from Steve, standing up to hungrily press her mouth to yours, her tongue entering as you gasp. The taste of yourself on her lips is intoxicating and she’s not shy about making sure you get the full experience, teasing her tongue against yours until you’ve swallowed every last drop, tears springing in the corner of your eyes when she pulls away.
You whine, chasing her lips, greedy with the need for more, but she only delivers one, quick, harsh slap to your pussy — smiling when you jolt — before stepping away, asking, “Did you think I was going to be the only one punishing you?”
“What?” you ask, dizzy and dumb from your orgasm.
She doesn’t answer, though, and the next thing you know, Steve’s strong hands are pulling you from the counter and spinning you around, smoothing up your spine until you’re bent over. Your mouth drops open in a silent oh as he pushes your skirt up, and your legs clench together at the sound of his belt coming undone.
“Steve,” you whine, blinking your wet lashes up at him through the mirror. “Please.”
“Please what, baby?” he coos, nudging your ankles further apart.“What do you want?”
“Sensitive,” you say, shuddering when he drags the fat tip of his cock through your folds. “’s too much.”
The two of you know that’s a lie, and Robin snickers from her place against the wall.
“It’s too much?” he repeats, mocking. His blunt head breaches your opening and you let out a loud moan. “Well, it wouldn’t be a punishment if it weren’t too much, baby. Now be a good girl and let me use your tight pussy.”
He slams all the way in with one, quick thrust, and you let out a loud sob as the pleasure begins to build, feeling so, sofucked out already, every coherent thought slipping from your head as you grip the counter at the brutal pace he sets.
You press your forehead against the cold formica, spit dribbling from your mouth as quiet, oh, oh, oh’s leave your lips, but Steve clearly isn’t pleased with this outcome. He fists your hair and pulls you up until your chest is pushed out, wrapping a thick arm around your neck to keep you in place as he grunts out, “Look at how wrecked you are already, baby. Look at how well you’re taking my cock, how your pussy was made for me. Watch how I punish my dirty little slut.”
“Please,” you moan, fucked out and incoherent as he continues to thrust up into you, his hips slapping against your ass.
“You like that?” he gasps, his teeth grazing the shell of your ear. “You like it when I use you like this?”
You nod, and his arm tightens on your neck.
“Words,” he reminds you.
“Love it,” you gasp out. “Don’t stop, please.”
He huffs out a laugh, and you completely lose yourself in the rhythm of his thrusts, pleasure washing you away as he bullies his cock in and out of you. At one point, his other hand drops down to your core, two fingers running tight circles over your clit and you squeal, jerking in his grasp but he only holds you tighter, practically lifting you from the ground to keep his pace.
“You gonna take it?” he grunts, hooking a hand under your knee and pulling it up. “You gonna let me come in your pussy? Feel me dripping out on our way home?”
A choked whine leaves you as you nod, crying, “Please, please. Need it, Steve.”
“Need what?”
“Need your cum,” you moan, head tilting back onto his shoulder. “Need you to cum in me.”
He grins at you in the mirror and pulls you into a rough kiss, his hips stuttering, warmth spilling inside as he cums, and he gives a few, weak thrusts before he pulls out entirely. You can already feel him dripping out as you sag against his hold, fucked and worn out but feeling so, so good.
Robin’s the first one to move, coming around to your front and righting your shirt with gentle hands, stroking her hand across your face when she asks, “You alright?”
You nod, humming, your eyes slipping closed.
Steve’s chest rumbles with silent laughter.
Together, the two of them fix your clothes and smooth down your hair, Steve throwing his jacket over your shoulders and zipping it up, Robin’s hand soft in yours as she guides you down the stairs, your thighs wet from Steve’s release as they usher you into the backseat of the Beamer.
And you know, drifting off with your head in Robin’s lap, that there’s nowhere else you’d rather be.
i miss u joe keery and chase sui wonders. that was mom and dad…
would the lovely ppl of the internet like to send me stobin x reader requests/ideas? 😸😸 i wanna write abt them so bad pls…..
it would be robin x reader x steve obvi
Those Days Are Over (Don’t Worry, Baby) — Steve Harrington (1)
pairing — ex!steve harrington x fem!reader
word count — 17.1k
summary — Four years ago, Steve Harrington had chosen his future and it wasn’t you. You’d chose to leave Hawkins entirely and that worked out fine until it didn’t. Now you’re sleeping in your sister’s guest room and picking up your nephew from baseball practice where Steve Harrington is teaching kids how to slide into home. Some things, it turns out, you can’t outrun.
warnings — high school sweethearts gone wrong, rekindling, reader and her sister have a 10 year age gap, small town romance, implied past emotional cheating on reader by steve, no demogorgons or veca or anything supernatural but there are still mentioned dynamics canon to the show, hurt/comfort, miscommunication, jealousy, referenced past breakup, alcohol consumption, semi/public makeout, quarter-life crisis, reader’s implied to be mean in the past, cheerleader in high school, job hunting, referenced childhood dance training, friends to lovers to exes to (??), sexual tension, making out, heavy heavyyy petting, cliffhanger ending
author’s note — this got so much longer than intended but i promise the second part is coming so soon. robin and vickie are still together bc i love them!! and eddie and steve in my mind are besttt friends with them and the entire group and everyone is alive! please let me know what you thought feedback is truly the most rewarding part of sharing a fic. i hope you enjoyed this ! ♡
part one part two part three
The baseball diamond at Hawkins Middle School looked just the same as it had when you were twelve, which was comforting or depressing depending on how you wanted to spin it. You were going with comfort today because depressing required a lot more energy than you had, and you’d already spent most of it smiling through your sister’s overly-concerned questions about job applications over breakfast.
Your nephew—Carter, age eleven, gap-toothed and a little shorter than his age—was easy to spot in the cluster of kids near the dugout. He looked exactly like your sister, Devon. He was the one trying to balance the bat on his palm, which seemed counterproductive to actual baseball but probably made sense to his eleven-year-old brain. You told your sister you’d pick him up. Easy favour that took out forty-five minutes of your afternoon in exchange for continued free housing and the implicit agreement that you were trying to get your shit together.
You leaned against the chain-link fence, going through the mental list in your mind of possible next ventures. Three retail positions, two receptionist jobs, one assistant manager role at a mattress store that required "three to five years of customer service experience with a passion for the product." You wouldn’t consider yourself particularly passionate for mattresses nor did you have three to five years of customer service experience.
"Alright, bring it in!"
The voice cut across the field, and it was so familiar that it made your stomach drop before your brain could catch up. You looked in the direction.
Steve Harrington stood near the pitcher’s mound in a faded Hawkins baseball tee and a backwards cap, whistle around his neck, gesturing at the kids to huddle up. For a second—one stupid, depressing second—you thought you were hallucinating. Were you in some weird time-slip situation? Because that was Steve. That was Steve-fucking-Harrington from high school, from makeout sessions in his BMW and terrible milkshakes at Bennys. That was Steve who used to kiss your shoulder while you were sleeping, and that was the cutest possible thing you thought could happen to your sixteen-year-old self.
Except, it wasn’t really. This Steve was older, filled out in the shoulders, moving with confidence that seemed so easy and didn’t require an audience. Coaching middle schoolers apparently, teaching them something. You watched him crouch down to the kids’ level, saying something that made half of them laugh and the other half groan.
Oh, you were so going to kill Devon for so blatantly setting you up with zero warning.
"Good practice today," he was saying as you got close enough to hear. "Really solid work. Daniels, that catch in the outfield?" He made a chef’s kiss gesture. "Carter, your swing's getting better, but you're still dropping your back elbow—we'll work on it Thursday, yeah?"
Carter beamed like Steve had awarded him a trophy.
The kids stared at the scatter, grabbing backpacks and water bottles, and that’s when Steve looked up. His gaze swept across the parking lot the way you assumed it probably did—making sure parents were here and kids weren’t abandoned—and then it landed on you.
He went still for a fractional second, then his face shifted from coach mode to something unguarded and surprised. Then he blinked, and his face did a recalculation and rearrangement into something easy, friendly, and casual, and he was walking over. His hands moved to his pockets. They always did that when he didn’t know what to do with them.
You focused on Carter instead, his backpack dragging and one shoe untied.
"Hey," Steve said, stopping a few feet away. He was close enough that you could see he’d nicked himself shaving, far enough that it was very clear that it wasn’t established whether the two of you could hug. His hands slipped into his pockets again. His voice was lower. Did that happen in high school, and you just didn’t notice? When did any of this happen?
"Holy shit—it is you," he said, and it sounded like he was on the same boat as you, wondering if he’d been imagining things. "You’re back."
"Yeah," you said, aiming for casual and landing somewhere in the vicinity. "Been a couple weeks."
"Couple weeks," he echoed, like he was turning the information over and calculating whether you’d known he’d be here. You hadn’t, but you couldn’t tell if that made it better or worse.
Then his eyes flicked to the kids, then landed on Carter who was zooming toward you with his backpack half-open and dragging on the ground. "I’m assuming this one’s yours."
You chuckled slightly as Carter crashed into your side, sweaty and dirt-streaked and happy.
"Did you see? Coach Steve said my swing’s getting better!"
"I saw," you said, ruffling his hair slightly. "You looked great out there."
Steve was looking at you and you were looking at him, and there was this weird moment where there were about seventeen things you could’ve said and exactly zero ways to say any of them. The last time you’d seen him was at graduation—almost a year after trying to avoid him and Nancy Wheeler in the hallways because you were just that girl who could not move on from a high school boyfriend.
Carter’s beady eyes ping-ponged between you both, his brain clearly working overtime, then his brows furrowed just the slightest.
"Wait," he said, suspicion creeping into his voice. "Do you two know each other?"
"We went to school together," you said.
"We were friends," Steve said at the exact same time.
The word hung there like it was something tangible, something you could touch and would cut if you did.
"Woah." Carter narrowed. "You were friends?"
"Yeah," Steve said, looking at you with eyebrows raised, like he wasn’t sure what the script was here. "Long time ago."
"How come you never told me your friend was my coach?" Carter asked you, accusatory like you’d been withholding critical information.
"I didn’t know he was your coach," you said, letting out a small chuckle as you bopped his nose, which made him scrunch his face up. "I didn’t know he was doing—" You gestured vaguely at Steve and the whistle and the whole situation. "This."
"This?" Steve repeated, and there was a hint of amusement in his voice now.
"You know what I mean."
Carter was still looking at you, and you could practically see the gears turning. "Were you like, actually friends? Or like, friend-friends?"
You subtly shook your head at Steve, but he was indulging Carter now. His fingers were on his chin as he hummed. You knew what he was doing. He always did this, making things lighter when they got too heavy and turned serious into a game. It used to drive you crazy, and it still did.
"What’s the difference?"
"Like, did you hang out and stuff?" he pressed. "Has he been to grandma’s house?"
You’d been fifteen when Steve first said he loved you. At the quarry with the radio playing something you couldn’t remember now, so many it was not all that important as you thought. You’d been seventeen when he stopped.
"Sometimes," you said carefully, shooting Steve a look that he either didn’t catch or deliberately ignored.
The corner of Steve’s mouth twitched, like he was trying not to smile. Your mom would keep his favourite cereal in your pantry; he knew where you kept the spare key. Was he thinking about that, too? How he’d been to your house more times than you could count?
"Did you have classes together?"
"A few," Steve said. "She was waaaay smarter than me, though. She actually did the homework."
Carter was still processing the information, his face scrunched up. Then, apparently, satisfied with whatever conclusion he reached, he shrugged. "Cool. Coach Steve, can I have a snack? I already ate my string cheese."
"You’re supposed to have that after practice, bud."
"I know, but I’m hungry." Carter dragged the word out like it was a medical emergency.
Steve laughed and pulled a slightly crushed granola bar from his pocket. "Here. But don’t tell your mom."
"Yes!" Carter snatched it immediately and tore into the wrapper.
"Seriously, don’t tell her," Steve said, glancing at you with genuine worry. "I don’t wanna be the coach that ruins dinner."
"Your secret’s safe with me," you said, pushing down a smile.
He smiled at that, small and a little crooked, and for a second it was like being sixteen again, that stupid flutter in your stomach, the way he'd look at you across the cafeteria or in the hallway between classes. Except you weren't sixteen anymore, and this wasn't high school, and Steve Harrington was apparently mature enough now to actually look after kids.
"So," Steve said, watching Carter devour the granola bar three feet away. "What brings you back?"
You shrugged, feeling slightly smaller now. "Didn’t work out the way it would, I suppose."
"Yeah," he nodded slowly, like he understood what you said. "I get that."
"Do you?"
He tilted his head like he was thinking about it. "Took a while to come to terms with it. I mean—I’m still here."
There was something in his voice that sounded something in-between regret and acceptance. "It seems like fun, though. Up your alley, too, now that I think about it."
He laughed slightly at that and rubbed the back of his neck. "It is. It’s not what I thought I’d be doing, but it’s—good. The kids are great. They’re weird and gross and they ask the most insane questions during sex-ed, but they’re great." Your eyebrows twitched up and mouth parted as soon as he said that. He beat you to the cut, saying, "Don’t laugh. I’m still getting the hang of it."
"I wasn’t going to," you said, but your voice wavered in a way that said you definitely were going to laugh. "I just can’t imagine you talking to kids about that."
He pointed a loose finger at you as he said, "Well, sit in on one of my classes. Maybe you’ll learn a thing or two."
Your rolled your eyes at that. Carter had finished his granola bar and was now attempting to balance on one of the parking lot curbs like it was a tightrope. You should probably get him home before he broke an ankle. "Carter!" you called, because you needed to break whatever this moment was. "We need to get going. Your mom’s gonna wonder where you are."
"Five more minutes!"
"Now, please."
He groaned but jumped down from the curb, trudging toward you with all the enthusiasm of someone headed to their execution.
Steve shifted his weight, hands sliding back into his pockets. "Hey, I'm usually here Tuesday and Thursday afternoons. You know. If you're picking him up again."
You felt something twist in your stomach. "Yeah. I might be."
He nodded. "Cool. That’s—cool."
The silence stretched between you, not quite awkward but close to it. Carter reached you and immediately latched onto your hand, already pulling you toward the parking lot.
"It was good seeing you," Steve said, and his voice had that genuine quality again, the one that made your chest feel tight.
"You too, Harrington." You smiled softly.
"Steve," he corrected, raising a brow.
You nodded, flashing him one last smile, not trusting yourself to say anything else, and let Carter drag you toward the car.
"Bye Coach Steve!" Carter yelled, waving frantically.
"See you Thursday, kid!"
You didn't look back. Couldn't look back. Just got Carter buckled in, climbed into the driver's seat, and tried to remember how to breathe normally.
Everything sucked. The only jobs in Hawkins were either at this very coffee shop (which felt like admitting defeat in a very public, dimly lit way) or required experience you didn’t have in fields you’d never thought twice about.
You’d taken over the corner table at the Daily Grind because it had an outlet and because Bonnie, who’d been working here since you were in middle school, didn’t care if you nursed the same coffee for three hours. The application in front of you asked you to describe your "passion for customer service excellence" in 150 words or less. You weren’t sure if that was too much or too little. It almost seemed like a dare.
Four years ago, you could’ve written this down in your sleep. You would have talked about forming a "genuine connection" and "creating memorable experiences." You also would’ve been smiling while writing it, already imagining yourself charming the hiring manager in the interview.
You typed, I believe in treating customers with respect and
You deleted it. Your foot started tapping again. You shifted in your seat, crossed your ankles, kept them still.
I believe in
Deleted it again.
Your coffee had gone cold. The cafe smelled like burnt espresso and the cinnamon rolls Bonnie made every morning that were too sweet and somehow always slightly undercooked in the middle. There was a stain on the ceiling that looked like Texas, which felt appropriate given that you’d briefly considered moving there last year with your ex-boyfriend before that had imploded with everything else.
The door chimed. You didn’t look up because looking up meant acknowledging that you were a 21-year-old woman sitting in a coffee shop at 2 PM on a Wednesday, filling out an application for a job you didn't want, in a town you'd sworn you'd never come back to.
"Hey, Bonnie."
You looked up.
Steve Harrington was at the counter in jeans and a Hawkins High sweatshirt—not a recent one, something older and more worn—and his hair was doing that thing where it looked like he’d run his hand through it too many times, but it still somehow looked better than more than half the Hawkins population’s hair. He had a canvas bag over his shoulder, and you could see some papers peeking out of it and the print of a water bottle inside. He was smiling at Bonnie, warm and genuine, completely unaware of how disarming it was.
Or maybe he was aware. He had used that smile to get out of a lot of things before.
"The usual?"
"You know it."
You should look back down at your laptop. You should absolutely look back down and pretend you hadn't seen him, pretend this wasn't the third time in a week that the universe had decided to throw Steve Harrington directly into your path like some kind of cosmic joke.
He turned around, already pulling out his wallet, paying, and saw you.
The smile faltered like he was recalibrating. Like he was running through about six different responses in his head and trying to figure out which one was appropriate for seeing your ex-girlfriend you broke up with four years ago in a car on a Wednesday afternoon.
"Hey," he said, slowly striding towards you.
Bonnie was making his drink—you could hear the espresso machine hissing, the clink of the syrup bottle—and Steve was still standing there, you were still sitting at your corner table with a cold coffee and a half-filled job application, and this was so much worse than the baseball field because at least there you’d had Carter as a four feet and eleven inch tall buffer.
Steve glanced at the empty chair across from you, then back at you, then at Bonnie like she might save him. She didn't. She just kept making his drink with the focus of someone who'd worked in customer service long enough to know when to mind her own business.
"Are you—" Steve gestured vaguely at your table. "Can I—or are you working? I don’t wanna interrupt if you’re—"
You forced a small smile as you closed your laptop. "I’m not working." God, was that an understatement. "Just—job applications. The exciting life of the recently returned."
He smiled at that, small and a little crooked. "Yeah, I remember that. The job hunt thing is always the worst."
"Did you do a lot of it?"
"Enough." Bonnie called his name and he grabbed his drink. Caramel latte, you'd bet money on it, extra caramel because Steve Harrington had never met a coffee drink he couldn't turn into dessert. When he came back, he was holding his cup with both hands and doing that thing with his weight where he shifted from foot to foot. "So. Can I sit, or—?"
"Yeah, course." You gestured at the seat with a wave of the hand, and applauded yourself for how normal you were being in the same orbit as him.
He sat. The table was small enough that when he placed his drink down, his fingers were about six inches away from yours. You moved your hands to your lap.
He nodded towards your closed laptop. "How’s it going?"
"It’s going." You shrugged. "Turns out Hawkins doesn’t have a lot of opportunities for people whose only qualifications are ‘gave up on college and came home.’"
"You gave up on college?" he asked, not able to keep the surprise out of his voice.
Your teeth tugged at your lip as you looked down at your hands, the floor, the table, and literally anywhere else that didn’t include him.
He cleared his throat when you didn’t respond, trying to break the ice. You momentarily felt bad for stalling the conversation and turning sour at the slightest—most normal, in fact—question someone could ask you about yourself right now. "Well, I served ice cream for a while. Then, I worked at Family Video for a while. Then the radio station. You remember Keith? He gave Robin and I the job when someone quit."
You nodded as he spoke, absorbing the new information about him, filling in the gaps in your mind about his life since he’d walked out of yours. "And now you’re a teacher."
"And a coach. Don’t forget coaching." He smiled sardonically. "Which is really me trying to convince middle schoolers that stealing bases is a real thing and not something I just made up."
You laughed despite yourself, feeling the gloominess that had taken over you just moments ago wash away. "Carter’s been talking about you nonstop since that day, you know? It’s ‘Coach Steve said this’ or ‘Coach Steve said that.’ I think Devon’s ready to kill you."
"Why?" He asked, letting out a chuckle. "What did I do?"
"You told him he could be a professional baseball player if he practiced hard enough."
"I mean—" He pulled the corners of his lips down as he shrugged. "He could."
"He can’t tie his shoes properly yet."
"Hey, don’t ruin his dreams," he said, pointing his index at you. "He’s got potential."
"You told a room full of middle schoolers they can be Mike Schmidt, didn’t you?"
"They’re kids! They’re supposed to have potential! That’s like, the whole point of being one." He was animated now, gesturing with his hands, and you’d forgotten how he got excited about things, how he cared in such a unique, unguarded way that made you want to believe anything he was saying was true. "You can’t tell an eleven-year-old he’s bad at baseball. That’s how you give complexes."
"I think Carter already has a complex about trying to be cool enough for you."
Steve's expression softened at that, became something more careful. "He doesn't need to be cool. He's already—he's a great kid. They all are."
His voice went softer when he said it in a way you’d never heard from him before.
"You really like it," you said. "The teaching thing."
"Yeah, I do." He met your eyes, and there was something too honest for you to look at there. "I know it’s not like I’m changing the world or anything. But it’s good. Feels like I’m doing something that matters, you know?"
You didn’t. Not really. But you weren’t surprised he did.
"That’s good," you said finally. "I’m really glad you found it, Steve."
"Yeah." He paused, and you could see him working up to something, the way his jaw tightened just slightly. "What about you? "Can I ask you something?"
"Sure."
"Why’d you come back? To Hawkins, I mean—" He stopped, and seemed to reconsider his words. "You had plans. You were gonna study psychology and everything. Help people."
You should have expected this question, especially from Steve after you’d seen him. He’d known all your plans, he had been part of all your plans. You both would pick schools that weren’t too far from the other’s, meet each other on the weekends and… Well, just be. You should’ve had an answer prepared, but you didn’t, so you just said the truth.
"I don’t know." You looked down at your laptop. "I got to college and realized I had no idea what I wanted, just knew what I was supposed to. And that’s not—not enough, you know?"
Steve was quiet, and when you looked up, he was watching you with this expression you couldn't quite read.
"Sorry," you said quickly. "That's—that's a lot. You asked a simple question and I just—"
"No." He shook his head. "Don't apologize. I asked."
"Still."
"I get it," he said. "I did it, too. You remember? What I thought I was always supposed to." His voice had gone quieter.
You thought about Steve in high school. King Steve with his perfect hair and his basketball jersey and his spot at the top of the social hierarchy that he'd inherited and maintained without ever really seeming to try. You thought about the way he'd smile at everyone, the way he'd been friendly and charming and exactly what he was supposed to be. And then you thought about the Steve sitting across from you now, wearing an old sweatshirt and talking about teaching sex-ed and coaching baseball with this earnestness that you weren’t used to.
And you were happy for him. You didn’t resent his happiness the way you thought you always would at seventeen. But a small part of you reminded he had to physically remove himself from your life to be the person he was proud to be. Why hadn’t you become your own, then? It was a bitter pill to swallow that Steve had done the right thing for himself leaving you.
"You’re different," you said, because you couldn’t not say it. "From high school."
"Yeah?" He smiled slightly, like he was happy you’d noticed. "So are you."
You blew out a breath. "Yeah."
"I don't know. Less—" He made a vague gesture with his hand, like he was trying to shape the words in the air. "You used to smile at everyone like you were running for mayor. You don't do that anymore."
You shrugged. That much was true. "Maybe I’m not happy to see people"
His smile turned crooked, self-aware. "Well, you were also running for class president back then." Then, he added, "I think it’s a good different, by the way."
You had to focus on the coffee cup sweating condensation onto the table or on anything that wasn't Steve Harrington looking at you like he understood exactly what you were too afraid to ask out loud.
The thing was, he probably did understand. That was worse, somehow. That he'd figured himself out and you were still here, filling out applications for jobs you didn't want, living in your sister's house, trying to remember who you'd been before you'd spent four years performing for an audience that had already left the theater.
"I should—" You gestured vaguely at your laptop. "I've got like six more of these to fill out before dinner."
"Right. Yeah. Of course." He stood up, grabbed his bag, and you watched him hesitate. Watched him do that thing where his hand went to the back of his neck and his weight shifted and you knew—you knew—he wanted to say something else but couldn't figure out how to say it.
Then he did anyway, because this version of Steve said the thing he was thinking instead of swallowing them down. "Hey, if you ever need a reference or something. For the applications. I know that sounds weird, but I’m technically a professional now. May look good if they don’t know me that well."
You stared at him for a moment. "You’d do that?"
"Yeah. I mean—why not?" He shrugged, and it was so casual, so genuinely generous that it made your chest hurt in a way you didn’t want to look at. "You're smart. You're good with people. You even put up with me for three whole years. That’s gotta count for something, right?"
The joke landed wrong. More because it was funny than not. It was exactly the kind of thing Steve would say to lighten a moment that had gotten too heavy, except this moment was already heavy and the joke just made it heavier. Four years. He'd said it like it was nothing, like it was just a fun fact about your shared history and not the entire shape of your adolescence, not the thing you'd built your life around until he'd decided he didn't want to be part of that life anymore.
"Steve—"
"Just think about it," he said quickly, already backing away from whatever he saw on your face. "I'll see you Thursday, right? At practice?"
You weren’t planning on going, not wanting to run into him again. "Yeah. Probably."
"Cool." He shifted his bag higher on his shoulder, gave you that crooked smile one more time. "See you then."
The next few times you saw Steve, it was mainly expected. Aside from when you ran into him at Melvad’s or during your run a few mornings, catching him behind the gates of Hawkins High smoking a cigarette and being horrible at keeping it a secret. The two of you had unconsciously—almost involuntarily—formed a routine where you picked Carter up every Tuesday and Thursday, with you staying behind around ten minutes making conversation with Steve that didn’t feel as awkward anymore.
Ten minutes became fifteen. Fifteen became twenty. By the third week, you were helping him pack up equipment—baseball bats into the mesh bag, bases stacked and carried to the storage shed behind the dugout—while Carter ran laps around the parking lot with whatever kid was still waiting for their ride.
"You don’t have to help," Steve said one Thursday, watching you coil up the extension cord he used for the speaker system. "I mean, this is probably half of my job."
"I know."
"So why are you?"
You shrugged, looping the extension cord around your elbow and hand the way your dad had taught you when you were ten. "Carter’s still running around. Might as well be useful."
He smiled at that and—thank god—didn’t question further.
It was easier than you thought it would be, falling into this. The talking, the helping, the standing around in a dusty parking lot while the sun started its slow descent and Carter attempted to teach another kid how to do a cartwheel the same way you’d taught him how to do one.
You watched him demonstrate with arms too loose and legs not quite straight. He’d gotten better since the first day you came back and spent a whole morning in Devon’s backyard breaking down the mechanics. Hands there, then here, push through your shoulders, spot the ground. The same way your ballet teacher had taught you when you were seven.
The other kid tried and collapsed halfway through. Carter laughed and tried to explain differently. You almost walked over to help before you caught yourself. They’d figure it out.
Steve told you about his classes, about a kid who asked whether or not someone could get an STD from public toilet seats and how he’d had to explain, very carefully, that no, that wasn’t how it worked. You told him about the receptionist job you’d snagged at Dr. Feldman’s dental office where you spent eight hours a day answering phones and scheduling cleanings and telling people about proper flossing techniques.
You’d written a thank-you note for Dr. Feldman after your interview using actual stationary, a blue pen, with your mother’s voice in your head about the importance of gratitude. Devon had found it on the kitchen counter. She’d told you that nobody did that anymore. You said you knew. Then she said, "Like, they’re going to think you’re weird," as though you were missing the point she was getting at. You knew that, but you’d mailed it anyway. The alternative was letting go of a habit that actually made you feel like you had control over something. You didn’t want to do that, even if it made you look like you were stuck in an old system of expectations of human interaction.
"That’s the place you got your braces, right?" Steve asked, leaning against the chain-link fence.
"Yeah, and it’s so embarrassing. Mrs. Patterson still works there and she keeps asking if I remember when I was snot-nose crying during my consultation."
He laughed at that. "Well, you got them off right before sophomore year. I’d know."
You rolled your eyes at that. You still weren’t completely comfortable with him bringing up the past so easily, but it made sense for him to do so. He’d made his peace with it. You weren’t sure you ever would. You may have not completed college, but two years had taught you that shit like being left for another girl sticks with a person.
One afternoon, he mentioned Robin and Eddie were coming by after practice to help him move some equipment to the gym for an assembly. You'd heard the names—Robin Buckley and Eddie Munson—but the pairing still felt strange. Robin had been in band, quiet and a little intense. Eddie had been the guy who sold weed behind the school and wore a denim vest covered in patches. And Steve had been—well. Steve.
"Wait," you said, watching Carter attempt to steal second base from a kid who wasn't even holding the ball. "Robin Buckley? From band?"
"Yeah."
"And Eddie Munson? Like, Eddie Munson?" Your voice had a particular lilt to it that said you weren’t sure how you could describe him.
Steve’s expression shifted and turned into something more careful. "Hey, they’re good people."
"I'm not—I didn't mean—" You stopped, recalibrated. "I just meant I'm surprised. You guys didn't really run in the same circles."
"We do now." His tone had a protective edge to it. "They're my best friends."
You thought about Steve in high school, about Tommy H and Carol, about the basketball team and the parties at his house when his parents were gone, about the carefully maintained social hierarchy that had felt so important at the time and so stupid in retrospect. You thought about yourself, too, about the cheer squad and student council and the way you'd smiled at everyone but really only talked to a select few.
"That's good," you said finally. "That you found people like that."
Steve relaxed slightly, and you noticed how his shoulders dropped. "Yeah. They’re—they’re really good. Robin’s in Massachusetts right now. Studying feminist theory or something. She’s way smarter than anyone."
"She was always smart," you mused, nodding as hazy memories of high school conversations started rolling around your mind.
"Yeah. Well, now she’s smart and gone, which sucks. But she visits when she can."
His voice picked up with affection and missing that felt bone-deep. You wondered how that felt, having someone care about you from hundreds of miles away. Having them check in, call on Sundays, come back because they wanted to and not because they’d run out of all other options.
"And Eddie?" you asked, genuinely curious.
"Eddie’s—" Steve laughed running a hand through his hair. "Eddie’s Eddie. He works at the garage on Main and his band’s kicking off and is actually pretty good. He’s kind of insane and loud but he’s—he’s solid, you know? He’s a great person."
Your teeth tugged at your lip. You didn’t really know, but you were glad Steve did. You liked that he’d found people who weren’t constantly trying to be something other than who they were.
The following Tuesday, you showed up to practice and Steve was talking to a guy with long curly and denim vest, both of them laughing about something while they loaded baseball equipment into the back of a van that had seen better days. Eddie Munson, you recognized. Up close, he looked older. He had sharper cheekbones, more tattoos than you remembered from the brief glimpses you’d caught in the high school hallways. He smiled at you; you’d been trained in that smile, the one that looked friendly without completely meaning it.
"You must be the famous high school sweetheart," Eddie said, so matter-of-factly you were mildly taken back at addressing the elephant in the room you had been avoiding pretty seamlessly so far.
Steve made a sound in his throat that may have been a protest, but Eddie was already sticking his hand out to you.
"Eddie Munson. We didn’t really run in the same circles back in the day." His grip was firm, rings cold against your palm. "You probably don’t remember."
"I remember you," you said, because you did. It was pretty difficult to forget the guy who’d walk on tables in the cafeteria and give monologues about—well, about how horrible the entire crowd you ran with had been.
"Yeah?" He looked genuinely surprised, then pleased. "Huh. Usually cheerleaders pretended I didn’t exist. No offense."
"None taken."
He turned back to the van, tossing in another equipment bag. "So, you’re back in town. That’s—how’s that going? The whole homecoming thing?"
You shrugged. "It’s definitely going by."
"Yeah, I bet." He said it while nodding. "Small towns, man. They’re like quicksand. Really, really slow quicksand."
Steve snorted. "Yeah. That’s how it works."
"You know what I mean." Eddie grabbed another bag. "Anyway, Robin's coming back this weekend. Visiting from Massachusetts. We're doing drinks at the Hideout Friday night if you want to come. Low-key, nothing fancy. Just—you know. Hanging out."
"Oh, I don’t know—"
"You should come," Steve said quickly, and when you looked at him, his expression was hopeful and open and slightly terrified. "I mean, if you want, obviously. No pressure. It’s just—it’d be nice. To hang out. Outside of, you know." He gestured vaguely at the baseball field.
You should say no. You should absolutely say no, because going to a bar with Steve and his friends—friends who'd known him after you, who were part of the life he'd built without you—felt like asking for trouble. Felt like stepping into a space where you didn't belong and waiting to be reminded of that fact.
But Steve was looking at you like he genuinely thought it was a good idea, and Eddie was watching you with curiosity, and Carter was running toward you covered in dirt and grinning, and somehow, you heard yourself say, "Yeah. Okay. That sounds good."
"Yeah?" Steve's whole face lit up, and you remembered—God, you'd forgotten this—how his smile could make you feel like you'd done something right just by existing.
"Yeah. Why not?"
"Cool. Friday night, around eight. I can pick you up if—"
"I'll meet you there," you said quickly, because getting in a car with Steve Harrington felt like too much too fast, felt like something that required more thought than you were prepared to give it. "I know where it is."
"Right. Yeah. Of course." He rubbed the back of his neck, and Eddie was smirking now, clearly enjoying Steve's discomfort. "Cool. See you then."
Carter crashed into your side, breathless and happy. "Can we get ice cream?"
"Maybe." You ruffled his hair, already sticky with sweat. "If you don’t get my car smelling like a sock."
"I don't smell!"
"You definitely smell, bud," Steve said, and Carter shrieked with laughter and tried to tackle him, which turned into Steve picking him up and spinning him around while Carter screamed happily and you stood there watching, something warm fluttering in your chest that instantly made you feel nauseous.
Eddie caught your eye and raised an eyebrow, and you looked away quickly, busied yourself with grabbing Carter's backpack from where he'd abandoned it near the dugout.
By the time you got Carter buckled into the car, Steve and Eddie were still working on the equipment, their voices carrying across the parking lot in easy conversation. You sat in the driver's seat for a moment, hands on the wheel, trying to figure out what you'd just agreed to.
Before you went to pick up Carter on Thursday, you ran into Mrs. Perry at the grocery store. She was your old dance teacher, Madame Petrova’s sister, and she lit up when she saw you. "Sweetie! I heard you were back in town. How are you?"
"Good, thanks. How are you?" you asked, pausing to meet her.
"Oh, busy as ever. You know, Linda closed the studio last year? Her hip finally gave out. Such a shame, no?"
Your chest tightened. You’d trained at Linda Petrova’s from age seven to seventeen. Every Wednesday and Friday, sometimes Saturdays. Your mom would drive you twenty minutes because Hawkins didn’t have a real dance studio, just the community center with scratched floors and the mirror that was cracked down the middle.
"No," you said, voice softening. "I had no idea."
"Mm. All students had to find new places. Some just quit completely." She shook her head. "The high school’s still figuring out how to do their musical, though." She looked around the store, then her eyes landed on you.
You weren’t sure if you knew what she was implying, but you smiled.
"Well," she continued. "You’re probably busy with settling in. So, I’ll leave you be."
You smiled, nodded, and said goodbye. You had to pick up Carter.
When you got there, Carter was finishing up drills, you helped pack up, and Steve was talking about the kid who'd asked if masturbation counted as exercise.
"What’d you tell him?" you asked, coiling up the extension cord.
"That technically yes, but it wasn't going to replace actual cardio for him." Steve was trying not to laugh. "His face, though. God. I thought he was going to die of embarrassment."
You laughed at that, eyebrows going up. "If he lives on Loch Nora, his parents are probably gonna give you a talking to."
"I don’t think he’s going to tell his parents what he asked," he said. "So, tomorrow," he said as he noticed you were getting to ready to leave, Carter already halfway to the car. "You’re still coming, right?"
"Yeah. I said I would."
"I know, I just—" He shoved his hands in his pockets. "Robin can be kind of intense at first. And, well, you already met Eddie. I just want you to know if it’s weird or if you want to leave or whatever, that’s totally fine. No pressure."
You looked at him—at Steve Harrington in his coaching jacket with grass stains on his jeans, warning you that his best friends might be too much, giving you an out before you'd even walked in the door. And you thought about how you'd spent four years trying not to think about him, trying not to wonder if he was happy or if Nancy Wheeler had been worth it or if he ever missed you. And here he was, nervous about you meeting his friends, even though the two of you had been nothing but friends—at best—that spent around thirty minutes with each other weekly.
"I'll be fine," you said. "I can handle intense."
"Yeah. You can." He smiled softly. "See you tomorrow, then?"
"See you tomorrow."
When you were in the car, Carter wasn’t hesitant about prodding anymore. "Coach’s really cool," he said, buckling his seatbelt.
"Yeah, he seems like a good coach."
"He let me practice pitching today even though I'm not supposed to until next year. He said I have good form." Carter kicked his legs against the seat. "Are you coming to the game next week? We have a scrimmage against the other middle school."
"Maybe if your mom can make it."
"She always does."
"Then I’ll come, too."
There were maybe only fifteen people scattered around the bar, a Bon Jovi song playing from the jukebox in the corner, and you stood in the doorway for a second too long, trying to remember why you thought this was a good idea. The Hideout itself looked the same as the night of graduation—and the other handful of times when the bouncer was a sleepier man who didn’t check ID—with dim lighting, sticky floors, and it looked like it had no intention of ever changing.
Steve was at the table in the back corner, and you recognized him immediately. He had one arm draped over the back of the chair, laughing at something, you recognized, Robin Buckley was saying. She had short hair and was talking with her hands, fast and animated. Next to her was a girl with strawberry blonde hair watching Robin with all her attention. Vickie. And Eddie was there, gesturing wildly with a bottle of beer, saying something that made Steve shake his head and grin.
Why were you invited? You were sure every single person on that table had one perfectly valid reason or another to not like you. You could give Steve some excuse about not feeling well; he probably wouldn’t even be that surprised.
But then Steve looked up and saw you, and his whole face showed something like relief. Then he was standing up, waving you over, and it was too late to turn back.
"Hey!" Steve said as you approached, and his voice was too loud, too eager. He cleared his throat, as though he was suppressing it. "You made it. I wasn't sure—I mean, I thought you would, but—" He gestured vaguely at the table. "Everyone, this is—well. You guys know her."
Robin looked at you with eyes you could only categorize as indifferent but also assessing. "Hi. I’m Robin." Before you could say that you knew, she stuck out her hand and you shook it. "Steve’s told me about you. Some things. Not like, a lot of things, but—you know. Things."
"Good things, I hope."
"Jury’s still out," she said, but she was smiling when she said it, and you couldn’t quite tell if she was joking or not.
"That's Vickie," Steve said, pointing to the strawberry blonde, who gave you a warm smile and a little wave. "She works at the hospital. And you met Eddie."
"The infamous ex-girlfriend returns," Eddie said, raising his beer in salute. "Want a drink? First round's on Harrington."
"It is?" Steve asked, furrowing his brows together.
"Yup." Eddie was grinning, looking between you and Steve like this was the best entertainment he'd had all week. "So what'll it be? Beer? Something stronger? We're celebrating Robin's weeklong presence in Hawkins before she abandons us again."
"I'm not abandoning you," Robin said. "I'm going back to school. There's a difference."
"Feels the same from here."
Vickie reached over and squeezed Robin's hand, and Robin's expression softened immediately.
"Beer's fine," you said.
"One beer, coming up." Eddie stood, stretched. "Harrington? You want another?"
"Yeah, sure."
"Cool. Don't be weird while I'm gone." He pointed at Steve, then at you, then walked off toward the bar.
You sat down in the chair Steve pulled out for you, hyper-aware of how close Robin was sitting, how her eyes kept flicking to you and then away, like she was trying to figure something out.
"So," Robin said, leaning forward slightly. "You're back in Hawkins."
"For now."
"That's what Steve said. 'For now.' Very noncommittal." She took a sip of her drink, something clear with lime, probably vodka. "What brought you back? If you don't mind me asking. Which you might. In which case, ignore me. I ask a lot of questions. It's a thing."
"Robin—" Steve started, but you cut him off.
"It’s fine. I dropped out of college, and didn’t really have anywhere else to go, I guess."
Robin's eyebrows went up slightly, but she didn't look judgmental. Just... interested. "What were you studying?"
"Psychology."
"And you dropped out because...?"
Your eyes landed on the wall beside the table. "I mean—mainly because it wasn’t what I imagined. And it didn’t get better." You blew out a breath. "What about you? Steve said you’re in Mass."
"It’s good. Really good, actually." She glanced at Vickie and smiled softly. "It’s hard being away from people, but yeah. It’s good."
Vickie squeezed Robin's hand again, and Robin leaned into her slightly, unconscious and natural. You tried not to feel something hollow in your chest at the way they fit together, the ease of it.
And soon enough, the conversation started to move on. Robin was talking about her classes, Eddie was complaining about losing a pick, Vickie was telling a story about a patient who’d come to the ER because he’d superglued his hands together on a dare. By your third beer, the edges had softened. You laughed when Eddie made a joke about Steve's hair.
Steve kept glancing at you, checking if you were okay, if you needed anything, and you wanted to tell him to stop, that you were fine, that you didn't need him to take care of you. But you also kind of liked that he was trying. That he cared enough to worry.
"—I can’t believe you actually wore that to school," Eddie was saying now, grinning at Steve. "That sweater was such a bad joke. The whole school was laughing at you for once."
Steve groaned, dramatically dropping his head in his hands. "Please stop."
"It had a reindeer on it," Eddie continued, clearly delighted at the memory. "King Steve was wearing the ugliest Christmas sweater with a light-up nose on it. People could see you coming from three hallways away."
Robin was laughing. "Please, please say there are pictures."
"There are definitely pictures," Eddie said. "It was in the yearbook and everything."
"It was for spirit week," Steve protested. "Ugly sweater day. That was the whole point."
"Except it wasn't ugly sweater day," you said, and immediately regretted it when everyone turned to look at you.
"What?" Eddie leaned forward, eyebrows raising.
You bit your lip, trying not to smile. "It wasn't ugly sweater day. That was the Friday. Steve wore it on Tuesday."
Steve dropped his head into his hands. "Oh my god."
"Wait wait wait," Robin said, waving her hands. "He wore it on the wrong day?"
"I told him it was Thursday," you said, unable to stop the smile now. "As a joke. Because he'd been insufferable all week about—I don't even remember what. And I figured he'd check the schedule himself, but he just—"
"Showed up in a light-up reindeer sweater on a random Tuesday," Eddie finished, absolutely delighted. "Oh, this is so much better than I thought."
"You told me it was Tuesday!" Steve said, looking at you with mock betrayal.
"I told you it was Tuesday as a joke, Steve. You were supposed to double-check!"
"I trusted you!"
"That was your first mistake," you said, and Eddie nearly choked on his beer laughing.
"So wait," Vickie said, smiling. "Everyone at school thought he was just being weird on purpose?"
"Oh, everyone had theories," you said, warming to the story now. "Some people thought he'd lost a bet. Some people thought he was trying to start a new trend. Tommy H told everyone Steve just wanted to wear it in for actual Christmas day."
"I got so much shit for that," Steve said, but he was smiling now too, shaking his head.
"You wore it on Friday too, though," you pointed out. "For the actual ugly sweater day."
"Because at that point I'd already committed! Everyone had seen it! I couldn't just not wear it again!"
Robin was wiping her eyes. "This is the best story I've ever heard. Please tell me you have more."
You glanced at Steve, who was giving you a look that was half-warning, half-amused.
"I might," you said carefully.
"Oh, you definitely do," Eddie said. "You dated him for what, three years? You've got to have dirt."
"So much dirt," you admitted, and Steve groaned.
"Please," Robin said. "I'm begging you. He never tells us anything funny from that time. And that was when he was doing the most stupid things"
You told them about the janitor’s closet (he'd been hiding from Coach after skipping practice and got stuck for forty-five minutes), and then about the time he'd tried to cook you dinner and set off the smoke alarm at his parents' house, and then somehow you were all trading stories. Eddie talked about Steve at the video store, Robin shared something about Steve crying at a documentary about penguins. And it was good. It was really good.
And when Steve's knee bumped yours under the table and stayed there, warm and solid and what you assumed was deliberate, you didn't move away.
It was when you were telling them the story about Steve’s attempt at serenading you to ‘I Want it That Way’ and how when he’d forgotten the words, he’d tried to rhyme ‘girl,’ ‘squirrel,’ and ‘beautiful basketball pearl, that someone called Steve’s name from across the bar.
You all turned to see Melissa Andrews weaving through the tables, smiling wide, and it only took you a second to place her. Cheer squad, junior and senior year. Always had extra hair ties and let you borrow her good mascara before games.
"Steve! Oh my god, hi!" She reached the table, then her eyes landed on you and lit up. "Wait—oh my god, is that you? I heard you were back!"
You stood up and she pulled you into a hug immediately. "It’s so good to see you," she said, squeezing your arms when she pulled back. "How are you? How long have you been back?"
"A few weeks. I’m good. How are you?"
"Good. Really good. Working for my dad’s firm, same boring stuff." She laughed and then looked at the table, at Steve. "Oh, are you guys here together?"
"Just—with everyone." What else were you supposed to say?
"That's so sweet. God, I can't believe—it feels like yesterday we were all in high school, you know?" She smiled at Steve, warm and familiar. "How've you been? It's been what, like six months?"
Steve's expression shifted, went careful. "Something like that. Yeah."
Six months since what, your brain supplied helpfully, and then immediately answered its own question when Melissa continued.
"I'm glad we stayed friends after—you know." She said it easily, casually, like it was nothing. "You're too nice. And you—" She turned to you again. "We have to catch up." Then, she turned to wave at the table, then disappeared into the crowd.
No one said anything. You picked at the beer label. Robin was looking between you and Steve with barely concealed curiosity; Eddie was picking at his beer label; Vickie looked confused.
"So," Eddie said finally. "Melissa seems nice."
"She is nice," Steve said quietly.
You picked up your beer, took a sip. It tasted like nothing.
Your brain was doing math you didn't want it to do: Melissa. Six months ago. Maybe less. How many dates was "a bit"? Two? Five? Ten? And before Melissa, who else? And after? Now?
How many people from your high school—people you'd known, people you'd been friends with—had Steve gone out with while you were gone?
"So," you said, trying to keep your voice as light as you can. The smile slipped into place. "Melissa. Small world, huh?"
Steve was watching you carefully, tugging at his lower lip like he wasn’t sure what he could say. "Small town."
You nodded, because that much was true. "I mean, Melissa’s great. She was always really sweet in high school, from what I remember." She’d also heard you talk about Steve, hear the intimate details about your breakup, and comforted you throughout it. But that was all the past. Water under the bridge.
Steve opened his mouth to say something, then closed it. "It wasn’t really—"
He didn’t finish the sentence, and after a moment of awkwardness, the conversation picked back up. Eddie was saying something about seeing Karen Wheeler at the grocery store, Vickie was asking if anyone wanted another round. You laughed and you nodded, but you felt separate from it now.
Steve shifted in his seat, knee bumping just slightly into yours. This time, you shifted in your seat to listen to Eddie. You took another sip of beer and tried to focus on what Eddie was saying—something about his band, a gig next weekend—but your brain kept circling back. Steve dated Melissa. Steve dated Melissa six months ago, which meant—what? You weren’t sure. But how many people was it from your past—people you’d run into at the store, or on the street, or at work—that you’d spoken with, caught up with, had dated Steve and you just had no idea?
You finished your beer, set the bottle down carefully on the table. Your hands were steady. That was good. You weren’t sure if they could tell you were drowning in a form of humiliation you hadn’t anticipated, but you had to get out of here.
"I think I'm gonna head out," you said, and it came out easy, casual. "Early shift tomorrow."
"On a Saturday?" Robin asked.
"Dr. Feldman's doing emergency appointments. Someone's got to answer the phones." It was a lie, but a believable one.
"That sucks," Eddie said.
"Yeah, well." You stood, grabbed your jacket from the back of the chair. "It was really nice meeting you guys. Thanks for letting me crash your night."
"You weren't crashing," Vickie said warmly. "It was so nice to meet you."
"Seriously, you should come out again," Eddie added. "Anytime Robin's in town. Or, you know, anytime. We're here a lot."
"I'll keep that in mind." You smiled at them because they'd been nice, because you'd actually had fun before Melissa showed up and reminded you of all the things you'd been trying not to think about.
Steve stood up. "I'll walk you out."
"You don't have to—"
"I want to."
Robin and Eddie exchanged a look that you pretended not to see.
The walk to the parking lot was quiet. Not the comfortable kind of quiet you'd been building toward earlier in the night, but the heavy kind where both people were thinking too much and didn't know what to say.
Your car was parked near the back, under the one working streetlight. When you reached it, you turned around and Steve was standing there with his hands in his pockets, looking at you like he was trying to solve an equation he didn't have all the variables for.
"Hey," Steve said. "You okay?"
"Mm-hm. Just tired." You smiled at him. "Early morning tomorrow."
He was watching you carefully. "Feldman has early appointments a lot?"
"Sometimes. You know how it is." Then, to make the mood lighter, you added, "Some people just get convinced their teeth will fall out over the weekend."
He was nodding along like he wasn’t completely listening. "Yeah, yeah. So—tonight was good, right? Robin, Vickie, Eddie. They thought you were cool. I could tell."
"They’re all really great, Steve," you said. "Thanks for letting me come. I mean it. It was really nice to hang out with more people."
"Yeah, I—" He paused. You’d reached your car and had opened the door without getting in yet. You turned to face him with your hand on the frame. "Was it Melissa?" he asked quickly. "Because she didn’t mean anything by it. The whole ‘staying friends’ thing. We just run into each other sometimes. It’s not—"
"Steve, it’s fine, really. You don’t need to explain anything." And you wish he really, really wouldn’t. "There’s nothing wrong that you did," you said, choosing your words as carefully as you could.
He was staring at you like he couldn’t figure out what to believe. Your words or the voice in his head.
"Okay," he said slowly. "But you’re being weird."
"Am not."
"Are too—"
"Okay," you said, forcing out a chuckle, trying to stop whatever was going on before the conversation turned immature. "I really do need to go. Devon’s probably waiting up. Rain check on the interrogation?" you said lightly.
"I’m not—" He stopped and rubbed the back of his neck. "Yeah. Okay. Rain check."
"Perfect." You got in the car, pulled the door shut before he could say anything else. You turned the window down because he was still standing there. "Thanks again for tonight. Really. Tell everyone I said bye."
"I will." You started the engine. He stepped back from the car, hands going to his pockets. You could feel him watching as you checked your mirrors, put it in reverse.
"Drive safe," he said.
"Always do." You smiled at him one last time and gave him one little wave.
He lifted his hand but didn't wave back. Just stood there as you pulled out of the spot, and you kept your eyes on the rearview as you left, watching him get smaller in the frame. He hadn't moved. Still standing in the same spot under the streetlight, hands in his pockets, staring after your car.
You turned onto the main road and he disappeared from view. Three blocks away, you had to pull into the parking lot of a closed gas station and turn off the engine.
Your hands were shaking. Your palms pressed flat against your thighs. Breathed. In for four counts, out for four. The way Madame Petrova had taught you before recitals when you were thirteen and you thought you might throw up from your nerves.
You were trying your best to avoid Steve during pick up the next Tuesday. Devon had genuinely felt bad about not being able to take over this time after you told her bits and pieces of what you’d heard at The Hideout, but you couldn’t blame her. You’d been voluntarily coming after your shift to pick up Carter at 4:45, recently with a smile on your face at the chance for general social interaction with someone aside from the people at the clinic who knew you from this girl’s sister or that boy’s tutor.
You parked at your usual spot but stayed in the car an extra minute. Practice was wrapping up, kids were scattering across the field, Steve was near the dugout gesturing at something, probably explaining proper sliding technique or why you couldn’t bat after a strikeout.
Carter noticed you first and waved so hard his body shook with it. You got out, locked the door, and smiled at him.
Steve looked up and raised his hand in greeting and nodded. You nodded back.
Carter jogged over, face red and sweaty, backpack half-zipped and dragging. "I made the coolest catch today!"
"Hey, that’s great," you said, smiling down at him as you ruffled his mussed up hair.
Steve was walking over. You started asking Carter if he had his water bottle and his glove and if he needed help tying his shoelaces. He didn’t, which meant his shoelaces were going to stay untied.
"Hey," Steve said as he reached you.
"Hi," you glanced at him, smiling briefly. "How was it today?"
"Good. Yeah. Same old, but they’re getting better." He shifted his weight from foot to foot. "Carter’s been getting amazing at his accuracy, though," he said, moving his eyes to the smaller bystander to this situation.
Carter smiled at Steve then wandered a few feet away to watch two other kids mess around near second base before you could stop him.
He’d left you and Steve to stand there with the silence stretching. There was no reason to stay.
"So, we’re gonna—"
"So, uh—" Steve rubbed the back of his neck. "How’ve you been?"
You planted your feet in the spot again. "Pretty good. Busy."
"Yeah. Cool." He nodded too many times. "That’s good."
After another beat of silence, Steve continued, "Hey, so I don’t know if you’d be interested, but—" He was talking faster now, like he’d been working up the courage to get this out before he lost his nerve. "You remember Mrs. Stone? The drama teacher? She’s kind of freaking out right now because they’re doing the spring recital and she doesn’t have anyone who knows choreography because the dance teacher isn’t dancing anymore, so she’s been trying to figure it out herself but it’s—it’s kind of a disaster, honestly." His voice went lower at the last part, which made you wonder if he’d sat in on one of the rehearsals and seen the disaster in real time.
You looked at him, an eyebrow raised. He kept going.
"And I know you did all those routines for the competitions and choreographed for cheer, and they were always—really good. Like really good. And I just thought maybe you’d want to help? It’s only for six weeks, and rehearsals are on Mondays and Wednesdays and Fridays around this time." He paused. "I don’t know if that’d be a problem with your schedule. But, I—"
"Steve—"
"—And I know you haven’t been doing that anymore, but I thought, maybe—" He stopped himself. "I don’t know. I thought you’d be great at it. That’s all."
There was something so desperate in the way he said it, like he was trying to fix something without knowing what was wrong.
You tried to think over your words. "I don’t know if I’m the right person for it," you said carefully.
"You are. Trust me." He was looking at you now. "Mrs. Stone’s got these kids trying to do a number with flips and it’s—it’s bad. Like, someone’s going to break an ankle bad. They need someone who actually knows what they’re doing."
"I’ve never taught—well, not like that, you know?"
"But you could. You were always—" He stopped, eyes wavering over your entire face like he was reliving the memories. "You were always really good at it all. I don’t think half the dance or cheer team had any idea what to do before you took over."
Your chest felt tight. You looked away from him. "When would she need an answer?"
"Soon, probably. The recital’s in six weeks."
"That’s not a lot of time," you said softly.
"I know. I know, no pressure. But just—" He was fidgeting with his hands now. "Just think about it? That's all I'm asking. Just think about it."
Carter was drifting back over now, curiosity getting the better of him. "Think about what?"
"Grown-up stuff," Steve said automatically.
"That's what everyone always says when they don't want to tell me things."
"That's because it's true, bud."
You watched Steve with Carter and the easy way they talked to each other, the way Carter looked at him like he hung the moon. You thought about those kids trying to choreograph themselves. About the high school cutting the arts and nobody stepping in to fill the gap. About Madame Petrova's voice in your head saying again until you got it right.
"Okay," you said quietly.
Steve's head snapped up. "Yeah?"
"Yeah. I'll—I'll call her. Or you can give her my number. Whatever."
"Really?"
"Don't make me change my mind."
A smile broke across his face—genuine, relieved, the kind that made your stomach flip before you could stop it. "That's—that's great. Really great. She's going to be so happy. The kids are going to be so happy."
"I haven't said yes to her yet."
"But you will. I know you will." He was grinning now, and you hadn't seen him look this pleased with himself before. "You're going to be really good at this."
"You don't know that."
"I do, actually."
Carter was looking up at you now, confused but intrigued. "Wait, what are you doing?"
"Maybe helping with the school musical," you said. "Maybe."
"That's so cool! Can I come watch?"
"We'll see."
"That means yes," he told Steve confidently.
"It means we'll see," you corrected, but you were smiling despite yourself.
Steve was still watching you, something soft in his expression. "Thank you. Really. For doing this."
"I haven't done anything yet."
"But you will." He said it with certainty like he knew you better than you knew yourself. "Mrs. Stone's usually in her classroom after school. Room 204. Or I can just—I'll tell her to expect your call?"
"You can tell her." You shifted your weight, suddenly aware of how long you'd been standing here. How easy it had been to slip back into talking to him. "I should get Carter home."
"Right. Yeah. Of course." He stepped back, hands going to his pockets. "See you Thursday?"
"Mhm."
Carter grabbed your hand, already pulling you toward the car. "Bye Coach Steve!"
"See you Thursday, kid!"
You didn't look back until you were in the car. Steve was still standing there, watching you leave. You lifted your hand off the steering wheel, waved back, and got yourself out of there as soon as possible.
You’d found your bag in a box filled with your things, shoved behind a box of yearbooks and old cheer uniforms. Navy blue with your initials embroidered on the side in gold thread, a sixteenth birthday present from your mom. The zipper was still stuck in the same place, and you found something ironic about that. Inside were a pair of beat-up jazz shoes you’d forgotten you owned, an old water bottle with about fifty stickers from so many different things, athletic tape gone slightly sticky with age, a scrunchie that smelled faintly of the vanilla you’d worn all of junior year.
You’d pulled it out, dusted it off, and before you could think better of it, you’d packed it with newer things. Fresh water bottle. Clean towel. The notebook where you’d started sketching ideas for the choreography when you couldn’t sleep at 2 AM.
After you’d introduced yourself to the high school group, you’d surprisingly managed to dodge most of the questions related to your time in high school (and there were a lot of questions). Who did you assign captain after you graduated? Whose sister won ‘most likely to be famous’ in the yearbook superlatives? How long were you and Steve Harrington together? The latter topic, unsurprisingly, involved the most questions. How did you two start dating? And how did he ask you to be his homecoming date, and how could the boy asking the question ask his current girlfriend to be his homecoming date?
You were heavily reconsidering whether you had it in you to do this after the first run-through. The kids knew the basic steps Mrs. Stone had taught them, but there was no uniformity or energy or sense of music. Two were doing an entirely different dance from everyone else. One girl in the back looked like she was going to cry out of sheer confusion. A boy in the front was clearly making up his own routine as the song went along.
You hadn’t reconsidered, and two weeks later you were sweating through your t-shirt despite the gym’s aggressive air-conditioning. Your voice was hoarse from counting, but they'd run the opening eight-count twelve times in a row without a single person off-beat.
It wasn't perfect. Not even close. Sarah—the girl with the ponytail—still dropped her shoulder on the fifth count. Marcus—the boy who'd asked about Steve—kept forgetting to spot his turns. But they were together. They were listening. They were trying.
"Good," you said, and you meant it. "That's what I wanted to see. We'll pick up here on Wednesday, okay? And I want everyone to practice those counts at home. In the shower, while you're doing homework, waiting in line at the grocery store, I don't care. Just practice."
They scattered—grabbing bags, pulling out phones, collapsing dramatically onto the stage the way only teenagers could—and you bent down to grab your water bottle, your lower back protesting the movement.
You'd been on your feet demonstrating for two hours and your body was already reminding you that you hadn't done this in four years. Your calves were tight. Your shoulders ached. There was a knot between your shoulder blades that wouldn't release no matter how you rolled them.
But it was the good kind of sore. The kind that meant you'd actually done something.
"That was amazing."
You turned andMrs. Stone was standing there with her binder clutched to her chest, looking at you like you'd just performed a miracle.
"It wasn't—I mean, they still need a lot of work—"
"They were flailing around like drunk squirrels before you got here," she said, and you had to fight the urge to laugh at the image. "What you just did in two hours—I've been trying to get them to understand counts for three weeks. You're a natural at this."
The compliment settled somewhere in your chest, filling something. You weren’t quite sure what it was yet.
"Thank you," you said quietly. "I'm just—I'm glad I can help."
On the third week, you were shoving the last of the rehearsal CDs into your bag when you heard the gym door crack open behind you.
"Hey."
You didn’t need to turn around to know it was Steve. You’d developed a sixth sense for his presence over the past few weeks, and could feel the air shift before you heard his voice.
"Hey yourself." You straightened, rolling your shoulders backwards. The knot between your shoulderblades pulled tight and you winced.
He was wearing a maroon sweater that was slightly fraying at the edges. His hair looked like he’d been running his hands through them repeatedly.
"Didn’t know you were still here," you said, bending to grab your water bottle from where it had rolled under the bleachers.
"Had to finish grading papers. Heard music coming from down here." He walked closer, and you tracked his movement in your peripheral vision, noticing the easy lope of his stride, hands sliding into his pockets. "Thought maybe the drama kids were summoning spirits or something."
"Close. Just teaching them to count to eight."
He laughed, and the sound bounced around the gym. "How’s it going? The rehearsals?"
You stood, wiping your palms on your leggings. They were damp from sweat and from that nervous energy that hadn't left you since you'd agreed to do this. "It's... going. They're getting better. Slowly. Very, very slowly."
"But they are getting better?"
"Yeah." You couldn't help the smile. "Yeah, they are. Today we actually made it through the opening number without anyone forgetting which direction stage left is."
"That's huge."
"It's something." You grabbed your bag, slinging it over your shoulder. The weight of it—familiar and grounding—settled against your hip. "One of them asked me today if I'd ever considered teaching professionally. Like, as a job."
"What'd you say?"
You paused, replaying the moment. Sarah with the ponytail had asked it so earnestly, like the thought had just occurred to her and she had to share it immediately. The way sixteen-year-olds asked questions was always unfiltered, and always assumed the answer was simple.
"I told her I'd never really thought about it." You started walking toward the door and Steve fell into step beside you. "But I have now, I guess. Been thinking about it."
"And?"
"And I don't know." You pushed through the gym doors and the hallway air hit you—warmer, staler, smelling like industrial cleaner and teenage desperation. "It's nice, though. Teaching them. Watching them figure it out. This one girl, Emily, she couldn't get the timing on this turn sequence. We stayed fifteen minutes after everyone left and just broke it down, over and over, until—" You stopped yourself, realizing you'd been talking faster. "Sorry. I'm rambling."
"No, you're not." He hit the push bar on the main entrance door, holding it open for you. "You're excited. It's different."
The parking lot was mostly empty now, just your car and his parked three spaces apart, both facing the baseball field. The sun was starting its descent, turning everything orange-pink. That specific late afternoon light that made Hawkins look almost pretty if you didn't think too hard about it.
"You look different, too," he said, and when you glanced over, he was studying your face. "Less..."
"Miserable?" you offered.
"I was gonna say tired. But yeah, that too." He leaned against his car, arms crossed. The whistle swung slightly against his chest. "Looks good on you. The happy thing."
Something warm bloomed under your ribs. You tried to ignore it, but it spread anyway, filling more spaces you'd forgotten were hollow.
"Steve—"
"You wanna get a drink?"
He said it fast, as though he was finding space to launch the question before he could overthink it. His hand went to the back of his neck and you could practically feel him trying to reel it back and make it casual.
"I mean, not like a drink-drink. Or it could be. Whatever you want." He was looking at the parking lot and his shoes and anywhere but your face. "Just thought—you’ve been working hard, I’ve been working hard, and there’s half-price appetizers at the Hideaway on Wednesdays, which is today. Wednesday, so."
You bit your lip, trying not to smile at how completely he was fumbling this. Steve Harrington, who used to ask you out with the kind of confidence that bordered on cocky, now tumbling over the suggestion of french fries and beer.
"So you're asking me out for half-price appetizers?"
"I'm asking if you want to hang out." He finally looked at you again, and there was something vulnerable in his expression. "As friends. Or not friends. I don't—fuck." He laughed, self-deprecating. "I used to be better at this."
"You really weren't."
"I definitely was."
"Steve, your first attempt at asking me out involved you 'accidentally' blocking my locker so I'd have to talk to you."
"That was strategic."
"That was obvious."
"But it worked." He was smiling now, some of that nervousness easing into something more familiar. "So what do you say? The Hideaway? I'll even let you order the loaded fries this time instead of pretending you don't want them."
You shifted your bag higher on your shoulder, feeling the weight of your old dance shoes against your hip. The ones you'd found in a box. The ones you'd thought you'd never use again.
Your car was right there. You could say you were tired—which you were—or that you had an early morning—which you did. You could smile and say rain check and drive home and spend the evening scrolling through apartment listings that you couldn’t comfortably afford.
Or you could say yes to Steve Harrington in a parking lot bathed in orange-pink light, asking you to hang out with all the grace of a teenage boy even though you were both twenty-one and should know better.
"Yeah," you said. "Okay. Let's get a drink."
His whole face changed—lit up in a way that made your chest tight.
"Yeah?"
"Yeah.." You pulled your keys from your bag. "And if you try to pay for my fries, I'm leaving."
"Deal. No—wait. What if I just pay for my fries and accidentally order way too many and you have to help me eat them?"
"That's the same thing."
"It's completely different."
You were already walking toward your car, but you were smiling. Genuinely smiling, and it was the kind that reached your eyes and made your cheeks ache. "I'll meet you there in forty. Gotta freshen up quickly. I’m all sweaty"
"Make it thirty," he called after you. "Those fries wait for no one."
You unlocked your car, tossed your bag in the passenger seat, where it landed with a soft thud, your old water bottle rattling against the new one. Through the windshield you could see Steve still standing by his car, watching you. When you looked over, he raised his hand in a small wave.
You’d ordered an Amaretto Sour while Steve ordered a Jack and Coke. You’d opted for The Hideaway this time because you wanted the fries and were sure you were going to drop dead from your day of answering phone calls, then teaching high schoolers a dance routine, going home to shower, then immediately coming here. You and Steve had claimed the back booth, the one where someone had carved ‘CLASS OF ‘79’ into the table edge where the vinyl was patched with duct tape.
Steve shrugged out of his jacket, and you watched him fold it twice before settling it into the seat beside him. It was a habit you didn’t remember him having. He used to just throw his jacket anywhere. You picked at the cocktail napkin under your glass, peeling it into damp strips while he settled beside you.
"Carter asked me today if I thought he could pitch in the majors." Steve was grinning now, eyes crinkling at the corners. "He wanted to know what age recruiters started looking. The kid who can’t put on his backpack properly at one go is already planning his draft year."
"Oh, my god. Devon’s gonna kill you." You pressed your fingers to your temples. "He’s already asking for more gear for his birthday. She’s gonna start sending you the bills. He’s also gonna start asking for a pitching coach"
"I am a pitching coach."
"A real one."
"Wow. Okay." But he was smiling, the corners of his eyes crinkled ever so slightly. "That’s how it is."
You mockingly tipped your glass in his direction. "That’s how it is."
The conversation started drifting after that, both of you having had. He’d told you how Joyce Byers and former Chief Hopper had moved to Montauk.
"Remember when he tried to arrest you?" You were smiling before you finished your sentence.
Steve’s hands stopped halfway to his glass. "He did no—" He stared at you for a second, mouth opened. "Holy shit, he did. God, I completely forgot about that." He started laughing, the kind of laugh that built slow and then took over his whole body. "It was partially your fault."
"Who told you to park behind a construction site?"
"You did!" He pointed at you with a fry, laughing now. "You specifically said ‘no one ever goes back there.’"
"I said no one goes there during the day."
"That is not—" He was laughing again. "That is not what you said. You specifically said—" He put on a voice, one that was higher than yours ever was. "‘No one ever goes there, Steve. It’s fine’"
"I do not sound like that." You smiled into your straw. "I totally did that."
"I rest my case. You were always the reason for our worst decisions." When you gasped, he continued, "You’re the reason I had to drive for an hour at three in the morning."
"You’re the one who said you were craving IHOP!"
"And you were the one who said ‘lets go right now," he shot back immediately, like the memory was just on the tip of his tongue.
"Because you wouldn't shut up about it!"
The bartender dropped off another round for which neither of you had asked, but you were both nearly done with your drinks, so it worked out. Steve immediately grabbed a fry from the basket that had appeared at some point.
"Okay, but that trip was worth it," you said. "We had an entire diner to ourselves."
"Because it was three in the morning."
"And you spilled syrup all over the seat."
You both were grinning when Steve’s arm draped over the back of the booth as he shifted further into it.
"Hey, I’ve been meaning to ask you—" He scratched slightly at his chin. "Was—is everything okay? About the Melissa thing?"
You cleared your throat, caught slightly off guard by the question. "Yeah. I mean, I said so."
"Yeah, but you’d also been—sort of—avoiding me after."
"I mean, I don’t know what to tell you, Steve." You let out a short laugh, wishing that you could reset and never let this conversation begin. "It was just weird, I guess. I don’t know how to explain it."
"Try?" he said, and you could hear the little uptick in his voice.
"I can’t imagine dating, like, Tommy H. or Benny or any of your old friends, you know? It would feel too weird."
"Well, I hope you don’t date Tommy H., he’s an asshole." Then, he added, "But yeah, I guess I didn’t think of it that way.
"I—I’m not saying you should’ve." You took another sip of your drink. Dutch courage was your way to get through this situation. You traced your glass with one finger. "I think—" You stopped, then started again. "I guess I always thought we were building something. Like long-term. And maybe that was just me being seventeen and stupid, but…" You shrugged. "I guess seeing Melissa just reminded me that for you, it was just—high school."
He was quiet enough that you looked up, and you were fearing that there it was. You’d said it, the wrong thing, and made everything wrong wrong wrong. His jaw was tight, and he was staring at his drink.
"It was serious to me," he said, voice softening as he tilted his head to look at you. "Not just high school or whatever bullshit you’re saying."
"Was it?" you said, trying to keep your tone gentle. Then, you loosely waved a hand. "I was young and dramatic and it was my first real relationship. Of course I spent years thinking it was everything."
Steve shook his head at your words, brows furrowing. "It was everything. To me, too."
"Steve—"
"Hey, I’m just saying. I’m not liking how you’re talking like you’re the only one who cared. Like I didn’t."
"I didn’t say that."
"You kinda did." His hand was still on the booth behind you, fingers drumming absently. "I may have not always—well, treated you that way. But I just want you to know I did care."
The air between you felt too thick now. You smiled tightly. "Yeah," you said, nodding. "I appreciate you saying that."
You took a sip of your drink and he grabbed another fry.
"So, you’re not going to avoid me at practice anymore?"
"I wasn’t avoiding you."
"You absolutely were."
"Maybe a bit." You smiled. "It’s fine now."
"Good." His fingers brushed against your shoulder where his arm was draped, casual and easy. "Because I do like hanging out with you. Don’t want you disappearing on me."
You felt something lodge in your throat and tried to swallow it down. "Okay."
"Good," he repeated, a the corners of his mouth twitching up. "Well, so much about who I’ve been with. What did you get up to?" He raised a brow. "Three years of college must’ve brought someone."
You laughed despite yourself, reaching for another fry. "You really want to know?"
"Fair’s fair, right?" He was watching you with an almost-curious expression.
"There was someone. For about a year and a half."
His hand stilled on your shoulder for a moment. "Year and a half’s pretty serious."
"It was." You chewed on the fry. "He was going to be an investment banker. You know, that type? Patagonia and a trust fund and all that."
Steve’s nose wrinkled. "Sounds like a catch." His thumb brushed against your shoulder.
You continued, "He asked me to move to New York with him after graduation. That maybe I’d want to get a fresh slate in a ‘real’ city."
Steve hummed.
"So I ended it three months before I decided to come back here. He called me a quitter, but it was worth it."
"I think that’s the last thing someone would call you." He took a sip of his drink.
The silence stretched for a moment too long. Somewhere around you, someone fed quarters into the jukebox and Tom Petty started playing. Steve finished his drink in two long swallows.
"You want to play?" He nodded toward the pool table where the couple was gathering their jackets.
You looked at him and the way his fingers were drumming against the table. He needed to move. So did you.
"Pool?"
"Mhm. Unless you’re scared to lose."
You raised an eyebrow. "I’m definitely not scared."
"Prove it."
You slid out of the booth and he followed. His hand briefly touched the small of your back as you walked toward the pool table. The touch was light, and you were wearing a sweater, but it still made your skin warm through the touch.
The previous players had the courtesy to rack the balls. Steve grabbed two cues from the wall rack, testing the weight of each before handing you one. "You break."
"Trying to be a gentleman?"
Steve leaned on the edge of the table, grinning. "Trying to get a good look at your form. See if you’ve gotten rusty."
You lined up your shot, very aware of how he was watching you. The cue also felt familiar in your hands; you’d played enough in high school, usually at parties, and even more at college.
The break was clean and solid cracks of ball scattered across the felt. Two stripes fell.
"Stripes," you said, straightening up.
"Good shit." He moved to stand closer, watching as you circled the table for your next shot. "Remember that time you beat Pat three games in a row and he tried to convince the entire party you were cheating?"
"All of you were such sore losers." You leaned down for your next shot, the 11 ball in the corner pocket. "He kept saying I was distracting him."
"Well." He clicked his tongue.
"I was just playing pool."
"You were wearing that—" He stopped himself and took a sip of his drink instead.
You missed your shot. "Wearing what?"
"My turn." But his ears had gone slightly pink.
He moved around the table, chalking his cue. You tried not to watch the way his hands moved, the way his shoulders shifted under his shirt as he lined up his shot. Tried and failed.
"The purple top," he said suddenly, not looking at you. "With the—the straps."
You remembered that top. Spaghetti straps, low-cut, the one your mom said was too revealing. You'd worn it specifically because Steve had mentioned he liked purple.
"You remember what I wore to a party five years ago?"
"I remember a lot of things about you." He sank the 3 ball, then moved to line up his next shot. "You used to bite your lips when you were concentrating. You’re doing it now."
You released your lip from between your teeth. "I don't—"
"You do." He missed his next shot, stepped back. "You also used to cheat."
"I did not cheat."
"You absolutely cheated. You'd lean over right in my line of sight and—"
"That’s not cheating, that’s being easily distracted."
"Same difference."
You moved to take your shot, very aware now of how you were standing, how he was watching. The 9 ball was an easy shot, straight line to the side pocket. But your hand was less steady than it should be.
"You're thinking about it now," he said from behind you. Close behind you. "About whether you're distracting me."
"I'm thinking about making this shot."
"You're thinking about both."
He wasn't wrong. You took the shot. Made it. Moved to find your next one.
The 10 ball was on the far end of the table. You had to lean across, stretching to line it up properly. You felt Steve move, sensed him coming closer even before you heard his footsteps.
"You're gonna scratch if you hit it that hard," he said, right behind you now.
"I'm not going to scratch."
"Your angle's off."
"It's not."
"It is. Here—" His hand covered yours on the cue, adjusting your grip.
His hand covered yours on the cue before you could argue. His chest pressed against your back, and suddenly you couldn't remember the shot you were trying to make, couldn't remember anything except the way his thumb brushed over your knuckles as he adjusted your grip. He smelled like whiskey and the same detergent he'd used in high school, and you wondered if he knew that, if he'd chosen it deliberately or if it was just habit.
"See?" His breath stirred against your ear. "It’s more to the left."
You felt heavy all of a sudden and couldn’t breathe properly. "Got it?"
"Yeah?" His thumb pressed between the hollow of your knuckles. "You sure?"
Your heart was trying not to escape through your body out your throat. "Steve."
"Mm?"
"You’re not helping."
"I know."
"Let me make the shot, Steve," you said through a chuckle, slightly using your arm to push him off."
He laughed roughly before stepping back.
You took the shot. Sank it. Barely.
"Lucky," he said.
"Skill."
You straightened up, turned to face him. He was closer than you expected, close enough that you had to tilt your head back slightly to meet his eyes.
"Your turn," you said.
"Right." But he didn't move and kept looking at you.
The air between you felt electric. The bar noise faded into background static; someone's laughter, the clink of glasses, a song you didn't recognize playing from the jukebox. All of it distant and muffled compared to the sound of your own heartbeat.
"Steve—"
"Hm?"
"Hi," you said, tilting your head to the side.
A smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. "Hi."
His hand came up, and for a second you were bracing yourself for him to touch your face. But instead he plucked the pool cue from your grip and set it down on the table behind you without looking. His eyes remained on yours.
"I’m gonna kiss you now," he said.
"Okay."
His hand slid to your waist, and there was a pause—just a breath, maybe less— where his thumb hooking through your belt loop and just stayed there. Then, he pulled you in, and you went, the inch of space between you disappearing.
The kiss was soft at first—almost careful—his lips pressing against yours like he was relearning the shape of your mouth through the shape of muscle memory four years old. You felt him hesitate and question in the gentleness, and something in your chest cracked open.
You pressed your lips against his a little harder, just for a second, and then his other hand came up to cradle the back of your head. He kissed you deeper, tongue sliding against yours in a way that almost made you lose your balance. The pool table bit into your lower back as you swayed, and you grabbed onto his shirt, fabric bunching in your fists, just to stay upright.
He pulled back just enough to breathe, nose brushing against yours, foreheads touching. His eyes were still closed. "Fuck."
"Yeah."
Then he was kissing you again, tilting your head back with his hands in your hair. He tilted your head back with the hand in your hair, angling you exactly where he wanted you, and you let him. Let him kiss you like he'd been thinking about this for weeks, months, maybe years. Like he'd been holding back and had finally decided to stop.
You remembered this even through the haze of the alcohol and him and the way the bar had gone blurry around the edges. How Steve kissed you, how he gave it his whole attention, his whole body, like both of you would die if you’d stopped. His hand on your waist slid around to the small of your back, pressing you closer until you were flush against him.
You broke away for air, dizzy, and he immediately redirected, pressing kisses along your jaw. Open-mouthed and deliberate, working his way down to the spot just below your ear that he definitely, definitely still remembered.
"Steve," you breathed, fingers tightening in his shirt.
"Mm." The sound vibrated against your skin. His lips traveled lower, finding the spot just below your ear, and your breath caught audibly. His teeth grazed your pulse point and you gasped, the sound embarrassingly loud even though you could barely hear it over the noise around you.
He smiled against your neck. You felt his lips curve. "Still sensitive there."
"We're—" You had to stop to breathe when he sucked lightly at the spot. "We're in public."
"I know." But he didn't stop. His hand had somehow worked its way under the hem of your shirt, thumb brushing the bare skin just above your hip. "Should probably stop."
"Probably."
His mouth moved lower, to the junction of your neck and shoulder, and his hand on your back pressed you impossibly closer. You could feel him against your hip—hard and obvious—and the knowledge sent a jolt down your spine.
Someone laughed too loud at the bar. A glass broke. The song changed to something with a heavier bass line. None of it mattered.
When you finally pulled away, you were both breathing hard. His lips were red and slightly swollen, hair messed up from where your fingers had threaded through it without you realizing.
"Come home with me," he said.
"Steve—"
"I don’t want this to end tonight." His hand flexed against your back.
You should say no and suggest coffee tomorrow, keeping this slow, not rushing into something that could blow up in both your faces. But this was what it was, casual. Something that was bound to happen. Something you had to get out of your system before it came out during unwanted times.
But his forehead was pressed to yours again and you could feel his breath—quick and uneven—and his hand was still under your shirt, thumb still tracing patterns on your skin. And you'd spent four years trying to be smart, trying to make good decisions, trying to be the person you thought you were supposed to be. Maybe just for tonight, you could want something. Could take something. Could let yourself have this without overthinking it into nothing.
"Okay," you said.
His eyes searched yours. "Yeah?"
"Yeah." You released your grip on his shirt, smoothed the wrinkles you'd created. Your hands were shaking slightly. "Let's go."
His whole face changed—relief and want and something softer you didn't want to name. He kissed you again, hard and quick, then grabbed your hand.
He doubled back without letting go, pulled out a bill, placed it on the table, grabbed his jacket, and you were moving again.
"Wait," you said as you hit the parking lot. The cool air was a shock after the warmth of the bar. "We can't drive. We're—we've had too much."
Steve stopped, turned to look at you. For a second you thought he might argue, but then he nodded. "You're right. Shit. Okay." He ran his free hand through his hair. "I only live like five minutes from here. We could walk?"
"You want to walk?"
"I want you to come home with me." He said it simply. "Walking, driving, fucking teleporting—I don't care. Just—" His thumb stroked your cheek. "Please don't change your mind."
"I'm not changing my mind." You laughed slightly.
"Promise?"
Instead of answering, you kissed him. Rose up on your toes and kissed him there on the sidewalk in front of The Hideaway, and he made this sound—relief and surprise mixed together—and kissed you back.
When you pulled away, you were both smiling.
"Come on," you said, lacing your fingers through his. "Show me where you live."
His grin was immediate, bright enough to compete with the streetlights. The air outside was sharp enough to clear your head a little, the in-between where the air was deciding whether it wanted it to be winter yet. Steve immediately laced his fingers through yours this time and started walking, pulling you along with him.
The streets were quiet. Hawkins on a Wednesday night never had much going on. A few cars passed, some porch lights were still on, but mostly it was just the two of you and the sound of your footsteps on pavement.
"This is weird, right?" you said after a minute. "Walking through Hawkins like this."
"Good weird or bad weird?"
"I don't know yet."
He laughed, tugging you closer until your shoulder bumped his. "Remember when we used to walk home from parties?"
"You mean when you used to walk me home because I wasn't allowed to be out past midnight?"
"Your mom loved me. She never actually cared when you got home."
"She definitely cared. She just liked you too much to say anything."
"See? Loved me." He was quiet for a moment, then: "I used to take the long way on purpose. Make it last longer."
Something warm bloomed in your chest. "I knew you were doing that."
"You did?"
"Steve, your house was in the opposite direction. You'd walk me home then walk like twenty minutes back to yours."
"Worth it," he said simply.
You passed under a streetlight and he tugged your hand, spinning you under his arm without warning. You stumbled, laughing, and he caught you around the waist.
"What are you doing?"
"I don't know. Felt right." He was grinning down at you, and you were suddenly very aware of how close you were standing, how his hands fit perfectly on your waist. "You used to let me do that all the time."
"We were usually dancing."
"We're dancing now."
"We're standing in the middle of the sidewalk."
"Same thing." He started swaying slightly, pulling you with him, and you couldn't help but laugh.
"There's no music."
"So? We don't need music." He spun you out again, this time humming something off-key that might have been nothing at all.
"You're ridiculous."
"You're smiling though."
You were. You were smiling so wide your cheeks hurt, and when he pulled you back in and kissed you—soft and sweet and tasting like whiskey—you were still smiling against his mouth.
"Come on," he said, taking your hand again. "Before I decide to just keep you out here all night."
You walked for another minute in comfortable silence, your hand warm in his, before he spoke again.
"That's where you fell off your bike in eighth grade," he said, pointing to a spot near the Richardson’s driveway. "Busted your knee open. I had to walk you home."
"We weren't even dating yet."
"I know. I still carried your bike the whole way." He squeezed your hand. "And then your mom gave me cookies."
"She always gave you cookies."
"Best part of walking you home. That’s why I always did when we were together."
"The cookies?"
"Well—" He looked at you, something soft in his expression. "Second best part."
Your heart. Stupid, stupid heart. "Steve—"
"That's where Tommy tried to fight that guy from the baseball team," he interrupted, pointing to another corner. "Remember? You had to break it up."
"I didn't break it up. I threatened to call his mom."
"Same thing. You were terrifying." He pulled you closer, arm going around your shoulders now. "Still are, actually."
"I'm not terrifying."
"You made three teenagers cry during rehearsal last week."
"That was one kid. And she was crying because she finally got the turn sequence right."
"Still counts."
You elbowed him in the ribs and he laughed, the sound echoing down the quiet street. His arm tightened around you and yours went around his waist, and walking became this stumbling thing where you were too close together to move properly but neither of you cared.
"This is nice," he said after a moment.
"Yeah?"
"Yeah. I missed this. Just—" He gestured vaguely with his free hand. "Being with you. Feels right."
You didn't know what to say to that, so you just pressed closer into his side. His apartment building was visible now, just up ahead, and you felt your stomach flip.
"That's me," he said, pointing to a brick building with external stairs. "Third floor."
"Nice."
"It's small. Nothing fancy." He was rambling now, nervous. "But it's clean. Usually. I mean, I didn't know you were coming over so I didn't—but it should be fine. Probably."
"Steve."
"Yeah?"
You stopped walking, turned to face him. "It's fine. I don't care what your apartment looks like."
"No?"
"Nope." You reached up, fingers curling into the front of his shirt. "Not here for the apartment."
His tipped his head down to meet your eyes as he smiled slightly. "What are you here for?"
Instead of answering, you kissed him. Rose up on your toes and kissed him right there on the sidewalk in front of his building, and he made a small sound as he pulled you closer to him.
When you pulled away, you were both breathing hard again.
"Inside," he said roughly. "We should really—inside. Now."
"Yeah. Okay."
His hands were shaking as he tried to get his keys out of his pocket.
"You're not helping," he muttered, finally getting the keys free from his pockets. One of them slipped from his fingers and clattered on the ground. He bent to grab it, and you pressed against his back, arms sliding around his waist.
"I'm not trying to."
"Yeah, I’m getting that." He was smiling when he straightened, and his hands covered both of yours where they were linked at his stomach. His thumb traced over your knuckle once before he turned the key in the lock.
The stairs were narrow—the kind where you had to go single-file or risk knocking into the railing—and Steve kept your hand in his the entire way up, pulling you behind him. Second floor, third door on the left. He fumbled with the keys again and you almost offered to do it for him, but then the door swung open and he was pulling you inside.
You had a split-second impression of the place—small, wood floors that needed refinishing, a couch that looked like it came from someone's basement, the smell of coffee and laundry detergent and something distinctly Steve that had no specific things you could point to—before he turned and his mouth found yours again.
This kiss was different from the ones at the bar; it felt hungrier. His hands cupped your face and he walked you backward until your spine hit the door, and the sound of it closing was the click of the lock and your bag sliding down your arm to hit the floor.
"Hi," he breathed against your lips.
"Hi, Steve." Your hands found the hem of his shirt, fingers slipping beneath to find warm skin.
i’m thinking .. jealousy fic with either angus or bosco? christmas party type of thing… ?
I have decided to take the Angus path (can u blame me, i adore him so much), so here's an attempt at a jealousy fic with angus hehe
a gift of kings and other fragile things | a.t
Synopsis: In which Angus Tully encounters a greater threat than Paul Hunham’s pop quizzes: a college boy with good manners and a phone number. Jealousy, a snowy courtyard at Brattle Book Shop, and an unexpected paperback ensue.
a/n: a reminder that i have not written jealousy fics for so long, please bear with me. happy holidays!! (this is not proofread, as always.) edit: sequel is out now!
✦ . ⁺ . ✦ . ⁺ . ✦ ✦ . ⁺ . ✦ . ⁺ . ✦✦ . ⁺ . ✦ . ⁺ .
The air in Boston turns sharp and specific with winter's arrival, carrying the sweet, insistent promise of hot chocolate from a corner cart, a scent woven through with the dust of nutmeg and the warm curl of cinnamon. It cuts through the crisp chill alongside the clean, resiny perfume of fresh-cut evergreens, a fragrance that seems to rise from the wreaths hung on every lamppost. And beneath it all, softening the edges of the brick and pavement, lies the silent, clean scent of falling snow, turning the city’s hard angles into a monochrome dream.
The brittle December sun did little to warm the stones of Boston, but the city itself seemed to vibrate with a frantic, festive energy that was utterly alien to the frozen silence of Barton. You, Angus, and Mr. Hunham moved through it like a small, discordant island. You’d somehow—miraculously—convinced him. It had been a perfect storm of your pleading, Angus’s surprisingly strategic muttering about “wanting a real Christmas, and ice skating,” and, you were sure, a quiet word from Mary about the cosmic sadness of two teenagers eating canned gravy in an empty mansion over Christmas. Hunham had finally relented, his face a mask of put-upon agony, citing something about “an accredited, if lamentably spontaneous, field trip.”
You and Angus hadn’t waited for a second invitation. You’d bolted for your rooms like startled deer, the frantic thump of your feet on the wooden stairs, a drumroll of rebellion. Now, walking behind Hunham’s stubborn, wool-clad form, you felt that giddy excitement settle into a nervous buzz. Angus was in his element, but in a new way. At Barton, his sharpness was a defensive hunch, a coiled thing. Here, he was all pointed curiosity, his head swiveling, cataloging everything.
“You’re in a festive mood,” You said, bumping his shoulder with yours.
“I’m in a freezing mood. And a historically accurate one.” But the corner of his mouth twitched. This was his version of giddiness—this sharp, observational cynicism. He was free, or as free as one could be with Paul Hunham as a chaperone.
You three turned into a corner, and the city was alive. Nestled between the tall buildings and shops, was a little bookshop, Brattle’s Bookstore. Its famous outdoor stalls, sheltered under bright blue awnings, stood bravely in the cold, rows upon rows of spines facing the world like a defiant, intellectual army.
You saw it first. Your elbow found Angus’s ribs in a sharp, silent nudge.
He flinched, his expression morphing from glum introspection to affronted dignity. “What? My spleen is not a door knocker.”
“Tully,” you breathed out, the word a puff of frost in the air. You didn’t even point, just shifted your gaze.
He followed it. And his entire being changed. The perpetual slump of his shoulders straightened. The guarded, weary light in his eyes ignited into a pure, unadulterated flame of avarice and wonder. It was the look of a pilgrim spotting the shrine.
“Mr. Hunham!” The call wasn't a request; it was a declaration, sharp and full of a sudden, desperate urgency. He was already drifting toward the shelves as if pulled by a magnetic force.
Your own face mirrored his brightness, the shared, secret thrill of discovery cutting through the cold. Hunham, who had been expounding on the granite qualities of New England resilience, stopped mid-sentence.
He glanced at the shop, then at the two of you—Angus, already pulling a first edition of something from a bin with reverent hands, and you, hovering at the edge of the stalls with a grin you couldn’t suppress. He let out a long-suffering sigh that condensed in the air, a sound of profound resignation. “I see no problem with books,” And in no time, you were scouring through the shelves.
You finally reached Brattle's, its old brick facade promising sanctuary. Inside was a warren of towering shelves, a sacred, dusty hush broken only by the soft rustle of pages. But the true magic, you quickly discovered, was out back. It wasn't just an alley; it was an open-air annex, a secret courtyard of stories.
The high walls of the adjacent buildings rose up like the sides of a canyon, lined with floor-to-roof bookshelves braving the elements. Freestanding racks, their metal painted a fading industrial green, formed narrow, canyonesque aisles right there under the grey Boston sky. It felt like stumbling upon a library that had burst through its walls, its collection spilling gratefully into the crisp, open air.
You drifted into your own world almost immediately. The quiet chaos of the outdoor shelves was a siren song. While Angus likely launched a tactical assault on the philosophy section and Mr. Hunham emitted a low, appreciative hum near the history stacks, whilst smoking a pipe, you fell into a different rhythm.
Your fingers trailed over spines, leather-worn and cloth-faded, absorbing the titles through touch as much as sight. The cold air was cut with the perfume of old paper—a scent like dry leaves, attic dust, and vanished afternoons. It was quieter here than inside, the city sounds muffled by the book canyon walls. You’d pull a volume out, flip it open to a random page, and for a moment, you were nowhere and everywhere, lost in a 1947 garden manual’s advice on rose pruning, or a travelogue’s description of a Venetian canal.
A mental list began compiling in the back of your mind, separate from the winter and the trip and the boys: that Woolf essay collection, the geology text with the marbled edges, the novel with the passionate marginalia in faded blue ink. It was a private, peaceful avarice, a promise to future, quieter selves. Here, you were just a reader in the cold, pleasantly adrift in centuries of other people’s thoughts.
You hadn’t even noticed it’d begun to snow until a boy, seemingly your age, reached for the same weathered copy of “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” you’d just let your fingers brush. “Oh, sorry,” he said, his voice friendly, his smile easy.
He was dressed like a local college kid; thick, practical coat, a scarf that looked hand-knit, cheeks pink from the cold. He didn’t look like anyone from Barton. He looked… normal. Maybe a few ages above from you, fairly.. good looking? But not someone that would strike your eye.
“It’s okay,” you said, pulling your hand back. “It’s a good one.”
“Right? A mind-bender.” He held the book but didn’t move away, his gaze curious.
“You go to school around here?” It was an innocent question. A simple, human attempt at connection in a city full of strangers. You opened your mouth to answer, to explain the strange, temporary truth of being a holdover on a field trip.
From his vantage point two aisles over, partially hidden by a shelf of mid-century gardening guides, Angus watched. He’d been tracking you, a silent, brooding satellite. He saw the easy way the stranger smiled. Saw how you didn’t immediately deploy your own defensive sarcasm. His grip on his own book tightened, the cheap paperback cover protesting with a faint crackle.
“Just visiting,” you said, a small, polite smile on your own lips. A smile Angus recognized—it was the one you used with Mary, or with a librarian. It was kind. He hated it. “Cool, cool. Well, if you’re around for a bit, there’s a killer coffee shop a block over. Best chai in the city.”
The boy leaned a shoulder against the shelf, settling in. Angus’s jaw clenched. This wasn’t a passing interaction. This was a conversation. He took a step forward, the snow-dusted concrete gritting under his shoe, ready to intercept, to dismantle the moment with his particular brand of acidic charm. But he froze. Something in him, something wretched and curious, wanted to see it. Wanted to witness the full, terrible proof of how you acted when he wasn’t the only variable in the equation.
So he watched, a statue of simmering resentment, as you laughed at something the guy said about the book’s title. The sound was light, unburdened. It carved something hollow out beneath Angus’s ribs.
“I’m Alex, by the way,” the boy said. You gave your name. Angus felt an irrational spike of betrayal at the simple exchange.
“Well, if you get bored of the tourist stuff,” Alex said, digging in his pocket. He pulled out a pen, plucked the receipt from his own book, and scribbled on the back. “My number. In case you want that chai. Or, you know, a tour guide who doesn’t charge.”
He handed it to you. You took it, the small slip of paper white against your glove.
That was the moment Angus decided the experiment was over. The data was conclusive, and it was catastrophic. He moved then, not with his usual slouch, but with a stiff, purposeful stride that ate up the distance between the aisles. Snowflakes caught in his eyelashes, but his eyes were fixed on you, burning with a cold fire.
You looked up, your eyes widening slightly at his approach, at the intensity of his expression.
Alex followed your gaze. “Friend of yours?” he asked, his tone still congenial, but his posture shifting slightly at the sight of Angus’s storm-cloud face.
Angus didn’t even acknowledge him. He stopped directly in front of you, his presence forcing Alex to take a half-step back. He looked from your face to the receipt still held in your fingers. His voice, when it came, was low, taut, and dripped with a venom so precise it could only be born of jealousy.
“Fascinating,” he said, the word a scalpel. “Collecting autographs now, are we?” His eyes were locked on the receipt in your hand. “Hunham’s waiting. He’s had an epiphany about the erosion of public decorum and is currently composing a lecture on it. He’s using words like ‘raffish’ and ‘indolent.’” His gaze cut to Alex, a look of pure, unvarnished dismissal. “I’d advise you not to be his prime example.” He turned on his heel, expecting you to follow. The command was absolute, leaving the snow, the book, and the boy with his phone number hanging in the frozen, ruined air between you.
“O-oh,” you muttered, the syllable knocked loose by the sheer force of his exit. You fumbled for a second, the receipt still pinched between your fingers, before letting yourself get pulled into his wake.
You managed a harried glance over your shoulder as Angus marched you away. “Well, it was nice knowing you, Alex!” The call was swallowed by the soft hush of the snow and the growing distance. Alex just gave a small, bemused wave, already receding into the landscape of the bookshop like a minor, forgotten character. Angus didn’t slow down. He didn’t look back. His grip on your arm was firm, not quite painful, but proprietary. He steered you through the maze of outdoor shelves, his jaw a hard line. “Nice knowing him?” he parroted, his voice a low, seething thing meant only for your ear. “You knew him for approximately ninety seconds. You can’t ‘know’ someone at that time. You can barely ascertain their literary taste, which, based on that selection, is dubious at best.”
“Did Mr. Hunham really have an epiphany, or did you just have one?” you asked, your voice quiet but steady in the narrow alley between the walls.
He finally turned to look at you, the movement sharp. The cold had painted his cheeks and the tip of his nose a faint red, but his eyes were all dark, volatile heat. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means you dragged me out of there like you were putting out a fire.” You held up the crumpled receipt slightly. “Because of this.”
“Don’t be absurd,” he snapped, but the denial was brittle, too quick. He shoved his hands deep into his coat pockets, a defensive hunch settling into his shoulders. “I was preventing you from becoming a case study in Hunham’s inevitable treatise on modern indecency. That… person was clearly loitering with intent.”
“Intent to what? Recommend a book?” You took a small step closer. The snow was beginning to dust his hair, catching on the wool of his scarf. “You were jealous.” You tease, pushing his buttons.
The word hit its mark. He flinched as if you’d physically struck him, the cocky, intellectual armor he wore so carefully cracking straight down the middle.
“Jealous?” His voice climbed, tight and thin, before he wrestled it back down to a furious whisper. “Of that? Don’t be ridiculous. I was acting out of… of basic social hygiene. He was a stranger. He was common. The whole interaction was dripping with a banal predictability that was practically offensive.”
He was pacing now, a short, frustrated path in the slush, his gestures sharp and agitated. “He probably listens to… to The Carpenters and thinks a well-argued point is being ‘aggressive.’ He’s the human equivalent of beige wallpaper.”
You just watched him, the ghost of a smile playing on your lips. His rant was too loud, too specific. It was a confession screamed through a megaphone of insults. “You’re describing him in a lot of detail for someone who found him so forgettable,” you said mildly, leaning back against the cold brick. He stopped pacing. Swallowed hard. The fight seemed to drain out of him all at once, leaving behind a boy who was just cold, and tired, and painfully, obviously caught.
“Just… throw it away,” he muttered, not looking at you, his eyes fixed on a frozen crack in the pavement. The demand was quiet, stripped bare of its earlier pretense. It wasn’t an order from a peer. It was a plea.
“Don’t worry, darling,” You taunt, “He wasn’t worth my precious time anyway,” You smirk, winking at him as you walk where Mr. Hunham was. Where he was skimming through books, smoking a pipe. Angus follows, flustered and red. He excused it because of the cold weather, but his racing heart tells him otherwise.
You browsed with a new, distracted focus. And then you saw it: a worn, olive-green copy of The Sirens of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut. It wasn’t philosophy. It wasn’t history. It was the perfect, weird, humanist antidote to everything Angus pretended to be; cynical, yes, but with a bruised and beating heart at its center. A small, private smile touched your lips. You’d come back for it. Later. When he wasn’t looking. You carefully slotted it back between its neighbors, marking its location in your mind.
Just one shelf over, Mr. Hunham’s back was turned, a monument of scholarly absorption as he examined a set of vintage books. The scrape of a boot on grit announced Angus’s approach. He came to stand beside you, his hands shoved deep in his pockets, his shoulders slightly hunched against the cold—or perhaps against the vulnerability still humming in the air. He didn’t speak. He just stood there, a silent, prickly presence, pretending to scan a row of titles he wasn’t really seeing. The proximity was its own kind of conversation.
A voice, syrup-thick and cutting through the cold, shattered the tense silence between you.
“Hey there, handsome. Got a cigarette?”
Both you and Angus froze, a united front of unwillingness to turn and see who the voice was addressing. You exchanged a single, brief glance, a silent pact to ignore it, to let the moment dissolve.
“No, sorry. I smoke a pipe.”
Well, so much for that. At the sound of Mr. Hunham’s tone, you both turned in slow, unison motion.
A woman with a riot of red hair spilling from a messy bun stood there, wrapped in a coat that looked like a diseased lemon and a fraying fur stole. She appraised Hunham with a weary, professional air.
“How about a date, then?” she tried again, undeterred. “You wanna get a date?”
“No, thank you,” Hunham said, removing his pipe with a hand that wasn’t entirely steady, offering a tight, nervous smile.
“Aw, come on. Let’s go somewhere warm.”
From beside you, Angus found his voice, low and laced with sudden, mischievous glee. “Go ahead,” he called over, a wicked smirk spreading across his face. “We can wait here. We’ll be fine.”
You choked back a startled snort of laughter.
The woman’s eyes lit up. “See?” she said to a mortified Hunham, jamming her hands into her pockets. “The kids can wait. Read some books. They don’t mind if daddy gets a little… candy cane.”
“Thank you, but I’ve never much cared for candy canes,” Hunham said, his voice climbing an octave as he snatched a random book from the shelf and stared at it with desperate intensity. “Also, I’m prediabetic.”
With a disgusted scowl, the woman turned and clacked away into the falling snow. The second she was gone, Angus leaned over the low shelf separating you from your teacher, his earlier jealousy apparently forgotten in the wake of this new, glorious humiliation.
“You know,” he said, his voice a stage whisper dripping with false sympathy. “If you did want a little candy cane, your secret’s safe with me. No judgment here.”
You snorted, the sound escaping before you could stop it. “Come on, Mr. Hunham,” you chimed in, unable to resist the opening. “Live a little. Embrace the spirit of the season.”
Hunham’s head swiveled from Angus to you, his expression shifting from flustered to profoundly, academically disappointed. He pointed the stem of his pipe at Angus first.
“Mister Tully,” he began, his voice dropping into the cadence of a dire classroom pronouncement. “And by extension, you,” he added, cutting his eyes to you. “For most people, sex is ninety-nine percent friction and one percent good-will. Call me old fashioned, but I place value on physical intimacy, and so should you two.”
“You’ve never had sex, have you?” Angus asked, his tone more one of blunt clinical curiosity than mockery.
To your shock, Mr. Hunham let out a single, sharp bark of laughter, a dry, rustling sound you’d heard maybe twice before.
“Believe it or not, Mister Tully,” he said, a strange, almost wistful glint in his eye as he gazed at the snow-dusted books, “there was a time when the fire in my loins burned white hot.”
You physically recoiled, scrunching your nose in visceral horror. “Okay, can we not? Please?”
Angus, however, was undeterred, a wicked grin spreading across his face. “You’re full of shit.”
“I assure you, I am not,” Hunham replied, unoffended, his voice taking on a low, conspiratorial note. “The details, in fact, would curl your toes.”
Angus smirks, “Okay, we’re finally getting to the good stuff, let’s hear.”
“Maybe when you’re 18.” He blew the smoke from his pipe, “Curl your toes!”
Thankfully, the subject of Mr. Hunham’s romantic history was allowed to expire, buried under a mutual, silent agreement to never speak of it again. After another ten minutes of browsing in the gently falling snow, he announced it was time to reconvene—but not before a “call of nature” required a visit to the bookstore’s facilities. This left you and Angus alone for the first time since the tense standoff with the receipt.
The quiet felt different now, charged but softer.
“You’re horrible,” you said, nudging the toe of your boot against his.
“Unprovoked assault!” he yelped, feigning injury. “I’m reporting you to Hunham. This is exactly the kind of friction he warned us about.”
“You deserved it,” you shot back, shaking your head. “For pimping out Mr. Hunham to bootleg Mrs. Claus over there.”
He didn’t answer with words. Instead, a faint, almost shy smile touched his lips, and he reached into the deep pocket of his coat. His hand emerged holding a small, slightly worn paperback. He held it out to you, his earlier bravado replaced with a tentative sort of earnestness.
It was a copy of The Once and Future King, the cover softened at the edges.
The cold seemed to solidify around you, rooting you to the spot. You could only stare at the book in his outstretched hand. “What’s this?” you finally managed, your voice barely a whisper.
“Merry Christmas,” he said, the words simple and direct, yet they seemed to hang in the air, fragile as the snowflakes.
You looked up at him, your lips slightly parted. The surprise was a warm, expanding feeling in your chest, crowding out everything else, the chill, the memory of the other boy, the lingering awkwardness. Words failed you completely.
Seeing your speechlessness, Angus shifted on his feet, the confidence of his gesture giving way to a rush of explanation. “I bought it. Well, I procured it. It was inside, on a shelf near the history section. It just… it seemed like something you’d argue with. In a productive way. And I had Hunham front me the cash, obviously, because my mother’s idea of a Christmas allowance is a sternly worded note about fiscal responsibility, so technically it’s from him, but the thought— the selection— that’s mine. The debt is also mine, which is a less charming gift, but there you have it.” He rambled to a stop, his eyes searching yours, looking for a verdict. The offering, and the vulnerability behind it, lay plainly between you.
For a moment, you just stared at the book, then at him, the careful lines he’d drawn between you all afternoon blurring into nothing. Without a word, you stepped forward and wrapped your arms around him, burying your face in the rough wool of his coat. It was a hug so tight and sudden, a passerby might have mistaken it for a desperate attempt to share body heat.
Angus went completely rigid, a statue caught in an avalanche. Then, all at once, the tension melted. One arm came up slowly, cautiously, to circle your back, his hand splaying against your shoulder blade. His chin came to rest lightly on the top of your head with a shaky exhale that fogged the air above you.
“Holy shit,” you mumbled into his scarf, your voice thick with a giddy, disbelieving laugh. “You’re such a secret softie.”
You felt him huff, the sound vibrating through his chest. “It’s a book, not a declaration of fealty,” he muttered, but he didn’t let go. His hand gave a small, almost imperceptible rub against your back.
You finally pulled back just enough to look up at him, still clutching the paperback to your chest. His cheeks were flushed, and he quickly looked away, rubbing the back of his neck with his free hand.
“So,” he began, his voice uncharacteristically tentative. “Is it… acceptable?”
A wide, unstoppable smile broke across your face. “I love it, you absolute idiot.”
You flipped the book open, the old pages releasing a familiar, comforting scent. Angus watched you, his hands shoved back in his pockets, trying and failing to look indifferent. The silence between you now was warm, full of the unspoken things his gift had dragged to the surface.
A thought, sharp and clear, cut through the haze of your happiness. The mental list you’d made in the stacks. That worn, olive-green copy of ‘The Sirens of Titan’ by Kurt Vonnegut. You’d seen it nestled between two larger novels, its spine cracked with love. You’d noted it, promised it to yourself for later. But looking at Angus now, his guard down, the bitter edge in his eyes softened into something hopeful and terribly young, a new plan began to form.
You wouldn’t give it to him now. This moment, this perfect, fragile truce built on a single paperback, was his. To produce a gift in return would feel like an exchange, a transaction, and it would spook him. He’d retreat behind a wall of analysis, picking apart the motives.
No. You’d save it. You’d tuck the Vonnegut away in your bag, a secret for the journey home, or perhaps for the long, dark evening back at Barton when the silence of the empty school threatened to swallow you both again. It would be a follow-up, a continuation of this conversation when words might once again fail. A way to say, I see you, too.
“It’s perfect,” you said again, closing the cover and holding it close. Your smile was softer now, knowing. “Thank you, Angus.”
He gave a single, stiff nod, the ghost of his own smile still touching his lips. “Don’t sentimentalize it. It’s just a book.”
But you’d seen the way he’d held onto you. You knew better.
The crunch of snow announced Mr. Hunham’s return, his pipe clenched between his teeth, looking relieved to find you both where he’d left you and, miraculously, not at each other’s throats. “The municipal parking meter is a far greater tyranny than any monarch,” he announced by way of greeting. “We depart.”
As you fell into step behind him, leaving the canyon of books to the snow, your fingers brushed against the comforting weight of The Once and Future King in your coat pocket. And in the depths of your bag, the olive-green Vonnegut waited patiently for its moment, a silent promise tucked between a spare sweater and the lingering thrill of a Boston afternoon. The trip back to the hotel would be long and dark, but for the first time, the thought of that looming, empty dormitory didn’t seem so desolate.
get this winter over with!
pairing. angus tully x fem!reader summary. you're not sure what you did to make angus tully hate you. your relationship with each other may be hostile and strained at best, but he may be your only hope to pass your english classes and fight off the winter blues. (9.5K) before you read. drinking, smoking, discussions of anxiety and depression, slut shaming, mention of suicide, no physical descriptions for reader but is implied to be shorter than angus, no use of "y/n", characters are 18+, angus and reader r so in denial it's annoying author’s note. so it's not winter anymore... but this was cope for my seasonal depression during the fall semester LMAOO clearly school got the best of me but better late than never! based on interactions between a classmate and i. he was such a dick sometimes and many of the lines angus says r things this guy actually said to me. but we're friends now :) pls enjoy!
Dickhead. The eloquent thought crossed your mind as soon as you saw him walk into the classroom. Angus Tully was the bain of your Monday morning literature class, and there he was, strolling in 20 minutes late without a care in the world.
Usually you would pay no mind to the people around you, inconsequential to your education. Angus Tully being late had absolutely no impact on your life, but it grinded your gears anyway. If you came to class even five minutes late? There was no doubt that he would give you shit for it. A week couldn’t go by without him directing some snarky comment towards you.
“Don’t expect me to give you the notes after this,” when you dozed off during a lecture.
“A+ on that one,” sarcastically, when you fumbled anxiously through a presentation. His issue with you wasn’t clear, but he made his disdain apparent.
Was it intimidation, perhaps? Your family rolled their eyes whenever you ranted about women’s inequality, but it was true! It wouldn’t be the first time that a male classmate acted out because they couldn’t accept that you were smarter than them. It was a shame to think that Angus could be the same way, but you didn’t know the guy very well. Who was to say?
Both being English majors and juniors, Angus was a familiar face around campus. The university was on the smaller side, so you became closely acquainted with almost all of your classmates. You had even made your first best friend at school: Sally Wyman, who sat next to you in English 101, was most passionate about Medieval English literature, and whose favorite book was, mindbogglingly, Beowulf. It was nice to have a small cohort, but it had its downsides as well: people that you didn’t like were inescapable. Angus was in every class, every semester, and popped up at every get together and study session. The two of you brushed shoulders constantly, much to your chagrin.
It was the Fall of ‘72 when he first caught your eye. He sat in front of you in the lecture hall of your American Literature course, and quickly became a sort of celebrity. Angus was outspoken, smart, witty, constantly raising his hand. Not all were fond of him, and occasionally an annoyingly heated debate about the writing of Kerouac would have everyone yelling at him to shut up. But even this didn’t deter your crush on him; his passion in class was motivating and aspirational. You knew you were smart, but you rarely had the confidence to speak up like him. Knowledge seemed to get wedged and stuck in the corners of your mouth, but flow endlessly out of your pen. Maybe if you had an assignment or essay to turn in then your professors would recognize your talents, but most classes were just hours upon hours of lecturing. Angus’ constant participation proved that he was not only smart, but self-assured, unafraid. You wanted to be like him.
Okay. Maybe the crush was helped by the fact that he was extremely cute, too. During particularly boring lessons, you found yourself lost in the mess of dark hair that made up the back of his head. You wanted to trace the C-shaped curls on the nape of his neck, the small freckles that dotted the pale column of his throat. If you stretched your arms, you would be able to run your hands over the expanse of his broad shoulders, smooth the wrinkled shirt collar beneath his sweaters. Even his sideburns, which would have you rolling your eyes on anyone else, left you in awe. He was stylish; a grown, masculine departure of the boys of your high school.
There was a time where you truly believed that Angus Tully could be the man of your dreams. How foolish you had been.
It was later in that Fall of ‘72 that the illusion cracked, and you saw Angus for who he really was. You were both in Professor Hilbert’s class: Introduction to Creative Writing. The final was a workshop to share with your classmates and receive feedback in return. Everyone had to write a minimum of 10 pages, and have it printed and shared among the class a week before.
You worked anxiously on your story: a tale about a woman whose paranoia and fear of being stalked by her neighbors climaxes into a manic murder-suicide. It was meant to explore and comment on mental illness, motherhood and the perception of women’s hysteria. The idea had been rolling around in your mind for months before the assignment, and you were excited for the chance to finally execute it. You knew that you were by no means the most gifted writer in the class, but you were proud of the work, and expected for it to be positively received.
Angus Tully had completely shattered your dreams. His critique was cutting and brutal: the language was flowery but shallow, your metaphors were nonsensical, and the pacing was all over the place.
“They say that good artists create, and great ones steal. I’m not sure if that was the framework you used when writing this, but all I could think was that you wanted to make an edgier version of Rosemary’s Baby. I mean, some of the dialogue was ripped right from the movie,” he said, leaned back in his chair with crossed arms.
You swallowed the lump in your throat, trying to remain calm. “I’ve never seen that film,” you admitted. “If there are parallels, it’s all just coincidence.”
The girl sitting next to Angus stifled a laugh, brushing her hair over her shoulder. Tracy Bellevue, if you remembered correctly. “To be honest, I have to agree with Angus on a lot of the critiques. Women’s liberation fiction is getting popular, and this just seems like a chance to cash in. It just felt a little uninspired.” He looked at her with a smirk, and she smiled back. You wanted to melt into a puddle.
By the time you took your seat, it felt like all the passion for writing had been vacuumed out of you, leaving a deflated silhouette of a person behind. Passion was reignited as soon as you had finished re-reading Angus’ piece, however. He had the audacity to call you a thief, when his was nothing more than a Catcher in the Rye rip-off? You refused to let him get away with this, and told him as much when it was time to give feedback.
“Your admiration for J.D. Salinger is evident, Angus, but I think the story would have benefitted greatly from a protagonist that was more than a Holden Caulfield copycat.”
He narrowed his eyes at you. “Excuse me? This character was based on my own experiences, which lots of teenagers have gone through. Just because your story was creatively bankrupt doesn’t mean that you can get mad and say the same thing to me.”
“I’m sorry?” you huffed, ready to annihilate the man in front of you. You were being nice before, but if he wanted to stoop low, you would go there. Hilbert stepped in before you could however, reminding the two of you that only constructive criticism was allowed for the workshop. It was embarrassing to have your piece torn to shreds by Angus and Tracy of all people, but even more so to be scolded by the professor. The two of you left class an hour later silently nursing the wounds, and igniting a bitter rivalry.
Maybe the two of you could have come back from that workshop with apologies and a clean slate, but it was Angus who had pushed it further. Just two weeks after the incident, Sally had skipped into class asking why you hadn’t come to Angus’ birthday party that previous weekend. You stared at her for a few seconds in disbelief, before sheepishly admitting that you hadn’t been invited, or even knew there was a party being thrown.
How the news had managed to evade you, you didn’t know. But Angus knew that you and Sally were close; and he still didn’t offer you even a pity invite? It stung, and felt isolating. What was up his ass, anyway? Did you do something to make him hate you? Why else would he have been so critical of your story in the first place? Most people in the class seemed to have enjoyed it. Even Professor Hilbert had given you written praise upon returning your story back.
Fuck that guy. You had worked your ass off to be at this school, and Angus Tully thought he was all that? He was just another rich kid who thought that being rude meant that he was smarter than everyone else. What struggle had he ever experienced, fancying himself to be a Holden Caulfield for the modern age? It made you sick. That stupid smirk, that obnoxious height, his full lips, warm brown eyes… You hated the fact that you still found him handsome. You wished that you could picture him with the physical manifestations of his hideous soul, but to no avail.
Since that workshop, not a semester, class or study session could go by without the two of you at each other's throats, trying to one-up the other at every opportunity. And even now, he thought that he could walk into class 20 minutes late, after just having shamed you for being late last week, and you wouldn’t say anything.
Angus gave you a glance as he passed by your seat, making his way to the back row, to which you raised your wrist and tapped your watch. Maybe you saw his look turned into a glare, but you were focused on the lesson. Trying to, at least.
The sound of laughter and conversation erupted immediately after class ended, with people standing up and stretching their legs after hours of being seated. You took your time gathering your things, not ready to brave the cutting winter air outside, or endure another two hours of lectures. Getting out of bed was agonizing this semester, nevermind actually going to class.
Skipping was a nasty habit that you’d been fighting for years, but this semester was starting to grind you down. It was the first time since you came to school that you felt true defeat and disinterest in your education. The only reason you had come into today was knowing that you and Sally could pass notes about her most recent date, and she hadn’t even shown up. It was lonely on days without her, and you couldn’t help the pang of jealousy seeing your classmates making plans without you. Ignoring the chatter around you was easy, and your consciousness was beginning to tiredly degrade back into autopilot mode.
A shadow cut through the scruffed grain of your table. You looked up to see Angus, wrapped in a thick red scarf and backpack hung off a single shoulder, waiting for you to notice him. He was, notably, alone. Usually he didn’t go anywhere without his little group of friends trailing behind him, and you glanced curiously around the room to see where they were. You spotted them, your classmates Max, Brian and Tracy, all walking out of the door, and all staring your way as they did. Tracy’s look could have turned you to stone. It was very rare for them to leave Angus behind.
“Yes?” you asked uncertainly, standing to put your coat on, preparing to go on the defensive.
“A bunch of us are going to Squeaky Boot after Johnson’s class later. You should come with.”
A few seconds of silence passed, while you scrambled to think of a response. Hopefully your calm face didn’t reflect the sudden panic he had just instilled in you. An invitation to the bar? Of all the things he could have said to you, that was the least expected. You stood, mouth slightly agape and wishing to stop time. “But it’s Monday,” was all you could come up with.
He didn’t miss a beat. “So?”
That was difficult to argue with. Eye contact was suddenly painful, and you inspected the line of his jaw instead, dotted with stubble that you wanted to reach out and smooth your thumb over. Damn your racing heart.
“Huh. Okay, sounds like fun.” To that, Angus simply nodded and turned to join the rest of the group. He didn’t look back at you as they walked out, but you couldn’t take your eyes off of his fleeting figure the entire time.
You stood alone in the classroom, bag hanging limply from your hand, trying to think. What was that all about?
---
There were many moments where you almost jumped ship. On your walk to the bar, you stopped about every five minutes, wondering if you should turn around and run home. What was holding you back? A drink would do you some good; any distraction from the mess that the semester was becoming. Sally would probably be there, and you knew the others well enough that it wouldn’t be lonely. You reasoned back and forth with yourself desperately, but it did nothing to ease your anxieties. It actually seemed to be making it worse. By the time you got to the door of the bar, you were shaking from more than just the biting cold.
Fuck this. Nothing to be scared of. Just a casual drink with my peers. Invited by Angus Tully. Fuck. You wrangled the door open against the forceful wind, and slipped into the bar.
The Squeaky Boot was a popular dive bar near your university, populated by drunken 19 year olds and tired townies. It engulfed you in a warm hug as soon as you stepped inside. Along the walls were framed memorabilia and neon Budweiser signs, slouchy leather booths and wooden tables worn smooth with use. There were multicolored Christmas lights tacked to the ceiling, blinking hazily through cigarette smoke. Your name was called from a far corner of the bar, and you melted in relief at the sight of Sally waving you over to a crowded corner.
“Hey!” you greeted, trying to mask your nerves. She was surrounded by your classmates, who were all talking cheerfully among eachother. Your eyes drifted around the room, looking for a tall, lanky figure. You spotted him a few tables away, back turned to you and clad in the same knit sweater he wore to class. “Where the hell were you earlier? I had to suffer through Shakespeare all by myself.”
She grinned brightly. “What can I say? The date went much better than I expected. Can you blame a girl for maybe sleeping over at his, and maybe getting breakfast with him the next morning?”
You gasped, slapping your hand on the table.“Oh my God, did you really? Did he pay for you, too?”
“Of course he did! It was just Ernie’s diner, but you can’t beat free waffles and coffee.”
You beamed at her, excited to hear more. “Okay, I need to hear all the details. Just let me grab a drink, first.”
Sally nodded, waving you away, and turned to busy herself in another conversation. You envied the way she effortlessly sewed herself into social fabric, sometimes. It wasn’t as easy for you to just step into a group and pick up where they were. It wasn’t like you were lonely, desperate for more friendship, but maybe life would be easier if you were a little more confident.
Your fingers were tapping against the bar counter, waiting for your beer, when someone stepped in beside you.
“Here’s that PBR you ordered,” the bartender slid the can across the counter, scarcely looking at you before a familiar voice piped up.
“Can you make that two?”
You whipped your head towards the newcomer, face to face with Angus, who had only a lazy eyebrow to raise at you. The moment his velvety brown eyes met yours, your breath caught in your throat.
“Hey, I’m not paying for your beer,” you frowned.
“I wasn’t expecting you to,” he replied, grabbing his own can and handing a couple of bucks to the bartender. You counted the bills as he flipped through them and realized that Angus had just paid for you. Oh.
He had already pushed off the counter and began walking away when you turned around. Words of gratitude died on your tongue as you watched him return to his group, all standing around a tall bistro table. Them, patting his back and him immediately blending in effortlessly. You felt sick with nerves again. You spun back to the bar, fistful of cash on the counter for another two beers and a single shot of vodka. You threw the small glass back, and followed it quickly with your first beer, chugging it before the bartender could even finish handing the new ones over. Tonight, you resolved, you were going to do something.
The look of surprise on Angus’s face when you had tapped on his shoulder made you wish you could snap a photo. His brow, usually set in a firm line, was now raised as you thrust the beer into his chest.
“Here. Since you left your money at the bar.”
Now the brow set back into its annoyed frown. “Is this what I get for being nice?”
“If you mean a free drink, then yes, that’s what you get.”
The beer was wet and cold against his shirt, and your fingers brushed as he took it into his hand. The feeling of his smooth fingertips against your knuckles sent a jolt of electricity up your spine. “I meant being bothered.” He turned around without another word, before Max laughed, smacked Angus’ arm.
“Hey, show some gratitude. How often is someone actually kind to you?” Max grinned, before turning to you. “Wasn’t expecting you to come out tonight.”
You frowned, trying not to feel offended. “Why not?”
“I dunno, thought maybe Tully over here would’ve scared you off. He’s pretty good at that.”
You snorted. “The last person in the world I’m scared of is him,” you said, pointing at the man beside you with your thumb. “He’s like, 80 pounds soaking wet. A toddler could take him out.”
That got howls of laughter from around the table, and you didn’t dare to look at Angus’s face. It felt good to be in on the joke for once, but the moment ended quickly, and conversation resumed around you like waves crashing from all sides.
“So, Angus,” you looked up for the source of the voice, and saw Tracy with her elbow propped up on the table and her chin in her hand. “How’s your novel going?”
You turned to him in silent surprise, eyes wide.
He glanced at you, before bringing his attention back to Tracy. “It’s not a novel, really. It’s more like a novella. And it’s going well; Sandra from the school paper volunteered to edit the first draft, which is cool.”
“You’re writing a novella? I didn’t know that,” you said.
He turned back to you, looking annoyed just by the sound of your voice. “Why would you know that?”
You sucked in a breath, holding back a biting response. “What’s it about?”
He was avoiding your gaze now, looking back at Tracy. “I’m not gonna let you read it. Not like I need your feedback.”
Tracy didn’t bother to hide her amusement, looking at you with a pitying smirk. These fucking people.
“I didn’t say I wanted to read your shitty book, I was just trying to be polite,” you gritted, pushing off the table. “Don’t know why I bothered, though. It’s not like you deserve it.”
Sally was stationed next to the pool table, yelling tips on how to angle the cues to your fellow drunken students, who missed the ball with one wobbly hit after another. You sidled up to her, beer can crushing under the weight of your furious fist.
“Looks like you got that drink,” she said, watching you over the rim of her own glass. She was drinking something red, with a cherry floating among the ice.
“Need a fucking stronger one, Jesus Christ,” you muttered.
“Angus got you riled up again?”
You threw your arms up, reignited simply at the mention of him. “I mean, what am I supposed to do? I tried to be nice, so I bought him a drink.”
Sally nodded seriously. “I saw that.”
“I don’t know what he wants, or why he insists on being an asshole to me. Like he’s an asshole in general, but to me he’s a giant, toxic one.”
“Hairy too, if I had to guess.”
You choked on your own spit at that, head whipped towards her. Sally just burst out laughing at your reaction, hand slapping her side. “Sorry, just trying to agree with you. Nothing worse than hairy man ass. Let’s get you something else to drink. Maybe not in a glass though; we don’t want it shattering all over the place.”
Not only did you get a stronger drink, but Sally had convinced you to take shots with whoever else was at the bar, and the two of you threw back shots of Smirnoff with the other students and old motorcyclists standing next to you. Well, a few shots. After an hour, you had completely forgotten how mad Angus made you. In fact, all the anger had dissipated into warm fuzziness, and a growing ache between your legs.
Everytime the two of you locked eyes from across the room, you felt desire spike throughout your entire body. Why did he have to be so handsome? Or if that was some inevitable trait gifted to him by God, then couldn’t God make him nicer? It was infuriating. He was infuriating.
Brian wasn’t infuriating. Of all the people who orbited Angus, he was your favorite. You both worked together on a research essay last semester, and got to know each other decently well. He was funny, hardworking, and kind of cute. You liked his wire-rim glasses, and feathered hair. There weren’t any moles dotting his face, or thick curly hair to dig your fingers into, but for now that was okay. You were leaned so close to him that you could smell his cologne. It was spicy, like cedar and smoke. Nothing like Angus, who always smelled soft, like laundry and lavender aftershave. Brian’s hand was brushing against your collar, feigning that he needed to fix its crookedness.
“How’s your semester been?” He asked.
“It’s been good,” you lied, “What about you?”
“I’ve been doing this internship since September, which is cool. Just copywriting for the local paper, but better than nothing.”
Jealousy and dread was beginning to brew in your stomach. You’d been doing nothing. You were going to graduate next Spring, and you still hadn’t managed to land an internship or build an especially good relationship with any professors. What would you do after school, when you hadn’t been pushing yourself hard enough? The thought of it was making you feel ill.
You hadn’t spoken for a few seconds, and tried to recover with “Oh, wow! That does sound cool.”
Brian gave you a small smile. He opened his mouth to speak, but you cut him off. “Sorry, I’ll be right back, just gonna use the washroom.”
He nodded, stepping back to let you walk away. Weaving through tables and patrons, you finally made it back to the corner where your jacket had been stashed away. You slipped into it quickly, and headed for the door.
It was much quieter outside. Music and laughter had been replaced with the sound of wind blowing against creaking wood, the noise of the bar muffled behind brick. You dug through your pockets, fingers searching through discarded wrappers, chapstick and loose coins before you finally found it. You pulled a tube and lighter from your jacket, cold hands trying to carefully slide a joint from the small tube.
As soon as you took your first inhale of the joint, relief took over your body. It didn’t take long for your mind to become fuzzy with static, and your limbs relaxed into weightlessness. You stood with your back against the building, and watched the empty street in front of you. Snow swirled through the air, picked up by wind and dispersed like mist. Beams from the streetlights cast the sidewalk in glittering light, and you kicked at the thin layer of snow with the toe of your boot.
The door to the bar swung open, and you watched as Angus Tully walked through. He had his coat on again, the dark red scarf wrapped loosely around his neck. A cigarette hung loosely between his lips. As soon as he saw you, his face dropped into irritation. You weren’t feeling so pleased at the sight of him, either.
“Jesus, what are you doing out here?” He muttered, leaning next to you against the wall.
You glowered at him. “Do you own the sidewalk, or something? What kind of stupid question is that.”
He fumbled through his jacket pockets. “You’re gonna talk to me about stupid questions? That’s rich.”
There was no dignifying him with a response, you just rolled your eyes and took another hit of your joint to the sound of him rummaging through his coat. After just a few seconds of silence, he sighed, and turned back to you. “Can I use your lighter?”
You kept your eyes on the street in front of you. “Don’t have one.”
“Seriously? You’re going to be like this right now?”
“God, do you ever shut the hell up?” You asked, holding out your lighter for him. It sat in your outstretched palm for a moment, before you felt him pluck it gently out of your hand. There was a flicker of light, and the sound of the Zippo flipping closed before he handed it back to you.
“What are you doing out here, anyway? Shouldn’t you be inside, being an annoying prick to everyone?” You sighed.
“Y’know, that’s exactly what I asked you,” he said, blowing smoke upward.
Your fingers were starting to feel numb in the cold, and you suddenly wished you brought a pair of gloves with you. “Just needed a little alone time. Which I still haven’t found.”
“Funny, thought you were having fun. Throwing yourself at everyone and whatnot. Seems like your greatest strength.”
You whipped around to him. “I’m sorry, are you keeping tabs on me? How is it any business of yours, what I do or who I talk to? What makes you think you can say that to me?”
Angus was fully turned to you now, too. The cigarette was burning quickly between his fingers, abandoned by his mouth. “I just don’t want my friend to get hurt, that’s all.”
“You were watching Brian and I?” You asked, incredulous.
His cheeks were turning bright red, and you sensed that it was from more than the biting weather. “So what if I was? I’ve seen how you are with guys.”
“‘How I am with guys?’ What the hell are you talking about? Where are you getting this from?”
“Come on, don’t act dumb. Every semester you get all cozy with some guy from our class, and then you ditch them. I just don’t want the same thing to happen with—I mean, to my friend. I’m not saying you’re easy or anything, just there’s a pattern.”
You were completely speechless. Maybe you did know a lot of guys from your class, but it didn’t mean that you were leading them all on, or that you had even been intimate with any of them. Brian was the one flirting with you tonight, and it didn’t mean you were a slut for indulging in it. But somehowm none of the words came out, no self-defense. You felt raw.
“What did I do to you, Angus? I mean, really. What did I do to make you hate me so much?”
He let out a bitter laugh. “You don’t get it, right? That’s very unsurprising, considering how little seems to get through your head.”
The fuzzy, warm feeling that the pot gave you had turned ice cold, and yet your brain still felt mushy and soft. There was no room for weakness around Angus, but now you felt like an open wound, a deep cut that he was digging his nails into.
“No, I don’t get it,” you replied. The lump in your throat was beginning to swell, like you tried to swallow an apple whole. “Because everyone loves you. All anyone ever talks about is you. ‘Oh, Angus threw this great party. Angus said the funniest thing the other day’. You have everything in the entire world, and you still can’t leave me alone. Apparently, it’s some great crime for me to even make friends. You just want everything for yourself.”
He stared at you with the same wide-eyed expression as before. If you squinted and focused just a bit more, he might have even looked embarrassed.
“I’d love to know what’s so fucking great about you. I really wish I saw that. We could even be friends if you weren’t such a giant asshole,” you finished weakly. You tossed the dead joint to the ground, and brushed past him back to the bar, shoulder shoved into his arm.
“You’re welcome for the lighter, by the way.”
---
The rest of the week had broken you down into a shell of yourself. After getting disasterously drunk after your argument with Angus at the bar on Monday night, you awoke with a pounding headache the next morning. You dragged yourself out of bed and into class, only to realize that you had forgotten to do a reading. If you hadn’t gone out that night, you would have had time to do the assignment, and now you were falling even more behind than before. Your shift at the campus café on Wednesday afternoon was incredibly busy because your coworker had called off. Despite the fact that you were a below-average barista, your boss insisted that you juggle the cash register and making drinks. On Thursday you slept too late and missed another class, and on Friday you barely had the energy to get out of bed.
You spent the weekend trying desperately to study and catch up with homework, but it was like your brain had completely shut down. You read and reread lines from your textbook, failing to gain any meaning from the words, and your hand began to cramp after writing only a page of notes. Everything was falling apart, and there was no one to blame but yourself.
Angus was just the cherry on top. You saw him almost everyday, and when you came to class late that Tuesday, the sight of him was just a stabbing, awkward reminder of what happened. Having that power over you was unbearable, and you wanted to skip classes to avoid even seeing him. You refused to let him know he had that power over you, but it was getting harder everyday.
Monday, on your way to Johnson’s class, you felt more defeated than you ever had. It was the last class of the day, but the sky was already starting to darken, and the snow had accumulated so quickly the past few days that most pathways on campus hadn’t been shoveled yet, leaving you to step wonkily through the quad. You tired quickly from trying to step in the uneven ground, and decided, with much shame, to call it quits and walk back to your dorm. Fuck this. Fuck school, fuck Johnson, and fuck your life.
You turned around and followed your steps back through the quad, staring down at the monotonous ground at your feet, before hearing your name called. Looking up, you saw Angus, bundled up tightly, with a ridiculous trapper hat over his head, curls still managing to escape from underneath. No. No, no, no. This was the last person you wanted to see right now.
There was no avoiding him, however, as his long legs reached you in a few short paces. “What are you doing? Class starts in two minutes.”
“Yeah,” avoiding his gaze, you attempted to move around him. “Better get a move on then.”
He stepped in front of you, blocking your path. “Where are you going? You know Lincoln Hall is the other way, right?”
“I know that, Angus,” you said, attempting to move around him again. However, the man just sidestepped you again, staying directly in front of you.
You looked at him, not bothering to hide the ire in your face. “Do you mind?”
“Are you skipping right now?” He asked, and you wished that he didn’t sound so earnestly concerned. You wished that he didn’t care at all.
“Yes, I am. Now move, please and thank you.”
He simply shook his head. “Don’t skip, okay? Come to class. We have a test on Wednesday and you’ll be screwed if you don’t go.”
You scoffed at him. “Oh please, don’t act like you care. If I fail, it’ll just give you an opportunity to rub in how much better than me you are.”
“It doesn’t matter, okay? We have to go. You’re not like this, you’re not… a skipper,” he insisted.
“How would you know what I’m like, Angus? I’m not going, and that’s it.” You pushed past him again, before suddenly being pulled by the wrist. You stared back at Angus in disbelief, and couldn’t help but think that this was the first time he had ever touched you.
“What the hell are you doing?” you yelled, giving your arm a light tug.
Angus’ grip was firm, but not painful, as he tugged you back in the other direction. “You’re being ridiculous. Come on, we’re already late as it is.”
Panic began to rise in your throat, and you shook your head frantically, now pulling harder to free yourself from his grip. Angus was much stronger than he looked, and didn’t seem to budge from your flailing attempts to get free. “What the fuck?” He yelled, looking at you incredlously.
“I can’t do it, Angus! Okay? I can’t explain it but I just can’t walk in there! Please, please, please don’t make me do this,” you begged, eyes screwed shut as you fought back tears.
He released you suddenly, and you fell back into the snow from your continued momentum.
“Oh, shit! I’m sorry. I didn’t realize that would happen, I was just trying to…” He stopped, and rushed to kneel by you, where you slowly sat up from the thick layer of snow you had landed in. Your ass was wet, and the chill was beginning to set in quickly. Everything was going so wrong, and you wished to curl into a ball and disappear.
“Are you alright? I’m sorry, I wasn’t trying to push you. Well, I mean, I was, but I didn’t mean to push you too far.” He extended his hand, and you grabbed it in defeat, letting him pull you out of the snow.
You brushed your behind with bare hands, and tried to dry them on your coat. “How did my life become so fucked up?” You asked yourself quietly. Angus still stood in front of you, irritatingly concerned, and you suddenly felt very sorry for the both of you.
Angus stared at you with furrowed brows, a frown on his face that you’d never seen before, and you wondered if he was upset. You’d never seen him be upset. Annoyed, of course. Mad, plenty of times. Happy, even, laughing it up with his friends. But simply upset? That was an expression that was new to you, and you hated seeing it on him. He still looked handsome, warm brown eyes trying to melt your cold.
He sighed. “Look, if you’re struggling with school, I get it. And I’m not trying to sabotage you, okay? No tricks when I say this: come to my place after class today. We can work together, and I can fill you in on what you missed for Johnson’s. I figure you can’t go now when…” He gestured awkwardly to your lower half.
You didn’t say anything for a long moment, just letting the snow fall around you in silence. Angus would be ten minutes late if he left for class now. “Why are you being nice to me?” you asked.
He shook his head, and swung his backpack around to unzip it. He tore out a piece of paper, and pulled a pen from the bottom of his bag. One palm was used to hold the paper, and he quickly scribbled something onto the sheet. When he handed it to you, you could see that the writing was messy, and that the pen had torn a little hole in every other character.
“That’s my address. If you want to come over, then come over any time after 4, okay? I promise I won’t belittle you or make you feel bad, or anything. I promise,” he repeated. By the time you looked up from the crinkled page, you saw him jogging to class, backpack bouncing from the single shoulder it hung from, and red scarf trailing behind him.
---
You stood infront of a three-story apartment building on Main Street. The first floor was taken up by a bakery, which you had been to only once before, and the facade was all worn, red brick, and intricate stained glass above the bay windows. It was the kind of apartment you dreamed of living in; the view from the bay was probably so comfortable this time of year. Angus didn’t deserve to live here. You stepped to the front door, and searched for Angus’s name by the doorbells. Once you pressed the button, a surge of anxiety ran through you, and you suddenly wondered if you still looked okay, or if the wind had messed up your hair. You smoothed a hand over your long, wool skirt, and wanted to slap yourself for caring what Angus thought of you.
After a minute, you heard footsteps thumping from behind the door, which swung open to reveal Angus all dressed down. He wore flannel pants, and a grey hoodie with the name ‘Barton’ printed in all caps.
“Hey, sorry, I didn’t know if you’d actually show up,” he said, stepping aside to let you in.
“No, that’s fine. It’s your house,” you replied, following him up the stairs to the second floor.
His apartment was so beautiful that it was unfair. The bay window was even more beautiful from this side, gauzy curtains pulled aside, and a plush bench nestled in the space. The kitchen and living room were connected with a wide archway, and you could see from where you stood that the dining table was surrounded by three wooden chairs, his winter coat hanging off the back of one.
The living room featured a plush corduroy couch, adorned by a single throw pillow and woven blanket tossed over the arm. The coffee table had board games stored underneath it, you could see an intricately designed chessboard poking out. A tall and narrow bookshelf stood next to the T.V set, and you wandered to look at it while Angus cleared the coffee table of mugs and loose paper. It appeared that he was most interested in the American classics, and you were impressed to see a copy of Gravity’s Rainbow on the shelf. You plucked it off carefully, and turned to Angus, holding the book to him with both hands.
“Is this one any good? I haven’t had the chance to read it yet.”
He looked to you from his place in the kitchen, depositing dishes in the sink. “Oh, uh. I haven’t actually read it yet.”
You snorted, and placed it back on the shelf, next to a curiously worn copy of Meditations by Marcus Aurelius.
“Sorry, I can take this for you,” he said, sounding much closer than he was before. He was only inches from you now, with surprisingly light steps, and gestured to your coat.
“Oh! Thank you…” you went to put your bag down on the ground, but Angus took it before you could. When you took your coat off, he took it with a single hand, leaving your bag on the couch before going to hang the coat off another chair in the kitchen.
It was awkward standing in Angus’ living room. Did he have a roommate? You wondered what the rest of the apartment looked like, and were itching to explore. You never imagined that you would be in his space, and it was almost too intimate to now be in it. You sat stiffly on the couch, busying yourself by rummaging through your bag.
“Hopefully you don’t mind being in the living room? My kitchen light has been flickering, so it’ll be a headache to sit in there,” Angus asked, setting down two steaming mugs onto the table.
“That’s fine. What’s this?”
“Oh, it’s Earl Grey. Nothing fancy, I don’t own a teapot or anything. Just in case you needed the caffeine,” he turned the handle of one mug towards you, before settling down on the couch.
You mumbled thanks to him, still feeling strange and out of place.
“...What have you been struggling with the most?”
It would have been nice if in that moment, an explosion engulfed the entire room in flames, and you and Tully could be put out of your own misery. The humiliation of having to turn to Angus, of all people, was almost too much for you. His sheepish willingness to help was not making it any easier. You could only groan, and rub at your face, trying to fight the incoming headache.
Angus just stared at you, brow furrowed in confusion and second-hand embarrassment.
“Hey, it’s okay. I’m telling you. It might be shocking to hear, but I used to struggle with school, too, and it took a lot of work to get my head back on straight. But I had good mentors, and it got better,” he tried to comfort.
You chuckled, moving your hands to organize your notebooks and assignments across the coffee table. “That doesn’t shock me, actually. You can be kind of dumb sometimes.”
“You’re calling me dumb? Who’s the one that missed three classes in a row for British Romantic Literature? You should value your education a little more; if you don’t show up to class, you’re basically lighting money on fire. That makes you the biggest idiot in the school,” he jeered.
“Three classes in a row? How do you even notice something like that? Are you stalking me or something?” You countered, reveling in the warmth growing in Angus’s cheeks. “Will you just help me, already? I’m behind on two reflections for British Romantic, and if they don’t get done soon, I’ll just about kill myself.”
“That would be a tragedy. How will the world go on without you?”
“Cut the sarcasm, you ass.”
The study session started off rocky, with you and Angus arguing back and forth about Don Juan, insulting the other’s interpretations, and each other’s intelligence. You wanted to quit, almost storming out at Angus’s sharp tongue, before realizing that it was the exact kind of content needed to complete the assignment. His opposing view made it easier to know what you were arguing for the reflections, and you began to write pages upon pages of examination for Don Juan and Childe Harold's Pilgrimage. It became productive to work alongside Angus; he did his work while you did yours, but it was motivating to study with someone as competitive as him.
Even harder to admit, but you were even having fun. You enjoyed working to background noise, and he let you go through his records to find something you liked.
You laughed loudly when you pulled out a copy of Shut Down Volume Two by The Beach Boys. “Really? Angus Tully likes The Beach Boys? Do you dance along to Surfin’ U.S.A.?”
He rolled his eyes at your joke, unamused. “Whatever, it was a gift. I used to like them as a kid. It’s like, the opposite vibe of Massachusettes.”
You placed the vinyl carefully onto the record player. “It’s okay, I like them too. I used to listen to Pet Sounds on repeat; my parents were pissed about hearing God Only Knows ten times a day.” The needle was set to the edge of the record, and you let it begin to play.
“You’re from Massachusettes?” You asked.
He was sprawled lazily on the couch, legs wide, one hand holding a copy of Othello and the other marking it with a pen. He responded without looking at you. “Yeah, a city called New Bedford. It’s by the ocean.”
Your eyes went wide as you took your spot next to him. “Wow, ocean town? That sounds amazing. You probably fished a lot, huh?”
He shrugged. “I wasn’t great at it. I usually just went because my dad liked to. We’d go and he’d fry it after, and my mom would complain about the smell in the house, although it always smelled kind of salty.” Angus trailed off, looking down at Othello, eyes glazed over in thought. You didn’t know anything about Angus’ life, but you could tell that the subject of his family wasn’t an easy one. Leaving the conversation off on a bitter point would only make things between the two of you tense again, and you changed topics.
“Is that where you went to school, in New Bedford?”
“No, I went to a boarding school closer to Boston. One of those small towns about an hour away.”
You shook your head. “I knew it.”
He shot you a look. “Knew what?”
“That you’re a rich kid. I mean, I knew that it was a private school you went to, I heard you tell Max once, but boarding school?” You shook your head again in pseudo-exasperation.
“Whatever. It sucked, and I hated going there,” he said. The two of you fell silent, the sound of Don’t Worry Baby filling the room.
“What were you like in high school? A total jerkoff?” You played with your pen, scribbling mindlessly in your notebook. When he didn’t respond immediately, you turned to check on him. Othello now sat useless in his lap, and he appeared deep in thought again.
“Honestly, yeah, I was.”
“Shocker,” you quipped.
“Yeah,” he laughed, “Basically everyone hated me. I mean, really hated me. My classmates, my teachers, the whole administration. I did stupid shit like pull pranks but it was something else that was wrong with me. Not just that I blew up a toilet with firecrackers or whatever, but I thought I was so much better than everyone else. And then I grew up a little and realized that I’m not. And I said stuff back then to people that should’ve gotten my ass kicked. Sometimes it did.”
You didn’t expect Angus to be so honest with you, and sat at a loss for words. “You blew up a toilet?”
He just chuckled. “Yeah, and I got caught, too.”
“Rookie mistake.”
“Exactly,” he sighed, running a hand through his messy curls. It was longer now than it had been at the beginning of the semester, and you wanted more than anything to smooth out the stray curl by his forehead. He looked so soft in his hoodie, warmed by lamp light, completely in his element. “This is the first time I’ve ever had real friends before. It’s the first time I’ve walked into a room and people didn’t groan at the sight of me.”
“Yeah, must be nice.” You looked down, fiddling with the hem of your sweater. “It’s hard to imagine how much worse you could’ve been back then, when you’re already pretty bad now. But it’s also hard to imagine you being lonely, when everyone loves you now. Everyone but me, I guess.” Your fingers tightened in the fabric, and you sighed. “You were right, before.”
Angus just sat, watching you. “Right about what?”
“What you said last week. That I don’t get it. There’s probably some obvious explanation for why you hate me, but I don’t understand what it is. I don’t know why you were so mean before, or why you’re being so nice to me now.” Angus seemed to be the shortcut to making you emotional, because as soon as the words came out, you had to fight the shaking in your hands, and the lump in your throat. “I mean, if it’s something that I did, just tell me, and I’ll apologize and we can just be normal classmates. Because I don’t have the energy to fight with you, lately,” you continued.
“It’s not you. You didn’t do anything, okay? I’m just an idiot, and you’re right: I’m a huge pain in the ass,” Angus said, shifting closer to you.
“It must be me. You’re even nice to Tracy, and she’s the worst,” you warbled. “And you’re already one of the best writers in class; you’ll probably go far. You’re gonna write a novel.”
“It’s a novella. I’ll show you the first draft when it’s done.”
The words were meant to comfort, but it just made you break further, and a gentle tear rolled down your cheek. “I thought you didn’t want me to read it,” you whispered.
Angus shook his head again. “I was just being an asshole when I said that. I was… scared. You’re a better writer than I am by miles. I didn’t want you to judge me if you read it and found out that it sucks so I… I don’t know. Everytime I’m around you I get scared and defensive and I become even more stupid than I already am.”
You let out a watery laugh, wiping the mist from your eyes. “You’re scared of me? How does that work?”
He sighed your name, a soft sound that you had never come out of his mouth before. Not in that way, as though he could cradle it gently between his smooth palms. When you didn’t look up in response, he placed a hand on your shoulder, moving you towards him. Your skin prickled at his touch; even between layers of clothes you felt electricity sparking and warming your arm. His eyes met yours with an intensity that was almost too much to bear, but you couldn’t bring yourself to look away. You were less than a foot apart now, the closest to each other that you had ever been.
“I know that you don’t believe it right now, but you’re talented and a great writer. Everytime you speak up in class it’s something that I’ve never thought of, that probably half the idiots in there could never come up with on their own. And every time you look at me, you’re determined, like you know you could out-smart me any day of the week. You could, and you don’t realize it yet, which is terrifying,” he rambled. You could hardly breathe listening to him. “One day you’re gonna realize that nothing is holding you back, and you’ll leave us all in the dust. I’m a dumbass for being too insecure to admit that before, to you or myself.”
You didn’t know what to say; you had never expected Angus to tell you any of that. You thought that he’d say something about your writing workshop freshman year, or the time you switched his spot in the class presentations from last to first, so that when he came into class five minutes late (as you predicted) he was scolded by the professor. What was unexpected was him singing your praises, and telling you that you were a better writer than him.
“It’s big of you to admit that, Angus. Thank you for saying it,” you said.
“Don’t thank me, thank my shrink. It’s taken years of therapy to get here,” he replied.
You couldn’t hide your surprise at the mention of a shrink. “Well, since we’re being vulnerable, I’m sorry, too. For not being the bigger person, and ending this madness sooner. And for saying some pretty horrible stuff about you before. I guess we were both jealous of each other… I just wanted to be as good as you are,” you admitted. “I do have another question, though.”
Angus frowned, removing his hand from you. “Shit. What else did I do?”
“Why did you say that stuff to me about Brian last week? That was pretty horrible, accusing me of being easy, sleeping around with these guys from class. I wouldn’t hurt him, you know,” you said seriously.
Angus groaned, dropping his head. “Oh, God. Alright that was messed up, and I was being a male chauvinist pig, but you can’t go out with Brian, alright? Serious, he’s a moronic charlatan and you have to turn him down.”
Now you remembered how rude Angus could be, and a fire was lit under you again. Just when things were going well, he had to go say and something
“And who are you to say who I can and can’t date?”
His head whipped up to you. “You guys are dating?”
“No, Angus. But even if we were, it wouldn’t be any business of yours. I can see whoever I want, and it doesn’t make me a slut or something,” you gritted.
The relief on his face was evident. “Oh, okay, good. That’s good.”
“‘That’s good?’ What are you talking about?” You asked in astonishment. Angus was giving you complete whiplash.
He stared at you, looking as if he had just been caught red-handed, before standing up abruptly. “I think you should go home now.”
“Are you fucking kidding me? What is going on with you right now, Angus?” You snapped, standing with arms crossed. “One minute you’re bearing your soul to me, and now you’re shutting down. What are you trying to communicate? Because I’m so confused.”
Angus’ hands were threatening to rip the hair out either side of his head. “I told you I was scared! Because I like you, okay? Because you’re intellectual and thoughtful and the prettiest girl I’ve ever seen, and you can’t date Brian, because it’ll destroy me.”
It was as if a gun had been shot inches away from you, the way your ears rang and the world around you narrowed into the tiny pinprick that was Angus Tully. Nothing else existed anymore, just the way he bit into his plush bottom lip, the anguished crease in his brow, the droop of his almond eyes, his silly Barton hoodie. All you could do was reach forward, grab his hoodie strings and press your lips against his.
He melted into the kiss immediately, palms coming to cup your cheeks. He leaned forward to ease the strained reach towards him, and your hands clenched at his chest. Your lips slotted together perfectly, his nose bumping into yours. Even the dots of stubble scratching against your chin, which you would usually bemoan on any other man, was exhilarating and made you press for more. When you pulled back for air, his mouth chased yours until you pushed gently against his chest.
“I like you, too. Is that too juvenile?” You asked timidly.
“No,” he said, caressing the corner of your mouth with the pad of his thumb. Your lips were swollen and warm from being pressed against his, and you loved the soothing feeling of his thumb brushing against you. “It’s perfect. That’s exactly what I wanted to hear.”
Huffing a laugh to yourself, you reached up to twirl a curl between your fingers. His hair was just as soft as you imagined, the perfect contrast against his scratchy cheeks. He laughed with you, and asked “Having fun up there?”
You smiled, leaning into him again, “Lots. I’ve always wanted to do this.”
“Oh yeah? For how long?” He grinned.
You faked an annoyed groan, resting your head on his chest. “Oh, I don’t know. On and off since freshman year? You sat in front of me in American Lit, and I thought you were the coolest guy in the world. On whenever you spoke, and off whenever you spoke to me.”
His deft fingers played with the hair at the nape of your neck, brushing against the locks. “I think I’ve got you beat.”
You raised a suspicious brow at him. “What do you mean?”
“Mine started during freshman orientation. We got the same tour group, remember? And when we went in a circle introducing ourselves or whatever, I couldn’t believe I was gonna be in class with someone as beautiful as you. And then you said you wanted to be a writer and journalist, writing stories about life like Joan Didion, and I thought it was the coolest thing I’d ever heard,” Angus replied.
“Oh man, losts of wasted time then. We could have been doing this for three years instead of fighting every day,” you said.
He gave you that soft smile you loved, taking you all in. He felt like the luckiest man alive, and everyone else could suck it. “Better start making up for it now, then,” and he leaned in again, soft and warm and perfect.
unedited, if you couldn't tell. woo! i am so glad to be done with this one. i actually found him a bit hard to write for, but it was fun to try! if you enjoyed, pls consider leaving a like, reblog or comment :)
things can only get better || part five
Previous Parts: one || two || three || four
Fic Rating: Explicit (18+)
Chapter Rating: Explicit (18+)
Word Count: 19.7k
Pairing: Steve Harrington x Reader
Chapter Warnings: SMUT (unprotected p in v sex, m recieving oral, fingering, masturbation, denial?) slow burn friends to lovers, jealousy, depictions of grief, parental issues
Chapter Summary: as you and steve begin to navigate your new relationship, you have to find a way to reconcile your happiness with your baggage.
Fic Summary: You and Steve can't stand to be around one another... but you have to learn to coexist and raise your goddaughter together in the face of the apocalypse.
The first time you met Steve, you were new to Hawkins.
At nine years old, you had your own friends that you'd miss terribly, and you didn't want to have to meet anyone new. You moved across state lines for the good of your parents' careers and took a box of goodbye letters and friendship bracelets with you.
Your parents became members at the Hawkins Regency Country Club two weeks into moving, a recommendation from the head surgeon at Hawkins Memorial. The first community mixer was held in the event center at the club, a big ballroom overlooking the tennis courts.
You snuck away into the hot summer night knowing that you wouldn't be missed and sat on the patio with your legs tucked beneath your stupid, itchy dress. And, really, you didn't expect to be bothered, but you heard shoes scuffing behind you and knew that your isolation was short lived.
In some part of your mind, you thought you'd always remember that version of Steve— in ugly, corduroy pants and a green striped shirt, holding a plate of hors d'oeuvres. He'd sort of had a bowl cut too, which you suspected was the reason that he didn't keep too many pictures of his childhood around. Not until he had turned eleven and got his hair cut like Lief Garrett, at least.
"I didn't want you to be out here alone," he said. "It's dark."
You shrugged and turned out to face the tennis courts… and the woods beyond. It was so creepy and ugly here. The trees were big, and the woods felt so endless. Like you could just walk and walk and never escape. That's what being in Hawkins felt like.
But Hawkins, Indiana needed a cardiologist and had an opening in neurology with a path for advancement. It was like fate, your parents told you. It was the perfect place for them to go. Perfect for them, but… you weren't so sure.
"Do you… um… like to ride bikes?" Steve asked as he sat next to you. His nails were a little bloody around his cuticles, which you thought was gross, especially because he intended to eat finger foods. He was actively picking at them, which only made it worse, and you wondered why he was making them worse.
"No, I like to roller skate," you answered, nose wrinkling as he picked again and you watched him expose pink, raw skin. "Do you want a band-aid?"
He shook his head. "No, I'm fine." It went quiet then. You heard an animal calling in the woods, nothing you could identify. You wondered if there were entirely different animals here, or if anything overlapped. "I'm Steve. I live on Bradford Street."
"I live on Bradford Street." You turned to look at him, really look at him and gave a tiny smile before you told him your name. "I just moved here with my parents. They're doctors."
Steve offered you a small cocktail weenie. You declined. "I think you're the house next door," he said. "That's where the Thomases lived, but I heard my mom say that Mr. Thomas was having a baby with someone who wasn't Mrs. Thomas, so I guess they moved somewhere that they can all live together."
Your expression wrinkled. That didn't sound right, but Steve seemed so sure, so you jut went along with it. As you sat there, the music from the party was filtering through the crack in the sliding doors. Jive Talking, which you loved. You even had the 45. Steve didn't look particularly amused.
"Well, you live next door, so we can be friends," Steve said. "Maybe next week you can roller skate, and I'll ride my bike, and we'll see who's the fastest."
It was all so simple, it was exactly what you needed. A companion during parties where you were meant to be seen not heard, a friend to spend time with when the world felt so lonely. For a while, you tried to write your friends back home… but then Hawkins became your home.
It felt like all you needed was Steve, but then you got Carol and Tommy too, and that was perfect. You'd lost all of them in different ways, and you got them back in ones you didn't expect.
You woke up on the Friday of Sam's first birthday beside a sleepy Steve with his face smushed into a pillow, listening to the sounds of Sam breathing over the monitor. You moved closer, kissing his shoulder, right above the barely-there pink scars where he'd been dragged across the upside down version of Lover's Lake.
"Mmmph," Steve groaned into the pillow. He didn't bother opening his eyes for a while, but then he rolled over and blinked the sleepiness away. A fond smile played on his lips at the sight of you, even with your messy bed head and granny pajamas. "Morning, beautiful."
You rolled your eyes and laughed. "Good morning," you said with a tiny grin. He started to sit up, but you put a hand on his arm and tugged him back into bed. "Where are you going? I thought Robin cancelled the broadcast today for Peanut's party."
Steve grinned and kissed your forehead once before peeling himself off of you. "Yeah, but it's Peanut's birthday. I'm hosting the morning show so I can record it all on tape and show it to her when she's older."
You grinned and sat up. "That's cute," you replied. "Now I feel like my painted toy box is a stupid idea. It's not sentimental enough."
"No, it looks great and she can keep it forever. And who knows if she'll ever actually listen to the broadcast, y'know?" he insisted.
You followed him into the en suite and sat on the countertop while he got the shower running. He stretched, and your eyes flicked to the dark hair that trailed from his tummy and disappeared into his flannel pajamas.
He caught your gaze when you looked back up at him and rolled his eyes. "No. You're not showering with me." You laughed, cheeks burning hot as you tried to play coy. Just as you opened your mouth, he shook his head. "No way. Not to save water, not because you need one anyway. You're going to make me late."
A slow sigh escaped you. You hadn't actually slept together since the last time a week ago. And that wasn't to say you hadn't gotten close, but Steve kept pulling back before things could get too far, panting into your mouth with a gentle, I think we should slow down.
It was impressive, but generally frustrating. You wanted to sleep with Steve. Frequently. And you were confused about why every time that you tried to move beyond a heated make out, he politely rebuffed you.
I just want us to take our time, or, I don't want to rush.
But you hadn't taken your time. You had slept together after months of silent pining and jealousy and angst, and now… nothing. What good was taking your time when you'd already gone all the way? When, frankly, you'd missed a few bases on your way there?
But something about seeing him, with the grogginess of sleep still clinging to him, all unkempt and domestic… it was really doing it for you. You'd toe the line again and see if an entire week of behaving was slow enough for Steve. "I won't make you late," you insisted. "It's so cold today, a hot shower sounds really nice. And I don't want to go back to bed and be cold and alone."
Steve put his hands on his hips and sighed. A tiny smile played on your lips as he ran a hand through his messy hair and rolled his eyes again. "Fine. But it's just a shower."
Five minutes later, your hands were all over each other as you stood beneath the steaming spray. You panted, gasping into his mouth as he kissed you hungrily. His tongue dipped into your mouth, laving over yours like he was desperate to claim you inside and out.
But just as your hand moved down his stomach, following that dark thatch of hair, he pinned it to the tile. "Steve," you whined as he licked up your throat. "Let me touch you, baby."
And you swore you could feel him shiver against you. "You sound so hot calling me baby," he panted against your skin. And, Jesus, his dick twitched where it pressed against your hip. "But I want us to—" he hissed when you grabbed his ass to pull him closer, making him rut against you, "—to take this slow. Don't wanna cheapen it."
Huh. You'd need to unpack that later. For the moment, you pulled back just to meet his gaze. "Are you telling me that I can't suck your cock?" You asked with a pout.
"Oh, fuck me," he groaned. "No. I mean— not no I'm not telling you that. It's… yes, I'm… not yes as in—" He looked like he was being held at gunpoint, all soaking wet from the constant spray of water over the both of you, as pathetic as you'd seen him.
"Steve," you said, as gently as you could manage. "I am so fine with cheapening the moment. I'm literally begging to suck your dick right now, this is humiliating for me."
You kissed his throat, and he tasted like tap water and the remnants of his shampoo that had rinsed out. "Just…" You planted another wet kiss, sucking softly at the tender skin just beneath his pulse point. "Lemme take care of you. Please?"
He groaned, and you felt his cock twitch against your hip again. For just a moment, he gave in, rolling his hips almost imperceptibly against you. And then he sighed and pulled back to look in your eyes. "Can I take you on a date first?" He asked, tucking your wet hair behind your ear. "It's important to me."
You sighed softly, feeling an annoying sting of disappointment. Maybe he had a point— you'd done everything so backwards, maybe it was smart to cool off until you'd gone on a date and talked things out. So, with an annoyingly understanding and affectionate tug in your chest, you nodded. "Tomorrow," you said, meeting his gaze. "Promise?"
He smiled and kissed you again, slow and deep. Your eyes fluttered as he pinned you against the shower wall, groaning into your mouth. "Turn around, I want to wash your hair."
Steve's fingers moved over your scalp, combing through your wet hair as he massaged in the shampoo. You couldn't help the soft sighs that escaped your lips as he worked the suds through the ends of your curls.
A tiny laugh escaped him and you turned over your shoulder, brows furrowed. "Your perm is all grown out," he mused. "You should let me cut it."
"So you can get your payback?" You asked, raising a brow. He grinned and continued to work the shampoo in, until your eyes were half-closed and your knees felt weak.
He kissed your wet, soapy shoulder fondly once he'd gotten all of the shampoo rinsed. "I know the importance of a person's hair." He parted your hair and placed a gentle kiss at the back of your neck, sweet and tender. You listened as he lathered soap in his hands, then moved them to your slick skin.
A soft, shuddering sigh tumbled from your lips as his big hands massaged the soap onto your tits. One hand feebly grabbed at the slick, tiled wall. "Steve," you panted, almost a warning.
"Mmm?" He let his hands move, lower, sudsing up your tummy and ribs. "Just getting you clean."
Bullshit. His hands moved to your thighs, then squeezed your ass. He kissed the top of your spine again, pressing his forehead to your damp skin. He eased you beneath the spray, so all of the suds and bubbles rinsed down the drain between your feet.
"All better," he said softly. You opened your eyes and smiled up at him, feeling that stupid fluttery feeling that he seemed genetically engineered to instill in you. "Now get your cute ass back to bed. I have to take care of something before I leave."
A sly grin spread across your lips as you cast your eyes down, where his cock twitched, hard and flushed a pretty pink at the tip. You had a pretty solid idea of what that something was, and it wasn't something you really wanted to miss.
"Don't let me stop you," you said, and he groaned as you caught your bottom lip between your teeth and met his gaze once more.
"You're so evil," he muttered. But he couldn't stop his own eyes from wandering, falling from your eyes to your mouth, to your tits, to the soft curls at the apex of your thighs. He huffed and you watched his hand wrap around the base of his cock and squeeze.
His pretty eyes fluttered a bit, but when they locked on you, it sent a shot of pure electricity down your spine. It settled in your stomach, molten hot, and you gave a shaky exhale as his fist began to glide up and down his cock.
Holy fucking shit. Your mouth felt dry, and you swear you got a head rush just watching him. Rivulets of water streaming down his strong arms, the bulge of muscle as his hand worked over his length.
"This what you wanted?" He panted. His palm splayed against the tile beside your head, making him lean even closer to you. He smelled like the sweet honey of his shampoo and the spice of his body wash. You nodded quickly, and he fucking laughed. "Such a perv. Have you always been like this?"
No. God, no. He had a way of bringing out the most degenerate parts of you, it seemed. The angry, jealous rage, the toe-curling, horny need, the sappy, doting affection. So you just rolled your eyes and shook your head. "Shut up."
He tilted his head down, just enough that your noses pressed together and your lips were just barely grazing. Each of his panted breaths puffed over your wet mouth as he worked himself in his hand. You could hear the slick glide of his fist even over the spray of the water.
"Fuck, you look so pretty," he groaned, and his lips brushed yours in a cruel imitation of a kiss. So close, but still not enough.
You laughed weakly, holding his gaze. With his forehead against yours, you couldn't see much beyond the slope of his nose. That close, you could see every tiny freckle there, like pretty constellations.
"Wish you'd just let me touch you," you murmured. He groaned and pressed a sloppy kiss to your lips. He pulled back just to pant and moan, soft against the side of your mouth. "So stubborn."
He kissed you again, hungrier this time. His tongue moved over yours, careless and desperate, until he pulled back with blown pupils and flushed cheeks. "I'm really close," he panted. "You drive me crazy. I want you so bad."
"So bad?" You echoed. He nodded, knocking his nose against yours.
"Mhmm…" His nose nuzzled against your cheek as he sloppily kissed the side of your mouth. "So fucking bad, honey." The moan that escaped him sent a thrill through you— electric right down to your core. You felt his hot cum painting your thighs as he worked himself through his orgasm. It felt so intimate, seeing him come apart like that all on his own, that he'd done that for you, because of you.
His head slumped against your shoulder, wet hair sticking to your face as he huffed like he'd run a marathon. "Jesus christ," he panted. "Fuck." He kissed your shoulder, rinsed you clean, and kissed your forehead for good measure.
You slipped back into the bed and the cotton sheets felt like ice without him there to warm you up. And, frankly, you were still really turned on, enough that you had to slip a hand into your panties and get yourself off just listening to him humming and fixing his hair.
Just imagining him in his tight Levi's with the pudge of his tummy jutting over the waistband, with the dampness of the shower still clinging to the hair on his chest and his shoulders. The sounds he had made echoed in your brain, the smell of him close to you, sweet like honey.
You came embarrassingly fast, biting into the plush of your bottom lip as you worked yourself through it.
Steve stopped by the bed a few minutes later and planted a gentle kiss on your lips, totally oblivious. "Go back to sleep, dummy," he mumbled against your mouth. Then he stood and grinned. "The big broadcast is at eight, so make sure you have the radio on. I'll be back to help before the party, I promise."
Steve's broadcast started at 8AM, right as you eased a hungry Sam into her high chair and turned on the portable radio on the kitchen table. Sammie perked up at the sound of the station's jingle, or maybe it was just that you were bringing her a sippy cup of milk while you got ready to make her scrambled eggs on the stovetop.
Good morning Hawkins, I'm your host, Steve "The Hair" Harrington, and I hope you're ready for a very special broadcast in honor of a very special girl. My girl, my Peanut, turns a whole year old today.
You grinned at the sound of a cheesy cheering sound effect, followed by noisemakers. Even if he had a helping hand, that choice was all Steve.
Sorry to any parents listening, but compared to Peanut, your kids are total duds. She knows three whole words, and she has two teeth, both on the bottom. Her favorite food is oatmeal, and she totally hates all of the gross meat flavored baby food. She can walk a little, but prefers to be carried, and if you turn your head while she's on the ground, she's gone, because she's the fastest crawler on the planet. Her favorite Care Bear is Funshine, and I'm not ashamed to know all of their names.
And, you're probably thinking— Steve, you have a daughter at twenty, you're totally throwing your whole life away. But that's total bull. Honestly, it feels like I was just kind of aimless before I became her dad. I think now, I'm finally seeing things clearly.
Anyway, I hope she's listening to this someday on cassette, or maybe on hologram. Who knows? So Peanut, if you're listening right now or in the future— your dad loves you, your mom loves you— you're probably the most loved kid in the world. Happy Birthday, Sammie. This one's for you.
A dumb smile played on your lips as the bouncy bass riff of My Girl played through the speakers. You glanced over at Samantha, your girl, and felt such a strong tug of affection that your eyes went misty.
Stupid. You'd never been so sappy before now. A perk of motherhood, maybe.
Various party members and their families called in to leave birthday messages— for posterity. Auntie Rob was the first one to say her piece from the studio. And when the calls rolled in, they came in droves. Claudia and Dustin, The Wheeler's, The Sinclair's, Joyce and the boys.
Your girl, your peanut, was adored by everyone who was lucky enough to meet her. She smiled up at you with the few teeth she had as you put her plate down and fed her little bites. And every time she heard her dad's voice on the radio, you swore she looked a little happier.
The birthday party was later that day, with snow still falling in fat flakes that piled up in snowdrifts outside. It was a biting, nasty cold that no one would have wanted to leave the comfort of the indoors for.
And even so, the house was packed full of people who wanted to celebrate her. Soggy boots were left in the foyer, where they melted into snowy puddles that the beach towels on the floor did little to help with. Parkas overflowed the rack by the door and spilled onto Daniel Harrington's desk like it was a coat check at a fancy restaurant.
You'd attempted to frost the cake with little peanut shapes, but they turned into ugly brown blobs. Karen Wheeler stepped in to assist, easing the piping bag from your hands so you could, "enjoy the party."
You were doing your best to do just that, passing from group to group, trying to keep everyone entertained. You passed Sam being held by Mrs. Perkins, who was posing for a Polaroid. It was a full house— a combination of Carol and Tommy's families, yours and Steve's families (with large exceptions), and the family that he had found in the party.
It was nearly elbow to elbow, even in the large house, and it was far too cold for anyone to spill into the backyard. One of Steve's little cousins knocked into your legs as he ran to peek inside the dozens of gift bags that had spilled from the dining table and onto the floor. You hadn't really expected so much, but it was a welcome surprise.
You scanned the room, eyes furrowed, and frowned when you didn't spot either of your parents. They had called to tell you that they would be there, but the party was well underway and they still seemed to be missing. But you couldn't focus on that, just like Steve couldn't really think about his parents' absence, or whether they would have cared to show up in the first place. You just continued through the party, trying to keep things in order.
A smile played on your lips as you passed a table littered with pictures of Sam's first year. In the very middle, in a small metal frame, was a photo of Carol, Tommy, and Sam on the night she was born— red in the face and wrinkly. In a frame beside that was a framed photo of you and Steve holding Sam in her Halloween costume, with her full bucket of candy between you. It felt fair that all four of Sammie's parents were represented, and you couldn't imagine the day without them there in some capacity anyway.
As you passed the snack table, you felt a strong arm loop around your waist and tug you back, until you were held snug against a broad chest and felt lips peppering kisses onto your cheeks. "Hey, beautiful," Steve mumbled against your cheek, punctuating it with a final smack. "Did you fix the cake?"
"Mrs. Wheeler's got it," you answered, turning your face to plant a soft kiss on his lips. "Have you seen my parents yet?"
He sighed and shook his head. "Not yet, but they said they'd be here," he assured. He rubbed his hands over your arms like he and kissed the crown of your head. "And if they don't show up… that's their loss, right?"'
You sighed and nodded, then tilted your lips and accepted another chaste kiss, which was met by loud, exaggerated groaning. With a sheepish smile, you turned to look at Dustin and Robin, who were eating pinwheel sandwiches and peanut butter cookies that Claudia had brought.
"Can you tiptoe around each other again?" Robin asked. "I can't keep down my food."
"Yeah, this mushy shit is nauseating," Dustin said with a grimace.
Your brows furrowed and you tilted your head, a sly smile spreading across your lips. "Yeah? As nauseating as a certain song?" He swallowed, and had the good sense to look abashed. "A certain song about a certain story… It's on the tip of my tongue actually…"
Dustin's expression wrinkled and he shook his head. "You're both seriously evil people, you know that? You belong together." He grabbed the peanut butter cookie from Steve's plate and shook his head. "Don't eat my mother's cookies, you don't deserve them."
You shook your head and peeled yourself off of Steve so you could continue your rounds. The party was there, along with their families. You hadn't realized how much Steve was appreciated until Sue Sinclair was pulling you to the side to talk about how Steve had spent August of '85 practicing with Lucas to prepare him for basketball tryouts. How he'd never missed one of Lucas' games, so they wouldn't have dreamed of missing Samantha's birthday.
And it seemed like every one of the kids and their parents had a similar story. Steve let Mike wait out a storm inside of Scoops Ahoy after closing, and sent him off with free ice cream. He drove Will into the city to check out the one comic book store that had a comic he needed. Claudia had already told you about Steve helping Dustin get ready for every single school dance he's ever attended… and reiterated it any time she had your ear.
You just wished El could have been there. She was an angel in your eyes, and she loved helping with Sam whenever she came to visit. You'd always felt so lonely as an only child— it was part of why you and Steve bonded so quickly as kids— and being around El let you feel like a big sister.
You'd promised to save her a slice of cake for the next time you saw her, but it still felt a bit unfair that she had to hide in the shadows. A girl like her deserved life in the sun.
"There's Mama," you heard a voice say, and suddenly Sam was in your arms again. You weren't even sure who had handed her over, but you bounced her on your hip and carried her over to Steve.
He smiled at the sight of her, expression softening as he leaned in to kiss her forehead. She let out a happy dada, which Steve had been bragging to everyone about. You had definitely heard her say more and hi first, but you weren't going to ruin his fun.
You adjusted her dress and straightened the bow clipped to the tiny ponytail on the top of her head. A camera flash startled the three of you, and you gave Claudia a sheepish smile as she took more photos, until Dustin put a hand on her arm and guided her away.
"Baby parties are kind of boring," you said to Steve as you nodded back to the clusters of people just standing around and snacking. "Maybe we can knock out happy birthday, cut the cake, then open a few presents?"
He frowned. "You don't want to wait a little longer?" He asked. "We can hold out for your parents, if you want me to. I can stall for time, give a big, sappy speech."
Despite everything, you couldn't help but smile. "Yeah, you got that out of the way tenfold this morning," you said. "It was really sweet, by the way. I got a little weepy, which is totally lame. But, she's lucky you're her dad."
Steve's cheeks went a little pinker than they had before— you were around him enough now to notice things like that. And how he swallowed hard at compliments that really meant something, like he had to force himself to accept it.
"Yeah, thanks," he said quietly. "And we're both really lucky to have you. You're so…"
A sight over his shoulder made you stand up straighter, and the sound of whatever he had been saying was muffled in your ears like you'd been submerged underwater.
Because in the middle of the living room, with snow clinging to her hair and a beautifully wrapped gift in her arms was your mother. It was almost impressive, how little you'd crossed paths with her since your brief visit to the Hospital. Sometimes, when you would go with Steve to visit Max, you'd hear her voice down the hallway, but that was the extent of it.
You wondered if the nurses warned her— Maybe avoid that hallway, your whore daughter is visiting the comatose redhead with that boy she lives in sin with.
But that wasn't fair. Well, really, what they had done wasn't very fair either.
"Sorry I'm late. I was hoping your father would be out of surgery by now, but…" She gave a flippant wave of her hand. "I brought a gift for Samantha."
A strained smile played on your lips as you bounced her on your hip. "That's really sweet, Mom," you finally said. "I can go carry that into the dining room with the others. Do you want to hold Sam? She's an easy baby, really calm."
She gave a polite, but firm shake of her head. "You don't need to bother, darling," she insisted. It was her coded way of saying, I'm here, but not for that. So you took a deep breath and watched her disappear into the party again.
You looked towards the front door and let out a heavy sigh. "We should probably just get everything done," you finally said to Steve. "Because if we wait much longer, Sam's gonna get fussy, and people are going to get antsy and…"
Steve planted a kiss on your forehead and ran a thumb between your brows, smoothing the wrinkle there until you laughed softened your expression. He pressed a small kiss right where his thumb had just been. "I'll handle everything, don't even stress."
If there was one thing that Steve was good at, it was taking the burden off of your shoulders and moving it onto his own. So while you got Sammie into her high chair and made sure her bow was clipped on straight and her shoes were buckled right, Steve rallied the troops and brought in the cakes.
Steve counted the room off, and Sam wailed as the crowd around her sang happy birthday. Her face went strawberry red as she cried, so you and Steve had to blow out the single candle on her tiny, baby sized cupcake. It was unclear to you whether or not that counted as a wish, but you had one. Please let this all work out.
That afternoon, when the guests had cleared out and left only a few stragglers to help clean, you took inventory of Sam's haul. With the quarantine in place, the gifts hadn't exactly been top shelf, but there was a clear show of effort that made you happy.
Hand-sewn outfits, hand-me-down toys and books, baby gear that people had no need for and were willing to pass along. The dining room was filled with it all, and you were honestly a little worried about finding space to store everything.
As you counted the number of Care Bears that she had gained (two funshines, one good luck bear, one bedtime bear, and three cheer bears), you felt arms loop around your stomach and you laughed softly as you were tugged against Steve's broad chest.
"You did good today," he mumbled against your throat as he kissed the soft skin there tenderly. "The party was fun, the cake was delicious—"
"I heard Mike say the peanuts on the cake looked like balls."
"Mike's an asshole," he said. "Mrs. Wheeler fixed it either way, and everything was perfect. You're perfect." His palms splayed over your tummy, pulling you tighter against him as he continued to pepper gentle kisses.
"Steve," you murmured softly, as he moved your hair away to suck at your pulse point. For a moment, your knees threatened to buckle, and you couldn't do much more than exhale a shuddery sigh. "Steve, Claudia is right in the kitchen."
He smiled against your throat and you shivered as his teeth grazed over your jaw. "She's occupied." His voice vibrated against your throat, and you sighed weakly.
You laughed softly and turned around in his arms so you could look up at him. "Steve. What about our date tomorrow?" He groaned against you and the ticklish buzz of the sound made you shiver. "If the rules apply to me, they apply to you."
With a sigh, he peeled himself off of you and fixed you with a little pout. "That's too many Care Bears," he sighed. "Way too many. And she already has, like, a million upstairs."
You laughed and held the good luck bear to your chest. "I think you should keep this one," you said. "Put it in the van for the crawls. A real good luck charm."
He ran his fingers over a hand-sewn big bird pillow and laughed softly. "What'd your mom end up bringing, anyway?" He asked, meeting your gaze. "Baby's first MRI?"
You scoffed and shook your head. "No, uh… it was old baby things of mine that were in storage," you answered. "Mostly dusty, old clothes that Sam will never wear. And…"
You reached into the box and pulled out a curly stuffed bear with a big yellow ribbon around it's neck. With a big smile, you held him to your chest. "Do you recognize him?"
For a moment, there was little more than confusion behind his gaze, and then there was a flash of recognition. "Mr. Coco," he said with a grin. "I gave you that when we were, like, ten."
"Eleven," you corrected, squeezing the bear even tighter against your body. The top of its head smelled like the attic— ancient and musty, but it made your heart ache with nostalgia. "What are your parents sending?"
He shrugged. "Well, snail mail and quarantine aren't exactly the best ways to communicate," he said with a wry laugh. "Three months ago I sent a letter with pictures of the three of us to them and reminded them of her birthday. And two weeks ago I got a heavily redacted letter that mentioned that they had shipped us a camcorder as a combo birthday-Christmas gift, with their best wishes for the three of us."
A tiny grimace twisted your expression. "Bleak," you said softly. "But useful? It'll be nice to have some home videos of Sam."
"Yeah, well that's if it makes it through the blockade, or whatever. Ninety-nine percent chance some bozo MP is fucking around with it right now."
Steve wrapped his arms around you again and kissed you slow and sweet, and you felt the tension of the day melt like the snow that dripped from the eaves outside. His hands moved up to your shoulders and you sighed against his mouth as his thumbs worked out the tension there.
"You should bail on cleaning," he said softly, mumbled against the corner of your mouth. "Why don't you go take a really long, really hot bath and relax for the rest of the night, hm? We have a big day tomorrow."
A grin twitched onto your lips as you peered up at him through your lashes. "Are you telling me I need to rest up before our date?" You asked coyly. "What are we gonna do? Run a marathon?"
"Something like that."
Before you could respond, you felt a presence at your left and turned to see a scowling Mike Wheeler. "Gross. Can you two stop sucking face long enough to tell us where the recycling bin is?"
Steve groaned in annoyance and stalked off with Mike in tow, dragging him into the garage where you kept the bins during the snowstorm. In his absence, you slipped into the kitchen and gave Claudia a grateful smile.
"You've done so much for us already, you don't have to clean any more," you insisted. "You should get home, Mrs. Henderson. Let the rest of us pick up the slack."
She looked reluctant, but grateful as she gathered her things and her son and headed towards the car. In the morning, you'd call the florist and send her a thank you bouquet, and even that didn't feel like enough. Without even meaning to, she'd become Samantha's unofficial grandmother, in a way. Whether she'd ever claim that title or not, it made you happy that even with your own and Steve's parents being absent in one way or another, your girl still had a family around her to give her love.
You tidied up what was left of the kitchen, then joined Lucas and Erica in the living room. They were trying to silently pop balloons with tiny pinpricks that they squeezed the air out of, which meant whenever one popped loudly, the offender got yelled at.
"There's a baby asleep upstairs, shithead," Erica snapped and slapped her brother's arm.
"You just popped one!" He argued back.
Nancy, Robin, and Jonathan were trying to make tidying the display of Peanut's baby pictures a three person job. Will was folding up the banners and garlands that he had painted for you to keep, while Joyce sat staring longingly at the snowy patio like she was craving a smoke.
You slipped into your bedroom and smiled at the sight of a tiny present on your nightstand. You chewed on your lip as you took the little box into your hands and read the small note on top.
To the best mom in Hawkins, from the okay-est dad in Hawkins. One year down, seventeen more to go. At least.
Inside the box, you found a little ring rattling about. A pretty gold setting with two little diamonds framing a dainty ruby cut into a heart shape. It fit perfectly on your ring finger, the one on your right hand.
You recognized it immediately— Valentine's Day of '80, Sylvia Harrington got the ring as an apology. Steve told you as much, when you had to sit through the Hawkins Regency Valentine's Day dinner and watch her showing the little ring off to the other ladies.
I heard Mom say he's screwing the secretary again. That's why she got that and not, like… a card and a bouquet.
The next time you went over, you found the ring shoved in the back of the jewelry box and tried it on. Still too big for your fingers, but so pretty that you just wanted to take it home. He said you could, if you wanted, but you knew if your parents caught you with it, they'd drag you over to return it by your ear.
Steve had remembered, after all this time. It was funny, how it had been a thoughtless gift from his father, but meant so much coming from Steve. One woman's sorry-for-cheating present is another's treasure.
You took Steve's suggestion and had a long, hot bath in Sylvia Harrington's pink bathtub. And you figured if you could have her ruby ring, you could use her fancy soaps and bath oils. You stayed in, decompressing until the water went lukewarm and you felt like a lavender-scented raisin.
It was still snowing out— you could see it from the big windows in the bedroom, so you pulled on your comfiest sweatsuit and thickest socks before braving the living room.
"Oh look, Mom's back," Robin said when you walked back in. It made your face heat up still, that stupid nickname. "We're watching Clue, if you wanna join."
You grabbed an extra slice of cake and slid into the free spot beside Steve. The second you were beside him, his arm found its place around your shoulders like it was second nature. And, really, you fit against his side like you belonged there.
No crawls, no monsters, no fears. Just one really good day— the best day. Steve and the rest of the party sprawled around the living room, a stupid movie on TV, your girl upstairs napping.
His lips pressed against your temple and you melted against him. You wished every day could be just like that.
Snow was still falling in fat, lazy flakes as Steve drove you into town the next day. The headlights illuminated them as they drifted down, landing in clumps atop yesterday's snow.
Steve had managed to strike a deal with Mrs. Henderson, or maybe he had just begged until she folded. Frankly, you weren't sure how he pulled it off, but you were baby free until the morning, which was as exhilarating as it was unfamiliar.
Your stomach fluttered with all sorts of strange feelings. Nerves, like any other first date you'd ever been on. Worry, because Sam was staying the night with Claudia and she'd never spent the night anywhere before. Giddiness, because you'd spent most of your adolescence dreaming about a date with Steve Harrington, and it was finally happening.
Enzo's was, as he put it, the only real option for your kind-of-first date. You didn't bring up that your last date had been to Enzo's as well, or how that date had turned out. All he knew was that it went bad, you didn't get to hook up, and he was stupidly smug about it.
The table he'd reserved was a little small, tucked into the corner next to the string quartet they had on Saturdays. They were playing Vivaldi— one of the songs that played from your childhood music box. You kicked Steve's shin as you tried to readjust your legs, and laughed bashfully as you mumbled a quick apology.
"You look so beautiful tonight," he murmured, and you melted a little as he brushed your hair behind your ears. "You got all dressed up for me, huh?"
Truthfully, you'd spent a stupid amount of time getting ready— flipping through Vogue and Cosmo for any inspiration for how to dress up while not freezing to death in the snow. Eventually, you copied an editorial as best as you could— a turtleneck sweater, a mini skirt, red tights, and black boots.
"I wanted to put in some effort," you admitted, a little bashful to have been called out for it. "Most of the time I'm just wearing sweats and a t-shirt covered in baby food, milk, and god knows what else. I thought you deserved me at my best for our date."
His brows furrowed at your words, and he shook his head quickly. "What? You're always at your best. You're— I mean, god, you're perfect all of the time, not just—" He exhaled hard and met your gaze. "I didn't mean to imply that you're… y'know, better, but—"
"Steve," you said gently. "I know what you mean, and thank you. I think you look pretty handsome yourself." He preened at that, and you grinned at his proud little smile as he read over the menu and tried not to look too happy about the compliment.
"Sam said milk today," you said, after a prolonged bout of silence. "Clear as day. So that's word number four."
His expression wrinkled a bit and he shook his head. "No, it's five. She said bye when we dropped her at Henderson's."
You were unconvinced. She'd said buh… and gah, and blew raspberries. But you shrugged and chewed on the crispy breadsticks the waiter had brought out with your waters. No wine— you tried to order their cheapest red and were promptly carded. That's what a fancy establishment got you.
While you waited for your food, the conversation was stiff. Talk about the station, about Sam and her newest milestones. About Robin, apparently dating someone new and totally stealing your thunder as the party's newest couple.
And then you just… sort of ran out of things to say. What was there that you hadn't said already earlier that day? Or that week? Or in the past nine months of living together?
There was so much balancing precariously on the shoulders of the date. It was your first full night away from the baby ever. It was your first real date with Steve. It was the requirement Steve had set before you could have sex again. And, in the back of your mind, it felt like a litmus test for the viability of your relationship.
"So…" you pushed your dinner salad around with your fork and the tomato on your fork mopped up the vinaigrette. "What's a normal first date conversation to have?"
Steve perked up at your attention and gave a small shrug. "I dunno… uh, where do you see yourself in five years?"
A snort escaped you and you couldn't help an amused smile that crept onto your lips. "What, like a job interview?" You laughed lightly as he ducked his head, but humored him. "Um… I would hope I've at least gotten my associates in nursing by then. I might think about trying to get a job at one of the schools when one of the batty, ancient nurses finally retire."
He looked at you expectantly, and you felt your face burn a little. "And in this very optimistic vision, your parents graciously hand over the keys to their place while still paying the bills so we can have a nice place to raise Sam," you joked, because it was the least mushy way you could communicate that he was still in your vision of the future. "What about you? Five years out, what do you want life to be like?"
You watched him think for a moment— brows drawn together, tongue peeking out from the corner of his mouth. A soft, huh, escaped him, like he hadn't thought about what his own answer would be.
"I guess, y'know, I want all of the bad stuff in Hawkins to be over," he began. His thumb ran along your knuckles again, worrying over the ring as he thought. "I'd have a decent job doing whatever the hell I can get hired to do. That part doesn't matter as much as just, y'know, being a good provider for my girls. And Peanut would be in school by then, and she'd be doing really well because we'd be working with her at home too. And, I dunno… I think it'd be nice if she had a sibling or two by then, before she's too big and feels left out when we have more."
Oh. You took a slow drink of your water and tried to pretend like you couldn't feel Steve's eyes on you, studying your reaction. Steve wanted more kids. Steve wanted more kids before you even turned twenty five. Steve wanted to have kids with you. And maybe you hadn't schooled your expression well enough, because his eyes went a little soft and his throat bobbed nervously.
"If we… y'know, have more," he amended. "But have you thought about it? Having more kids, I mean."
"That's a… wild question for a first date," you said with a weak laugh, trying to brush off the seriousness of the question. "I guess I never really thought about it before everything happened, you know? I thought I'd decide whether or not I'd have kids when I was older and had everything else figured out first. But, uh… I guess it got decided for me."
Truthfully, you'd always wondered if you wanted kids at all. It seemed like everyone's parents let them down eventually. Your own, who hadn't ever really seemed interested in raising you in the first place, Steve's who tormented him with both emotional and physical distance. Carol's father whose benders drove her to your house for an escape, and Tommy's father, who pushed him aside to pour all of his attention onto his shiny new step-family.
It just felt like all parents did was fuck their kids up in some way. Whether intentionally, or as an unfortunate side-effect of just existing.
But you'd also seen Claudia doting over Dustin at the dinner table, encouraging his interests and hobbies even if she didn't understand them. You'd heard Steve singing Sam to sleep at three in the morning, exhausted but full of so much selfless love that it didn't even bother him that much. And you'd felt a new part of yourself growing and changing over the past year— like the muscle of your heart expanding to create a new space all for your girl. Full of pride and love and joy for every bit of her that you got to experience.
The odds felt stacked against you, in a way. Most parents messed up; everyone you knew had, at one point, slammed their bedroom door and just screamed into their pillow about how they hated their parents, or they just didn't understand. And you thought that, maybe, the inevitability of it was just part of life that you had to count on.
Because you still remembered how proud your father had been when you clumsily stitched your teddy bear's arm back on, and how your mother had beamed about how beautiful you looked before prom. You remembered Carol's father's slow recovery for his family's sake, and how he'd cried happy tears when they danced at her wedding.
"I guess I don't think it would be the worst thing," you said finally. "More, I mean. Like… two or three including Sam. If the circumstances are right."
"What about four?" He asked, and you couldn't tell if he was joking or not.
So you brushed your hair back and narrowed your eyes with an easy smile. "Do you always ask your dates how many babies they're willing to pop out for you on first dates?"
He scratched the back of his neck sheepishly and laughed. "Sorry, you're right, that's pretty intense, huh? Uh… it's been a while since I've been on a first date," he admitted. "Like a real, sit down, have a conversation date, you know? Not just…"
"Yeah, I know what a first date is," you replied with a tiny laugh. "Who was your last real one? Nancy?"
It was meant to be a teasing jab, but his cheeks went a shade of pink that might have been adorable if it weren't for jealousy roiling around your stomach. Which was stupid, really, but that didn't make it any less present. "I mean, yeah, pretty much," he admitted.
"Huh… Carol told me you were, like, really dating around after I left Hawkins," you said, raising a brow. "Like… constant stream of girls dating around. I guess I didn't realize she meant, like, fucking around."
He glanced at the tables on either side of you, but the string quartet was playing loud enough that it sort of muffled your conversation. "I took most of them out beforehand."
You laughed wryly. "Most of them."
His eyes narrowed, and you could sense defensiveness in the tick of his jaw. "Why are you being so weird about this? You're acting pissed."
You didn't know how to even begin to explain how you were feeling, because it was a weird feeling. This itch under your skin, a resentment. Of the girls, of him. Stupid, nagging, hot jealousy from a very loud, very tender spot you thought you'd outgrown.
"I'm not pissed," you insisted, because you were pretty confident that you weren't. "And I don't know what it is, okay? I just feel crazy when I think about you with other girls. It makes me feel like I'm in high school again."
Unfortunately, you were self aware enough to know where it all stemmed from. Carol's birthday party in the stupid basement closet and your first kiss with Steve (with anyone). How he had immediately confessed that he wished you had been Lisa.
It was watching his endless stream of girlfriends and going to parties where he'd disappear into the nearest door with a lock and walk out unkempt and smug. It was the mental image of Steve with pretty girls who he took on casual dates and hooked up with in his car, the same car that he'd gotten you in the backseat of.
It made you stupidly nauseous to think about. That you were one of many, that there was always a chance that you were being compared to some other girl he'd been with, for better or worse.
Maybe Amy was a better kisser. Maybe Laurie was better in bed. And Lisa had better tits, and Stacey had a better attitude, and, and, and. Maybe the only thing you had going for you was that, for now, he was in love with you.
"Hey, I can see your brain working," he said, and you thought it was sweet how visibly concerned he was, at least. "This isn't like high school, okay? After the wedding it was all just… meaningless. I was looking for something— for someone— that wasn't even in Hawkins."
Your chest fluttered a little at his words. There was a sick sort of pride you felt at being the one in the back of his mind while he was with other girls, just like he had been with you. It soothed that nagging voice in the back of your head, just knowing that you had been the one who he was comparing them all to.
Sure, it was immature and selfish, but it had always been a part of you, that jealousy. "Oh," you said softly, because you couldn't think of anything else to say.
"That's why this date means a lot to me, you know?" He said. His cheeks were dusted with the faintest ruddiness, the softest spray over his freckle dotted face. "I just… I needed this to be different than before, so you don't think that being your boyfriend isn't important to me. I didn't want you to think I just wanted to sleep with you, and that's all that mattered to me, because I wouldn't blame you if you thought of me that way."
You swallowed around a lump in your throat and nodded. "I don't think of you that way, and I know you really care about this," you said, lips twitching with a tiny smile. He took your hand from across the table, his thumb running over the ruby ring on your finger. Your heart was doing a funny, fluttery thing, one that made you feel like you were going to cry or laugh because you were so full of feeling that something had to come out.
You knew what it was, but you couldn't bring yourself to verbalize it. "Hey, about what you said before… I don't want you to just pick whatever job is available so you can be a provider, or whatever," you said. "Isn't there anything you want to do?"
He shrugged, brows knit. "I don't know," he admitted. "Remember that career aptitude test we took in senior year?" When you nodded, he sighed. "It told me I was best suited to be a, like, retail associate, which is just a fancy way of saying a schmuck who folds shirts for a living."
Your lips twitched with the beginnings of a frown at his dejected tone, like he'd given up on ever doing anything he cared about. "Steve, c'mon, they give you, like, twenty suggestions. They weren't all just retail."
He sighed, and the forced nonchalance in his expression was how you knew it really bothered him. "Alright, fine, they also said I should be an elementary school teacher."
Your brow knit. "Well, what's the problem with that?"
His laugh was bitter and dry. "Maybe that I'm a goddamn idiot," he muttered. He looked up and saw pure concern on your face, which made him quickly shake his head and try to look unbothered. "I'm sorry it's just… it doesn't matter what I'm suited for. I just want to be good to you, and good to Sam. I'm happy when I know you're both healthy and happy. And you're both healthy and happy so..."
"You're not an idiot, Steve," you pressed. "And I'm not going to be happy if you're killing yourself every day at some soul crushing job, just for my sake."
Across the table, his nails dug into the soft skin around his cuticles and pulled. It made your stomach turn just to watch it, especially when you had to look at the raw, tender flesh. "Do we have to talk about this?"
"Well, if you can ask how many kids I'm willing to give you, I think I can tell you that I want you to have a job you care about," you countered.
It struck you then that this wasn't a first date. It wasn't even a fiftieth date. While you were avoiding your feelings for Steve, your lives had grown around one another whether you wanted them to or not. Tightly woven, completely inextricable.
Nothing was as simple as just being each other's boyfriend and girlfriend when you'd been playing house since March. Mom and Dad. Samantha's Parents. Hello, this is the Harrington Household, we can't come to the phone right now, but—
Boyfriend felt too casual for what he was to you. It felt small and childlike. You were talking to Steve like your future together had already been written in permanent marker. And, really, you knew that feeling wasn't just about Sam. It was a choice you made daily, that you'd been actively making since March.
A choice to wake up and see things through, to live with hopefulness instead of anger. It was the harder path, you were more than sure of it, but the funniest sense of certainty settled over you as you looked at Steve across the table.
It had never felt so obvious until that moment.
"I think you're smarter than you give yourself credit for," you said finally. "And I think you're funny, and charismatic, and shockingly selfless. And if you ever can't decide on what to do, I vote that you stay a DJ, 'cause your voice sounds really sexy on the radio."
He laughed and shook his head incredulously, but the tiny smile on his lips as he stared at the tablecloth told you that you'd managed to cheer him up a little.
The waiter brought out your plates, which gave you both a healthy buffer to push thoughts of the future aside for another time. The conversation moved away from heavy topics like how many kids will we eventually have and what job will you have to support them and don't be jealous that I was sleeping around before we reconnected, I did it because I missed you, and into safer places like wow, these mashed potatoes are really good and I think the menu actually called it a potato puree.
Your fork dragged against your plate, and it suddenly felt very… calm. Sweet and well intentioned, but so much more grown up than you were used to. It reminded you of being twelve and having a babysitter come over so your parents could go have a date night. They went out, had a nice meal, and got home exactly at nine so they could hand over the cash to the babysitter.
You didn't want to feel like them— not now, not ever. Besides, the mention of a future career outside of interdimensional monster hunting had bummed your boyfriend out.
"Do you wanna do something fun after this?" You asked as you finished your last bite. "Like… maybe we can hit up Big Town and see if that bartender who always sold us drinks still works there."
"Big Town?" He asked, brows furrowing. "You want to go bowling?"
You nodded. "Yeah, why not? When's the last time either of us did anything fun?" Really, your lives had become a series of end-of-the-world emergencies, child-rearing, and brief moments of respite in each other. But fun… the kind of fun that you'd had before the world ended, had been a rare occurrence in your lives as of late.
He gave you a guilty look look, like like a puppy that had just been caught chewing on your favorite shoes. "This isn't fun?"
"No, it's great, Steve, and I appreciate that you planned all of this," you insisted. "But… I think we should take advantage of our baby-free night since it's only, like, half past eight. And I want to see if I can kick your ass in bowling still."
The promise of a little competition lit a spark in his eyes, and his guilty, disappointed expression disappeared. "I always went easy on you," he said with a grin. "And you're right, this isn't the most exciting date of all time. I just wanted it to be kind of fancy, I thought you deserved to be treated to something nice."
You leaned across the small table and planted a soft kiss on his lips, not caring that your blazer was at risk of dragging across your plate. "It's very sweet," you said against his lips. You gave him another slow kiss and sat back. "You're very sweet. And very, very bad at bowling."
Steve flagged the waiter for the check, unable to sit back while his athletic prowess was called into question. On the way to the car, after he had paid for the meal (a meal which you thought was way too expensive, but you weren't going to tell Steve that), you linked your fingers with his and tugged your jacket a little tighter around yourself.
But thoughts about how the conversations inside had gone kept nagging you with each step away from the warm glow from the windows. You didn't want to leave that part of the date with unsaid words or a dark cloud over it.
"Okay, to start, I'm sorry for getting weird about you dating around," you began, pausing at his car. You leaned against the passenger's side door and peered up at him. "It's totally fine that you did, y'know, and I'm not ever going to think lesser of you because you did, or judge you for anything, because that would be totally hypocritical. And it's not even about you it's—"
The soft warmth of a kiss on your cheek made you shut up and take a deep breath. He stepped back and brushed your hair out of your face with a an amused, if not understanding smile. "It just made me think about how much time we've wasted, y'know?" You asked, meeting his gaze. "I don't even know if there's anything we could have done to change how things ended up, or if this is just what we were meant for, but sometimes I catch myself thinking about all of the places we could have fit back together before."
You thought about senior year, and if Steve would've come to your window after Billy beat him senseless— cold tile under your knees as you cleaned the blood off of his face and stuck pink bandaids on the deep cuts. How easy it would have been then to just apologize for your fight before you slept together and things got more complicated.
Or, maybe, Fall break of your freshman year of college, when Carol and Tommy sent you to return a couple of tapes to Family Video. You had thought it was a simple favor because she was way too pregnant to deal with the asshole manager bitching her out about late fees, but, no. Steve was behind the counter like they'd planned it all. Honestly, they probably had.
Maybe if you'd just talked it out then. If he hadn't been so avoidant, if you hadn't been so angry.
"I'm glad it's now," he said finally. "I'm glad you got to stay away from… everything I come with for a little while." His eyes shifted over your shoulder and you turned, looking at the football stadium glow of the military base in the square. A shiver ran through you, not from the snow. "Let's get you in the car, you're freezing. And I don't want you to blame it on frostbite when I kick your ass at Big Town."
A smile played on your lips as you nodded. You stood on your tiptoes and kissed him again, slow and sweet, then got in the car.
Honestly, you didn't hate the Beamer that much anymore. It smelled like Steve's cologne, and a little bit like the strawberry applesauce that you'd spilled into the floor mats in the backseat when you'd tried to appease a crying Sam on the drive home from a doctor's appointment.
The radio was turned to WSQK, as it usually was. As Steve cranked the car, you heard Robin announcing her next track— a throwback by Depeche Mode. Steve made a face and turned the radio up.
"I put her onto that one," he muttered, without much venom at all. He flipped down the visor to check his hair in the mirror and your heart fluttered at the sight of the pictures of you and Sam clipped inside. He brushed his fingers against the pictures briefly, like it was a habit, before he shut the visor and gave you an easy grin.
That was your Steve. The Steve you felt that aching affection for that you couldn't bring yourself to place. He held your hand over the center console and drove into the snowy night.
Big Town Bowling Lanes was the one respite from Steve's carousel of women when you were in high school. It was like it had sacred wards carved into the foundation, forbidding him from bringing annoying skanks along whenever you went bowling with Carol and Tommy.
Or, maybe, it was just because it was four people per lane and Carol wouldn't let him kick you out to bring some girl. Either way, you relished in your weekends spent at the lanes. Tommy and Steve always took it way too seriously, and you always wound up barely edging Steve out in scores.
Darrell, who worked the concessions stand, would pour beers into styrofoam cups so you could pretend they were sodas, just as long as you tipped him nicely. It was a pleasant surprise to find him still behind the counter, and still willing to sell beers to underage drinkers like you and Steve.
A few teenagers were trying their hand at the open mic night while you waited for a lane to open up— singing Madonna and Paula Abdul and a few other top 40 songs. It wasn't the best background music, but the liveliness reminded you of your friends. It was a welcome reprieve from the constant sobriety of the end of the world and parenthood.
"Pinball while we wait?" Steve suggested. You fished around your purse for a couple of quarters and leaned against the machine while he played. Tommy had always been better than him at this exact machine, but Steve knew all the targets and how to get multipliers. Plus, it was nice to look at his handsome face lit up by the flashing lights.
You used a quarter to try the claw machine beside him— another thing Tommy had excelled at. He'd taught you all the tricks to get a prize every time, and even though you were out of practice, it was a bit like riding a bike. While Steve got a second ball in the playing field, the claw caught on a gorilla's arm and carried it to the prize chute. You put in another quarter and won a second one for Sam.
The bowling alley was packed— there wasn't much else to do in a quarantine. To make up time, you signed the two of you up for the open mic, where you fumbled your way through You're The One That I Want from Grease. Steve still hated Travolta, and still had a much better singing voice than you did. When the lanes still stayed full, you sang Don't You Want Me very, very badly.
Darrell poured you both beers, and you were about to just give up and call it a night when the lane you'd been desperately waiting for opened up. Already, enough time had passed that you were itching under your skin with anticipation about getting home, so you weren't exactly focused on bowling.
You watched Steve step up to the lanes each frame as you sipped at your beer, eyes on the way his jeans clung tight to his ass, the way his fingers slid into the bright green house ball. Your pulse fluttered at the sight, and your brain went a little fuzzy.
God, you needed to get laid.
You took another drink as he threw the ball down the lane and the pins crashed at contact. Strike. He spun around, a smug grin on his lips, and marked an X on the scorecard.
"That's three in a row, baby. I'm going for a perfect game," he insisted, smacking a kiss on your forehead. You blinked yourself from your horny stupor and nodded. You took another drink of beer and took your turn.
You were distracted by his stupid hands and handsome face. Frankly, you were regretting bringing up bowling as an option, because you were stupidly needy and eager to get him back home so you could get your hands on him. You knocked down seven pins, then threw into the gutter on your attempt to pick up the spare.
"You're not giving me much competition, honey," he said as you sat back down, grinning smugly. You shook your head and rolled your eyes, leaning into his side, but as soon as you had cuddled up against him, he was back up and on the lanes.
You gave a strained smile and a thumbs up, and watched as, sure enough, he threw a clean strike. His excitement was palpable, as was his ego. He looked like he was back on the basketball court in high school after he'd shot a successful three-pointer.
When he sat down, you leaned into his side and put a hand on his thigh. He kissed your forehead, then nodded towards the lane. "Stop stalling 'cause you know I'm going to beat you," he said, completely oblivious to your intentions.
You sighed and stood, heading back to the lane. This time you managed to get a spare, which was met by a very sarcastic clap from your boyfriend. He stood, not even giving you time to sit beside him before he was up again.
Steve took competition very seriously, and you knew that. He had barely even sipped at his beer so he could keep his focus. Partially, you appreciated that he wasn't going easy on you as a form of flattery, but you also wanted a little more attention.
There was something cute about him getting all worked up and focused about it. The way his tongue peeked out in concentration as he wrote scores, how he'd turn around and give you a smug smile at the end of each frame. You were bowling in a technical sense, but really you were taking it as your opportunity to relish in the ghost of King Steve before you.
"Why don't you help me correct my form?" You asked him as the game neared its end, slipping your fingertips inside the V-neck of his collared shirt. His heart thrummed against your touch, beneath the soft chest hair and spattering of beauty marks hidden beneath. "Hm? Give me a fighting chance."
He swallowed hard, his warm brown eyes going wide. "You want me to… oh! Yeah, I'll just… yeah, I'll help you."
With a grin, you stood and pulled him to the lane and grabbed the ball. "Okay, so… you want to line up with the dots on the ground," he began.
You nodded and sighed contentedly as he fit himself against your back. "Start back here, and you walk to gain some momentum. And before you're at the line, you pull your arm back, and throw."
He guided your motions as best as he could with a twelve pound ball in your hands. But it wasn't the actual advice you wanted— you knew how to throw a bowling ball down a lane— you wanted the close press of his body against yours.
"Got it?" His breath puffed over your ear and you shivered. You nodded and he stepped back. "Show me."
You rolled the ball down the lane and grinned victoriously when nine pins came down. You turned on the balls of your feet and met his gaze, hands clasped behind your back.
He sat back, seemingly less interested in the actual sport of bowling now that he had you blatantly flirting with him, in a cute little skirt and an oversized blazer that you definitely stole from his dad's closet. You'd even put a little brooch on it— two interlocking gold hearts and a dangly little pearl.
"What are you gonna give me if I make the spare?" You asked with a coy smile. "I think I deserve a prize for my hard work."
He shrugged casually and nodded back to the prize counter, where a bored employee sat with her chin in her hand and read Seventeen. "Maybe you can get one of those slap bracelets."
You rolled your eyes. "Hm… not quite what I was thinking."
"I just think it's a waste of a prize if whatever you're asking for is something you're going to get anyway." He gave you a smug smile and you could do little more than laugh and shake your head.
You picked up the spare, and your temporary reward was a slow, hungry kiss when you joined him on the couch. Really, you should have been a little embarrassed by the fact that you were french kissing Steve in the middle of the bowling alley, but you were too drunk on him to care. His hands slid under your jacket, teasing the waistband of your skirt where your sweater was tucked in.
"Hey, I should probably finish this game," he pulled back suddenly, glancing at the lane. His thumb brushed under your bottom lip, tidying up your smudged lipstick. "I'm, like, five strikes from a perfect score."
You sat back, brows furrowed, bottom still tingling from the way he'd bitten it. "Wait, what?"
He held up the score sheet. Sure enough, while you'd been staring at his ass and drooling over the veins in his hands, he'd managed to pull off seven strikes in a row. Fuck… maybe he had been letting you win in high school.
"Wow… sexy," you deadpanned, but he didn't seem to mind. In fact, he looked really proud of himself when he bowled another strike.
"You must be, like, my lucky charm," he said, planting another kiss on your lips. "This is the universe telling me you're the one."
By the time you finally made it back to the car, Steve had his picture framed on the wall of Big Town Lanes, a tiny plastic trophy, and a rainbow slap bracelet he'd asked for from the prize counter.
"Hold out your wrist," he said. With an amused huff, you held out your arm and tensed in anticipation. "C'mon, don't be a baby, it's just a bracelet." He slapped it onto your wrist and you shrieked, yanking your hand back.
"You were right, bowling was fun," he said. "And I did totally kick your ass. I'm gonna have to ask Henderson the odds on bowling a perfect game. Maybe we should go buy a scratcher or something."
You laughed, shaking your head. It was something else you loved about Steve— he was naturally funny. He could make you laugh until your sides hurt, especially now that you weren't denying your feelings for him. Well, not like you were before, at least.
"Alright, champ, let's get home," you said with an affectionate eye-roll. "It's freezing."
The house felt a little less like home when you walked inside. It was cold and still, like a dollhouse. You wondered if it was how Steve felt growing up alone most of the time. You couldn't ask, because Steve hated feeling pitied, but you could wonder.
As you got settled, Steve put his trophy down on the counter and you eased off your coat and went to check the answering machine. "Hi sweethearts. Samantha was a perfect angel. She had some meatloaf and mashed potatoes for dinner, then watched the Care Bears movie on tape with Uncle Dusty. She's just gone down for the night, and I know she can't wait to see you in the morning. Enjoy your night, you two!"
You smiled fondly at the message and turned to face Steve with a smile. "Hear that? We've raised a perfect angel," you said with a tiny laugh. He was pouring glasses of wine into the pretty crystal that typically sat unused in the china cabinet. The deep red looked so inviting behind the etched glass, especially after cheap beer.
"Of course we did, you're a great mom," he said, and handed you the glass. Your fingers brushed against his as you accepted it into your own hand, just for a fleeting moment. "Feels weird having the house empty, huh?"
You brought the glass to your lips and took a slow sip. "Really weird," you agreed. "Not bad, just different."
He nodded and took a drink of his own. You both stood in the dark kitchen, lit only by the street lamps outside the window— a pale yellow glow. You finished your glass and felt a pleasant warmth all over— a buzz under your skin. His parents' wine collection was fancy enough that you actually enjoyed drinking it, unlike the cheap boxed stuff that you and Carol used to share.
"Wanna listen to some music on the couch?" He asked finally. "I have some pretty great mixes. Working at the station means I get access to all of the good stuff."
You snorted at the thought of Steve slacking off and making mixes on the clock. "Your big move right now is asking if I want to listen to music on the couch?"
"Well, it's a really good mix," he insisted with a stupid grin. You shook your head and put your empty glass back on the counter with full intentions to revisit it later.
You knew this move in his playbook, and you were totally shameless about the fact that it was actually going to work on you. So you let him lead you over to the couch, and sat patiently while he messed around with the fancy sound system hidden in the bookshelves.
He clicked the tape into place and joined you on the couch just as the sound of a synth started playing. You bit your lip to stifle a laugh as he slung an arm across the back of the couch, so his fingers brushed against your shoulder. It was just so obvious.
You shivered as his fingers played with the ends of your hair, twirling them around his fingertips. That was the invitation he needed. You grinned as he tugged you into his side, wrapping his arm tight around you. "Cold? Need me to warm you up?"
It was so corny. You figured this was a move of his, tried and true, but you didn't mind. Really, you had always wondered what the Steve Harrington hookup experience was like.
So you nodded and let him pull you into his lap where he was nice and warm beneath you. "'S that better?" He asked. Big hands settled on your arms, moving up and down in a showy attempt to warm you up.
"Mhmm… but maybe I'm a little hot now," you said, playing right into his hand. At that, his expression perked up, and you could sense his excitement in the way his eyes lit up.
"Yeah? Gotta get this off then, huh?" He tugged at the thick fabric of your sweater, right below your ribcage. As soon as you nodded, his fingers slipped beneath the waistband of your skirt and untucked your sweater so he could pull it over your head and toss it mindlessly aside.
It totally fucked up your hair, but neither of you seemed to mind. Steve's eyes flicked to your breasts, the soft flesh encased in delicate black lace. You ran a hand over your unkempt hair in a nervous attempt to make yourself presentable again while he just stared.
"Where'd you get this?" he asked, meeting your gaze. "Did you send Murray out for it?"
Your expression scrunched in distaste. "Ew, no, why would I ever ask him for that?" You muttered. "I got this at school."
He swallowed hard, and you sighed softly as his warm hands moved up your ribs to cup your breasts through the lace. "You wore this for some college guy?"
You really had to steel your expression to keep from grinning. There was something exciting about the hint of jealousy in his gaze, the tiniest tick in his jaw. "I wasn't exactly celibate in college," you said slowly. His fingers flexed and you exhaled shakily as he played with you. "If you'll remember, I was heartbroken and trying to put this total asshole in Hawkins behind me."
His lips turned into what you could only describe as a pout, just before he moved his mouth to your sternum, pressing soft kisses to the flat of your chest. You would never tell another soul, but giving Steve a taste of his own medicine was immeasurably cathartic.
"If the fact that another guy saw this bothers you so much, you can just take it off," you added. He sighed against your skin, and you moaned softly as his lips trailed hot, messy kisses over the thin fabric.
He shook his head, nuzzling his face deeper into your tits. He mumbled something that you couldn't understand and met your gaze. "I'm not jealous," he insisted. "I just feel like they probably didn't appreciate your effort."
You couldn't keep the smug grin from your lips. "No?" You asked, cocking your head. "But you appreciate it fully, right?" He nodded and sucked a bruise onto your exposed cleavage.
"I appreciate it so much." His voice vibrated against your skin, making you laugh softly. When he pulled back from your tits, his pupils were blown with desire. He gave a tiny nod towards your skirt before dragging his eyes back to yours. "Do they match?"
In lieu of a response, you stood up and unzipped your skirt, so it joined your discarded sweater on the floor. Steve groaned at the sight of you in your sheer red tights, barely concealing the promise of more black lace beneath— high cut and pretty.
Before you could slip your fingers under the waistband to roll the tights down, Steve grabbed your wrist. "I've got it," he said. "It's like unwrapping a present."
He kissed your stomach once, twice, then eased the tights down your legs. His hand came under your knee, easing it into a gentle bend so he could pull one leg off your feet, then he repeated for the other.
There was a certain intentionality to every one of his touches— a confidence that showed in the steadiness of his hand as he ran his hand up your thigh. It was gentle and sure— intimate.
His hands slid up your thighs and pulled you in closer, so his mouth was level with your lower stomach. You sighed when he ducked his head and kissed the front of your panties, nice and sweet.
"Wait," you said suddenly. He looked up at you with flushed cheeks and half-lidded eyes, and you swear you got a head rush. "Just sit there for me, okay?"
You swore you could hear his pulse kick when you sank to your knees between his thighs, or maybe that was your own. Your palms slid up his thighs, moving over the dark-wash denim. He was already hard, you could see the thick shape of him straining against the fabric.
"Can I?" You asked. One hand rubbed at the bulge beneath your palm, the other toyed mindlessly with the button to his jeans.
"Fuck— yeah, 'course you can, honey. You can do whatever you want to me."
You smiled prettily up at him and popped the button of his Levi's. He groaned at even the lightest amount of pressure against his dick as you eased the zipper down and freed him from the confines of the denim.
You'd seen his dick before— in the shower, while he was changing, even how it looked in your hand. Even so, you'd never seen it so close before. You spit into your palm before you wrapped your hand around the base of him, relishing in the warm pulse beneath your grip.
With just the slightest glide of your hand upwards, you watched precum dribble from the ruddy tip. He groaned, hips thrusting up into your grasp. He squirmed as he kicked off his jeans and briefs, then tossed his sweater to the side. Your hand caressed his now-bare thigh, soft and downy to the touch.
"You have the cutest little freckle right here," you said with a tiny grin, and relished in the way his cheeks went red with embarrassment. Your lips moved to the base of him, where there was a small beauty mark. He shivered above you as you planted a soft, wet kiss there and looked up at him through your lashes.
"Fuck," he groaned, chest already heaving. "You're killing me, honey."
Your lips trailed up his shaft, until you wrapped your lips around his tip and suckled. He moaned, deep and pretty, head lolling back against the cushions. It was hard to fit much of him inside of your mouth without triggering your gag reflex. Your hand had to pick up your slack, stroking the inches that didn't fit with slick twists.
"God, you're good," he panted. "So good for me." You nearly preened at the praise. His fingers threaded into your curls, twisting your locks into a loose ponytail. Not so he could guide your pace or force you to take him deeper, but to keep your hair from getting in your face.
You pulled off, just to spit the drool that had collected in your mouth back onto his cock. It dripped messily down his shaft and over your fingers, collecting at his base and dripping down his balls. You moved your mouth down to them, licking up the mess you made just to hear him cry out above you.
He swore under his breath as you licked up the underside of his cock once more on your way up, tasting the slick mix of his precum and your spit. You pressed an almost chaste kiss to the head— once, twice before you teased the precum-slick slit with your tongue.
He exhaled sharply through his teeth. hips bucking up towards the wet heat of your mouth. You licked around the tip, teasing a pretty moan out of his lips. When you finally wrapped your lips around him and took him deeper into your mouth, his thighs tensed on either side of you.
You were incredibly grateful that you had the experience you did before Steve, otherwise you'd probably humiliate yourself. Your lips stretched to accommodate him as you tried to take him deeper, and you had the experience to know exactly how to fight your gag reflex as his cock nudged your soft palate.
"Keep going, just like that," he panted, tummy tensing as you let your tongue massage the underside of his shaft. "God, you've got a perfect fucking mouth."
When your jaw began to ache, you pulled back, lips puffy and sticky with spit. You pumped his cock in your fist as you took a second to catch your breath. His free hand moved to your face, where he stroked your cheek tenderly.
You wet your lips before you took him back into your mouth, suckling softly on the head of his cock briefly before you swallowed him deeper.
You were sure the sight was obscene— your lips stretched wide around his girth, spit bubbling around the spot where your mouth and fist met with each messy bob of your head and twist of your wrist. His moans we're constant, and the taste of his precum was heady on your tongue.
When his fingers tightened around your hair, you moaned around him, eyes fluttering. He panted out a pathetic moan at the sound, at the feeling of your own noise vibrating against him. He was so close, you knew it. His thighs tensing, his moans getting breathier, his hips canting up as they tried to bury his cock deep into your mouth.
You looked up, meeting his half-lidded gaze as you swallowed around him, and he was done for. He barely had time to give you a weak warning of, "gonna cum—" before he was spilling into your mouth.
You did your best to swallow every spurt of cum that painted your tongue and work him through every last aftershock. You were panting like you'd run a marathon when you finally sat back and wiped your sticky lips on the back of your hand.
Steve's eyes were closed, one arm tossed over them as he caught his breath, cock flagging between strong thighs as he came down. When he finally opened his eyes, you kissed a beauty mark on his inner thigh and stood.
"Sick of me already?" He asked with a grin. He grabbed your hand and tugged you onto his lap, but you shook your head and leaned back.
"I was gonna grab some mouthwash before we do anything else," you explained with a sheepish laugh. "So it's not gross for you, I mean."
He shook his head and let his arm move to the small of your back to ease you closer. You sighed softly as he pressed his lips to yours, licking slowly into your mouth. "I don't care," he murmured. Then, like he was trying to prove his own point, he licked your pouty bottom lip with a grin. "That's, like, the least gross thing you could ask me to do."
"Yeah?" You asked with a grin. "You're such a slut."
You watched him close his mouth and swallow, pupils blown as his eyes flicked from your lips and back to your eyes. He laughed weakly, but you knew he was so gone that he'd agree with anything you said. You leaned in, laving your tongue over his as you kissed him slow and deep.
It was messy and desperate, but you didn't care. His head tilted back, and you took every opportunity he gave you to kiss deeper, to lick into his mouth and claim the space for your own. His hands slipped down to palm your ass over the lace, squeezing and tugging you closer on his lap.
"Are you gonna let me touch you?" He murmured against your lips. You nodded, and he licked your bottom lip before a smile spread across his lips. "Yeah? I bet you're soaking through your panties right now. Probably why you're sitting up like that— so I can't feel it."
He eased you back so you were laying on the couch beneath him. His mouth went to your throat, suckling softly on the sensitive spot just beneath your ear. With his knee between your thigh, you couldn't help but squirm, seeking a little bit of relief where you needed it most.
You hated to be so easy for him all of the time. You wanted to look a little more composed and in control, but Steve had a way of making your inhibitions melt away and drip down your thighs.
"You drive me crazy, Steve," you murmured, your words little more than desperate pants in his ear. As his hand moved down your torso, you arched into him, seeking the heat of it against your body.
The feeling of his fingers slipping beneath the lace of your panties pulled a whiny mewl from your lips. The rough pads of his fingers rubbed over your sensitive clit, just barely grazing it before dipping down to your slick entrance.
"So wet and I've barely even touched you." His words vibrated against your jaw, and he punctuated them with a soft kiss. He nudged your thighs apart with his knee, giving him better access to toy with you.
A shudder ran through you as he slid his slick fingers up to your clit, only to circle his fingers so he totally avoided giving you any real friction. "C'mon, Steve," you whined. "I didn't tease you."
He laughed, a low, pretty sound that tickled your throat. "You're always a tease."
"You jerked off in front of me yesterday," you panted, bucking your hips with the feeble hope that you might catch the pad of his fingers where you wanted them. "Didn't let me touch you for a week. Fuckin' tease."
You could feel his smile against your skin, but, sure enough, he relented and gave you what you wanted. You gasped softly as he finally rubbed your clit, a pretty noise that he swallowed up in a hungry kiss.
His tongue slipped into your mouth, lapping up each whine and moan as he played with your pussy. Thick fingers rubbing through your slick folds, curling deep inside of your aching entrance.
"That's what you wanted, yeah?" He murmured against your lips. His fingers flexed, curling until your walls squeezed around them. "Mhmm… I can feel it. You're always so sensitive for me."
The sound of his fingers plunging in and out of your sopping cunt made your cheeks burn. It felt pointless, being so embarrassed at the effect that he had on you. He was just as affected by you as you were of him… but you couldn't hear how turned on he was with every single thrust of his fingers inside of you.
You grabbed onto his shoulders with one hand, blunt fingernails digging into the firm muscle there to ground yourself as he fucked you slow and deep with his fingers. Your other hand moved down, squeezing his wrist in an impossible choice of needing more but feeling too much.
The heel of his palm rubbed against your clit, giving you relentless friction and pressure that you couldn't squirm away from. Your thighs trembled, walls fluttering around the intrusion as he brought you closer and closer to the edge.
The lap of his tongue into your mouth kept you from slipping away entirely. Sweet, sensual kisses that kept you there with him, relishing in the full-body high of being worshiped by Steve Harrington.
You felt that warm buzz in the pit of your stomach, a pressure just building and building until you couldn't deny its pull anymore. Gasping into Steve's mouth, you squeezed his wrist and bucked against his hand as he brought you over the edge.
"That's it, pretty girl," he hummed. Your eyes fluttered, rolling lightly as he curled his fingers, toying with you as the final waves of pleasure wracked your body. "That's what you needed, huh?"
When he pulled his hand from your panties, his fingers were slick with your juices. He wasted no time sucking them between his lips, cleaning every trace of you off.
He laid beside you, tracing spit-damp fingers along your tummy as his mixtape played on. You'd been so wrapped up in Steve that the music had gone fuzzy in the background. But now that you were fully back in your body, all fuzzy and content, the sound of saxophones struck you fully. With a giggle, you met his gaze. "Careless Whisper?" You asked with a grin. "You're so corny."
"Hey, it's the best," he insisted. "It's sexy."
You rolled your eyes and grinned up at him before you leaned up an kissed him again. He smiled into it, meeting your lips with the ease and confidence of a man who knew he had all of the time in the world with you.
You didn't want to wait another second. You shifted, pinning him beneath you on the cushions. He was hard already, and you had a feeling he had been for a while. As you stripped off your bra and tossed it aside, you watched his cock twitch where it rested against his stomach.
"Looks like you really want me," you teased, like you didn't want him just as bad. "Do you have it in you, baby?"
He swallowed hard and nodded. "Fuck, yeah I do," he breathed. His hands moved to your hips, and you didn't resist as he guided your hips in a slow grind. It was a little obscene, the sight of your clothed pussy rubbing over his bare cock. Precum beaded then dripped onto his stomach, making a slick little pool beneath the head that only seemed to grow with each lazy rut. "You gonna give it to me?"
Steve's pupils were blown wide as he looked up at you, swallowing up the honey-brown of his irises. He really did drive you crazy. Really, how was it fair that he could just look at you like that? Desperate and doting in equal measure.
You detached from him to wiggle off your panties, balancing against the back of the sofa as you kicked them off, then settled on his lap once more. His big hands went right back to their place on your hips and you couldn't help but give a testing roll of your hips.
Even with that tiny motion, you felt his fingers flex, dimpling your soft skin. Your eyes fluttered at the feeling of the blunt head of his cock nudging your clit, still sensitive from the first orgasm he'd pulled from you. You felt your cunt pulsing with need as you continued to slowly grind down against him.
"You're torturing me," he whined. His eyes were half-lidded and lazy, his mouth parted as he watched your slick pussy gliding along his length. One of your hand rested on his chest for stability as you moved, giving him the perfect view of your tits as they moved in time with your hips. "God, you're so hot, honey. Just wanna make you feel good, baby. You've gotta let me, 'cause I know you need it."
A breathy laugh escaped your lips as you looked down at him. "I barely have to do anything and you're begging," you teased. He groaned, grinding up against you, unabashed in his need.
And, yeah, it would've been fun to keep torturing him, but you were still just as impatient as he was. So you lifted your hips just enough that you could guide his cock to your entrance and begin to slowly sink down.
He felt even bigger with you on top, something you'd blissfully forgotten since your wedding hookup. It made you wonder if he had gone easy on you the week prior and hadn't tried to go all the way in. It felt like a challenge to prove you could take it— every single inch.
Your fingers twitched against his chest, curling into the downy hair there as your mouth fell open. He moved one of the hands resting on your hips to lay on top of yours, frustratingly affectionate. "C'mon, honey, just take it nice and slow."
"Shut up," you panted, which only made him grin up at you. "I've done it before."
It wasn't like riding Steve was some herculean task, even if he was stupidly hung. But you were more than a little out of practice, and after you finally managed to pick up a decent rhythm, you kind of just wanted him to flip you over and fuck you into the cushions.
You weren't a quitter though, and Steve's blissed-out reactions beneath you were all the encouragement you needed to keep going, aside from your body's need for release. Your thighs ached slightly from months of celibacy, but the room filled with a chorus of both of your moans each time you sank back onto him.
"You feel so good, baby," you moaned softly, giving your hips a little swivel that made a drawn out groan spill from his lips. "I love how you feel inside of me. So deep."
It wasn't just to fluff his ego— you swore you could feel every ridge and vein of his cock where it was buried within you. Every pulse, every twitch was just confirmation that he felt as good as you did.
The hand that was gripping onto your hip moved, flattening just beneath your belly button. It's as tender as it was debauched, just like him. His thumb stroked over your soft skin, sweeping back and forth in a display of affection. "Feel me here?" He asked, and it was a marvel that he could look so earnest when asking something so filthy.
You nodded, giving a slow rock of your hips. He was so deep that you could hardly think of anything else except for the drag of his cock against your fluttering walls, the way his tip nudged against your G-spot as you sank down on him again and again.
"Steve," you whined, looking down at him. "I want you to fuck me."
A lazy smile spread across his lips. "We are fucking." As if he was proving his point, he began to thrust up so he could sink deeper into your wet heat.
Your brows knit together as a soft moan fell from your lips. "Yeah, I— fuck, Steve— I know but I just want—" Your eyes rolled back as he fucked you nice and deep, stealing the words and your breath right from your lips.
"I know what you want." You almost regretted asking to switch positions when he pulled out, leaving you empty and wanting. But then he was shifting you beneath him and hooking your legs over his shoulders. "How's this?"
You swallowed hard. "It's good, it's so good," you said eagerly. You could feel the head of his cock nudging your puffy folds as he rutted against you. It would catch at your entrance and you would gasp in anticipation, but he didn't sink in yet.
"Can you bend a little more?" He asked, and moved so he was pressing your thighs into your chest, his body imposing above you. "Is that too much?"
When you shook your head, reached between your bodies and began to slowly push inside. You groaned, head lolling back as he moved. With the way he'd folded you in half beneath him, you felt every inch splitting you open. Thick, stretching you out obscenely around his girth.
"Oh god," he groaned, and you swore you felt his dick twitch inside of you. "You're squeezing me so tight. Perfect fucking pussy."
Your face went hot at his words. "Steve," you whined. He'd never said anything so dirty to you before, and it thrilled you as much as it made you feel a flash of embarrassment.
He grinned down at you, pulling out so he could glide back in nice and slow, just to torture you. "What? You don't want me to talk about how much I love your pussy? 'Cause the way you're gripping me makes me think you do."
"Fuck, Steve," you moaned. "You can't say stuff like that, baby. You're killing me."
"I think you like it," he said, pushing in again, so deep that his balls pressed tight against your ass. "I think you fucking love knowing that I'm obsessed with you."
He pulled out again, only to set a dizzying pace. Hips snapping against yours again and again and again, while you just laid there and took it. Your feet dangled where they rested over his shoulders, shaking each time he bottomed out.
"Oh my god. You're so wet, honey. Sound so fucking pretty."
His words made you conscious of the tacky, slick sounds of his cock plunging into your cunt. The slick sound of your walls swallowing him, the plap plap plap of his balls against you. You didn't particularly think the sounds of him fucking you were pretty. They were pornographic and obscene, sure, but not pretty.
He was heavy on top of you, rutting more than thrusting so each movement made him grind against the sensitive spots inside. Your eyes rolled back and you felt your walls squeezing around his cock. "Steve, just like that—"
"C'mon, beautiful, tell me how it feels."
You whined, toes curling. "So— ngh— so good, baby," you managed. "God, I feel you everywhere."
It wasn't the most coherent description, but it was true. He was inside you, so deep it felt like your body was moving to accommodate him. He was on top of you, pressing you into the bed, into him. Around you, holding you close. It was like your world started and ended where you touched him.
It was so easy to lose yourself to him. His head buried into your shoulder as he ground deeper, harder inside of you. A choked sob slipped past your lips, and you trembled as the pressure built up inside of you. His tip nudged your sweet spot over and over, until you weren't sure you could take much more.
"God, I fucking love you," he panted. Your pussy fluttered around him at those words, and he moaned at the feeling. "Want me to say it again? I love you so much."
It hit you suddenly then. Your cunt clenched around him as euphoria washed over your body. "Oh, fuck, Steve—" you gasped, until your words dissolved into keening moans and whines. You mewled, eyes rolling back as he continued fucking into you as you lost yourself to the pleasure.
He lifted his head just enough to capture your mouth in a messy kiss— tongues sliding against one another, licking into his mouth to swallow each other's cries. His rhythm grew sloppy and clumsy, until he swore into your mouth.
"Oh, fuck, honey, shit— I'm— fuck fuck fuck—" He barely managed to pull out before he was painting your cunt with hot ropes of his cum. His cock twitched with each spurt of cum, until there was nothing left to give. He exhaled sharply, looking more than spent as he eased your legs from his shoulders and caught his breath.
The tape had long since ended, leaving you in silence, save the chorus of your shaking breaths. You giggled weakly and peered up at him with a dopey smile. "Holy shit."
Steve took a shaky breath and met your smile with one of his own— equal parts exasperated and lovestruck. "God, we really can't go raw anymore, baby. I almost didn't make it."
Your heart did a funny little skip at that, but you nodded. "Yeah, probably shouldn't," you agreed. He leaned down to give you one more kiss. "Let's go to bed, yeah?"
Steve couldn't keep his hands off of you, even when you were just washing your face and brushing your teeth. He wrapped an arm around your shoulders and dribbled minty foam down his chin. You hated how endearing you found that.
When you were taking your vitamins and medicine, he stood behind you, chin resting on the top of your head as you washed them down. "You're so clingy," you accused, meeting his gaze in the mirror.
"I just love you," he replied, and kissed your temple for good measure.
You climbed into bed and stared at the ceiling as Steve dozed beside you. The soft cadence of his breath rising and falling. But you didn't want to sleep yet. You just wanted more time with him.
So you grabbed the shabby quilt from the foot of the bed and wrapped it around your body as you crossed the room to your turntable. Behind you, there was the soft rustle of blankets as Steve sat up, rubbing his eyes.
"What're you doing?" He slurred sleepily. You glanced at him over your shoulder, at his half-lidded eyes and his messy hair, and felt such a strong tug of emotion that you had to look back at the task at hand— flipping through your crate of records.
"Trying to find something good to listen to," you replied casually, pausing to eye Purple Rain before flipping onward. "I'm not tired yet— don't really want the night to be over, y'know?" You grabbed your old Super Trouper album and smiled fondly as you set it on the turntable and put the needle to the vinyl.
Steve groaned at the choice in music, but you rejoined him in bed, curling up against his chest with a contented sigh. His strong arms wrapped around you, pulling you closer. His fingers tangled with yours, playing with them as you laid in the quiet of the room.
"I want you to tell me something no one else knows," you whispered. "Even if it's just something small."
He leaned over, kissing the crown of your head briefly. You felt the warm puff of his breath over your scalp as he thought, a hum buzzing against your skin.
"I made you a tape, in case Vecna got in your head and started digging around," he said finally. "This was, like, a month after Hawkins split open, so we thought he might just start popping people into trances all over town. And I was so scared for you, y'know? I didn't want anything to happen to you."
A tiny smile played on your lips. Even when you felt like your whole life had shattered around you, he was still working to make things better, even if you didn't know it. You hated that it had taken you so long to see that, when it was something so beautiful about him.
"What song?" You asked after a beat, brows furrowing.
He laughed softly. "Well, I asked you what your favorite song was over breakfast, you glared at me, asked why I cared, and told me Baby I'm a Star. And I didn't really know if that was true, but I made the tape anyway. And then I made a second one with How Deep Is Your Love, because you used to say if that song was played at your funeral, it'd wake you right up."
A snort escaped you at the memory. You could remember him asking, and it felt like such a cheap attempt to bond that it had soured your mood for the rest of the morning. You felt a world removed from that moment, even though it hadn't even been a year since then.
"It actually would," you agreed. You squeezed his hand and brought the back of it to your lips to plant a soft kiss there. He had a tan line from his watch that was only just starting to fade from the winter gloom. It was so strange, to be so utterly seen by someone, and to see them just the same.
"What's your song?" Your lips brushed against the back of his hand as you spoke. "If you got lost, what would pull you back?"
"Under Pressure," he replied simply. "Sometimes I'll play that tape in the van just 'cause. I could listen to that song forever, y'know? Drives Dustin crazy."
A small laugh escaped you at the image. Maybe it was just that it was late and you were exhausted, but you were endlessly amused by the thought of Steve making Dustin listen to music on replay on top of the monotony of the crawls. "Tell me something else. Talk to me about anything, I just want to hear you."
He sighed, relaxing beside you. He was so warm where he pressed against you, accommodating the nudge of your knee between his thighs and the slip of your arm under his. The soft thud of his heartbeat was like a metronome where your ear rested against his chest.
"Mrs. Wheeler said she'd start babysitting Sam for us, if that's what we wanted," he said. "I was going to tell you tomorrow, after we'd had the date and everything. I know you never wanted to just sit around this big house all day, so I told her we'd talk about it."
You swallowed hard, and felt a strange mix of excitement, gratitude, and the strangest ache in your chest. "I mean… yeah, we could use more money," you agreed. "But I don't even know what I'd do, Steve. Like… bus tables at Enzo's? Work with Murray at Bradley's? Gross."
Both of your bodies shook as he laughed. "God, you're so dramatic. You could do whatever you wanted," he insisted. "You could help us at the station."
You snorted. "Mm… doesn't really solve the money problem, huh?" You curled even closer into him, like you just wanted him to envelop you completely. "And I dunno… maybe I don't want things to change just yet."
Hawkins was like a world frozen while life moved around it. It was all real life with real consequences, and you knew that, but it also felt like you were holding your breath until all of the interdimensional horror was over. Once that happened, the day to day problems would feel bigger.
You didn't want to leave Sam with Mrs. Wheeler during the day, but you knew that was probably best. Rip off the proverbial bandaid and start the slow process of detaching from your routine before things really changed for good. You were never meant to be a housewife forever— it wasn't what you wanted, even if you'd gotten good at playing that role.
Steve kissed the crown of your head and squeezed your hand. "They don't have to change," he insisted. "But they can if you need them to. I just don't ever want you to feel like you're trapped, or you're making yourself smaller to fit here."
"Thanks," you whispered. "I just feel like I need a little more time with her. When things go back to normal, I don't know if I'll ever have this much time again. I feel like she deserves it."
The record played on while you continued to talk about anything you could think of. Steve had been watching the Bulls whenever he could catch a game on TV, and was eagerly trying to explain why he thought this was their year. You told him about the Danielle Steel novel you'd borrowed from Nancy and were totally devouring. He played with the ends of your hair, you planted the occasional kiss to his chest and shoulders.
You closed your eyes, listening to the sounds of ABBA playing from your speakers. "In five years, I want to be doing this exact same thing," you whispered. "Listening to an outdated record, laying in bed, just talking until we run out of things to say."
"Why don't we make it ten?" Steve mumbled against the crown of your head. You smiled and chewed on your lip. Ten could work. Or twenty-five, or fifty. Forever, even.
The needle of the record stopped, raised, and returned to its cradle, leaving the room quiet. "Steve," you whispered. It felt louder in the stillness of the bedroom— breaking through the silence of the house the same way a scream would. "I love you too."
The words hung heavy in the air, and Steve froze at your side, barely even breathing. Waiting for him to say something, anything felt like torture. And you knew you'd squeezed the proverbial toothpaste out of the tube, but really, you didn't mind. Life was already so messy that it felt natural.
"You love me," he echoed. Not a question, exactly, and not self-important enough to be a statement… just sheer disbelief.
And you wouldn't stand for that, so you rambled on. "I was just scared to say it, and I kept telling myself it was too soon because we've only been official, for, like, one week, but, y'know, things are different for us. I don't want to hide behind walls to protect myself anymore, and I know that y—"
Your words were muffled by the pressure of Steve's lips on yours. You barely had time to kiss him back before he leaned away to meet your gaze. "You love me?" He beamed down at you. "You don't have to. I mean— I just didn't expect you to reciprocate so soon."
"How could I not?" You asked gently, meeting his gaze. It was so soft and hopeful, warm enough to melt away your fears and reservations about opening up. "Even when I wasn't saying it, I felt it, y'know? This… rightness. And I felt bad for a while, but I don't want to feel bad anymore."
It was this circular logic that you kept falling into— the idea that fate had brought you to that moment. You'd never been a big believer in anything before, except in yourself, Carol Perkins, and that things usually went wrong for you somehow. Fate was new.
Carol got pregnant with Sam, which meant she had to get married, which is where you slept with Steve and dredged up all of those old teenage feelings again— the yearning and angst. Carol and Tommy made you and Steve godparents, Carol and Tommy died when the rifts opened, you and Steve raised Peanut, you and Steve fell in love.
Good things happened which led to worse things. Horrible, painful things happened that led to beautiful ones. How could you ever move on if you let guilt and anger keep you from being happy?
You believed in a lot more now. You believed that there were good people who would give up their peace thanklessly to save a world that would never even know they needed to be saved. You believed in psychic powers and monsters. You believed that your daughter's near-toothless smile was the best medicine on a really hard day.
And you believed, as corny as it was, that you were always meant to be with Steve Harrington from the moment he sat with you out on that patio.
"Oh my god, you love me," he repeated, smiling even wider. Before you even had time to roll your eyes and insist that, yeah, that's what you just said, he had shifted on top of you so he could kiss you fully. "I mean, I probably should have known when you came just from me saying it, but—"
You rolled your eyes and pulled him in again, relishing in the full weight of his affection as your lips met. You'd worried before that it would feel like a burden on you, some awful weight to carry on your shoulders, but it felt right in a way few things ever had.
A/N: Thank you so much for your patience and continued love for these characters + this fic! As many of you know, I've been getting treatment for my OCD which took a lot of my headspace away from being able to get this out sooner. I appreciate your love and encouragement SO so much and I promise not a single day passed that I wasn't actively working on it!!
I hope you love this chapter as much as I do! Part 6 (the ACTUAL final part) will be a wombo combo of the events of the final season + epilogue from what I have planned now, but I think we all know by now that my plans vs what I actually write don't always align perfectly <3
Worst comes to worst... seven or eight parts. Who knows! But I'm hoping I can tie this story off with a little bow in this next chapter.
Please send me an ask with your thoughts/hopes/opinions on this chapter and the story so far!! Give me a like/reblog/comment if you see fit as well <3 And thank you so, so much for reading! XOXO
canines.
Steve Harrington x Reader they say love makes you crazy. Steve kind of gets it now. or : the fine lines between stalking and guarding.
foreword: for @fairyysoup . my reigning queen of evil but also my baby bunny with a pink nose that i hold gently in my hands <3
cw: post s4/pre s5 Steve, stalking, obsessive behaviors, sneaking around, guard dog Steve, perving, underwear stealing (and huffing), gender neutral Reader, R wears makeup, has breasts + a vagina, has hair (color/length/texture not described), light smut, freak4freak, character study, soft dark fic, MDNI
wc: 3.4k
canines part two
Steve doesn’t love you in a normal, wholesome way. He’ll be the first to admit.
His love is a sort of sickness. Must be. The way it eats him alive, the way it consumes him- and the only cure is you.
Always, only you.
Of course he’s fucking hooked. Who the hell wouldn’t be? Your smile, your laughter, the quiet way you can assess a room and take its temperature to gravitate towards who needs you most.
You’re a giver. A beacon of light. Pure sunshine, distilled into every pore, so much that every night has Steve on his knees trying to drink and lick and suck the goodness from you like it’ll save him.
Running his tongue along the contours of your ankle and the webbing between your fingers and the plush, fatty pool of skin underneath your breasts. All these underloved, undiscovered places that Steve wants to map and memorize and recite like holy nightly prayers.
He needs to taste the golden shimmering sweetness of your sweat and tears and day-old perfume like it’s his antidote. Like you’re some undeserved reward for all the shittiness that’s come before.
Steve loves you with dogma, with conviction. It took a startlingly short amount of time to align himself to your orbit, to make you his new center of gravity- even less time to feel the rearranging happen on a micro level.
He’s attuned to your presence, now. Can feel you three rooms away, six houses down, on the other side of town, like some part of his mind blinks with your dot on the map.
And the best part is? You’ve got no clue of this simmering streak of darkness. Your awareness begins and ends with the sweetest parts of your boy.
Steve intends to keep it that way.
He loves being sweet for you. To you. Opening all your doors and kissing your hands and sharing his smoothie in the mornings. Steve doesn’t do this to get brownie points, or to posture in front of your friend group, or even to show you off- he does these things because you deserve them. Just by nature of being you.
You also deserve someone who will watch out for you, who will make fucking sure trouble doesn’t touch your doorstep. Who will travel beyond a shadow of a doubt to know that you’re safe.
Maybe you don’t deserve all the specific ways in which Steve feels he maintains this order, but- you could do a lot worse.
Sure, he got a little intense after the earthquakes. Broke down in front of you and begged you to never leave his sight. Crawled into your lap and wept in your arms and let himself be comforted and cooed at by you and your hands.
He was going crazy after almost losing you to the bloody red underbelly of the wrecked and dangerous worlds that he couldn’t control, but- he was more careful after that night. Better with his own grip on himself.
Better at hiding it, anyways.
The first time Steve followed you to work, he didn’t even realize he was doing it.
You’d left for your shift at the diner like usual, a kiss to his cheek and a tight squeeze before the sound of your car humming to life, the low purr as it backed out of the Harrington driveway and beyond.
It’s the beyond part that really got under Steve’s collar.
For whatever reason- maybe it was the fresh feeling of your thighs around his ears, of the slick, hot noises you’d made for him in the shower just an hour previous- that was the morning that set him off.
Steve had pushed up from the breakfast table without clearing his cereal bowl. Left the half-drunk milk and Cheerios to bloat as he slipped smooth and silent out the front door.
Keys in the Beemer’s handle, in the well of the ignition, turned over with a twisted wrist. Steve was on autopilot. There was only one thought, pulling the rest of his body into taught forward movement, sending him into cold motion-
get to you.
See you.
Know, beyond that shadowy doubt, that you’re okay.
He followed you to work. It was actually pretty simple, since he knew your route and could predict when he’d be most visible, when to back off and when to creep the nose of the Beemer a little closer.
You pulled into the parking lot and Steve parked across the street, behind the run-down butcher shop with an alleyway that tunnels to the front door of the diner. Steve watched you with his engine off, barely blinking to be able to see every minute movement of yours in the front seat.
You used the flip down mirror to fix your makeup and fuss with your hair. Steve wanted to shout- it’s no use, you’re already too pretty to look at- but then that would sort of defeat his whole undercover thing.
Steve kept watching as you ascended the outdoor steps, as you swung into work with your shoulderbag tapping at your hip, as the building door closed behind you. The street-facing windows of the place were too lit up by the sunrise’s glare to give him any insight as to where you went next, but that’s okay.
Steve had already made plans to come back on his lunchbreak when the sun is positioned better.
He breathed out long and slow. Knuckles leaching white over the steering wheel as he loosened his grip. He felt miles better, being able to see the evidence of your arrival and the deliverance of you into the safe, menial hands of a predictable job.
Then Steve glanced at his watch, swore a blue streak, and high-tailed it across town to his own job.
The most surprising thing to realize is that even afterwards, Steve doesn’t feel sick over his actions. He’s not repulsed by what he did, doesn’t consider himself a creep or a stalker.
No, Steve feels normal. For the first time in a long while.
He shows up twenty minutes late to The Squawk and bickers with Robin and sources new sound effect tapes and drinks the shitty, burnt coffee out of his specially reserved Snoopy mug. Same as always.
The secret lunchbreak trip to your workplace is a new addition to his routine. He was sloppy with his lying today, said something about a toothache to Robin as an excuse for why he wouldn’t just be eating with her, like always.
That’s okay. Steve will find better excuses. He’ll just have to get sharper and smarter, which he is more than willing to do for you.
If it means he can eat the ham and cheese sandwich you packed him in the comfort of his front seat, watching an unsuspecting you eat the same thing across the street, then Steve will make it happen.
It’s been a few weeks of this- learning your patterns more intimately, where you’ll go during the hours you’re not with Steve or at work, where you’re most likely to take a detour- and Steve’s gotten good.
He’s been careful and methodical and his reward is ensuring your safety. In another life he must have been your sworn knight, or acolyte, or dog, maybe- something honest and loyal and true, but always with a sword or sharp teeth to jump to your defense.
Steve loves getting to see these little pockets of your life that he normally wouldn’t. You’re so generous, so kind- hugging Mrs. Byers when you drop off some fresh cookies, linking your arm through Robin’s on your way into the thrift store, giving Lucas a lift to the hospital and parking so you can walk him indoors- the epitome of care.
Steve watches it all through the window of his Beemer. Marvels at you, wonders how a person can be exactly who they say they are. Thanks every thread of the universe that you’ve chosen his chest, of all places, to come home to every night.
These last few weeks on this new routine has caused the buzzing under Steve’s skin to melt into the background. Along with his morals, probably. But he’s grateful all the same, feels that it’s an overall positive thing, this need to protect.
To see you.
He’s looking at you now with an intensity he only reserves for when you can't see him- your eyes have slipped shut, in the hazy afterglow of sex, and Steve is pressed to you still. Caging you in with his arms, taking his time to let his eyes rove over your face.
Steve loves looking at you. Especially like this. The damp baby hairs at your temple, the sheen of sweat on your skin- he can practically smell the hormones rolling off you in waves.
He could stare at you all day, all night. Has, before, actually- with minimal blinking.
Steve is looking close enough to see a stray eyelash on the apple of your cheek. He ducks to kiss you, pressing over the lash, trailing more kisses even after the tiny thing is pocketed behind his lips.
His tongue moves to press the sliver of hair against the roof of his mouth, sharp end prickling at his gums. He wonders if it would be strong enough to puncture. If it could find a home in his flesh that will knit back together and keep this small piece of you calcified, forever.
You murmur something and Steve shifts so his ear is closer to your lips.
“I gotta pee.”
He chuckles. Kisses you again, and again, and then helps you sit up. Hands soft and worshipful along the bare length of your torso as you work to get your feet on the carpet.
Steve settles back against the headboard with the sheets gathered around his waist. Engaged in his favorite activity. Watching.
You seem slightly dazed and a bit ditzy after four orgasms, casting around your room for the oversized sleep shirt that Steve had torn from you and tossed mindlessly away. You crouch to look under the bedside table, knees wobbling.
“I seem to be missing my undies,” you say. Sleepily. Dragging the wrinkled shirt from the floor to start maneuvering your arms into.
Steve hooks an elbow behind his head, resting into the curve of it. He should get up and help you look but he’s been making an honest effort to let you do things for yourself, recently. To sort of offset the whole watching thing.
He’s not sure how successful he’s been in this endeavor.
“Why don’t you check your dresser, honey?” Steve suggests.
Your head pops free of the shirt collar and you frown, legs bent and akimbo on the carpet as you try to settle the shirt with clumsy fingers. “No, I mean- I mean even before. I’m missing some pairs.”
Steve feels the tips of his ears go cold. Color draining fast.
You’re blinking up at him now, head tilted, the picture of guilelessness and befuddlement. “You don’t know where they went- right, Stevie?”
He feels caught in your crosshairs. Something behind his navel flips at being on the other side of the scope.
“Sure don’t, sugar.” Steve shakes his head, then yawns. Hopes it looks convincingly casual. “I’ll take you city shopping next weekend, if you want.”
Steve had been careful. He only took what he thought you wouldn’t miss- a sock with no match, a paperback from your give-away pile, a single vitamin from the bottle of a hundred others.
The undies in question were old, a faded floral pattern with holes on either side of the elastic. They’d been sitting at the bottom of your hamper for over a month, calling to him.
He’d pocketed them last week and after getting home from another round of You Watching, had laid out flat on his mattress and shoved his thumbs into the worn holes and spanned the width of the cotton crotch across his nose.
He’d breathed in the faint, lingering scent of your pussy and practically choked himself on it, calling to mind the ghost of you sitting on his face. He came completely untouched. Heaving himself over the edge with just the pressure and smell.
Steve swallows the memory away. You’re still looking at him in this very disarming, lamblike way, and he gives you a gentle smile- “Go pee.”
You sigh. Vague humor and suspicion in your voice as you kneel, working your way to standing- “Okay. But you owe me a whole new pack. The nice, silky kind.”
Steve uses his free hand to do Robin’s two-finger salute, which can mean either fuck off or I vow wholeheartedly, depending.
It makes you giggle. Your legs are fawning and shaky but you manage to get up, pulling a fresh pair of underwear from the top dresser drawer before disappearing behind the attached bathroom door.
Steve counts to thirty then rolls to his shoulder, on his side, face plunking straight into your pillow. There’s the floral smell of your shampoo, and underneath it, earthy scalp.
He blinks against the fabric and breathes deeply and wonders.
Do you know? If so- how? That undies comment felt so pointed. But then again, maybe not.
Of course not. Steve tells himself he’s being paranoid. He’s been good, he’s been careful, and he won’t fuck this up. He can’t.
You return from the bathroom and Steve snuggles you into the bed, tucking the sheets around your form and giving your neck a kiss before slipping into the bathroom himself.
One of the lightbulbs above the mirror is out, everything cast in a dim yellow glow. Steve makes a mental note to bring a new bulb next time he’s over.
The bristles of your toothbrush are wet still, the purple plastic nudging against the black bristles of his own dry one. He takes the handle of yours and pops the head into his mouth.
It tastes overwhelmingly, disappointingly, like mint and nothing else, but it’s still good enough to have his eyes rolling to the back of his skull. Feeling the sog squeeze out as he crushes the bristles between his back molars, more of that toothpaste residue bursting across his tongue.
Steve’s nostrils flare. He breathes out heavily, jaw working hard to extract the last of the wetness- then he slips it from his mouth and replaces it into the holder. Picks up his own toothbrush, runs the tap water for a minute, and wets the bristles so it looks like he was being normal. Just brushing his teeth, that’s all.
Steve pees, too, absently looking around the small, cluttered space to catalogue what’s changed since he was here last. Not much difference, in less than a day- although the shower curtain is partially open, droplets clinging to the clear liner. You must have showered after work, before he came over.
Then he sees the hair stuck to the shower wall and nearly groans. There’s a sparse circle of strands, still slightly damp, about halfway up the smooth white tiles.
Steve pulls his sweats back on and is mindful of the crinkling curtain but wedges his arm past the gap, just to put his whole palm over the patch of stray hairs. Just to feel the tickle of them against his skin.
He won’t take them. Not now, at least. It’s too obvious, too weird, too likely to get him caught. Steve is already planning to come back tomorrow after he ensures you get to work safely. Maybe by then they’ll be sitting at the top of your bathroom wastebasket for him, a perfect little gift.
He flushes the toilet and washes his hands and counts, again, to thirty before flicking off the light and returning to bed.
The lamp on your bedside table gets clicked off, plunging you both into darkness. Steve feels for you in the absence of light, finding the curve of your shoulder faced away from him towards the wall.
He kisses you there, then stretches out under the covers. Thigh pressing into the side of yours. Listening to your steady breaths.
And just when he thinks you’ve fallen asleep, you speak.
“How long have you been following me?”
It’s like a river of ice has been dumped over his head. Steve freezes, his heart leaping into his throat, slamming through him like the heavy beat of a drum.
“What do you mean?” He asks, staring wide-eyed and unseeing up at the ceiling. Plausible deniability is either a lifeline or a hanging rope, at this point.
“In your car. You’ve been following me to work and the library. Saw you in my rearview a few times.”
Your words aren’t angry- they’re blurry at the edges, wondrous and heavy with sleep.
Steve is quiet. And wildly afraid. A step taken too far out from the precipice that threatens to drop him dead onto the rocks below.
Say something, his brain screams, and he stumbles into speech- “It’s not- I’m not- it’s not because I don’t trust you…”
Above all, even more than being caught, he’s worried you’ll think him jealous. Overbearing. Staking his claim. And that’s a deep mischaracterization of the truth.
Truth is? He does it because he loves you. And for many other fucked-up reasons. But the main drive is love, not mistrust.
It’s not like it was with Nancy, he doesn’t get lethally jealous in that way anymore; it’s not even the same as when he used to tail Robin, although that dynamic probably hits a bit closer to the mark.
Steve is silently spiraling. Blood juttering. Wondering how the hell he’s going to pull off a convincing excuse, because honestly, he hasn’t thought this far ahead yet. He has no contingency plan.
His heart is thunking out of rhythm until you give this dreamy little sigh, sheets rustling as you turn. The length of your arm drapes over his ribs, your leg hitching to lay across his hips.
And then the side of your face presses into the thicket of hair at his chest, your ear fitting directly over the spot where his heart is pounding. Like you’re trying to subdue it back to a normal speed.
“I know,” you murmur, consoling, fingers running along the notches of his ribs. Lashes fluttering shut against his skin. “I just wish you had told me.”
Steve is breathing a bit easier with the weight of you and your words. His muscles had prepared for a fight but now, stunned into silence, the adrenaline is easing out of his limbs with every pass of your fingers.
“I like that you watch me.” Your hand tracks a path up his torso, to his collarbone, to the hollow of his throat, seeking out that clustered constellation of moles at the side of his neck. As if you’re memorizing him in the same way he memorizes you. “Makes me feel safe. Wanted. Bet it makes you feel good, too.”
More than you know, Steve wants to say. But then the pads of your fingers are pressing into the raised pattern of his beauty marks and the thought dissipates completely.
His hand sweeps over your shoulder blades, the other coming up to cradle your head. Thumb skating back and forth beneath your brow.
“Sounds like we’re two peas in a pod,” is what he settles on replying. Hoarse with revelation.
He feels the curl of your smile against him, and then your lips split into a yawn, genuine. Sleep shuddering up your spine as Steve’s hand moves with it.
“Let’s talk about this in the morning, sweetheart. Get some rest now.” It’s his most calming, lulling voice. Reserved for children under the age of two, and you.
You’re apparently tired enough for pliancy and obedience. One final, deep breath before you begin dozing, surrendering yourself to the channel of dreamland.
Steve stays awake for a long time. Holding you, aligning his breaths with yours, and still open-eyed staring at nothing.
You like being watched.
Hmm.
Steve isn’t sure what this changes, yet.
But it kind of feels like it might be everything.
canines part ii
steve harrington masterlist
ok i am ACTUALLY FR THIS TIME working on my academic rivals to lovers! angus tully x reader fic but it was supposed to be posted before christmas last year because it takes place during the winter semester and focuses heavily on winter blues/seasonal depression at school...
should i post it asap anyway, or wait until winter when ppl would actually be interested in reading about that?
should i wait to post?
yes, wait until winter
no, post it asap
i'm so annoying bc i made this poll and teased you all BUT FINALLY the fic is making suuuch good progress. i had to change a bunch of stuff around but i think it's in a much better spot now. we're at 2,800 words, like a third of the way thru sooo i'm expecting we'll end around 9k?!?! should be done by the end of the week fr guys AAA!!
fic is now at 4.6k guys AAAAAAAHHH HALFWAY THERE!!!!! i’m so excited to share omg… should still be out this week, i’m aiming for wednesday??
