the evening is spilling warm and pink through the windows when you tiptoe into the kitchen of your little apartment, a yawn floating at the tip of your tongue, catching like cotton in the ridges of your teeth. sleep still holds you captive, sitting against your lashes like a feather-weight. as you blink it away, the blurry warp of fatigued vision ebbs to reveal your boyfriend, in all his glory, scrubbing absentmindedly at the dishes piled up in the sink.
he hasn’t seemed to notice you, yet. the radio is going— something old, and sweet that you’ve heard but never bothered to know— and he’s humming the tune, following it’s dulcet rhythm. it’s cute. makes you feel soft in the epicentre, watching how he pulls the veil of domesticity around his shoulders like he was made for it, soap suds like silk on his knuckles, gold from the sun.
“hey stevie,” you offer, padding towards him over the tile that is warm from the orange glow of the oven. he’s put something on. you think it might be pizza, because the box from the store is poking lazily out of the bin. steve glances over his shoulder at the lilt of your voice, soft and languid. a smile lifts the corners of his mouth.
“oh! you’re alive,” there is a teasing undertone to his words, wrapped up in a bow of gentle affection, and you can’t help but roll your eyes and smile at his quip. the ends of his hair are catching sunset colours; he looks like a painting, you think, as you slide against his back, wrapping your arms like ribbon around his stomach. steve presses a lingering kiss to your hairline, and you hum something satisfactory from the back of your throat. “welcome to the land of the living. did you have a nice nap?”
“the best.” that much is true. you’d had a long day, following a long week, that was beginning to look like like the precipice of a terribly long month. sleeping off the incomprehensible tension of trying to beat out assignment deadlines feels good; makes you feel rejuvenated. steve returns to the diligent job of getting yesterday’s tomato soup out of the pan. “what have you been up to?”
“oh, you know. did a bit of vacuuming, a bit of laundry. put dinner on.”
you plant a kiss to the vast plains of space between his shoulder blades.
steve huffs a laugh, because he recognises the sincerity in your voice. “oh yeah?”
you close your eyes, content to ponder the rise and fall of steve’s breathing against your cheek. he’s in that lovely green polo you got him for christmas; frilly in his “kiss the cook” gag gift apron robin had thrown at him one sweet afternoon. “mmhm. very.”
the conversation fades into smoke at that, sinking in to the tiles of the kitchen, the cracks in the wall. an acute sense of love pokes through your chest, as steve returns to humming. marie adams, you think. in the apartment that is yours, you hold your universe and melt into him: steve harrington, wrist deep in water, glowing in the shimmer of the dying day.
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