hyunjin/jooyeon/jeno enthusiast

08-23-02 (i might reblog smth nsfw so be aware) this girl came up to me, said she wanted a photo. she asked me, "which one is your best side?" you know what i told her? I TOLD HER IT'S BOTH SIDES ‼️ bias list (just in case 😋😋😋) jungkook (bts), jake (enhypen), taehyun (txt), hyunjin (skz) san + seonghwa (ateez), dk + mingyu (svt) jaehyun, hendery, jeno, chenle, haechan, yuta, sion (all ncts combined idk bro) jiwoong (zb1), theo (p1h), jaehyun (bnd) chaeryeong (itzy), jeongyeon (twice) jooyeon + jungsu (xdh), wonpil (day6) and if anyone knows 8loom know i think about dan sagami every minute biases to-be (if/when i lock in) taeyang (sf9), eric (the boyz)

[joocomics]

HELLO!! HOW ARE YOU? i hope you are so very fantastically amazing!!

so i've been in a little bit of a silly goofy mood i fear and have recently been brought to the attention of the thing (thats the technical term actually) where the person kissing you BRINGS YOU CLOSER BY THE BELT LOOPS ON YOUR JEANS (i did not experience this. it came up in discussion with my friend in regards to lee know of stray kids. that is besides the point)

so i bring this to you humbly with: who in what band? is it self indulgent to say lee jooyeon? i'm also thinking MAYBE taehyun, soobin, intak, ode.... i am very very unsure and i feel like your beautiful brain can help me work this out bcs if i can't have it in real life i might as well know which idols would

and am i insane for feeling insane about this (be honest!!)

ANYWAY I LOVE YOU AND AM SO HAPPY FOR YOU AND CAN'T WAIT TO BINGE READ UR 1K EVENT WHEN I'M ON MY PERIOD AGAIN AND HAVE AMPLE AMOUNTS OF TIME TO SIT AND ENJOY😋😋

HIII I’M SO HAPPY TO HEAR FROM YOU BABE 🫶🏼 i’m doing great and i hope you are too!! oh you’re coming back with a wonderful question i love this! okay let’s see…

xdinary heroes: seungmin!!!! oh this is so seungmin core… i remember one of my first posts on this blog was about that scene from to all the boys i’ve loved before where peter has his hand in the back pocket of lara jean’s pants and then spins her around while they’re walking side by side and how it’s a thing seungmin would absolutely do… DO U KNOW WHAT I’M TALKING ABOUT 😭 he’d be doing such acts regularly and he’d be super smooth with it, always catching you by surprise 🙂‍↕️ and for jooyeon i don’t think you’re being biased tbh!! you can be bickering over something silly and he’d pull you by the loops out of nowhere to shut you up with a kiss cause he’s Just a Guy and he’s heard it somewhere that girls like it

piwon: i can see intak doing it at the beginning of your relationship? (pls tell me if you get it and agree) it would happen when he’s trying to keep his composure when you’re in public; when it’s just the two of you his hands immediately go to your hips or your neck and jaw, but in case there are people around, he’d want to play it chill (and cool) and the trick with the belt loops would be a fun way to do it cause he knows it’s gonna impress you :3 i see jongseob doing it too not gonna lie!

txt: taehyun DO YOU MEAN FRATBOY TAE *wink wink* no but seriously any genre of taehyun would be into this. ugh he’d be soo smooth and swift with it like… out of everyone on this list he’d be the one doing it in a Hot way if i’m gonna be real with you 🥲 (and he’s not even my bias) i see him leaning against a wall, you’re flirting, his gaze is alternating between your eyes and lips as he’s intensifying the moment before the kiss happens 😩 it’s getting hot in here

(soobin doing this to you would be really nice but can we sometimes take a moment to discuss how it might turn him on if you pull him by the collar of his shirt to kiss him? idk how i started thinking of this bsjsks)

and if i remember correctly you don’t stan wayv but you have your eye on hendery so i just have to let you know that out of all members from wayv hendery would be the one to do this 100% like i’ve never been more sure of anything else in my life

if you’re insane then i am too! (you are not insane) <3 this was so fun let me know if you agree 😋 ahhh i love you too lovely and i really really hope you enjoy the drabbles from the event when you get around to them! rest well and as much as you can whenever you’re free 🤎

[zelinkcrossing]

OH MY GOODNESS THAT TO ALL THE BOYS SCENE 🫠 I CAN SEE IT SO CLEARLY. smooth is literally like THE oh seungmin word like YES YOU'RE A GENIUS THATS SO HIM i feel like if there are actually any men out there they should take notes from him.

jooyeon is "Just a Guy and he’s heard it somewhere that girls like it" I AM SO OBSESSED WITH YOU LIKE SERIOUSLY I LOVE YOU AND YOUR BRAIN like pls why am i GIGGLING TO MY WALLS AT THAT goodbye

LIKE YOU GAVE SUCH A SILLY THING SO MUCH NUANCE WITH INTAK DOING IT TO BE COOL LIKE!!! I NEVER THOUGHT OF THAT EVER BUT YES!!! and i didn't even consider jeongseob but he's so smooth in my brain (like seungmin vibes in that way) so i agree one trillion percent.

TAEHYUN. OH THE GAZE WHAT IF I MELT INTO A PUDDLE i'm obsessed. YOU KNOW ME SO WELL I LOVE YOU! i one million percent understand the Hot way you're talking about because that's like the first way that comes to mind so cool cool cool that it's so him 😋

(oh and soobin? literally forget it the idea of him ENJOYING THAT like please if only men were real. i was so not in that universe but you built a spaceship and brought me there and now that will be rotting my brain for the time being so THANK YOU)

YOUR HENDERY COMMENT YOU ARE TOO AMAZING. YOU'RE RIGHT I DON'T KNOW WAYV LIKE THAT BUT I THINK HE'S NEAT...thank you for imparting this information to me. i fear as though he must be meant to be my bias and i must be meant to intensely stan wayv because if YOU say he's most likely to do one of the top 10 hottest things i can think of then it's giving meant to be.

this actually just made my life and i'm making a link to this my bookmark to get onto this website bcs why not be greeted with it every time i arrive 🤩🫠 thank you once again for giving me a little peek into your brain and sharing your thoughts with me 🥰 in case i forgot to tell you I LOVE YOU SO DEARLY 🫶🫶🫶

[levanswrites]

𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐝𝐮𝐚𝐥𝐢𝐭𝐲 𝐨𝐟 𝐦𝐚𝐧 𝐤𝐞𝐲𝐬

another fun little hc because i am deeply unwell with keys fever rn

.   *　✦　　.　 ˚　✦　 .

Keys is, without question, the most attentive boyfriend you've ever had.

Sweet, kind, considerate—maybe a little introverted, not the type for grand gestures or constant PDA—but he always takes care of you in all the ways that matter. 

He's the kind of guy who automatically switches sides so he's the one closest to traffic when you're walking together. The kind who remembers your favorite snacks after you mention them once; he somehow always has them waiting in his pantry whenever you come over.

If you fall asleep on his couch with your head in his lap, he'll sit there for hours with his leg completely numb before even considering waking you up. 

And that carries over into the bedroom, too.

He’s attentive in a way that makes you feel so completely safe, so completely looked after. Always checking in, always tuned in to the smallest shifts in you. You think he genuinely likes taking care of you, making sure you’re alright, making sure you feel good, that you're enjoying yourself as much as he is.

He's open-minded—always willing to try something new if it interests you—though the two of you usually end up drifting back to your favorites. Missionary, lotus, anything that gets him close enough to brush your hair back from your face, to watch your face scrunch up in ecstasy. He's the type to lace his fingers through yours just so you’ll have something to hold onto when you let go.

With Keys, affection isn't loud.

It's the hand on your waist guiding you through a crowd, the jacket draped over you when you fall asleep on the car ride home.    

He’s a sweet guy, is what you’re saying.

So naturally, about a month into dating, you decide surprising him at his apartment is a great idea.  

You slip inside with the spare key because he told you weeks ago “it’s okay to stop by whenever.”

You think it'll be cute.

Maybe you'll sneak up behind him, cover his eyes, press a kiss to his cheek just to watch him go all flustered and pink for you. 

You've got a soft plushie tucked under your arm—a teddy bear wearing a blue hoodie and tiny little glasses that looks exactly like him. Keys Bear, as you'd immediately named him in your head.

You're still grinning to yourself as you jiggle the door open.

Except the moment you step inside you hear:

“Motherfucker.”

You stop dead, the keys still dangling from your fingers, plushie nearly slipping from your arm, because... 

Who the hell was that?

You know that voice.

But at the same time... you don't.

It sounded like Keys.

Except lower, rougher. Completely stripped of the soft-spoken warmth you're used to hearing.

“There’s no fucking way that hit me.”

Click.

Click-click-click.

“Where did this guy even come from?”

Click-click.

“Yeah, okay. Sure. That's bullshit.”

Your eyebrows slowly climb toward your hairline.

Keys swears?

Obviously he does; he's an adult, you've never assumed otherwise.

But around you, the harshest word you've ever heard him say is probably “damn.”

You inch down the hallway toward his bedroom, the door cracked open enough for you to peek through.

And you find your sweet, considerate, impossibly patient boyfriend sitting there, three inches from the monitor, headset on, shoulders wound so tight they're practically touching his ears.

His eyes are locked onto the screen with laser-focus, fingers flying across the keyboard faster than you can follow.  

The same fingers that slip into yours mid-conversation.

The same fingers that patiently untangle your necklaces when they knot, zip up your dresses when you're struggling with the clasp.

The same fingers that help you fold laundry on lazy Sunday mornings because “it's faster if two people do it.” 

The same fingers that once spent forty-five minutes researching heating pads online because he was not about to let you suffer through cramps with anything mediocre.  

You've never seen him look this focused before. 

Jaw set tight, a tendon in his neck standing out in a way you’re not used to seeing. His eyes are narrowed behind his glasses, the screen reflecting in quick, restless flashes of light across the lenses. 

“Are you actually serious right now?”

Click.

“Push mid.”

Click-click.

“No—don’t stand there, move.”

Click.

“Yeah. That's what I thought.”

Your stomach does a strange little flip.

Because...

Is this your boyfriend?

Your sweet boyfriend? 

Your “text me when you get home” boyfriend? 

Your “hold still, it's cold” boyfriend?

Your “I saw this and thought of you” boyfriend? 

Your “I made extra food because I knew you’d forget to eat” boyfriend? 

The man who says “sorry” when he needs to squeeze past someone in a grocery aisle?

The man who once spent an entire afternoon helping his elderly neighbor move furniture because her grandson couldn't make it over that week?

The man who gets pink in the face whenever you compliment him?

Who still gets visibly flustered every time you kiss his cheek?

That man?

And what really gets you, about all this, isn't the swearing.

It's his tone. 

Key’s isn’t shouting into his microphone or slamming his desk the way you’d expect from most gamers.

If anything, he’s speaking in this low, calm register.  

Something a little degrading in his voice when he tells his teammates: “You wanna try that one again?” or “Nice job, buddy. Maybe hit something next time.”

A kind of cool, knowing arrogance that only comes from being completely certain he’s right.

Which, judging by the groans from the people in his headset and the score steadily climbing on his screen, he usually is. 

You always knew your boyfriend liked being right. 

When you first met Keys, you'd figured out pretty quickly that he was insanely smart. Competitive, too.  

You just never realized he’d been holding himself back this whole time. 

It's like discovering your golden retriever has teeth.

Because for the first time, it occurs to you that your boyfriend isn't nice because he lacks a backbone.

He isn't sweet because he's incapable of being mean.

He's sweet because he actively chooses to be. 

Watching him now, it's obvious.

That quick wit, that confidence. That razor-sharp sarcasm and the ease with which he fires back cutting comments without missing a beat.

A side that clearly existed long before you met him.

It's always been there, just hidden underneath polite smiles and good manners.

That contrast, unfortunately, is making it very difficult for you to think straight.

And even more difficult to stand straight.

You shift your weight in the doorway, still clutching little Keys Bear against your chest as you feel heat pool between your thighs, growing wetter with each passing second—another low, mumbled comment from him, dry and just this side of mean, effortless in the way he says it and so different from the softness he shows you.

On screen, another defeat.

Keys lets out a long, suffering sigh, dragging a hand through his hair as he slumps back in his chair.  

It swivels slightly with the motion, and his gaze finally catches on you in his peripheral vision.

You watch as those big, expressive puppy-dog eyes go round with shock. 

And just like that, Gamer Keys disappears. 

He jolts, the headset nearly flying off as he yanks it from his head, sending it clattering onto the keyboard. 

“Baby! Hey!” The smile that spreads across his face is instantly familiar, warm and soft, albeit surprised. “When did you, uh, when did you get here?”

You blink, remembering to swallow the spit pooled on your tongue before you speak. 

“Just now.”

Keys studies you for a second.

The slack-jawed, slightly dazed look on your face must give you away, because his brows pull together.

“Is... everything okay?”

“Yep.”

“You sure?”

“Mm-hm.”

“Okay, cause… I mean, you’re kinda just staring at me right now? So...”

Yeah.

Because ten minutes ago you thought your boyfriend was the sweetest man alive.

And you still do.

Except now you’ve discovered there’s an entirely different side to him underneath all that softness.

A side that's confident, quick-witted, ruthless, almost intimidating when the situation calls for it.  

Mean.   

You clear your throat, glancing down at the teddy bear still squished against your chest before holding it out.

“I brought you this.”

Keys blinks at it, then carefully takes it from you with both hands.

And the expression that breaks across his face is so soft, so fond, it makes you doubt whether the last few minutes were real at all.

“Wow, this is... he’s so cute,” he huffs out a quiet laugh, turning it in his hands, thumb smoothing over its head. He looks up at you, a boyish grin pulling at his mouth, his glasses catching the light. “Is this supposed to be me?”

You nod.

He lets out another laugh, shaking his head. “Yeah, okay. I see it.” 

He gently props the plushie up right beside his monitor, adjusting it once before letting it settle.

Then he reaches for you. It’s easy and instinctive—one arm slipping around your waist as he draws you closer, spreading his legs and guiding you into the space between his knees. 

Your hands come up to rest on his shoulders, fingers carding through the soft hair at the nape of his neck. 

He tilts his head up to look at you, still a little concerned, trying to figure out why you haven’t stopped staring at him. 

“Hey, you sure you’re okay?” he asks again, quieter this time, thumb brushing against your side.  

You lean down, palms gently holding him in place as you press a sweet, feather-light kiss to his cheek. You give his face a soft little squeeze afterward, pleased by the scrunch of his nose and the way his grin spreads.

His ears turn pink.

There he is.

Your Keys.

“Just missed you,” you mumble, then glance toward the glowing monitor behind him. “Can I watch you finish your game?”

His brows lift slightly.

“The game?”

“Yeah.”

“Uh, you sure?” he blinks, clearly thrown. “We can do something else.”

You shake your head.

“No. Keep playing. I wanna see.” 

A slow, slightly confused smile tugs at his mouth before he nods. 

“Okay, yeah, sure. Let me grab you a chair.” 

You hum, then—much to Keys’ surprise—you turn around and plop yourself down, right into the space between his thighs.

His chest presses flush against your back, the familiar warmth of him wrapping around you. The sudden closeness seems to catch him off guard; you feel his breath hitch right by your ear, his lips grazing against your skin when he exhales.

You wiggle your hips, rubbing against his lap as you try to get comfortable, and immediately feel him go still behind you.

You bear just a little more of your weight down before turning your head, catching his wide-eyed gaze with a sweet smile. 

“Is it okay if I sit here instead?”  

[zelinkcrossing]

hey so WOW.... hey so i just watched free guy not that long ago and now i feel like i need to rewatch it through This Lens cuz um HELLO

[keer-y]

hey pookieee, where do u think all the joe k characters would take a girl on the first date?

im torn between gator suggesting a douchey ‘netflix & chill’ or actually trying to be a gentleman and picking somewhere nice.

steve maybe a drive-in movie? i wonder about kurt, keys and teacake tho.. thoughts? xx

hmmmmmmb 🤔 i like it

MDNI • tw: slight degradation kink, use of "slut"

kurt: this man would bring you to a taco truck and it would fuck extremely hard and be a great first date, i'm ngl. he is fucking smitten even though you met him randomly in line at the post office and he was so weird and cute that you agreed to get dinner with him, but you didn't give him your phone number, you just gave him your snapchat. he sent you no less than 3 dick pics at your request almost instantaneously, and that was kind of the reason you agreed to go out with him (he's hung). he's trying so hard to impress you on the date that you let him go down on you in the backseat of his car. he's not that good at it, and you explain to him very condescendingly that it's a shame he has such a nice, big, useless cock because if he can't even get you off with his mouth, what hope does he have otherwise? you grab his face by the chin, give him a sloppy kiss, licking your taste off him, and tell him that until he learns the right way to give head, he doesn't get to come. at all. it's not a surprise at all that he wants to spend all of his free time practicing.

keys: i think keys' idea of a good first date would be an arcade. but keys is keys and he'd find a place that was a combination arcade/mini golf course and he would ABSOLUTELY take you there. you'd go through $20 of tokens each, absolutely kick his ass at skee-ball, get your ass kicked at the resident evil arcade shooting game (you may be particularly susceptible to jumpscares but that is NOT your fault). you'd take your tickets and grab some pizza before heading to the prize booth, where keys would pool his with yours so you could get one of those wiggly monster finger puppet guys and also a pretty sturdy phone case with hatsune miku on it, that's very clearly a knockoff but it makes you two laugh anyway so you take it. you play three rounds of mini golf and you win all three, though you suspect that keys let you win the third one so you could have a clean sweep. he drives you home and you make out in his car before he walks you up to your door, where you kiss again before asking if he wants to come in for coffee. first he tells you that it's too late, but after you give him a pointed look he understands what you meant by coffee and end up riding him on your couch before you settle down under a blanket to watch weird science, which you both enjoy ripping apart for how poorly it's aged, but also enjoy because it's just a silly lil movie.

teacake: your first date with teacake is to a fucking edm concert. he makes sure you have earplugs because he's not sure how you feel about tinnitus (do people feel differently about tinnitus?) and you drive up to the show together. it's an outdoor show but not at an amphitheater or any kind of actual venue, it's just a small situation where there are tons of people in day-glo clothes, tons of people in cybergoth attire, and a handful in casual clothes. you fall into the last category, but teacake? he's got on a neon yellow shirt, a pair of red pants, and shoes featuring both colors, reflective as all hell; he's practically glowing beneath the spotlights and blacklights strewn around. there's someone off to one side doing makeup, and he drags you both over, getting your faces painted with intricate patterns, so you'll both light up as you make your way into the crowd, pressing tight against him in the sea of bodies, jumping and dancing together as the music washes over you in the little valley where the concert's being held. your heart is keeping time with the beat, and during a lull, you press your teal-painted lips to teacake's fuschia ones, both of you drawing away from the other, now electric purple. you can't hear him, your head buzzing from the thumping bass, but you can tell by his eyes crinkling up, how wide his mouth is, he's laughing his little heart out, having the time of his life with his arms wrapped around you so you don't get separated in the crowd.

steve: i feel like high school steve is very "drive-in movie and then lover's lake" for sloppy makeouts (and more!), but adult steve is much better. he will not take you out for dinner. no, after you have a few casual "hangouts" like grabbing a coffee or meeting at the park for a walk on your lunch break, he asks you over for your first real date and he cooks dinner for you. it's just spaghetti but he made the sauce himself and even though it's a little too al dente (he got nervous and drained it too early), it's still one of the nicest things a guy has ever done for you. he assures you it's just because he's from a small town and his mom raised him right (he gets this glassy look in his eyes when he says that, and you're not sure what that means), but when he walks you out to your car that evening and goes to give you a kiss on the cheek, you turn your head at the last second and let his lips brush yours, for the first time. he pulls back, surprised but lowkey elated and opens your door for you, letting you get in before he ducks down and steals your second kiss from you. he heads back up to his front door, hands in his pockets, watching your tail lights fade to nothing in the distance before he taps his lips with his index finger, and heads inside.

gator: lol... i don't think gator is really a dating kind of guy—we can all agree on that, right? that said, if things ever did progress to a first date with gator, i think it would be all fucking backwards. you'd hook up in his car—so, what would happen is he'd text you "u up?" and when you said yes, he'd pull up to your place and text you that he was outside. he's not coming in because he knows you still live with your parents (student loans are a bitch) and even if he did want to fuck you in their house, they hate him anyway so it's best for everyone if you make this a car quickie. you'd come outside in a hoodie and leggings, slide right into the backseat of his truck while he clambers over the center console to join you back there, not even greeting you before his tongue's in your mouth, hands unzipping your hoodie, snickering a little and pulling away just enough to say "good lil' slut" because the hoodie is the only thing you're wearing on top, no shirt, no bra. you let him paw at your tits before he's got you on his lap, facing away from him as you bounce on his dick, letting him come inside you because you're on top of getting your birth control shot, every 3 months like clockwork. however, this time, something new happens. he nuzzles the back of your shoulder as you both come down, his arms around your waist, and you hear him mumble "y'hungry?" he finds you some napkins in his glove compartment to "clean up" (in some sense of the word) and then he drives you to get chinese takeout, which you eat in his car. you talk about your day, his shift at the station, and when he drives you home, he reaches across you to open the door for you—he's not the type of guy who would get out of the car to open it from the outside, or walk you up to your door—but before you can close it, he gruffly says "g'night," and actually waits for you to get inside before he drives away.

[zelinkcrossing]

STEVE 🫪🫪🫪🫪🫪🫪 one thing ab me is touching ur own lips after a kiss is going to DO IT FOR ME no questions asked. like oh okay when's the wedding then what are we thinking venue wise

[morninglesss]

disparate youth, pt. 8

Steve Harrington x f!reader // part one // part two // part three // part four // part five // part six // part seven // part eight // COMPLETE

NSFW/MDNI

Outer Banks, summer 1995. Steve’s parents are celebrating their thirty year anniversary with a week of parties, photos, and perfect appearances. Steve shows up out of obligation - and brings you as his “girlfriend” for survival. IT’S THE VOW RENEWAL! The Harringtons give with one hand, and take away with the other. Steve comes to a number of realisations. We finally (finally!) earn the NSFW tag.

This is the final part of the story. Thank you for taking beach!Steve into your hearts as much as you have. He deserves the absolute world. 🌊

word count: 12.6k

The officiant’s voice carries easily across the terrace.

It’s a different quality to yesterday’s rehearsal - the same words, roughly, but weighted differently now that there are flowers and an audience and his mother dressed in an ivory gown standing at the arch with her hands in his father’s. The afternoon light has turned amber, flooding the terrace in gold, and everything it touches - the white chairs, the pale blue flowers, his mother’s dress - looks luminous. Steve is aware of it the way he’s aware of most beautiful things - at a slight remove, appreciating it without quite being inside it.

Your hand is in his.

Not for show. Not for anyone watching. Just there, your fingers threaded through his, your thumb moving in a slow gentle arc across the back of his hand the way it has been since you sat down. He’d reached for you before the officiant had even begun, or you’d reached for him - he genuinely can’t remember which, and it doesn’t matter, it’s just where his hand is now and where he intends it to stay.

He watches his parents at the arch.

Danny, in his navy suit, carries the ease of a man who has thought about and rehearsed this and knows it rote - but underneath the ease, there’s something Steve doesn’t see often. Something genuine. His father is looking at Annabeth the way Steve has only ever seen him look at things he truly values - not with a sense of possession, but with the quiet certainty of a man who chose well all those years ago and has never once doubted it.

Steve knows about the others. Has known for years - his father’s absences explained as work, his mother’s tennis schedule that ran long into the afternoons. Both of them, over the years, careful and discreet and never threatening the thing they’d built. He used to find it impossible to reconcile. He’s not sure he’s fully managed it even now. But watching his father look at his mother like that - with that particular certainty - he thinks that maybe the vow they’re actually renewing today isn’t the one about fidelity. It’s the older one. The one they made before any of the rest of it. The one that says - you, above everyone and everything. Still you.

He doesn’t know if that’s really enough. He’s not sure it’s his place to decide.

And Annabeth - his mother, precise and composed in everything she does - has tears in her eyes. Not dramatic. Just there, caught in the afternoon light, a fact she apparently isn’t trying to manage away.

He looks at her for a moment. His mother, who has disappointed him in so many specific ways, who has loved him in all the ways she knows how, even when it wasn’t quite what he needed. Standing at an arch threaded with pale blue flowers, crying at her own vow renewal, thirty years in.

Something in him shifts - not forgiveness exactly, and not resolution either. Just the ache of something complicated, finally allowed to be exactly that.

Your hand tightens slightly in his.

He looks at you.

You’re watching the arch too, but you glance at him at exactly the same moment he looks at you - and it’s different to every other time this week. It isn’t the managed look of two performers checking in on each other during an act. It’s something much steadier than that. Something that knows what it is now.

He doesn’t look away.

Neither do you.

The officiant’s voice continues somewhere up ahead, and none of it touches him. There’s just your hand in his and your eyes on his and the clearest, simplest thought he’s had all week inside his head - ‘Just her. In whatever way she’ll give me. That’s all.’

Beside him, Edith sits with the stillness of a woman who has attended a great many ceremonies and knows how to be present in one. Her handbag is on her lap, both small hands folded over it, her pearls catching the afternoon light. He’s been aware of her since they sat down - not intrusively, just the way you’re aware of warmth. She hasn’t said anything, hasn’t needed to. She’s just there, beside him, in the way she’s always been there; quietly, completely, without condition. He thinks about the buttermints she’d pressed into his palm before they’d taken their seats, her shaky, spindly hand finding his, and he feels something tighten in his throat.

Across the aisle, Grandma Rose sits between Juliane and Lucy, a champagne flute already in hand despite the ceremony being mid-flow and the bar supposedly not open until afterward. She’s watching Danny and Annabeth with what appears to be genuine pleasure - and he believes it, actually. Whatever she is, she loves her daughter, that much has always been true. But he finds he can’t look at her for long today. The warmth on her face for Annabeth and the blade she’d dressed as a compliment last night exist in the same woman, and he can’t quite make them fit together yet.

The officiant’s voice rises slightly as he reaches the vows themselves, the words repeated simultaneously by his parents.

I choose you. Again. Freely and knowingly, with everything I now know that I didn’t know then.

He feels you shift beside him, just slightly. Feels the quality of your attention change.

He doesn’t look at you this time.

He just holds your hand, and listens, and lets it be whatever it is.

****************

Their table is tucked to the right of the room, close enough to the terrace doors that the evening air comes through in cool occasional drifts, far enough from the band that the noise doesn’t build the way it would closer in. His mom’s doing - he’d noticed it when he found the table plan pinned to a board outside the dining room. Not the hearing - she doesn’t know about that. But she knows about the migraines, knows what a long evening of noise and bright light can do, and she’d put the family table somewhere quieter without saying a word about it.

It’s the most mom thing she’s done all week. Possibly ever.

You find your seat, glance at the place settings, and move yours to his left without a word. Just a small practical rearrangement, placing yourself on his deaf side, and he watches you do it and feels something he’s been feeling all week but has no clean language for yet.

Lucy drops into the chair across from him with the energy of someone who has been cooped up all day and is now very ready to cut loose.

“Okay,” she says, already reaching for the wine. “Now the serious part’s over.” She fills her glass, then fills yours without being asked, raising it across the table. “To Uncle Danny and Aunt Annabeth. Thirty long years. You’d get less for murder.”

“Lucy, please!” Juliane chastises, from two seats down.

“I mean it with love,” Lucy says, entirely unapologetically.

A waiter arrives and fills Steve’s glass. He takes a drink, grinning the whole time.

Lucy sets her glass down and leans back in her chair. “Steve, your dad cried.”

“Probably just the lights - ”

“No Steve, full tears. Right at the end, during the vows. I saw it.” She points at him with her glass. “You’ve got it too, by the way. The Harrington crying gene. Don’t think I didn’t notice at Christmas.”

“I did not cry at Christmas.”

“Steve.” Lucy gives him a look of patient, fond exasperation. “The Folgers ad.”

He opens his mouth. Closes it. Reaches for his wine once more.

“That ad,” he says, with great dignity, “was objectively moving. It’s about a son coming home. It’s about family. Anyone with a functioning heart would -”

“You had to leave the room. You were making noises only dogs could hear.”

“- I needed a glass of water.”

“You came back with red eyes, Steve.”

“I… allergies.”

Across the table, Rick snorts in a way that might be agreement and might be him trying very hard not to laugh. Juliane has given up entirely and is looking at the ceiling.

You make that sound beside him - the pure laugh when something surprises you - and he feels it the way he always does now, hot and bright, illuminating something inside him.

“Steve’s right,” you say to Lucy, when you’ve recovered. “It was a really cute ad.”

“Thank you,” he sighs, relieved. “Finally. Someone with taste.”

“I cried at it too,” you add.

The look on Lucy’s face is one of pure delight. “Oh, you two are made for each other.”

He doesn’t answer that. Neither do you. But he feels the back of your hand brush his under the table, and he turns his palm over for you without thinking about it.

Lucy leans back in her chair, surveying the room with the satisfied expression of someone who has been looking forward to this part of the evening all week. “Alright, we’ve got dinner before the speeches start. Dad, you look dangerously sober.”

Rick, to his credit, holds out his glass immediately.

The meal unfolds around them - courses arriving, conversation moving across the table with the easy momentum of people who have known each other long enough not to need much effort. Danny’s friend Andrew tells stories about their early years in college that has the table in pieces. Juliane retaliates with stories of her and Annabeth’s teenage years that have everyone split between surprise and hilarity - Andrew’s wife covering her mouth, Rick laughing until his eyes water, Lucy demanding specifics that Juliane refuses to provide on the grounds of family dignity.

Steve eats, and drinks, and laughs more than he expected to.

At some point - between the second course and the third, the band having settled into something low and easy in the background - you lean slightly toward him.

“Did you hear The Hawk is doing a special screening next month?” you say, close enough that it stays between you. “Some Like It Hot. One night only.”

He turns toward you. “You’re kidding.”

“Saw it in the Hawkins Post before we left.” You reach for your wine, topping up your glasses. “I’ve never actually seen it.”

He stares at you. “You’ve never seen Some Like It Hot?”

“I’ve never seen Some Like It Hot.”

“That’s -” he shakes his head. “That’s genuinely concerning.”

“Is it? Is this because you worked in a video store and now you feel like you can look down on my movie taste?”

“No - it’s just a classic. It’s one of the great -” he stops himself. “Okay. We’re going.”

You raise an eyebrow. “Are we?”

“Yes. Non-negotiable. I’m not letting you continue to exist without having seen Some Like It Hot.” He picks up his wine glass. “I’ll drive. We can get food after.”

You look at him for a moment, and the look on your face is one he’s going to be thinking about for a long time.

“Alright,” you say. “Deal.”

A Friday night at The Hawk. Food after. The most ordinary plan in the world, made at a white linen table at his parents’ vow renewal, and it does something to him that he couldn’t explain if he tried - the simple, solid fact of it. Something to go home to. Something new to go home for. Something dangerously close to a date.

He looks at you properly then. The blue dress in the candlelight. Your hair loose over one shoulder. The completely natural, completely devastating way you’ve just assumed a future that involves both of you in it, side by side, back in Hawkins, as though it’s already decided.

Because it is, he thinks. It already is.

He leans in toward you, his mouth close to your ear. “You look beautiful.”

Just that. Plain and direct, because he’s so tired of being cautious. He can feel the warmth of you, the scent of your perfume, and he stays close for a second longer than the words require.

You go still beside him.

He pulls back just enough to see your face. The small catch in your expression - surprise, or something adjacent to it - before it settles into something he’s been watching develop all week, something that has no performance in it at all.

“Thank you,” you say. Quiet. Like you mean considerably more than the two words.

His eyes hold yours.

Then your hand comes up and your fingers find his face - warm, your thumb tracing slow from his cheekbone to the corner of his mouth and back. He feels it everywhere, the way he feels everything you do now. Your eyes move across his face like you’re reading something, taking stock of something, and he lets you, because there’s nothing in him right now that wants to hide.

Your hand shifts to the back of his neck, fingers pressing once, warm and deliberate, before you let go. You hold his gaze a moment longer. Then you reach for your water, and the table carries on around you both.

He exhales - long and slow, like something he’s been holding for days has just been given somewhere to go.

Across the table, Lucy is demonstrating something to her father using two forks and a bread roll. Juliane is shaking her head. Andrew and his wife are laughing.

Steve looks at all of them - his family, imperfect and loud and completely themselves - and feels, for the first time all week, something close to at ease.

****************

The first dance is announced just as the last of the dessert plates are cleared.

The band shifts register - something warmer, slower, the room gathering itself around the edges of the dance floor as Danny takes Annabeth’s hand and leads her out. They move well together, the choreography of people who have been doing this together for over thirty years, and the room watches with the fond attention of people who have been invited to witness something real.

Steve watches too, from the edge of the floor.

His father says something into his mother’s ear that makes her laugh - properly, surprised out of it - and he thinks, there it is. That’s the thing underneath all the management and the logistics and the thirty years of careful appearances. That laugh. His father still making his mother laugh like that, after all this time, after everything.

It’s complicated, loving his parents.

He’s starting to think that might just be what love looks like, sometimes. Complicated. Imperfect. Still there.

The song ends to warm applause. Danny makes a small bow, Annabeth shakes her head at him with the loving exasperation of someone who has been doing that for thirty years too, and then Danny is crossing the room toward Edith’s table, hand extended, the soft smile he reserves for his mother alone.

Edith takes his hand and allows herself to be led to the floor.

Steve looks around for his mother.

She’s being approached by someone - a distant cousin of Danny’s, affable and well-meaning, his hand already extended. Annabeth turns. Sees him. And then her eyes find Steve, standing at the edge of the floor, and something blossoms across her face that he doesn’t have a name for.

She says something to the cousin, declining his offer with a smile, and crosses to her son instead.

He hadn’t expected that. He’s not sure why he hadn’t expected it, but he hadn’t.

“Dance with me, Steven,” she says, her hand held out towards him. Not a question, and not something he’d ever say no to even if it was.

She takes his hand and he leads her onto the floor and he is acutely, almost painfully aware of every set of eyes in the room. His father’s friends. His cousins. Andrew and his wife. Lucy, probably already storing this away for later. All of them watching Annabeth Harrington walk past someone else to get to her son.

He doesn’t know what to do with that yet. He’s not sure he’ll know for a while.

The band moves into the opening bars of What a Wonderful World and he puts his hand at his mother’s waist and they start to move, and he is - what is he? Grateful, maybe. Self-conscious. Terrified of doing something wrong now that she’s given him this. Trying not to hold on too tight.

They find their footing. She’s a good dancer - he’d forgotten that, or never quite registered it fully. He vaguely remembers her mentioning classes she’d taken with Juliane when they were girls. She holds herself well, and leads slightly even when she’s following, which doesn’t surprise him.

“Are you having a nice time, Mom?”

She thinks about it - really thinks, which isn’t quite what he expected. Annabeth Harrington is not usually a woman who needs a moment to find her answer.

“Very much,” she smiles. “More than I thought I would, actually.” She pauses, smiling past his shoulder to someone in the crowd. “I’m always so worried about the details that most of the time I forget to -” she stops. Looks up at him. “Well. To really be in it.”

“You’re in it tonight,” he says. “I can tell.”

She meets his eyes. Something in her expression shifts - not dramatically, just a small, quiet movement, like a door opening a fraction.

“I am,” she says. Then, after a moment, she asks “and are you?”

He thinks about the beach last night. The dunes. The morning. Your hand in his during the ceremony. The cinema plan. The fingers at his cheekbone, the corner of his mouth, the back of his neck.

“Yeah,” he smiles, bashful. “I think I actually am.”

She nods, like that settles something. They turn with the music - the singer’s voice filling the room, rich and serene - and for a while neither of them speaks. Just moving together, mother and son, two people who have a great deal of history and have chosen, tonight, to let it rest.

He notices, somewhere in the middle of the second verse, that her posture has changed. Not dramatically - she’ll never be anything other than composed, it’s too deeply engrained in her - but there’s something fractionally softer in it. The careful management of herself, ever present, ever vigilant, given just the smallest amount of the evening off.

He doesn’t comment on it. He just holds it.

Then her hand leaves his shoulder, and she reaches up and touches his temple. Gently. Two fingers, barely any pressure, the way you’d touch something delicate. The place where the migraines live. The place she’s watched him press his own fingers to all week when he thought no one was looking.

She was looking.

“Mom, it’s -”

“Shh.” Not unkind. Just quiet.

Her fingers move to his forehead, brushing his hair back the way she used to when he was small and running a fever and she’d lay beside him in his bed in the dark.

He’d forgotten she did that. He hadn’t known he’d forgotten until just now.

Her eyes are glittering.

“My bright shining boy,” she whispers. Softly. Like something surfacing from a very long time ago. “That’s what I used to call you. Do you remember?”

He doesn’t trust his voice entirely. “I- I think so,” is all he manages.

She looks at him - really looks at him, in the way she so rarely does, the inventory she usually performs replaced by something more open, more undefended - and he sees it. The love that’s always been there, imperfectly expressed, poorly demonstrated, genuinely felt. All of it.

“I don’t always -” she starts. Swallows. Starts again. “I know I’m not always -”

“Mom.” He shakes his head slightly, and squeezes the hand he’s still holding. “It’s okay.”

She presses her lips together. Nods once. Drops her hand from his head and straightens, the composure returning like a tide coming back in, smooth and inevitable. But her eyes are still bright, and she doesn’t look away from him.

“I do love you, Steven,” she says. Quietly. Making sure. “More than I could ever tell you.”

He holds her a little tighter, stumbling over his steps.

“I know,” he says, pressing a kiss to her cheek. “I love you too.”

She nods. Something in her settles.

They finish the dance.

When the song ends he looks across the room and finds you immediately - still at the table, your chin in your hand, watching him. When your eyes meet his across the crowded floor, you mouth something at him.

He can’t quite make it out from here. But you’re smiling, and your eyes are doing the thing they do when you’re trying not to cry, and that’s more than enough.

****************

The floor opens up.

Annabeth finds her husband and watches as Danny leads Edith back to her seat with great ceremony - she accepts his arm with the dignity of a queen being escorted from the throne - and then someone calls out for September and the band obliges immediately, the opening notes landing like a starting pistol. The room surges forward.

Steve finds you again before he’s quite decided to look for you. You’re already on your feet, pulled up by Lucy, who has apparently decided that the formal portion of the evening is over and the fun portion has begun and nobody is sitting down anymore.

“Come on,” you say, already reaching for him.

He lets himself be pulled.

What follows is not, strictly speaking, elegant. It’s September at a Harrington party with an open bar and a band that knows what it’s doing, which means it’s loud and warm and chaotic, and the dance floor fills up fast with people who’ve been behaving themselves all evening and are done with all that now. Lucy claims the most space of anyone, moving with the complete unselfconsciousness of someone who has never once cared about how she looks dancing. Rick, to Steve’s genuine surprise, is excellent. Juliane stays at the edge of the floor and claps along, which is somehow exactly right for her.

And you - you dance the way you do most things. Fully, without performing it, your whole body in it. Loose and easy and occasionally silly, pulling faces at him when he pulls faces at you, the tight careful quality of the week falling away in increments with every bar of the song.

He spins you once, badly, and you nearly take out a distant cousin, and you both laugh hard enough that he has to stop dancing for a second just to recover.

It’s… good. It’s genuinely, unexpectedly good. He can feel the buzz of the champagne in his blood and the music in his feet and you close enough to catch if you spin wrong again, and for the length of two songs he stops thinking about anything else at all.

The band finishes the second number to a round of applause and launches into something slower to let people catch their breath. The floor shuffles and reorganises - some people drifting back to tables, others pulling partners in closer, the natural ebb of a dance floor finding its rhythm. Groups have formed across the room: his father’s contingent loud out on the terrace, a cluster of cousins commandeering a few tables, the older relatives gravitating toward each other the way they always do.

He’s about to lean toward you - to say he’s going to get some air, his right ear starting to ring faintly at the edges - when Lucy materialises at your elbow with the focused energy of someone who has identified her next mission.

“You,” she says, pointing at you. “Bar. Now. I need a partner in crime and Dad has already said no.”

You look at Steve.

He smiles. Nods. Go.

You let Lucy pull you away, glancing back at him once over your shoulder, and he watches you go with the feeling of someone watching something good move temporarily out of reach.

Then he turns and finds the spiral staircase in the corner of the dining room.

****************

The staircase is narrow and iron and winds up in a tight curve to the mezzanine above. The noise of the reception below softens as he climbs, not disappearing but changing quality - the band becoming something you feel more than hear, the voices blurring into a general warm hum. At the top, there’s a small lounge bar, low lit, barely a handful of people in quiet conversation. A couple at the far end sharing something that looks like an argument conducted in whispers. A man Steve doesn’t recognise nursing a scotch at the bar.

He gets a club soda from the bartender and crosses to the far end where the floor to ceiling windows stand open onto the small balcony.

The night air finds him immediately - cool and salt-edged, the breeze coming off the ocean somewhere beyond the manicured gardens below. He exhales. Rolls his shoulders. Lets the quiet soak up the residual chaos from downstairs.

Below him, the main terrace stretches out - strung with lights, the outdoor bar busy, a cluster of men with cigars gathered near the far railing. He can see the glow of the tips in the dark. Hears parts of the low rumble of conversation, the register of men who have known each other a lifetime and are comfortable talking with no need for holding back.

He recognises his father’s laugh before he sees him in the group.

He leans on the balcony rail. Looks out at the gardens rather than down. He’s not listening, exactly. He’s just… here. Getting some air. Letting his ears and his head rest.

He’s not really listening.

And then, cutting through the conversation, he hears his name.

****************

He doesn’t move from it. He stays perfectly still.

- always was, remember? Even as a kid -

He can’t catch it all. His bad ear loses the thread at the edges, fills in gaps with silence. But he gets enough. Enough to know the outline of what’s being said before the words fully reach him.

- thought he’d grow out of it -

- the teaching thing, I mean, Jesus, Danny -

Laughter. Low and easy and entirely at his expense.

He knows about this conversation. Has always known this conversation existed somewhere, in rooms he wasn’t in, at tables he wasn’t at. He’d just never stood above one before and listened to it happen in real time.

- popular kid, always was, just never quite -

- yeah -

- coulda been -

- uh huh -

- shoulda been -

The specific sort of eloquence from men who understand each other without needing to finish sentences. The shared vocabulary of a disappointment that is so well-established it doesn’t need articulating any deeper.

His father says something he can’t catch. The group laughs around him.

- at least he’s got the girl now, finally -

- oh sure, for now -

His hands grip harder against the balcony rail.

- you know how it goes with the kid, always the same story -

- remember the Wheeler girl, Ted’s eldest? -

- thought that was going to be something -

- and then, what about the girl he brought to Edith’s birthday, the hell was that all about -

More booming laughter. Andrew’s voice prominent in it. Andrew, who’d shaken his hand tonight, called him son, laughed at the right moments over dinner. Andrew who has apparently been having this conversation with his dad for years.

- I mean what does that tell you? -

- tells you plenty -

His father’s laugh. Familiar. Easy. Not pushing back, not redirecting, just there. Present in it. One of the boys.

- not the smartest, though -

- lazy, ain’t that it? -

- always too distracted, especially senior year -

Something in Steve’s chest goes heavy in a way that is worse than pain.

He’s heard his father’s silence on this before - the absence of the word dyslexia in the Harrington house, the careful management of every assessment and appointment, the way Danny could look at his son’s struggles and find a way to frame them as choices. As failures of will rather than differences of wiring. He’s spent his whole life understanding, on some level, that his father finds him easier to love at a distance.

But this?

Listening to his father laugh along while his friends dismantle him, piece by piece, over cigars on a terrace - the teaching, the relationships, the whole accumulated evidence of a man who never quite became what was expected of him - and not saying a word in his defence. Not one word.

- I mean at this point you have to wonder -

Someone says it. He doesn’t catch whose voice.

- the pool boy’s boy, am I right -

- oh yeah, Annie’s favourite pool boy -

- y’never saw that guy after ‘66, Danny. Maybe little Stevie’s the reason! -

The laughter that follows is the particular laughter of a joke that has been told many times before. A well-worn groove. His father’s laugh in the middle of it, helpless with it, thirty years of this particular cruelty made comfortable by repetition.

The pool boy’s boy.

Because he’s such a failure - so thoroughly, comprehensively not a Harrington - that the only explanation must be that he isn’t one. That somewhere in the gap between who Danny Harrington is and who his son turned out to be, there must be another man. Someone lesser. Someone more like Steve.

He looks at the dark gardens. The neat hedges. The lights strung along the terrace below, warm and festive, his parents’ perfect evening still assembling itself around the joke.

He should go downstairs, but his feet won’t cooperate.

And then the laughter stops.

Not gradually, but all of a sudden. The immediate silence of people who have realised they’ve been caught out.

He looks down.

You’ve stepped out from behind the screening plants at the edge of the terrace.

You’re standing in the light from the string of bulbs overhead, and the blue dress and the set of your jaw and the quality of your stillness tell him everything - you’ve been there long enough. You heard it. All of it, or enough of it that the difference doesn’t matter.

Danny’s friends have gone very quiet.

“Oh, don’t stop on my account.” Your voice is pleasant. Dangerously pleasant, the register he’s heard before, in the dunes, when the fury was at its coldest. “Please. Carry on.”

None of them say a word.

You look at Danny’s group of friends for exactly one second - the look of someone who has taken full stock of a situation and found everyone in it utterly lacking - and then you turn to Danny.

Just Danny.

“Is this how you always let people talk about your son?”

Danny’s chin lifts slightly. The automatic response of a man who has never been spoken to like this by someone he’s categorised as unimportant. “Now, sweetheart -”

“Don’t.” The word is quiet and final. “I’ve been here a week. I’ve sat in your house and watched your family and I’ve been very patient, but I am done with being patient.” Your eyes don’t move from his. “When was the last time you had a real conversation with him? Not about his job, or money, and not about what you think he should be doing differently. A real one, about him.”

Danny’s jaw tightens. “I don’t think you’ve known my son long enough to -”

“I’ve known your son long enough to know that he flew eight hundred miles to be here because you asked him to. That he shows up, every time, despite -” you gesture briefly at the group, at the terrace, at the whole evening “ - all this. That he sat through your rehearsal dinner last night and smiled his way through things that would have broken most people.” You pause. “How long have you known him?”

The question swallows up the silence.

One of the friends shifts. Someone’s cigar tip glows and fades.

Danny’s expression has moved through surprise into something harder. “I think you need to be careful about speaking on things you don’t understand. Steve’s life, our family -”

“- I understand that you just laughed at a joke about your son not being yours,” you say. Still controlled. Still precise. But underneath it now something that has heat to it, something that has been building all week, since the rehearsal, since the dinner, since every small casual diminishment she’s sat through and endured on Steve’s behalf. “I understand that nobody here” - the glance again, brief and withering - “said a word to stop it. I understand that you do this, Danny. Regularly. And he knows you do it, and he shows up anyway, because you’re his dad and he loves you. Which is considerably more than you deserve.”

Danny draws himself up to his full height, shoulders back, chest barrelled. The posture of a man who is used to being the authority in every room he enters and has just found the authority challenged in front of witnesses.

“You’re way out of line -” his voice has dropped now, the authority in it sharpening into something less pleasant. “You’ve been around five minutes. You don’t know him, you don’t know this family, and frankly I don’t know what Steve’s told you but -”

“He’s a really, really great teacher.” You state it plainly, clear enough for even his father to understand. The fury in your voice has found its centre now, quiet and absolute. “He teaches because he’s extraordinary at it, because those kids need someone exactly like him, because he chose something that matters over something that would’ve impressed you. And you’ve let your friends mock him for it for years. You’ve let them make your son the punchline of their jokes.”

You take one step forward.

“Do you know what he’s like? Do you know anything about who he actually is, or do you just fill in the blanks because it’s easier than paying attention?”

His father says nothing.

The silence from him is different now. Not the comfortable silence of a man among friends. Something else. Something that has the quality of a man looking at something he’d rather not see clearly.

“Steve is - he is the best person I know. He shows up for people. Completely, without being asked, without keeping score. He pays attention - to the things that matter, to the people who matter - in a way most people never manage.” Something in your voice shifts, raw at the edges now, emotion seeping through. “He makes people feel like they’re worth paying attention to. Do you have any idea how rare that is? Do you have any idea what that’s worth?”

You look at Danny directly.

“Maybe he’s not who you wanted him to be. Maybe his life doesn’t look the way you imagined it would. But who he actually is - right now, today - is someone I would choose, every single time, over every version of him you think you wanted.” Your voice drops, but doesn’t soften. “And I love him for exactly that. All of it. Every part of it you’ve spent thirty years being disappointed by.”

The terrace is completely silent.

You hold Danny’s gaze, long enough that he has to look away first - and then you turn and walk back inside without another word.

Steve doesn’t breathe.

He watches you go - the blue dress disappearing through the terrace doors, the sound of your heels fading - and feels something give way in him. Not break. Give way. The way a fist unclenches after holding on for too long.

I love him for exactly that.

Said to his father. In front of his father’s friends. Not offered to Steve carefully in the dark on a beach with an exit route built in. Just stated. Plainly. As though it were simply, obviously true and she couldn’t imagine why anyone would think otherwise.

He’s been looking for something all week. All year. Longer than that, maybe - the approval, the recognition, the sense of being chosen by the people who were supposed to choose him first. He’s been looking for it in this family, at these tables, in these rooms, his whole life.

It’s been standing next to him the whole time, at Christmas markets and school fairs, Tigers games and dinners with Robin. She’s been right there with him.

Below, trapped amongst the awkward silence of the men on the terrace, Danny looks up.

Their eyes meet.

Steve has spent his whole life trying to read his father’s face - looking for approval in it, for recognition, for some sign that the gap between them was smaller than it felt. He’s gotten good at it, the way you get good at things you’ve had to practice since childhood. He can read Danny Harrington the way he can read a room, or a student who’s struggling, or weather coming in from the horizon.

What he sees now he’s never seen before.

Not guilt exactly, and not quite remorse. Something quieter and harder than either of those - he sees a man who has just heard someone else say plainly what he has never found a way to say himself, and who is old enough and honest enough, in this single moment, to know it.

Steve holds it.

Then he turns and goes back through the doors, past the quiet bar, and down the spiral staircase two steps at a time, diving into the blur of a reception in full flow.

His one thought, his only thought:

Find her.

****************

The noise of the reception hits him like a brick wall.

He’d forgotten, in the quiet of the mezzanine, how loud it was down here.

The band has found its peak and is staying there - the bass coming up through the floor, through his shoes, into the soles of his feet - and the room has stopped being a room full of people at a party and become something closer to a single organism, hot and rhythmic and completely self-absorbed. Bodies everywhere. The heat of them. The smell of alcohol and perfume and a hundred expensive suits and the electricity of a crowd that has drunk enough and danced enough that it has forgotten to be careful.

He pushes into it.

His one good ear protests immediately - the volume at this level more like pressure than sound, something that sits behind the eye and builds - and the movement around him is constant and unpredictable, eddies and currents in the crowd that have their own logic and don’t care about his. He’s taller than a lot of the people here and it still doesn’t help. The light is low and strobing slightly with the band’s rhythm and the floor is packed three deep in every direction.

He keeps moving. Keeps scanning. He can’t find you.

He pushes further in, past a cluster of cousins, past Andrew’s wife talking to someone he doesn’t recognise, past a gap in the crowd that closes again before he can use it. The band is driving something with a strong backbeat that has the whole floor moving, and he moves against the flow of it, shoulder first, excusing himself through gaps that aren’t quite wide enough -

There.

On the far side of the floor. You’re pushing through from the other direction, your head up, scanning the same way he is, and even from here he can see it - the tightness in your expression, the energy rolling off you, the blue dress moving through the crowd with purpose.

He raises his hand.

You don’t see it yet.

And then Lucy materialises at your shoulder - appearing from nowhere the way she always does, two drinks in hand, already talking, already trying to pull you away from the floor and into something else. He watches your attention snap to her. Watches as you take one of the drinks automatically, the same way you’ve been all week, polite and present despite everything that’s happened.

His heart drops.

He knows what normally happens here. He knows how this goes with Lucy - she’s warm and funny and completely impossible to disengage from once she’s decided you’re her person for the next five minutes, and you’ve been accommodating her all week, because that’s who you are. You show up. You stay. You don’t make things difficult.

And normally he’d accept it. Normally he’d lower his hand and find somewhere to wait and tell himself there’d be another moment, a better moment, and the moment would pass and he’d be fine because he’s always fine, he’s spent his whole life being fine about things that really aren’t fine at all.

His hand stays up.

Because he is so done with that. He is so completely, comprehensively done with letting the moment pass. He watched you stand on a terrace and say things to his father that he has never had the courage to say for himself, and he is not lowering his hand, and he is not finding somewhere to wait, and he is not going to be fine about this.

He keeps his hand up and his eyes on you and he waits.

And then you look past her.

You find him across the crowded floor - not searching anymore, just landing, like you just knew where to find him - and your expression does something he can feel from twenty feet away. The anger, the shock, the champagne haze, all of it is still there, but underneath it there’s something that has been building since the movie, since the dunes, since the bedroom, since this morning on the pillow with your hand in his.

Lucy is still talking.

You hand her back the drink you haven’t touched.

He watches you say something to her - brief, not unkind, but firm - and then you’re moving. Through the gap between two couples, around the edge of a group that doesn’t part quickly enough, your eyes fixed on him the whole time.

He moves toward you.

It takes longer than it should. The floor is too full, the bodies too many, someone stops him with a hand on his arm and a question he doesn’t catch and he answers without knowing what he said but he keeps moving.

And then the crowd shifts, the bodies part just enough, and you’re there.

Right there. Close enough that he can see your face properly - cheeks flushed, bright-eyed, still burning with whatever happened on the terrace - and he’s close enough that you can see his.

You look at each other.

Then, at exactly the same moment -

“Hopper.”

The former chief’s name lands between you and you both start laughing - startled, bright, the laugh of two people who didn’t plan that and can’t quite believe it - and then his hand finds yours and your fingers close around his and you’re moving, weaving back through the crowd toward the exit, not running but close, the party carrying on around you completely indifferent to the fact that you’re, finally, leaving it behind.

The night air meets them at the door.

****************

The cab is silent the whole way. Not awkwardly so, just the silence of two people sitting with something that has outgrown words. His hand is in yours on the seat between you, neither of you looking at the other - your fingers, his thumb, the side of your knee against his, every point of contact registering with an acuity that has nothing to do with the wine.

He looks out his window. The coast road in the dark, the occasional light from a house set back from the water, the pale line of the ocean visible between gaps in the buildings and dunes. He’s been on this road every day this week and the journey has never felt this short.

He doesn’t want to arrive yet.

He wants another minute of this - of your hand in his and the dark outside and the held-breath quality of a moment that knows what’s coming and is letting it build. He wants to stay in the almost of it for just another minute, the way he’s been staying in almosts all week, except that this one is different. This one he’s going to step into. This one is going to happen.

The driver takes the final turn. The chaos and club’s lights have long since disappeared behind them.

The cab pulls up to the dark house and they’re through the front door before it’s fully driven away.

No lights. No conversation. Just the two of them moving through the familiar house in the dark, and something has shifted in the silence between them - not the taut held-breath quiet of the cab ride, but something that has made a decision without quite saying so.

He follows you upstairs.

The bedroom door closes behind them and they’re both moving immediately - no pause, no standing in the middle of the room trying to work out what comes next. He knows what comes next. They’re done with the house, done with the week, done with the whole careful choreography of it, and the knowledge of that is its own kind of energy, purposeful and forward-moving and slightly giddy at the edges.

“Suitcases are on top of the wardrobe,” you say, reaching behind you for the fastenings at the back of your dress. “Can you -?”

“Yeah.” He crosses to you. The blue dress is a strapless gown, his mother’s vision down to the last detail - laced and buttoned up the back, small careful loops that someone, Lucy or Juliane probably, spent considerable time on this afternoon. He finds the top of the lacing and works it loose, one loop at a time. His fingers are steady. The room is quiet except for the two of them, the soft sounds of a house that has been emptied of everyone else for the evening.

“Gran danced to everything tonight,” he says, to the back of your head. “I don’t think she sat down once.”

“She told me earlier she’s been dancing since she was four.” You’re watching him in the mirror, your eyes on his every time he glances up from where his hands are working your dress open. “Said it’s the only form of exercise she’s ever respected.”

He huffs softly. “That sounds like something she’d say.”

He moves to the row of small buttons beneath the lacing. They’re small and fiddly and clearly designed by someone who didn’t have to undo them at the end of a long night, and he works through them carefully, one by one.

“Mom was something tonight, by the way.”

“She really was.” Your voice is warm with it. “She looked happy. Genuinely.”

“Yeah.” He finds the last button. “More like herself than I’ve seen in a while.”

You’re quiet for a moment. “The dance with you. I was watching from the table and I nearly -”

“Don’t.” He says it warmly, his hands going still at your back. “You were already trying not to cry. I could see you from across the room.”

“I was not - I was emotional on your behalf, that’s completely different -”

“That’s still crying.”

“It’s adjacent to crying -”

He’s smiling now, properly, and so are you - he can see it in the mirror. The last button gives and he steps back.

You reach for his t-shirt - the soft grey one, worn thin at the collar, hanging over the back of the chair - and pull it over your head before you let the dress fall. It pools on the floor and you step out of it, draping it over the chair, and you’re already moving toward the wardrobe in his t-shirt and your underwear before the fabric has finished settling, still in your good earrings, completely unbothered.

Something about the sight of you does something to him that he doesn’t try to contain.

“Do you know where the box for your cufflinks went?” you ask him, opening a drawer. “The velvet one.”

“Nightstand. Left side.” He shrugs out of his jacket and shirt, dismantling the evening piece by piece. He finds an old Tigers vest in the open drawer and drags it over his head. The dress pants follow, replaced by a pair of cotton pyjama pants. The relief of being back in his own clothes again, his own skin, the performance of the week finally fully shed - is considerable.

You’ve found the cufflink box and set it on the dresser, scooping up the small gold pieces he’d taken from his cuffs and stowing them away carefully. You’re opening another drawer, the one with your fresh underwear, emptying the drawer into your case with the focused energy of someone who has already decided what comes next even if they haven’t said it yet.

“We’ll take the hire car back to the airport,” you say, as you work through the drawers. “First light, once you’re safe to drive. I’ll call before we leave and check the times of the flights to Indianapolis. I’m sure we can swap our tickets for an earlier flight.”

He looks at you across the room.

“You sound as keen to get back to Hawkins as I feel,” he says.

You glance up, something in your expression caught between amused and certain.

“Maybe.”

“Thought so.” Fond. Completely, helplessly fond.

You look up from the drawer, catching his expression, and something in yours softens in response - just for a second, just enough - before you go back to what you’re doing.

He’s laughing now, quietly, and the room feels lighter than it has in days - the wine and champagne still warm in him, the week finally behind them instead of ahead, and you here, in his t-shirt and almost nothing else, packing up ready to leave with him.

“I need to tell you something,” you say, while you fold and pack. “About what happened tonight. Out on the terrace.”

“Okay.”

“Your dad and I had a… I…”. You stop what you’re doing, whatever your hands have been busy with. “I confronted him,” you say. Still to the drawer, but differently now - the efficient packing energy still there but something underneath it, a current running through the words. “On the terrace. Him and his friends.”

He keeps his face neutral. “Yeah?”

“They were - ” you stop talking and take a breath, a little reset. “I went out for some air and I heard them. Through the plants.” You pick up the small pile you’d been folding and put it in your case. “They were talking about you.”

“What were they saying?”

You look at him then - properly, across the room - and the look on your face tells him everything about what you heard before you say another word.

“Horrible things.” Quiet. “About your job. Your relationships. The way you -” You shake your head. “The way you’ve turned out, like you’re some kind of disappointment that needs explaining away. Like you’re a running joke they’ve all agreed on.” Something tightens in your jaw. “And your dad was just - he was laughing along, Steve. He wasn’t pushing back, he wasn’t telling them to stop, he was just - there. In it. Like it was nothing.”

He doesn’t say anything.

“And then one of them - Andrew, I think, or someone next to him - said something about you not being -” Another stop, another exhale. “There’s a joke they have, about your mom. That you’re ‘the pool boy’s boy’. Do you know about that?”

“I know about it,” he says, flat.

You look at him. “He laughed, Steve. Your dad laughed.”

“Yeah. Sounds like him.”

Something in your expression shifts - the anger still there but something more complicated moving underneath it now, something that looks like it might be grief on his behalf. “How long has that been going on?”

“Long time.” He folds something and adds it to his case.

You press your lips together. Turn back to the case, pick something up, put it down again. “So I stepped out,” you say. “From behind the plants. And I told him - I told them -”

You make a short, sharp sound.

“Oh god.” You turn to look at him fully. “Did I cause a scene? At your parents’ vow renewal? Steve, if I’ve made things worse for you…”

“No,” he says, firm. “He deserved it.”

“But your mom, and the family, and -”

“He deserved it.”

You hold his gaze for a moment. “What do you mean, he deserved it? How do you -” Something crosses your face. “Steve. What did you hear?”

“I was on the balcony,” he says. “The one above the terrace. I went up for some quiet away from the band, and I could hear them below me.”

Your expression does several things in quick succession.

“You were there, the whole time?”

“I was there before you were.” He pauses. “I heard the joke. I heard what they were saying about my relationships, the teaching, all of it.” He swallows, throat suddenly dry. “And then I heard you.”

“All of it?” you whisper.

“Everything that mattered.”

The room goes quiet.

You’re standing at the chest of drawers, your case open on the floor beside you, something half-folded in your hands. He’s by the wardrobe, his own case at his feet. Neither of you moves for a moment.

Then he crosses to you.

No hesitation. No careful approach. Just him, crossing the room, his hands finding your face - both of them, palms warm against your cheeks, thumbs at the corners of your jaw - and you look up at him and whatever you find in his expression makes the thing in your hands fall somewhere without you noticing. The half-packed cases and the open wardrobe and the cast-off finery of the evening all fall away.

“So you heard -” you start.

“I heard you tell him that you love me,” he says. “For who I actually am.”

Your mouth closes.

He watches something happen in your eyes - the nerves arriving, the expression of someone who has said something true to a whole group of people and is only now having to say it to the one person it was actually for. Your throat moves. You open your mouth again and nothing comes out.

He doesn’t wait.

“And I need you to know, that I - I am so in love with you,” he says. Plain. Certain. The words he’s been carrying all week finally said out loud, finally given somewhere to go. “I have been for - I don’t know how long. Long enough that I stopped noticing it was happening. Long enough that this week nearly broke me, being this close to you and not being able to -”

He stops himself.

Your eyes are very bright, glittering in the light coming from the bedside lamps.

He watches it happen - the recognition moving across your face. Like something finally being called by its right name.

You nod.

Small. Certain. Your hands come up and find his wrists, not pulling his hands away, just holding on.

“Same,” you say. Your voice comes out smaller than usual, stripped of its usual steadiness. “Me too. I have - for a while, I just -” you shake your head slightly, still looking at him. “Same.”

That’s all.

It’s everything.

And then you kiss him.

The first kiss is soft.

Just that - his hands still holding your face, your hands wrapped around his wrists, the two of you finally, simply here. He can feel your breath against his lips, and the slight tremor in you that has nothing to do with cold.

He pulls back just enough to look at you.

The tenderness is still there - he can feel it, the weight of what was just said still warm between you. But underneath it something else is surfacing, something that has been building since the harbour wall, since the boutique, since a recliner on the beach and his hand on your thigh and every careful, managed, almost of the week.

He can see it in your face. He suspects you can see it in his.

You have been so careful.

You have been so endlessly, exhaustingly careful - with the rules, with the lines, with the talking points and the agreed boundaries and the gentle choreography of two people trying very hard not to break something before they really understood what it was.

He is done being careful. And he can tell, from the way you’re looking at him, that you are too.

Your hands move from his wrists to his shoulders - not pulling him in yet, just resting there - and the room feels crystalline, frozen, before you pull him back to your lips and this kiss is nothing like the first one.

His hands slide from your face into your hair and you slip your hands down his chest to find the bottom of his vest, pulling it up, and he breaks the kiss long enough for it to come off over his head and then his mouth finds yours again before it hits the floor. Your hands spread flat against his chest - warm, certain, the same hands that have been finding him all week - and he walks you back the single step until the chest of drawers is behind you and there’s nowhere left to go.

His hands find the bottom of his shirt you’re wearing.

You lift your arms.

It joins the vest somewhere on the floor and then his hands are on you - finally, properly, without a blanket between you or an audience ten feet away or any of the careful management of the week - and you make a sound against his mouth that he feels all the way down.

He pulls back just enough to look at you.

“Yeah?” he asks. Low. Making sure.

You look at him - really look, the directness that has been undoing him all week - and something in your expression is certain and warm and done with waiting.

“Yeah,” you say. “Definitely yeah.”

His hands find your waist. Your hips. The soft skin inside your thighs, and you shift closer to him, and he can feel how much you mean it.

“I’ve thought about this,” you say, against his jaw, while his fingers slip through your folds. Almost conversational, except for the slight unevenness in your breath. “About you. Like this.”

He goes very still. “Yeah?”

“Mm.” Your mouth at his throat now. “More than I should have, probably. You’re not meant to think about your friends the ways I’ve been thinking about you.”

“How long?”

You pull back slightly, enough to look at him. The ghost of a smile. “Long enough that it’s embarrassing.”

He kisses you again before he says too much.

Your hands find the waistband of his pyjama pants. You push them down - not all the way, just enough, letting them rest just under the curve of his ass - and then you wrap your hand around his cock and he bites back a moan that is entirely involuntary and not remotely dignified.

You go still.

He opens his eyes.

You’re looking at him with an expression that is equal parts appreciation and barely suppressed amusement.

“Okay,” you say. “Wow.”

“Okay?”

“I knew.” You tilt your head slightly. “Rumours travel, even in Hawkins.”

He stares at you. “There are rumours about -”

“Steve.”

“About my -”

“Steve.” You squeeze once, lightly, which effectively ends his ability to form sentences. “I’ve seen you in sweatpants - the whole town has. I knew. I just -”

You glance down at the gap between your fingers and thumb, then at he sheer amount of him that your hand can’t hold. Then you glance back up, the amusement giving way to something more genuine. “I was not fully prepared.”

He looks at you for a long moment, a heady mix of pride and lust and adoration burning under his skin.

“I will never,” he says, with great seriousness, “ever, let you live that down.”

“I know,” you say. “Worth it.”

His fingers find your waistband and he slides your underwear down your legs. You step out of them without breaking eye contact, which does something major to his ability to think clearly.

And then there’s nothing left between you.

He kisses you again - deeper this time, his hands moving over you with none of the restraint of the week - and you turn around in his arms, your back to his chest, and he feels you press back into him deliberately, unambiguously, and that’s all the direction he needs.

You brace your hands against the chest of drawers and he’s behind you, his fingers scratching down your back before his hands settle on your hips. He leans over you, covers you, mouths at your shoulder blades and up to the back of your neck, taking his time tasting your skin even as you grind your ass against his cock and make these little whimpers that he knows will embed themselves into his memory.

He takes himself in hand, slicking his thumb over the tip with every pass of it, biting his lip to muffle the whine in his throat when you step your legs further apart and arch your back, tilting your hips just right, exposing yourself completely to him.

God, he thinks, you’re so fucking beautiful.

There’s so much he wants to do. His mind races with the possibilities. He wants to drop to his knees and worship at your cunt, he wants to lay you down and cover every inch of you with kisses, he wants to pull you into his lap and just sit there with you grinding down on him until -

- you push back on him again, slick and hot and eager, and the look on your face as you glance over your shoulder tells him the time for thinking is over.

He guides himself against you, teasing you as much as he can cope with, gliding himself between your sopping lips, back and forth, over and over, soaking up the slick heat of you as you grind yourself against him.

“Y-you’re so… you’re so wet…”, he grunts out, biting down so hard on his lip he’s sure he’s drawn blood.

“It’s your fault. Been like this since I saw you in that suit -”

“Yeah, seriously?”

“I was thi - thinking about this…”

“When? Tell me.”

You push back harder, and he does whimper this time. “D-dinner. When you said I - when you said I was beautiful…”

“Fucking… jesus…”

He can’t speak, can’t think anymore. He lines himself up and pushes into you slowly, watching with rapt attention as you take him in, inch by inch.

You drop your head, a long exhale leaving you, your fingers curling against the top of the chest of drawers. He stills - one hand gripping your hip, the other spread flat across your back - giving you a moment, giving himself one too, because the feel of you is extraordinary and he is trying very hard not to embarrass himself in the first thirty seconds.

“Okay?” he bites out, once he’s fully sheathed inside you and frozen to the spot.

“Y-yeah, more than,” you whisper, breathless. “You can move.”

He moves.

It builds fast - the angle of it, the sounds you’re making, the way you push back to meet him - and his hands grip tighter and his mouth finds the back of your neck again and he can feel everything, the heat of you, the specific give of you around him, and it’s almost too much, it’s been almost too much since the moment you wrapped your hand around him and looked up at him with that expression.

At some point - he couldn’t say exactly when - your knees buckle slightly and he catches you, and it seems easier, more natural, to go down to the floor together than to stay standing. The rug comes up to meet them, your hands bracing against it, and he’s behind you still, finding the angle again, and it’s good, it’s so fucking good, the sounds you’re making are going to ruin him permanently -

He gets perhaps four thrusts in before he feels it.

The rug, which has felt far thicker and softer under his feet this week than it currently feels under his knees. And then, immediately, with the clarity of someone whose brain has just caught up with his body -

Her knees. Her arms.

He stops.

“Steve -” You look back at him over your shoulder, flushed, breathing hard, your expression making absolutely clear that stopping was not on your agenda.

“Rug burn,” he says, like it should be obvious. “Your knees.” He lifts one of his own by way of demonstration, the skin already a little pink from friction. “I can feel the weave pattern and I’ve only been down here thirty seconds.”

He feels you flutter around him. He tries very hard to focus on the matter at hand.

“I don’t care about the rug Steve -”

“I care about the rug. Mostly what it’s doing to your-”

You push back, figuratively as well as literally. “Steven Harrington, I swear to god -”

“Bed,” he says. “I’m taking us to bed.”

He pulls back and gets an arm under you - not graceful, not even remotely - and somehow manages to get you both up off the floor, across the room and onto the bed in a combination of movements that involve his elbow hitting the wrong place and you grabbing the edge of mattress to stop momentum sending you flying over the other side.

You end up on your back, hair everywhere, looking up at him with an expression that contains multitudes.

“Smooth, Harrington,” you say, plumping a pillow beneath you.

“Always have been,” he agrees.

And then neither of you is laughing anymore.

****************

He takes his time.

He’s been taking his time all week - careful, managed, always half-aware of even when it wasn’t a performance - but this is entirely different.

He starts slow. Deliberately. His weight on his forearms either side of you, close enough that he can see your face properly - really see it, the way he hasn’t been able to all week without it meaning something he wasn’t ready to name yet. Your hair spread across the pillow. Your eyes on his, steady and open and entirely genuine. He pushes into you and watches your face change.

It’s - it’s a lot. The intimacy of it, face to face, nothing between them, your legs wrapping around him and drawing him in and your hands finding his back. He drops his forehead to yours for a moment, just breathing, just existing in the fact of it.

“There you are,” you say softly, and he laughs - surprised out of it, warm - and then he starts to move properly and the laughing stops.

It builds slowly this time. Not the urgency of the floor, not the overwhelming heat of it - something steadier, deeper, more chosen. He learns what makes you close your eyes and what makes you keep them open and what makes you pull him closer when he’d already thought there was no closer left to go. Your hands move over him - his shoulders, his back, the nape of his neck - like you’re learning him too, like you have time now and intend to use it.

He kisses you between movements. Your mouth, your jaw, the curve of your throat. Feels you arch up into him in response, your fingers pressing into his back.

“Steve -”

“I know,” he says. “Let me take care of you.”

He keeps taking his time, even when he draws himself out of you, even when you protest the loss.

His mouth finds its way down your throat, your collarbone, the soft skin of your breasts - taking each one in turn, his tongue tracing slow circles around your nipples until you’re squirming beneath him and pulling at his hair with more impatience than he’s going to reward. Lower, his mouth dragging down your stomach, your hips lifting toward him before he’s even got there.

He settles between your thighs.

“Steve -” His name again, already unsteady.

“I know,” he says, against the inside of your thigh. “Give me a minute.”

He takes considerably more than a minute.

He learns you the way he’s been wanting to learn you all week - the unique geography of you, what makes your breath stutter and what makes your hips roll and what makes you clap a hand over your own mouth to muffle the desperate, pleading sounds you’re making. He works you with his mouth and his tongue and his fingers until you’re shaking, dragging his tongue from your hole to your clit and back until your thighs are trembling either side of his head and your hand in his hair has gone from guiding to gripping, until you say his name three times in quick succession in a way that tells him you’re close.

He backs off, ignoring the curse of protest you hiss out, studiously avoiding the tilt of your hips as you try to tempt him back to where you most want him.

“Steve, c’mon, I’m close…”

“I know, honey, I know,” he murmurs into the crease of your hip, kissing a trail over your stomach before he works his way back down.

He does it again. Brings you right to the edge of it, plunging his tongue inside you while his thumb and finger teases your sensitive, swollen clit, and then eases back, his mouth soft and loose against your inner thigh while you gasp and writhe above him and tell him, in some detail, exactly what you think of this approach.

“I know,” he says, pleasantly. “One more time, you’ve got this.”

“Steve - ”

“Just once more,” he says again, and goes back to work.

The third time he doesn’t back off.

He gives you everything - fingers curling inside you to find the soft spot that makes your back arch clean off the bed, his mouth working you over in the way he’s worked out you need, relentless and focused and entirely committed to the task - and you come apart slowly and then all at once, your thighs closing around his head, your hand fisting in his hair, your whole body shuddering through it as you cry out.

And right in the middle of it - unstoppable, raw, wrenched out of you because you simply cannot not say it -

“I love you, Steve, I -”

Broken and certain at the same time. Your voice catching on the last syllable, the words spilling out of you in the wreckage of everything else.

He feels it everywhere.

In his chest. In his throat. In the base of his spine. He kisses you through the last of it, feels you come down slowly, your hand loosening in his hair, your breathing beginning to even out.

Then he kisses his way back up your body - your stomach, your ribs, the curve of your breast, your throat - and when he settles between your thighs properly and pushes into you again you’re still oversensitive, still trembling slightly, and the sound you make is something he is going to carry with him for the rest of his life.

He tries to pace himself.

He genuinely, sincerely tries.

But you’re warm and you’re so fucking wet around him, and you’re looking up at him with your hair everywhere and your lips swollen and your eyes dark, and you wrap your legs around him and pull him deeper into you, and he feels you clenching around his dick and you’re still saying his name - quietly now, just a breath of it on each exhale - and there is simply nothing he can do to stop himself.

He lets the pleasure that’s been haunting him since that shower the first morning, the pleasure he’s been edging closer to every single day, the pleasure that’s been slowly driving him crazy all week until this exact moment, he lets it tear right through him.

His face presses into your neck, his whole body shuddering, your arms coming up around his shoulders and holding on while the room goes white at the edges and he thinks, with complete and helpless conviction, that he has never in his life felt less alone than he does right now.

After, he doesn’t move immediately.

He stays close. His weight mostly shifted to the side, but still pressed against you, his face at your shoulder, one hand spread warm across your stomach. Your fingers are moving through his hair, slow and absent, the same rhythm as the migraine afternoon earlier in the week, except that everything is somehow different now and yet still the same.

You’re quiet for a while. The good kind of quiet. The kind that doesn’t need filling.

He turns his head to press his lips to your shoulder. Your collarbone. The curve of your throat. Slow and undemanding - just because he can now, just because there’s nothing stopping him anymore.

You make a soft sound and turn toward him, and he meets you there, and the kiss is soft and gentle and perfectly yours.

“I love you,” he says, against your mouth. Properly. Out loud. To your face. “I should have said it back straight away. I just -”

“I know,” you soothe. Your hand at his jaw, your thumb tracing the line of it. “I know you do.”

He exhales, relief washing over him.

You kiss him again. Then again. Small, warm, lazy with it - the kind of kissing that has nowhere else to be.

His hand moves over you - your waist, your hip, the warm skin of your side - and you let him, and it’s different to every other touch of the week. Not performing closeness, not managing it, not wondering if it’s allowed. Just his hand, just you, just this.

“We have the whole house to ourselves,” you say eventually, into the comfortable dark between you. Something in your voice - thoughtful, the smile underneath it.

He lifts his head slightly, squinting as he tries to focus on you. “We do.”

“All night.”

“All night,” he confirms.

You look at him. Your smile properly present now, warm and wicked and yours.

“That’s a lot of rooms to work through,” you ponder.

He looks at you for a long moment, brain catching up, desire licking up his spine once more. “Give me twenty minutes.”

“Twelve.”

“Eighteen.”

“Fifteen minutes, Steve, and that’s my final offer.”

He drops his face back to your shoulder, laughing properly, and you laugh with him, and the house is quiet around you and the night is entirely yours and he thinks - not for the first time, but more clearly than ever before - that this is it. This is the thing he didn’t know he was looking for.

****************

Later, much later, with the sky beginning to lighten at the edges - dressed in each other's shorts and vests, whatever they pulled together from the bedroom floor - they find their way down to the beach.

The hire car is already loaded, their cases in the trunk, everything they’re taking home to Hawkins packed and ready. The green dress and the blue dress hang side by side in the wardrobe upstairs, the suits beside them. They left them without making it a big thing. It felt right.

They go to the beach without discussing it. Just the two of them, barefoot, following the path through the dunes the way they’ve been following it all week. The sand is cool now, the heat of the previous day long gone, the tide further out than usual, the beach wider and quieter and completely, entirely empty.

They find a spot in the dunes, close to the line of the marram grass scattered through the sand. They sit close, his arm around you, your head at his shoulder, facing the horizon where the sky is doing something extraordinary - the darkness thinning at the edges, the first pale suggestion of colour beginning to bleed through.

Neither of them speaks for a while, the silence broken only by the distant squawk of gulls somewhere beyond.

He looks at the horizon. Feels the cool air coming in off the water, the soft stillness of the world before it wakes up, your body warm against his side.

“We should probably sleep at some point,” you think out loud, your hand rubbing up and down his bare forearm.

“I’ll sleep on the plane. You can sleep in the car on the way to the airport.”

Neither of you moves.

The sky keeps changing - the colour deepening now, rose and gold beginning to edge up from the horizon, the stars fading one by one at the edges. The ocean catches it first, the water going from dark to something warm and gleaming, and the beach slowly, gradually, fills with light.

He thinks about the week. All of it - his parents, the performance, the rehearsal and the dinner and the dunes and the bedroom and everything that came after. The whole long, complicated, exhausting, necessary week.

He thinks about Hawkins. About The Hawk on a Friday night. About the early flight home with you beside him, the whole of Indiana waiting at the other end.

He thinks about the words he said in that bedroom - finally, out loud, to your face - and what it felt like to say it and mean it and have it received and returned to him, fully and equally.

Your hand finds his in the cool morning air, your head dropping to his shoulder.

He holds on, and presses a kiss to your hair.

The sun comes up.

[zelinkcrossing]

literally i feel like i have been blessed !!! this ending was PERFECTLY satisfying and literally scrumptious and i genuinely have never felt more like an ending was earned like this one was. both of them fucking earned it and steve got a sliver of what he deserves from annabeth and danny got a sliver of what he deserves from steve and the whole thing was BEYOND chef's kiss amazing amazing amazing AMAZING LIKE SERIOUSLY

[morninglesss]

disparate youth, pt.7

Steve Harrington x f!reader // part one // part two // part three // part four // part five // part six // part seven // part eight // complete

Outer Banks, summer 1995. Steve’s parents are celebrating their thirty year anniversary with a week of parties, photos, and perfect appearances. Steve shows up out of obligation - and brings you as his “girlfriend” for survival. The post-rehearsal fallout continues, and Steve can’t sleep. When you don’t come back, old fears pull him off the couch and down to the beach to find you. What follows - in the dunes, in the dark, and in the quiet of the morning after - gets them somewhere closer to honest than they’ve managed all week.

Word count: 8.7k

As always: Steve Harrington deserved better, so I gave him softness. 🌊

The clock on his father’s desk reads 1:26.

He’s been watching it without meaning to - the numbers changing without sound, each minute replacing the last oblivious to the fact that he’s still here, still awake, still no closer to anything. He’d tried closing his eyes twenty minutes ago. That had been worse. The inside of his eyelids had given him the dinner table, Grandma Rosemary’s sly smile, the particular quality of your stillness beside him, the tap of your thumb against his hand.

He opens his eyes and watches the clock instead.

The self-recrimination had started almost immediately after you left - that was the pattern, had always been the pattern, the same loop he’d been running since he was old enough to understand that something about him consistently failed to be enough.

He’d gone around it several times now. Why does he keep going back? Why does he keep standing in that room, at that table, waiting for something to be different when it never is and never will be? His father had looked at him on the way out and squeezed his shoulder and said get some rest like it was any other evening, like nothing had happened, like Uncle Rick hadn’t been standing beside him at the arch and the arch hadn’t been complete without him in it.

And he’d smiled. He’d said thanks, Dad. He’d performed gratitude for a squeeze on the shoulder from a man who’d spent the week treating him less like a son and more like a pleasant addition to the guest list.

Why does he keep doing that?

He knows why. He’s always known why. The hope is the problem - that particular, stubborn, completely unjustifiable hope that this time will be different. That this dinner, this week, this version of the family assembled together will somehow produce a version of his parents that really sees him. It never does. It hasn’t done since he was twelve years old standing in the kitchen doorway listening to his father explain to someone on the phone why his son probably wasn’t cut out for the kind of work that mattered.

He’s almost thirty years old. He still hasn’t stopped hoping.

His father’s side of it is absence - the distracted nod, the conversation that moves on before he’s finished his sentence, the life his parents built together that has always felt complete without him in it. His mother’s is different, and in some ways harder.

Annabeth sees him. She always has. She just looks at what she sees and finds the gap between it and what she’d wanted - and she’s never quite been able to hide that the gap is there. Not always unkindly. Just honestly, in the particular way of someone who has very precise ideas about how things should be and loves you anyway, in spite of the disappointment.

He’s not sure, sometimes, which one is worse.

That had been his mother’s side of it. His father’s. Rosemary’s contribution. And then his own - the part that makes the rest of it worse, the part he can’t file away or build scar tissue around because it’s entirely his doing.

He’d used you.

He sits with that. Doesn’t soften it or reframe it or find the version where it looks better than it is. He’d taken your generosity - the whole week of it, every gracious, steady, careful thing you’d done - and in one panicked, ego-driven half hour he’d turned it into ammunition. He’d pointed you at the table like something to hide behind. You’d sat there and smiled and backed him up and he’d kept going, and going, and the tap of your thumb against his hand had been the clearest possible signal and he’d felt it and nodded and then kept going anyway.

You performed at me, Steve. In front of all of them.

He had. That’s the part that sits the worst. Not what Rosemary said - Grandma Rose is just Grandma Rose, another version of the room he’s been performing for his whole life. What sits worst is that he’d turned and performed at you. The one person in the room who was actually, genuinely, unreservedly on his side. The one person who didn’t need convincing.

It’s all bullshit.

Your voice. Nancy’s voice. The two of them sitting on top of each other in his memory, same word, same flatness, completely different meanings - and his nervous system unable to tell the difference, just filing both of them under the same old wound: you thought it was real and it wasn’t.

Except that’s not what you said. He knows that’s not what you said. You said the family was bullshit. You said the performance was bullshit. You said he’d let you believe something was real and then used it like it wasn’t.

Which means you thought it was real too.

He closes his eyes.

Opens them.

The clock reads 2:14.

He’s been in here for nearly two hours.

He becomes aware of it slowly, the way the absence of something registers before you’ve named what’s missing - the house is quiet. Not the quiet of everyone asleep. The quiet of no one having come home yet. He hasn’t heard the family returning from the club, hasn’t heard any cars on the gravel, hasn’t heard the particular noise of a group of drunk Harringtons finding their way to bed.

And he hasn’t heard you.

He sits up.

He’d assumed - he’d been so deep in his own head that he’d just assumed you’d come back, that he’d have heard the front door, that you were upstairs in the bedroom while he was down here on this couch and at some point in the morning he’d have to face you but at least you were there, at least you were -

You haven’t come back.

The realisation moves through him differently to the guilt and the self-recrimination he’s been dwelling on. Those have been loud, circular, familiar. This is something else. Something quiet and cold that starts at the base of his spine and moves upward.

He knows this feeling.

He’s spent years trying to forget it - the particular cold alertness of the Upside Down, of waiting for someone who doesn’t come back, of understanding at a cellular level that the world contains things that take people and don’t return them. It isn’t rational. It’s 1995, it’s a beach in North Carolina, the gates are closed and have been for years and you’re just out walking, you’re just angry, you’re fine -

He’s not waiting. He’s already on his feet.

****************

He doesn’t decide to go outside so much as find himself there.

One moment he’s on his father’s couch, the next he’s in the hallway, and somewhere between the office door and the deck he’s shed the dinner jacket - tossed it over the banister without breaking stride. The tie follows on the deck itself, pulled loose from his collar and dropped. He sits on the top step and takes his shoes off, then his socks, pressing his bare feet flat against the boards for a second before he stands again. His belt is next, threaded out of his already too-tight trousers and coiled on top of the shoes. His shirt he leaves on but works the top three buttons open, slips his cufflinks into a pocket, and rolls the sleeves up to the elbow.

The night air finds his forearms immediately. He breathes.

Better.

Not good. But better.

He looks out at the beach. The moon is just past full and high, throwing a pale, flat light across the sand that makes everything look slightly unreal - visible but bleached out, the shadows too sharp, the water beyond a moving silver line.

He goes down the steps, through the path between the dunes, and onto the sand.

He doesn’t call your name.

He’s not sure why, exactly - some instinct about not wanting to feel like he’s summoning you, not wanting you to feel cornered or chased. He’s looking for you, not calling you back. There’s a difference, even if he couldn’t explain it clearly. So he just walks, hands loose at his sides, eyes moving across the beach in the methodical way of someone who’s done this before. Other nights. Other times he’s moved through the dark looking for someone and trying not to think about what he might find.

He doesn’t let himself think about those times directly. He has enough distance from them now, enough years of ordinary life between then and this moment, that he can feel the old fear without being swallowed by it. It’s there - the particular cold alertness, the body’s knowledge running ahead of the brain - but he can hold it at arm’s length.

Mostly.

He thinks about Barb first, the way he always does when this feeling arrives. Barb who stayed outside and didn’t come back, who nobody looked for properly, who the town folded away into an explanation that fit. It had been his house. His pool. He hadn’t known, and not knowing hadn’t saved her, and the logic of it - that proximity means nothing, that being nearby is not the same as being safe - is a logic his body absorbed and never quite let go of.

Eddie. Chrissie. Heather. Even Billy, in the end, in his own terrible way.

Will.

Max.

Holly.

El.

The beach is empty. The sand is cool and firm under his feet near the tide line, softer further up toward the dunes. The properties further along the coast are dark, the occasional light in a window, nothing moving.

He turns toward the dunes.

You’d found him on the beach, the night of the party. He’d walked down here in a mess and you’d followed without being asked, sat beside him in the dark and let him be exactly as bad as he was at that moment. He owes you the same. He owes you considerably more than that.

He’s been walking for nearly twenty minutes when the fear stops being something he’s holding at arm’s length and becomes something else - sharper, less rational, the padding and the distance from it suddenly thinner than he’d like. The dunes stretch ahead of him, grassy and dark, the moon throwing shadows between the banks of sand that his eyes can’t quite resolve into anything definitive. He scans them, methodical, the way he’s been scanning the whole beach, except that now his heart rate has picked up in a way that has nothing to do with the walking.

He’s about to shout your name when at last he sees you.

You’re tucked into a hollow between two dunes near the farthest edge of the property, where the sand gives way to the scrubby boundary of the next house along. Knees drawn up, arms wrapped around them, your face turned away from him toward the dark grass. Small. Completely still.

He stops.

The relief hits him first - a physical thing, a loosening in his chest that is embarrassingly intense for a situation he’d known, rationally, was probably fine. His held breath comes out more panicked than he intends.

Then he takes in the rest of it. The set of your shoulders. The way you’re holding yourself, folded in, like you’ve been sitting like that and trying to make yourself small for a while. The particular quality of a stillness that isn’t peace.

He crosses the sand toward you quietly.

You hear him coming anyway. You look up and fix your gaze on him.

Your eyes are red, he can see that even in the silvery moonlight. You don’t look away, and you don’t tell him to go.

He sits down in the dunes an arm’s length away, knees bent, forearms resting on them. Not close. Just present.

The ocean moves in the distance. The moon makes everything pale and strange.

He waits.

You don’t look away from him. Your eyes move across his face in that particular way you have - reading him, studying, finding the things he hasn’t yet said. He’s still breathing harder than the walk warrants. He can feel it in his chest, the residual adrenaline, the relief that hasn’t quite finished moving through him yet.

“You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” you say. Quiet. A little wry, even now.

He sighs, and rubs at the back of his neck. “Yeah, something like that.”

Silence stretches between you. The breeze moves through the dune grass above, a soft, continuous sound.

“You were gone a long time. Worried me,” he admits.

You look at him steadily. “So you came looking for me.”

“Yeah.” He drags a hand through his hair. “I did. I wanted to talk.”

He doesn’t elaborate immediately. You don’t ask him to. You just look at him for another moment with the particular steadiness of someone who has heard what they needed to and is deciding what comes next, and then you look out toward the water.

“Okay,” you say. “So talk.”

He takes a breath.

“Grandma Rose got under my skin.” He says it plainly, no preamble. “More than I was ready for. I heard it and something just -” he presses two fingers briefly against his sternum, “- went. And I went straight back into being Steve fucking Harrington before I’d even decided to, but worse somehow. Amped up like I had something to prove. And then I couldn’t stop. Even when I knew I should. Even when you told me to.”

You’re watching him. He can feel it.

“The shit I said about schools,” he exhales, looking up at nothing, the embarrassment of it still hot. “About getting a place together. All of that was pure panic. Drowning and grabbing for something solid and not caring what I grabbed.”

He digs his fingers into the cool sand, turns them over, lets the grains spill. “But it wasn’t all panic. Some of it…”

He looks at his hands. “I need you to know there’s a difference. Even though I made it impossible for you to see that tonight.”

You’re quiet for a moment.

“I know, Steve,” you say. Something in the flatness of it settles him - you’ve been out here working through it, and you’ve landed somewhere. He can’t quite read where yet.

“I used you.” Hard to say. True. “I took everything you’ve given this week and pointed it at that table like a - I don’t know. A weapon. Something to hide behind.”

He stops.

“And you sat there and backed me up and I kept going and I knew I should stop and I…” he exhales, rough. “I’m sorry. For all of it. For making you smile through it. For not stopping when you told me to.” His hand moves, taking in the evening, the dinner, all of it. “For… just, all of it.”

You don’t answer immediately. You look back out to the waves rolling in, and the breeze catches your hair and whips it around. It takes everything in him not to reach out and tame it. Then he wonders why he’d dare?

When you do speak again, your voice has shifted.

“Your grandmother.”

He looks up.

“Rosemary.” Your jaw is tight. “Sitting there with her champagne and that pink smile -” You stop, like the image of it is physically uncomfortable. “Lord knows what you see in him.” The words come out in a voice not quite your own. “The rest of us have been missing it.”

You shake your head, sharp and short. “Like you’re - like anyone who looked at you and saw something worth choosing must have got it wrong somehow. Must have missed the obvious thing.”

Your voice cracks slightly on the next part.

“And everyone laughed, Steve. They all just - laughed. And you sat there and smiled and I couldn’t -” You falter, and press your hand flat against the sand. “I couldn’t do anything. I had to just sit there too.”

He doesn’t say anything. He’s not sure he could.

The wind moves through the dune grass. Somewhere down the beach the tide shifts, moving towards a higher line.

He should leave it there. He knows he should leave it there, but he doesn’t.

“Rosemary’s just -”

“Don’t.” The word comes out sharp. “Don’t make excuses for her. She knew what she was doing.”

He closes his mouth.

“And your uncle.” Your voice has more heat in it now, the careful control beginning to give way. “Standing up at that arch with your dad. Best man. Like it’s the most natural thing in the world, like there wasn’t someone else who should have been standing there - his son, Steve, you’re his son - and not one person in that room said anything. Not one.”

You’re shaking your head again, and this time it’s slower, heavier, the disbelief of someone who has been turning this over for hours, days maybe, and still can’t make it make sense. “They just - they just accepted it. Like it was fine. Like you were fine with it.”

“It’s complicated, with Dad and Rick. He’s been -”

“Steve.” Your voice drops suddenly, which is worse than if it had stayed loud. “Stop defending people who don’t defend you.”

The words land with a precision that takes his breath.

He doesn’t answer.

“The teaching.” The heat in your voice has changed again, quieter now, but if anything more concentrated for it.

“Someone has to do it.” You say it in the flat, satisfied tone of the uncle who’d said it, and it sounds worse repeated back.

“I heard that at lunch. I sat there and watched you smile and change the subject like it was nothing, and I…” You shake your head. “You didn’t even flinch. That’s what gets me. You didn’t even flinch.”

He keeps his eyes on the sand.

“You love those kids.” The certainty in your voice is the hardest part to sit with. “I’ve watched you talk about them all week - when someone actually asks, which isn’t often enough - and your whole face changes. You chose your career because it matters to you, because you matter to those kids, and your family treats it like it’s embarrassing, like it’s something to apologise for.”

Your voice catches on the last part, and that’s worse than the anger was. “And you let them, Steve. You smile and you take it and you let them.”

He doesn’t look up.

Not new, none of it. He’s known all of it. But said aloud by someone else in the dark it sounds different - larger, less manageable, like something that’s been folded small for a very long time and is only now being allowed to take up its actual space. He’s spent so long storing it under that’s just how they are that hearing it said plainly, without apology or softening, is almost more than he knows what to do with.

“Not one person,” you continue. “Not once, all week. Not a single ‘well done, Steve. We’re proud of you’.” The words come out raw at the edges. “Nothing.”

You look at him directly, reaching out and turning his head until he meets your eyes. “They’ve been doing this your whole life. And you take it. Every time. You smile and you take it and you go back for more, and tonight you got so desperate to prove something to people who are never, ever going to…” You stop yourself again. Breathe. The fury pulling back slightly, leaving something more raw and exposed underneath. “It makes me so angry, Steve. Not just at you. At all of them.”

He sits with that.

It isn’t the words he doesn’t know what to do with - he can hold words at a distance, examine them, file them somewhere. It’s the thing underneath them. Someone has been watching his family all week with clear eyes, without the scar tissue and the habit and the twenty-nine years of telling himself that’s just how they are - and what they’ve seen has made them furious. On his behalf. Without being asked.

He can’t remember the last time someone was angry for him rather than at him. He tries to think of a single instance and can’t, which is its own kind of revelation.

The part he has to sit with is that you’re not wrong. He’s always known, somewhere underneath the management of it, that the teaching comments sting because they’re meant to, that the best man role went to Rick because his father didn’t stop to think of him, that Rosemary’s line was a blade dressed as a compliment and the table laughed because it fit the story they already had of him. He’s known all of it. He’s just been calling it manageable for so long that hearing it said plainly, out loud, in the dark, by someone who has no reason to soften it - it hits him differently. Like a room he’s been living in his whole life with the curtains always drawn, and someone has just thrown them open.

Something shifts in him that he doesn’t have a name for yet. Not quite grief. Not quite relief. Something that has been waiting a long time for someone to see what you’ve seen and say so.

“They mean well.” He hears himself say it. Hears the hollowness of it before it’s even fully out.

You look at him, a little incredulous. “Do they?”

He opens his mouth. Closes it. Looks out at the water for a long moment.

“I don’t know,” he says at last. And saying it - actually saying it out loud, instead of reaching for the version that makes it more bearable - costs him something real. Something he’s been paying interest on for years without ever touching the principal.

You stare at him for a long moment.

The fury has quieted. What’s left is something sadder and more tired, and in some ways that’s harder to deal with than the anger was. The anger he could receive - could take his share of it and let the rest wash over him. This is different. This is you, wrung out and red-eyed in the dunes at three in the morning because of his family and because of him, and he wants to reach across the sand and take your hand, and he doesn’t. Not yet. He hasn’t earned that back yet.

“Tomorrow’s going to be hard,” he says. His voice comes out quieter than he intends. “Being back in that room with all of them.” He digs his fingers into the sand again, not looking at you. “I keep thinking about putting you back in there. After tonight. Rosemary, and my parents, and -” he stops. “I don’t want to do that to you. You didn’t sign up for any of this.”

“I’m going.” Your voice is firm. Not loud, not heated - just completely certain, in the way you are when you’ve already decided something and the conversation is a formality.

“You don’t have to -”

“Steve.” There’s a patience in it, and something underneath the patience that isn’t quite patience at all. “I know I don’t have to. I’m going.” You meet his eyes. “I’m not going to let them have that as well. They don’t get to have that.”

He looks at you for a moment. The moonlight on your face. The particular set of your jaw that he’s learned means the matter is closed.

“Alright.” He nods. Looks back out at the water. “I just want to get through the next two days. Go home. Get back to something that makes sense.” He exhales, pinching the bridge of his nose where his glasses should be. “I’m sorry this week turned… I’m sorry it wasn’t what either of us thought it would be.”

You’re quiet for a moment, chewing your thumbnail nervously.

“It wasn’t what I expected,” you acknowledge. “That’s not the same as it being something to apologise for.”

He doesn’t know what to say to that, so he doesn’t say anything. Just holds it, the way he’s been learning to hold things this week without immediately reaching for the exit.

“And so that’s what we’ll do,” you say, after a moment. “Get through it. Go home.”

The simplicity of it.

The we in it.

It moves through him in a way he doesn’t try to manage or examine - just lets it exist, the way he’d let things exist in the bedroom earlier in the week, the way he’s been learning to let things be true without immediately finding somewhere to file them.

He looks at you in the moonlight, and something in him that has been braced for a very long time begins, very quietly, to loosen.

He has been not-saying something for days. He can feel it now more clearly than he has all week - pressing outward, right at the surface, closer than it’s ever been. He sits with it for a moment, just feeling the weight of it, the particular form of something that has been growing in him since before the harbour wall, before the boutique, before the beach and the blanket and the almost of your mouths. Since before this week, maybe. He’s not sure anymore where it started, and tells him something.

He owes you something real tonight. Not the whole of it - he can’t give you the whole of it out here in the dark with the sand and the dried tears on your face and everything still this raw. He needs to do it right. He needs you to know it has nothing to do with Rosemary or his family or the week or any of it - that it exists completely separately from all of that, that it would still be true if none of this had happened, if they’d never come to North Carolina, if it had just been Hawkins and the ordinary life they’d been living side by side for years without either of them looking at it directly.

He needs you to believe him. That’s the thing. After tonight, after the dinner table and the performance and the prop - he needs whatever he says next to settle as true, and he’s not sure he’s earned that yet, but he’s going to say something anyway because he owes you and because he’s so, so tired of not saying it.

He looks down at the sand between his feet, then looks back up at you.

“This week,” he starts, and then the words desert him entirely for a moment, just gone, like they’ve decided they’re not ready.

He tries a different way in.

“What’s happened, between us… I, I didn’t -” he exhales, rough, frustrated already. “I didn’t plan it. I didn’t perform it. I don’t know what to do with it yet, I don’t have… I’m not going to sit here and tell you I’ve got it all figured out, because I don’t.”

He sighs, the familiar lacking feeling creeping up his spine before he pushes through it.

“But I know it’s real. I know it was real before tonight and I know it’ll still be real after, and I know it was real before this week too, I think, I just -” His jaw tightens for a second. “I wasn’t looking for it. I didn’t think it was something I’d find.”

You’re quiet beside him, face turned out toward the tide.

“I need you to know that,” he says. Quieter now. “Whatever tonight was, whatever I did at that table… that part - the part that’s real - that wasn’t in any of it. That’s, I -”

The words come right to the surface and stop in his throat, like something that knows it isn’t time for yet.

He pulls back from the edge.

Not yet. Not like this.

He looks at you, and hopes you can hear what he can’t say yet, and trusts that you probably can, because you always could.

“That’s all I’ve got right now,” he says. “I’m sorry it’s not more.”

He watches you take it in - not sitting with it, just holding it, the way you hold things that matter. The moonlight on your face. The sound of the ocean nearby, lapping at the sand.

He waits. He’s good at waiting, when it’s for something that counts.

“I know,” you say at last. Quiet. The word landing simply, without qualification, and that simplicity is its own kind of answer. “I think I knew on the beach last night.”

He goes still.

Not the managed stillness of the dinner table, the trained, careful stillness of someone holding their face in place. Just, still. His whole body registering what you’ve just said before his brain has quite caught up with it.

I think I knew on the beach last night.

He wants to ask what exactly you knew, wants to map it against what he feels, wants to close the distance between the two things and see if they match - but he doesn’t ask, because it doesn’t matter right now, because whatever you knew on the beach it was enough to keep you here, to not say the word when you could have, to turn your hand over in your lap at the rehearsal, palm up, an offering.

It’s enough.

More than enough.

“I just -” you continue, quieter now, your eyes on the middle distance. “Tonight was a lot. And I don’t want to say something now that comes out wrong, or that you’d hear wrong, or that I’d mean wrong.” He hears the trepidation in your voice, in the way your breath shakes when you inhale. “I need to sit with it for a bit. With all of it.”

“Okay,” he nods. “That makes sense.”

He means it completely. He means it in a way he hasn’t meant many things - not as concession, not as retreat, just as the simplest possible expression of I hear you and I’m not going anywhere.

You look at him again. Something in your expression shifts, not a smile exactly, but close to one. The particular look of someone who has just been given something they weren’t sure they were going to get.

“Alright,” you say.

The word settles between you.

Not a closing. Just a resting place. The kind that holds you while you find your footing for whatever comes next.

After a while you uncurl from where you’ve been sitting, stand, and brush the sand from your shorts. He gets up and stands with you.

You start walking back along the beach, together.

The moon is still high. The sand is cool and firm under his feet. The house lights are visible up in the distance, warm against the dark, and he walks toward them without hurrying, without thinking about what comes next, just walking.

Somewhere between the dunes and the waterline - he couldn’t say exactly when, because it doesn’t announce itself, it just happens the way things have been happening between you all week - his hand finds yours.

You don’t pull away from him.

You walk the rest of the way like that.

The sound of cars on the gravel reaches them before the house does - voices, laughter, the particular noise of a group of drunk Harringtons finding their way home from the club. He glances at you. You glance at him. Without a word you cut up through the dunes toward the side gate, away from the noise and away from everyone who would want to know where you’ve been. He stops at the deck long enough to gather everything he’d left there - tie, belt, shoes, socks, the whole discarded costume bundled under one arm - and follows you.

Through the barely used side door. Jacket rescued from the bannister. Up the stairs, quick and quiet. Past the voices carrying up from below, his parents and Rick and Juliane and Lucy, oblivious to everything that’s happened between you.

The bedroom door closes behind you both.

****************

The room is exactly as you left it.

The lamp on his bedside table is still on. The green dress is crumpled on the floor where you’d stepped out of it hours ago, the silk slip abandoned nearby. Your shoes kicked sideways away from where you’d stepped out of them. The evening, preserved exactly, which feels longer ago than it is.

You cross to the dresser, find your sleep clothes, and take them into the bathroom. The door closes softly behind you.

He stands in the middle of the room.

He’s aware of the quiet in a way he hasn’t been all evening - the particular quality of a room that has had something happen in it and is still holding the echo of it. The dress, shoes and slip left on the floor. The jewellery on the dresser where you’d taken it off. He looks at all of these things, and then he moves.

He picks up the green dress first. Both hands, careful. The chiffon is lighter than the evening it carried, delicate, like it might tear just from being touched. He finds a hanger in the wardrobe and works the dress onto it slowly, smoothing where it’s creased, making sure the halter sits right - the same halter he’d tied and untied in this room twice, in two completely different versions of the night. The silk slip next, shaken out, hung beside it. He crouches for the shoes, pairs them, sets them on the wardrobe floor with their toes facing out. The jewellery on the dresser - the earrings, the bracelet - he finds the boxes and puts each piece back, closing each lid.

He’s not sure exactly what he’s doing, or whether it matters. He just knows that the dress ended up on the floor because of him, and the least he can do is make sure it doesn’t stay there.

He turns to his own things.

He hangs the jacket and shirt on a single hanger, the tie looped over the hook. Cufflinks are placed carefully back in their box. His trousers are smoothed and hung on another hanger, the belt coiled up. He sets his shoes beside yours at the bottom of the wardrobe - his and yours, lined up together, which he notices but doesn’t linger on.

He opens his drawer and finds his old Hoosiers vest and gym shorts. He changes into them, and the relief of it is immediate and considerable. Soft worn fabric, elastic, no tight buttons or collars. He rolls his shoulders. Something unknots that has been knotted up since before the rehearsal.

The bathroom door opens.

You come out in your sleep things, hair damp at the edges, face clean and pink from the warm water. Your eyes go straight to the open wardrobe - the dress hanging, the shoes lined up, the dresser cleared - and you go still for just a second. Not surprise. Something quieter. The look of someone who has understood something without needing it explained.

You look at him.

“You didn’t have to do that,” you say. Quiet. Not an accusation, just the fact of it.

“Yeah,” he says. “I did.”

You hold his gaze for a moment. Then you nod, once, and cross to your side of the bed.

He goes into the bathroom.

He washes his face, both hands, holds the cold water there for a second longer than necessary. Brushes his teeth until all he tastes is mint. He considers the shower and decides against it - too tired, and he wants to get back out there. He looks at himself in the mirror for a moment - the vest, the emerging five o’clock shadow, the dark circles under his eyes, the face of someone who has been awake too long and said more tonight than he’s said in years.

He thinks about the beach. The dunes. The moonlight. I think I knew on the beach last night. He lets it sit in him, warm and uncertain and real, and doesn’t try to do anything with it.

Then he turns the light off and goes back out.

You’re in bed, sitting up against the headboard. Hair down, sleep vest loose on your shoulders. You look tired - properly, deeply tired, the kind that comes from a long night of holding yourself carefully and then letting it all go on a dark beach. The anger has gone. What’s left is something quieter, something that has chosen, despite everything, to still be here.

You look over to him, and you smile. Small. Real. A little worn at the edges.

You reach down and pull the sheet back on his side.

He sees it for what it is - the door opening again, after he’d been the one to force it shut.

You, deciding. Him, being let back in.

He gets into bed.

He lies down and faces you, keeping the careful distance of two people who have said more than enough for one night. He can see your face in the glow of the lamplight - the specific way you look when the day is finally letting you go, the version of you that performs for no one.

He reaches behind and turns his lamp off, letting darkness envelop the room.

For a moment neither of you says anything. Just the quiet, and the dark, and the sound of the ocean through the window. The particular quiet of a room where two people are lying very still and neither of them is sleeping.

“Steve,” you murmur, after a long moment of near-silence. Softly. Just his name.

“Yeah?”

He hears you take a breath.

“I’m glad you came to find me.”

Something moves through him that he doesn’t have a word for - relief, maybe, or something on the far side of relief, something that has been waiting all night for exactly that.

“Me too,” he says.

The quiet settles back around them.

And then, in the dark, he feels your hand find his. Your fingers moving across his palm and slipping between his. The same grip as the harbour wall. Same as at the rehearsal. The same grip as the walk back along the beach.

Interlaced. Intimate.

He holds on, and that’s how he falls asleep.

****************

He doesn’t know who wakes first.

One moment there’s nothing, and then there’s the room - the morning light coming through the curtains, pale and clean, the sound of the house already moving below them. And you, close enough that he can feel the warmth of you, your hand still in his where it had been all night.

He doesn’t move.

Neither do you.

He’s aware of you being awake the way he’s aware of the light - shifting gradually, the brightness increasing. Your breathing has changed. Your hand is still in his but your fingers have tensed slightly, a small, conscious adjustment. You’re here. You’re awake. And neither of you is doing anything about it yet.

Downstairs, something crashes. Lucy’s voice carries, bright and amused. His mother’s answer, already precise, already running the day. Footsteps across the kitchen floor. The particular noise of a house that has a schedule and intends to keep it.

Neither of you moves away from each other.

He turns his head slightly and finds you already looking at him. Not with anything weighted or careful - just looking, the way you look at things you’re comfortable with. Your hair is loose on the pillow. Your face is still soft from sleep. In the pale morning light, with the sounds of the Harrington machine running without them downstairs, you look - he lets himself have the thought, just this once, just here - like exactly where he’s supposed to be.

“Hey,” you whisper. A little rough from sleep.

“Hey,” he replies.

Neither of you says anything else for a moment. It doesn’t need anything else.

The noise downstairs continues - more footsteps, a door, someone calling to someone else about something that sounds urgent and probably isn’t. The vow renewal is today. The whole week has been pointing at today, and today is assembling itself with or without them.

He watches the sunlight move across the ceiling, reflections from the pool rippling above.

“Are you okay?” you ask. Not the social, polite version of the question. The real one.

He considers it honestly, the way he’s been learning to consider things this week instead of reaching for the managed answer.

“Nervous,” he says. “About today.”

You shift slightly, turning more toward him without letting go of his hand. “Tell me.”

He exhales slowly. “Rosemary. My dad’s speech - whether he’ll -” He stops. Starts again. “Last night was already a lot. Today’s going to be more of it, more people, more - and you’ll be right there in the middle of it, and I know how angry you are on my behalf, and I don’t want -”

He turns his head to look at you. “I don’t want today to be something you have to survive. You came here to help me and I’ve already made it harder than it needed to be.”

He watches you take that in.

“I came here because you asked me,” you say. “And because I wanted to. That hasn’t changed.”

“I know. I just -”

“Steve.” Your voice is gentle but certain. “I’m not fragile. I can handle your family.”

“I know you can.” He shifts against the pillow. “That’s not what worries me.”

You wait.

“Watching them do it,” he says. “Now that I’ve -” he stops. “Now that I can’t unknow what I know. About how it lands on you.”

The house carries on below them. Someone’s radio. Footsteps crossing the kitchen.

“I’m worried about you too,” you say at last.

He turns his head toward you.

“I said a lot of things on the beach last night,” you continue. “And I meant all of them. And now you’re going to walk back into that room and they’re going to do what they do, and I -” Something tightens briefly in your expression. “I don’t want to have made it harder for you to absorb it. By naming it. I don’t want you walking in there already raw because of what I said.”

He thinks about that. The idea that her honesty - the thing that had undone him and remade something in him all at once - might make today more painful rather than less.

“It doesn’t make it harder,” he says. “Knowing you see it.” He finds the words slowly, the way he’s been finding words all week. “It makes it - I don’t know. Smaller, maybe. Like it has less room to convince me it’s true.”

You look at him for a long moment. “Okay,” you say quietly. “Good.”

The house carries on below them. Someone drops something else, someone shouts. Lucy laughs. His mother’s voice carries through the floor, precise and purposeful, the day already well underway without them.

“We should probably go down,” he says, making no move to go.

“Probably,” you agree, moving just as little.

“If it gets too much,” he says. “Either of us.” He glances at you. “Hopper still works. It doesn’t have to be just the -” he gestures vaguely between them, meaning the physical, the beach, all of that. “If you need out of a room, or if I’m - if you can see I’m not handling it. Just say it.”

You look at him.

“Hopper,” you say, testing the new weight of it.

“Hopper,” he confirms.

Something settles between you - not quite a promise, but close enough that it functions as one. The word doing different work now than it did on the harbour wall, broader, more useful, covering more ground.

“Alright then. Deal.”

He looks at you in the morning light, your hair loose on the pillow, your hand still in his.

“Thank you, for last night. For the beach. For -” he stops. “Everything.”

“Don’t thank me,” you say, clean and simple. “Let’s just get through today.”

“Yeah,” he says. “Okay.”

Neither of you moves for another moment. Just the light, and the warmth, and the sounds of the family that can wait a little longer.

Eventually, together, you get up.

****************

You’re the one who remembers the blue dress.

“Can you…?” You nod toward the curtain rail, where the garment bag is hanging, zipped and waiting. “I can’t reach without climbing on something and I’m not doing that in my underwear.”

He opens his mouth. Has approximately three different responses lined up, none of which survive contact with the actual image his brain has just produced - you, a chair, all that bare leg - and closes it again. Shakes his head. Gets up, still grinning, and lifts the bag down without looking at you because he’s pretty sure his face is doing something he can’t entirely control right now.

“What?” you ask, an eyebrow raised.

“Nothing,” he says. “Not a thing.”

He can feel you looking at him. He keeps his eyes on the garment bag as he carries it to the bed and lays it across the foot of it. You unzip it slowly, folding it open.

He’d forgotten.

He’d seen it on you in the boutique, had watched his mother nod over it with the satisfaction of someone whose vision was being confirmed, had known abstractly that it would look like something. But the dress itself, here - petrol blue, liquid satin, the kind of thing that knows exactly what it’s doing - is different from the memory of it.

He looks at it laid out on the white duvet and thinks about the week. The first night and the party and the harbour wall and the boutique kiss. The bedroom in the afternoon and the green dress on the floor and the beach in the dark. All of it pointing here, to this room, to this morning, to today.

He wants you to have a good day.

That’s the clearest thought he has, standing here in his Hoosiers vest looking at the blue dress on the bed. Whatever his family does today - whatever Grandma Rose or his mother says, whatever his father doesn’t say, whatever form the performance takes - he wants you to have a good day. He wants the week to give you something worth keeping, something that isn’t just the sum of last night.

“It’s beautiful,” he says. And means it about more than the dress.

You glance at him. Something moves across your face - warm, a little careful, not quite ready to take that all the way yet.

“Don’t make me cry before I’ve even put it on,” you say, smiling bashfully.

He grins. Looks away. Gives you the moment.

****************

The getting-ready is quieter than yesterday.

More settled. The effortful, slightly self-conscious quality of Thursday evening is gone - what’s in its place is something more honest. No pretence. No careful management of the line between what’s real and what isn’t. Just the two of you moving around the room with the particular ease of people who have said enough to each other that the silences don’t need filling anymore.

He makes coffee from the small machine on the dresser and places yours on the nightstand without being asked. You do your hair at the mirror. He gets dressed at his own pace, and the quiet between you is easy in a way that surprises him - no performance in it, nothing being managed.

He’s working on his shirt when you turn from the mirror.

“Tie,” you say.

He looks down at it, hanging loose around his neck.

You cross the room and he goes still, the way he always does now when you’re close and doing something deliberate. Your fingers find the fabric, fold it into the right configuration - focused, practiced. Your face is close to his. He can smell your perfume, the same one as yesterday, the same one that had been in the air of this room when he’d stood here with the ribbon in his hand and the unfinished sentence going nowhere.

It’s different now.

You smooth the tie flat against his chest. Your hand rests there - palm open, fingers spread, the same gesture as the first night at the party. An echo, and he knows it.

You look up at him.

“Still okay,” you say. Quiet. The same register as that night, making sure he hears it. “Still very okay. I want you to remember that today.”

He lifts his hand and presses his lips to your forehead. Warm, brief, certain. Not the reassurance of Thursday evening. Something quieter than that. Something that doesn’t need to explain itself.

Your hand stays on his chest for a moment longer.

Then you step back and go to find your shoes.

*****************

Downstairs, the house has become something else entirely.

There’s a woman Steve doesn’t recognise standing near the kitchen island with a clipboard, speaking quietly into the phone hooked to the wall. She glances up when they come down the stairs, ticks something on her clipboard, and looks away again. Hired, clearly. His mother’s final concession to the day - handing over the mechanics of it to someone else so she can simply exist in it.

It’s working.

Annabeth is in the kitchen, already dressed - something ivory and considered, her hair styled to perfection, a glass of champagne in her hand at eleven in the morning, which on any other day would be remarkable and today is simply correct. She looks - Steve finds the word without quite meaning to - radiant. Not in a way that surprises him exactly, because his mother has always known how to occupy a room, but in a way that reminds him that underneath all the logistics and the notebooks and the thirty years of careful management, she genuinely loves this. The occasion. The being seen. Today she gets to be the bride, the centre of attention, and she is, completely, without apology.

Danny is beside her, already in his suit, more relaxed than Steve has seen him all week. The authority is still there - it’s always there, it’s part of his architecture - but it’s sitting differently today. Lighter. He has his hand at Annabeth’s back, and she’s leaning into it slightly, and for a moment Steve sees them the way the room sees them; a couple who chose each other and kept choosing each other, for thirty years, in all the ways that counted and in some that didn’t.

It’s complicated, loving his parents. It always has been.

Rick is at the kitchen island with Lucy, both of them in their wedding party clothes, coffees in hand. Lucy spots them first.

“There they are.” She raises her mug. “Don’t you two look -” she pauses, taking them in with the sharp eyes of someone who has been watching all week and has arrived at conclusions. “- good,” she finishes, with a smile that means considerably more than the word.

Annabeth turns.

She looks at you first - the blue dress, your hair, shoes, jewellery, the whole assembled picture - and something in her expression moves through satisfaction into something approaching genuine.

Then she looks at Steve.

“You’re late,” she says. Not unkindly. Just noting it, the way a bride notes things on her wedding day - from a slight distance, because today the world is arranged around her and she’s allowing it to be.

He opens his mouth.

“Sorry,” you cut in, easy and unbothered, addressing the room but angling toward him with a small private smile. “Steve’s fault, obviously. You know how he is.”

He drops his head to the curve of your neck, and to anyone watching it looks like exactly what it looks like. Against your skin, quiet enough for only you - “I can’t believe you just said that.”

There’s silence in the room.

Lucy inhales her coffee, then coughs noisily.

Rick concentrates on his cup with a great interest in the middle distance.

Annabeth looks at you for a moment with the expression of someone who has decided, on balance, that today is too important to be distracted by this particular thread. She takes a sip of her champagne.

“Thirty minutes, everyone, ” she says pleasantly to the assembled group.

Then she turns back to Danny, and the room rearranges itself around them, and the coordinator with the clipboard materialises at Annabeth’s elbow with a question about the floral arrangements, and just like that the late morning resumes its motion.

He looks at you.

You look at him.

The morning light is coming through the kitchen windows, falling across the island and the flowers and the assembled Harrington occasion in full operation, running its familiar course.

He reaches for your hand.

You’re already reaching for his.

[zelinkcrossing]

yet another chapter of HOLDING MY MFING BREATH FOR TEN THOUSAND WORDS oh my god i just love this so much i don't even have the words

[morninglesss]

disparate youth, pt.6

Steve Harrington x f!reader // part one // part two // part three // part four // part five // part six // part seven // part eight // complete

Outer Banks, summer 1995. Steve’s parents are celebrating their thirty year anniversary with a week of parties, photos, and perfect appearances. Steve shows up out of obligation - and brings you as his “girlfriend” for survival.

It’s the morning after the night before, and it’s also the vow renewal rehearsal day. There’s a boatload of pressure on beach!Steve’s shoulders - will he buckle, or will he prevail…?

Word count: 10k

As always: Steve Harrington deserved better, so I gave him softness. 🌊

The smell of coffee reaches him at the top of the stairs.

He stands there for a second - one hand on the polished banister, still in the particular groggy suspension of someone who woke too early and couldn’t go back under - and just breathes it in. The house is quiet in a way it hasn’t been all week. No loud cousins. No Lucy appearing from nowhere with a question pulled from the ether alongside one of her knowing smirks. The vow rehearsal isn’t until late this afternoon, the full family dinner after it, and the morning has been left empty by mutual agreement, as though the bones of the house itself know everyone needs a few hours where nothing is required of them.

He pads down the stairs in bare feet, still in the boxers and loose Hoosiers vest he’d slept in. His mother would have something to say about that - ‘Steven, your grandmothers will be here any moment, can you please just get dressed like an adult?’ - the particular blend of weariness and wounded expectation she reserves for the gap between who he is and who he’s supposed to be presenting as. He finds, this morning, that he doesn’t especially care what Annabeth Harrington has to say about any it.

All week he’s been the one awake first. He’d got used to it without noticing - the particular quiet of those early minutes, the house still sleeping around him. This morning he’d surfaced to find your side of the bed already cool, and the realisation had taken a second to settle in him. You’d been asleep when he came up last night - or you’d seemed to be - and now you were already downstairs, already somewhere ahead of him in the day, and he hadn’t liked the feeling of that at all.

He finds you outside.

The kitchen is empty - coffee made, pot still warm, a mug left out for him - and the back door is open onto the deck. You’re at the fence at the far edge of it, both arms folded on the rail, looking down at the beach. Your feet are bare on the boards. You’re wearing one of his summer shirts, a “beach Steve special”, purchased for him by Robin - one that had migrated from his side of the wardrobe to yours somewhere in the week’s general disorder, worn half open and loose over whatever you’d slept in - and your hair is still tangled from sleep.

You haven’t heard him come out.

He stands in the doorway for a moment before he moves.

The beach below is still in the early light, the water flat and grey-silver, the furniture from last night left where the cousins had abandoned it - chairs at odd angles, the recliner still pushed slightly out of place. The fire pit is cold. The screen and poles are gone.

He fills a mug, takes a mouthful, and stands there for a second while he waits for the first his of caffeine to reach his system. Only then does he go outside.

The deck boards are cool under his feet. You turn at the sound of him - no startle, just the easy pivot of someone who wasn’t all that deep in thought, just occupying the quiet - and look at him for a moment before your mouth curves slightly.

“Nice vest,” you say.

He looks down at it, then back up at you. “Gotta represent the team.”

“They’d be proud, no doubt.” You turn back to the water.

He comes to stand beside you at the fence.

Close - not quite touching, but the kind of close that would have meant something different a week ago and means something different again this morning. The air is cool off the water. Neither of you says anything for a moment.

The quiet has texture to it now. Not uncomfortable exactly, but not easy either - something in between, something that knows too much about last night to be ordinary silence. He is aware, standing here, of the specific distance between his arm and yours on the rail. Of the fact that he knows, now, what the inside of your thigh feels like under his palm. Of the fact that you know what his breath sounds like when he’s trying very hard not to react to something.

These are not small things to know about a person.

“Sleep okay?” he asks.

“Eventually.” Your thumb moves against your mug. “Took a while.”

“Yeah.” He looks out to the beach and the ocean beyond. “Me too.”

Nothing in that exchange is dishonest. Everything in it is careful - the particular carefulness of two people who have crossed several lines in the last twenty-four hours and are standing on the other side of them in the early morning light, still working out what the view looks like from here.

He doesn’t push at it. Doesn’t have the language for it yet, not before the caffeine, not with the morning this new, what they did the night before still so raw, and the day already waiting ahead of them with its rehearsals and its dinners and its full Harrington choreography.

So he concentrates on what’s in front of him right now; his coffee, the beach, and you, and lets the quiet settle between you.

The waves move in from the pink horizon. A pelican crosses the width of the beach without apparently caring about any of it.

From inside the house, his mother’s voice emanates.

Carrying down from somewhere upstairs - one of the offices, maybe, or the landing - quick and precise, the particular cadence she uses when she’s already three steps into the day and expects the world to catch up. He can’t make out the words from here, just the rhythm of them. It’s more than enough.

Something in his shoulders adjusts anyway. He straightens up. Smoothes out a sleep-worn crease in his vest. Almost regrets choosing boxers over shorts. Twenty-nine years of data to draw on.

“How long has she been at it?” he asks, low.

“Since before I came down.” You’re still looking at the water, but something in your posture has changed slightly - a small, almost imperceptible settling, like you’ve quietly noted the shift in the morning’s atmosphere and saved it. “The florist called early, I think. Then somebody else.”

He nods. He can fill in the rest without being told - the caterer, the seating chart that had already been revised at least twice and would be revised again before the day was out, the dozen small orchestrations his mother had been running in parallel all week that would, starting today, have somewhere to land.

The quiet they’d been standing in has a different quality to it now. Still there, but aware of itself. Aware of what’s coming. Hurricane Harrington about to make landfall.

He takes a mouthful of coffee.

“Right,” he says. “Okay.”

“She’s going to want to go through tonight,” you say. Not worried. Just noting it. “Timings, seating, checking what we’re wearing again. All of it.”

“Yeah.” He nods, with a wry smile. “Over breakfast, probably. Or maybe before - like we’ll be rewarded with some Lucky Charms or yoghurt if we answer her questions right the first time.”

You both know what that means. Not the logistics themselves - those are manageable. It’s the performance of it. Sitting across from his mother and answering questions about the two of you with the easy confidence of a couple who know exactly what they are, when he is standing here in his pyjamas on the other side of the most confusing twenty-four hours of his adult life, and the only thing he knows with any certainty is that he does not want it to stop.

“Are you ready for that?” you ask, careful with it.

“Not even a little bit,” he says.

You make a sound, small and warm. “No, me neither.”

He looks at you. You don’t look back immediately, your thumbnail moving slow against the rim of your mug. Then you do - just briefly, just enough - and it’s the wrong thing, or the right thing, because whatever happened between you on the beach last night is still there, sitting just beneath the surface of the morning, and he can see it and you can see it and neither of you has touched it yet.

He looks back out at the water. The pelican has gone. The beach is just the beach.

“Last night,” he starts.

You turn your head toward him. Not quite looking at him. Just angling slightly, the way you do when you’re listening properly.

“On the beach.” He stops. Tries again. “I keep thinking about - I don’t know how to -”

From inside the house, his mother’s voice sharpens suddenly, rising in volume - a name, a question, the brisk decisive sound of someone who has just moved from one room to another and needs an answer immediately.

They both go still.

The moment closes. Not dramatically - just quietly, the way a door swings shut on its own weight.

He sighs, and drags a hand through his unruly tufts of hair.

“Later,” you say, firm. Not a dismissal. Just a fact.

“Yeah,” he nods. “Later.”

He drinks his coffee. You turn back to the water.

Upstairs, his mother is still on the phone.

****************

The kitchen feels different once they’re back inside it.

Smaller, maybe. Or just more aware of itself - the breakfast things waiting to be used, the table set for however many people Annabeth had decided last night, the day’s formality already present in the room even before anyone has started performing it.

He opens the refrigerator. Stares into it without particular purpose.

“Eggs?” he asks.

“Mm, yes please.”

It settles into motion from there - the easy domestic machinery of two people who have shared enough kitchens to know how to move around each other without negotiating it. You find the pan. He finds the butter. The coffee pot goes back on. Neither of you talks much, but it isn’t the careful quiet of the deck - it’s something more workable than that. Something that has tasks to fill it out, something he can hold onto.

He’s cracking the second egg when he becomes aware that the kitchen is no longer just the two of you.

He turns.

Edith Harrington is seated at the kitchen table with the composure of a woman who has been there for some time and sees no reason to explain herself. Handbag on the chair beside her, back straight, pearls at her neck and ears. A small, immaculate woman whose stillness takes up more room than most people’s noise.

She’s looking at him with an expression of mild, affectionate amusement.

“Gran?” He blinks. “How did you…?”

“Good morning, Stevie.” She points a shaky finger to the stove. “You might want to attend to that butter.”

He turns back to the pan. The butter is beginning to brown at the edges.

Behind him, he hears you say, a little carefully, “Good morning, Mrs Harrington.”

“Edith, dear.” Her tone is pleasant and absolute. “Or Gran - that’s what everyone else your age calls me.” She fixes you with a spry smile. “I won’t be answering to anything else at this point in my life.”

He glances back over his shoulder in time to catch your expression - the small, genuine smile of someone who has just been welcomed somewhere they hadn’t quite expected to be let in. Something moves through him that he doesn’t stop to look at directly.

“Good morning, Edith,” you try again.

“Much better.” She accepts the cup of tea you put in front of her without being asked, wrapping both small hands around it. He notices that with a smile - Edith doesn’t take tea from just anyone.

"Your father went to collect your other grandmother," Edith says, conversationally enough but with a slight sourness to her tone that Steve recognises as decades of grandmotherly competition. "She'll be here by ten." A small pause, the length of a considered thought. "I don’t know why we have to be here so early, when the rehearsal doesn’t start until three. It all seems a little over-engineered to me, but then again, this is an Annabeth Harrington production, so…"

He keeps his eyes on his eggs.

"And your mother has been on the telephone rather a lot this morning," Edith continues, in the same semi-pleasant tone, "in case you hadn't noticed."

“We noticed,” you say.

“Mm.” She takes a sip of tea. “She does love an event.”

The observation sits in the kitchen, not quite a criticism and not quite not one. The particular register Edith uses when she’s saying something true and leaving it entirely up to everyone else how to interpret it.

He slides the eggs onto two plates, then stops and looks at the table.

He crosses to the table and sets his plate down in front of Edith instead.

"Stevie -"

"You won't grow up big and strong without your breakfast, young man." He says it in the particular singsong voice of someone who had it said to them approximately four hundred times before the age of ten. "Sound familiar? Eat up."

She looks at the plate and looks back up at him. The mild amusement in her expression shifts into something warmer and older - the particular look of someone recognising themselves in a piece of the past they'd forgotten they'd left behind.

“Toast,” she says, after a moment, pushing the plate back toward him. “I’ll have a piece of toast. You eat your eggs.”

“I’ll make more.”

“You’ll eat this plate. I’ll take toast.”

He opens his mouth. Closes it. Puts the bread in the toaster without further argument, then sits down with his plate across from you. Edith watches this exchange with the satisfaction of someone who has won and is too well-mannered to say so.

He digs his fork into his scrambled eggs. “You’re missing out, Gran, they’re good.”

Edith looks at him the way she used to when he was small - the particular quality of her attention that always made him feel simultaneously seen and safe, and that he’d forgotten, somewhere in the years between then and now, that he missed.

She doesn’t say anything else. She doesn’t need to. She just drinks her tea and watches the two of you have breakfast, and the morning assembles itself around all three of them.

He hears his mother on the stairs before she appears - the particular rhythm of Annabeth Harrington descending with purpose, already in motion, the day already orchestrated from an office upstairs before her foot touches the bottom step.

She comes into the kitchen looking exactly as he’d expect her to: dressed smart, composed, a leather-bound notebook tucked under one arm and her reading glasses pushed up into her carefully teased hair. She takes in the room in a single, practised sweep - you, the breakfast things, the coffee pot - and then her gaze lands on Edith and cools by several degrees.

“Edith,” Annabeth crosses to her and presses a kiss to her cheek. “I didn’t hear you come in.”

“No, you did not. Lucky I have my key,” Edith agrees pleasantly, patting her chest where the key hangs on a long chain.

The two of them hold that for just a moment - the particular register of two women who have been having this specific conversation for thirty years - and then Annabeth straightens and turns to the coffee pot.

Her eyes pass over Steve on the way.

She stops in her tracks.

“Steven, for goodness sake.” Her voice carries the weariness of a woman who has had this conversation too many times before. “My mother arrives in…” she checks her watch, “…less than an hour.”

“Yeah, I’m aware,” he says, already bored of it.

“- and you’re sitting at my breakfast table in your underwear.”

“I’m in pyjamas, Mom. Boxers. But if they’re so offensive, would you rather I take them off? Because I can…”

“You will do no such thing -”

He’s halfway out of his seat, lifting his vest and reaching for a waistband he won’t actually touch, pushing his mother’s limits further than he’s dared to for years.

Annabeth covers her eyes with one hand and swats the air in his direction with her notebook, barking something about decorum and manners and ‘we didn’t raise you to behave like an animal, Steven Harrington, sit down!’

“Gran hasn’t complained.” He grins around a mouthful of egg.

Edith, from the head of the table, takes a small sip of tea and says nothing. Her expression suggests she is finding this enormously entertaining.

He drops back into his seat, and looks at you across the table.

You’re looking at your plate, but your shoulders are doing the thing they do when you’re trying very hard not to laugh, and the corner of your mouth has lost the battle entirely. You don’t dare to look up.

Something in him feels very light all of a sudden.

Annabeth, apparently deciding that dignity is best preserved by moving swiftly on, waves off his follow-up offer of eggs without looking at him - “I don’t take dairy before noon, Steven, you know that…” - and turns to lean against the counter, notebook open.

“Okay, everyone,” she says, in the tone that means they are now doing this whether anyone is ready or not. “Let’s talk tonight.”

****************

It's early afternoon by the time they go upstairs to get ready.

The day had filled itself in around them - Danny arriving back with Annabeth’s mother Rosemary, the house expanding with noise and movement as more of the immediate family arrived, Annabeth's logistics finally finding their audience. He'd spent most of the afternoon fielding questions about teaching - the same conversation in four or five different registers, depending on who was asking. A distant aunt with the particular brand of bafflement that reads as concern. Two cousins who'd seemed genuinely curious, which was almost worse. An uncle he barely remembers, who'd said well, someone has to do it in the tone of a man awarding a consolation prize. You'd been beside him for most of it, close enough that your arms touched, and he'd been aware of you the whole time in the particular way he's been aware of you all week - the specific frequency of you, just off his shoulder, just within reach.

Now the house is doing the particular thing it does before an event - everyone dispersing to their rooms, the hallway full of the sounds of doors and running water and someone's radio playing Everclear too loud. Probably Lucy, now he thinks about it.

Their room is quiet.

You're standing at the foot of the bed in your slip, the green dress laid out beside you, looking at it the way you look at things you're still deciding about. He's in his trousers, dress shirt half buttoned, tie hanging loose around his neck, sitting on the edge of the bed pulling on his shoes.

“Your mom knows I can never repay her for the dresses and everything, right? This outfit alone, the dress, the shoes, the matching jewellery - it’s beyond me.”

He stops fiddling with his laces, leaving one shoe undone. You hold the dress up against yourself and look at your reflection in the tall mirror in the corner of the room.

“She knows. Honestly, she’d be offended if you even suggested it. I know it’s weird - it makes me uncomfortable and they’re my damn parents. The way I think about it, is that she’s done it for herself more than for you. And I don’t mean that in a bad way, it’s just that mom has… very precise ideas about how this week needs to culminate. She liked the dresses, she bought them, you’ll wear them, that means she gets her big perfect weekend just like she’s been imagining.”

You look at the dress held against your body for a moment, then back at your reflection.

“That actually makes me feel a little better about it.”

“Good. Wear the dress, drink champagne, eat the food. Makes her happy.”

“Solid philosophy.”

“I’ve had years to refine it.”

A moment passes, quiet and easy. He goes back to his shoes. You look at the dress against your body in the mirror, then set it down on the bed, then pick it up again.

"Could you…?” You glance back at him over your shoulder, then at the dress in your arms. "The neck. There’s a ribbon. I can't get the halter to sit right."

He stands up from the bed and crosses the floor.

You lift the dress over your head - a careful, practised motion - and he watches the green chiffon settle over you, the fabric finding its shape as it drapes over your body. You gather your hair over one shoulder and hold the two ends of the halter up behind your neck, waiting.

He comes closer.

His fingers find the ties - satin ribbons, softer than he'd expected - and he works them slowly, making sure the fabric lies flat across the back of your neck before he draws them together. He's close enough to smell your shampoo. Close enough that when he exhales it moves the small hairs at the nape of your neck.

He keeps his hands steady, or something close to steady at least.

“Tell me what you’re thinking,” you say. Quiet, matter of fact, your eyes forward. “About last night. I need to know where your head is - if we’re walking into tonight and doing this in front of your whole family, I need to be able to keep everything straight.”

His hands still for a fraction of a second.

Then he keeps going. Draws the ribbon through, finds the tension, makes sure it’s right.

“It’s fine,” he says. “Last night was… I mean, we’re good. Last night doesn’t have to be a thing.”

“Steve.”

“What?”

“You’ve spent most of your life learning exactly how far you could push your mother before it stopped being worth it.” You say it evenly, not unkindly. “This morning you blew straight past that line and enjoyed every second of it. So don’t tell me nothing’s different.”

He exhales slowly through his nose.

“Okay,” he says. “It’s different. It’s a thing.”

“Thank you.” You wait. “So?”

He smooths the fabric at the back of your neck, even though it doesn’t need smoothing.

“Last night,” he starts. Stops. Tries again. “On the beach. My hand on your -” He doesn’t finish that sentence. Doesn’t need to. “That wasn’t - it wasn’t the weed, or the beer. I knew what I was doing. I want you to know that. I wasn’t just caught up in a moment.”

You’re very still.

“Neither was I,” you say.

“Yeah.” He’d known that. He’d known it on the beach, in the specific way you’d touched him, the way you’d held still while he touched you and not said the word and not moved away. “I know.”

The quiet between you lingers. The sounds of the house filter up from below - footsteps, a door, someone laughing at something.

“And the kissing,” you add. “In the boutique…”

“Also not performing.”

“No,” you agree. “It wasn’t.”

He’s looking at the back of your neck, the line of your shoulders, the place where the ribbon crosses the knot he’s just made. He could step back now. The dress is done. He doesn’t step back.

“So that’s where my head is,” he says. “If you’re asking.”

You turn around. Not pulling away - just turning to face him. He doesn’t step back.

You look up at him with the particular directness that has been undoing him all week.

“Mine too,” you say. “For what it’s worth.”

He looks at you for a moment. The directness of you, this close, is almost too much to hold.

He reaches out and tucks a strand of hair back from your face - slow, deliberate, the back of his fingers grazing your cheek as his hand falls away. Not a performance. Nobody watching.

You hold his gaze. Something settles between you that doesn’t need naming.

“Okay,” he says, eventually. Quiet. “So tonight.”

You exhale - not quite a sigh, not quite relief. “Tonight.”

A moment passes. He’s still close, the room still quiet around them.

“The way we’ve been,” he starts. “In front of everyone this week. That’s worked.”

“It has,” you agree.

“But now there’s…” he gestures vaguely between you, meaning the beach, the blanket, his hand, the almost of your mouths, all of it, “…this. Which is different.”

“Which is different,” you echo.

“And I don’t want to…” He trails off, stops, tries again. “Some of that needs to stay ours. I don’t want to be doing something tonight that means something and have it just look like -”

“- a performance,” you interject quietly.

“Yeah. That’s not what this is.”

You’re quiet for a moment, looking at him with the particular steadiness that means you’re thinking something through properly rather than just agreeing.

“So we keep it simple tonight,” you decide. “What we’ve been doing all week, that’s fine. Holding hands, occasional arm,” you grin, “…the easy stuff. But the rest of it stays here.”

“The rest of it stays here,” he says.

It takes something to say it out loud. Naming what needs protecting means admitting it exists, and admitting it exists means… well. It means what it means.

He steps closer and presses his lips to your forehead, brief and steady, his hand coming up to cradle your face for just a second.

“We’ll figure out the rest,” he says. “Back home. Whatever it is.”

“Back home,” you agree. “Good.”

He takes a step back to look at you properly. The dress is - he'd known it would look like this, he'd watched Lucy hold it up in the boutique while his mother nodded with the satisfaction of someone whose vision was being confirmed, but knowing and seeing are not the same thing. The halter crosses at your throat, the keyhole below it, the green of the fabric doing something particular in the late afternoon light.

He feels his face grow warm.

"Wow," he exhales, which is not a sentence, but it's all he has. He scratches the back of his neck.

Something moves across your face - warm, a little uneven, not quite a smile and yet somehow more than one. You look away first, reaching for your earrings on the nightstand.

"Go finish your tie," you say, blushing.

He goes to finish his tie.

****************

The club sits back from the coast road behind a long gravel drive, the kind of place that announces itself quietly - white clapboard and green shutters, wide verandas wrapping the front, old oaks throwing shade across the lawn in long, practised arcs. American flags. Box hedges. A parking lot full of vehicles that cost more than most people’s houses and everyone knows it.

Steve has been here twice before. Both times just to the bar, both times with his father, neither time by choice.

He holds the door for you and follows you in.

Inside it smells like fresh cut flowers and expensive candles and something older underneath - wood polish, maybe, or the particular smell of a carpet that’s absorbed fifty years of formal occasions. The staff know his mother by name. They know his father by a particular quality of deference that Steve recognises from childhood and has never quite been able to categorise. The Harringtons belong here. The room tilts slightly in their direction, makes room, wraps around them as they glide through the space, accepting flutes of champagne and air kisses and handshakes.

He straightens his tie and smooths his hair without thinking about it.

The ceremony space is outside on the main veranda overlooking the ocean. White ribboned chairs set out in angled rows, an aisle down the centre, an arch at the front threaded with pale blue flowers that must have taken someone hours to put together. His mother’s planning, down to the last ribbon.

They take their seats in the front row, the family filling in around them. Edith moves in carefully, her handbag on her arm, accepting the chair Steve pulls out for her with a touch to his arm. Rosemary Monroe - Grandma Rose, as someone dared call her once and soon came to regret it - arrives a moment after and settles herself on your other side with the composed authority of an elderly woman who has attended a great many events and expects this one to meet her standards. Her daughter arranged it, after all.

She appraises you once, briefly, before turning her attention to the front of the room. Steve notices you sitting very straight.

The officiant is a tall man with a clipboard and reading glasses pushed up into his hair, the practiced ease of someone who has done this several hundred times and knows when to be warm and when to be efficient. He runs through the flow of the ceremony - the processional, the readings, where Danny and Annabeth will stand, the moment for the exchange of rings. His voice carries well.

Steve watches his parents take their positions at the arch.

They look - he finds the word without wanting it - right. Like people who belong in the frame. Annabeth has changed into something ivory, Danny in a navy suit, the two of them arranging themselves at the front of the deck with the unconscious ease of people who have been photographed together for thirty years and know exactly how to stand.

“I’d like to thank Rick, Juliane and Lucy for their support this week,” the officiant says, warm and inclusive, gesturing toward them where they’ve taken their positions flanking Danny and Annabeth. “It’s a genuine pleasure to have family standing up for family, especially to celebrate something like this.”

Rick nods, the easy acknowledgment of a man comfortable with attention. Lucy beams.

Steve keeps his eyes on the arch.

He doesn’t move. Doesn’t shift his weight or adjust his cufflinks or do any of the things his body sometimes does when something hits him uncomfortably. He’s been trained out of those tells for decades, has learned to hold himself so still in moments like this that nothing registers on the surface.

But your hand, resting in your lap beside his, turns over. Palm up. An offering, not a demand.

He takes it.

You don’t look at Steve, and he doesn’t look at you. You both keep your eyes to the front, watching the officiant work through the order of service, while his thumb moves across your knuckles, once, then twice, and goes still.

The rehearsal continues around them.

****************

The dining room has been set for the occasion in the way his mother sets everything - with the particular thoroughness of someone who has decided exactly how the evening will feel and has briefed the staff accordingly. Round tables in crisp ivory linen, low arrangements of pink flowers at each centre, candles already lit against the early evening. A string quartet in the corner working through something Steve doesn’t recognise but assumes is correct.

Their table is the second one in - close enough to Danny and Annabeth’s to feel included, far enough to be clearly distinct. He pulls out your chair, then Edith’s, and takes his own seat beside you.

The champagne arrives. Menus are considered. The table finds its rhythm.

He is, he’ll admit, trying harder than usual.

Not at the performance exactly - at the line between the performance and what isn’t. They’d agreed on it in the bedroom, the rule clean and simple: nothing that isn’t true. But sitting here, in his mother’s chosen venue with his mother’s chosen lighting and the string quartet playing something his mother had approved, the line keeps shifting on him. He refills your glass. Sets his hand briefly at your back when the waiter leans across. Turns toward you when you speak, the way he always does, except that tonight the turning feels deliberate in a way it hasn’t all week, and he’s not sure if that makes it more or less real.

You feel it too. He can tell by the slight, careful quality of how you’re holding yourself - present, warm, but measured. Both of you finding your footing on the same uncertain ground.

Rick, nearby, is characteristically easy company - a large, affable man who fills whatever room he’s in without appearing to try. He pulls Steve into conversation about the golf he’d missed that morning, requiring both arms to demonstrate a particular shot, and Steve laughs in the right places and asks the right questions and is, he suspects, doing a reasonable impression of someone who is entirely fine.

Across the table, Grandma Rose sits between Edith and Danny’s oldest friend’s wife. She has said very little since they sat down. She doesn’t appear to need to. She holds her champagne flute in one hand and watches the table with the precise attention of someone conducting a quiet audit, missing nothing and commenting on very little.

Her eyes have settled on the two of you more than once.

He notices. He doesn’t mention it.

The first course comes and goes. Lucy refills her own glass and then yours without being asked, says something that makes you laugh properly - surprised out of it, the short one, the real one - and he feels it in his chest the way he always does now, like a key turning. He wants to be the cause of that laugh.

By the second course the champagne has done what champagne does, and the careful quality of the evening has loosened at the edges. Rick has moved on to a story about a fishing trip that has Juliane shaking her head. Lucy is deep in conversation with the couple to her left. The table has turned inward, smaller, easier.

He leans toward you.

It isn’t planned. Nothing that happens next is planned, which is, Steve thinks later, the first point of failure.

The officiant’s words have been sitting somewhere low in him all evening - a genuine pleasure to have family standing up for family - not sharp, not new, just the familiar settled weight of it. The way Rick had nodded. The way Lucy had beamed. The way his parents had looked at each other in front of the arch like the frame was complete, and hadn’t cared that he wasn’t in it.

He presses his lips to your temple. Warm, brief, the same gesture he’d given you in the bedroom before you’d come down - except that here, now, with the candlelight and the champagne and Rosemary six feet away with her excellent eyesight, it means what it means and he knows it.

“Thank you,” he says, low, his mouth still close to your hair. “For earlier. For - for just being there.”

You turn your head slightly toward him. “Always,” you say. Quiet. Simple. Like it’s effortless and means everything, which is somehow the most devastating version of it.

He stays close for a second longer than he needs to.

“Also I need you to know that this suit is actively trying to kill me and the minute we get back to the house I’m putting the vest back on.”

You press your lips together, your hand finding his thigh. “Your mother will be devastated.”

“She’ll survive.” He straightens, reaching for his wine. “She has Dad to deal with - he’s untied a button on his waistcoat and I can tell it’s driving her crazy.”

”Crazy good?”

He shakes his head. “Crazy bad.”

The sound you make - small, warm, caught between a laugh and something more - is not for the table. It’s just for him, in the small private space between their chairs, belonging to the two of them and the evening and nothing else.

Across the table, Rosemary takes a sip of her champagne while Edith tries to involve her in conversation. She doesn’t say anything, but she’s watching like a hawk.

The second course plates are cleared. The string quartet shifts into something with more tempo. Danny rises from the main table to say a few words - warm, practiced, the speech of a man who knows how to hold a room, thanking Lucy and Rick and Annabeth - and the table listens with the relaxed attention of people who have heard him do this before and trust him not to drone on too long. Rick calls out a few well-meaning heckles, just to spice things up, which even Annabeth laughs at. Steve listens and applauds at the right moment and feels your hand find his under the table, your fingers threading through his the way they did on the harbour wall, and he holds on, letting you keep him steady.

It’s during the third course that Rosemary speaks.

She does it without preamble, in the tone of someone offering an observation that has simply occurred to them - pleasant, conversational, the verbal equivalent of passing the bread basket.

“I’ll say this,” she says, addressing the table at large but angling toward you in a way that makes the target unmistakable. “You’re the first girl Steven’s brought here that I’ve actually believed to like him.”

A small pause. The table quietens, listening.

“Lord knows what you see in him that the rest of us have missed all these years.” Her coral-painted mouth curves, keenly amused, the smile of a woman who knows exactly how to expose something and has chosen her moment carefully. “Whatever it is, he’s kept it well hidden.”

Edith snaps to attention, her tone light but her eyes sharp. “Rosemary, that’s quite enough. Let the boy be happy for once.”

Laughter moves around the table - warm, easy, the response of people who’ve heard family teasing before and recognise its signature. Rick grins. Lucy raises her glass slightly. Danny’s friend chuckles into his champagne.

Steve smiles. Tight and well practiced.

It’s the right smile - measured, self-deprecating, the smile of a man who can take a joke at his own expense and is somewhat gracious about it. He has worn this smile at this kind of table for most of his adult life and it takes almost nothing to produce it.

Almost.

He feels his least-liked grandmother’s knife go in. Clean, precise, finding the gap in the armour with the accuracy of something aimed rather than thrown.

The first girl he’s brought home that I’ve actually believed.

Lord knows what you see in him.

He reaches for his wine, his hand a little unsteady, and takes too large a mouthful.

He gives it a minute.

Long enough for the laughter to settle, for the table to turn back to its own conversations, for Rosemary to accept the compliment of having made the room smile and return her attention to her plate. Long enough for it to look like he’s let it go.

He hasn’t let it go.

The thing about Rosemary’s particular brand of it - the warmth, the smile, the table laughing along - is that there’s nowhere to put it. His parents’ version he can absorb and put away for later. His father’s omissions he’s built scar tissue around. But this is something that sounds like affection and lands like a verdict, delivered in front of witnesses, and the witnesses think they’ve seen a fond grandmother be charmed by his girlfriend.

What they’ve seen is someone confirm, pleasantly and publicly, that they are surprised she’s here with him. That anyone would be.

He sets his wine down and turns to you.

“Grandma Rose isn’t wrong, you know,” he says, pitched to carry just far enough. His hand finds yours on the table - not under it this time, not private. On top of it, where the candlelight catches it, where Rick can see it, where Rosemary can see it. “I’ve been trying to figure out what I did right for months.”

You look at him. Something moves behind your eyes - quick, reading him, and he watches you find it, the slight extra wattage, the performance gear clicking back in.

You hold his gaze for just a fraction of a second longer than the moment needs.

“You showed up,” you smile, already reaching to tuck a strand of hair behind his ear. Steady. Playing along, because you always do.

“God, that’s a low bar,” Lucy smirks from across the table.

“Yeah, it is,” you agree. “The men in Hawkins could learn a lot from Steve. He should run dating classes - ‘How to be a Good Boyfriend - the Harrington Method for Men’.” The table laughs, and Steve laughs with them, his thumb moving across your knuckles in the candlelight.

He picks up the thread and runs with it.

“We’ve been talking about her moving closer, actually…” he says, and then catches himself, smoothing it over without breaking stride, “ - getting a place together, I mean. Somewhere with a bit more space. Maybe a couple of spare rooms to fill, you know? We’re both still in Hawkins but it’s…” he shrugs, the movement of a man describing something that has simply outgrown its current container. “It makes sense, at some point. To find somewhere that fits us better for the future.”

He feels your hand shift slightly under his. Not pulling away. Just shifting.

“Oh Steve, we had no idea you two were so…” Juliane gasps, leaning forward with the bright attention of someone who has just been handed something good. “Are you thinking of staying in Hawkins, or maybe moving?”

“We’re open,” he says, easy, already building the room around it. “Somewhere with good schools, eventually. That’s - I mean, that’s the thinking. When the time’s right.”

Good schools.

He hears himself say it. Watches it land around the table - the small, warm ripple of it, Rick’s eyebrows lifting slightly, Juliane’s hand going to her chest, Lucy going very still across the table with the focused attention of someone watching a car approach a red light at high speed.

“Well,” Edith says warmly. “That’s wonderful. Wonderful news. Do your parents know? They’ll be so thrilled!”

“Nothing decided,” he says. “We’re not - it’s not immediate - “ he laughs, the laugh of a man being charmingly modest about something that seems already decided, which is not what this is, which is not what any of this is. “I just mean that we’re thinking about the future. In that way. The whole…”, he gestures again between himself and you, a generous, easy movement that encompasses everything - the imaginary house, the imaginary schools, the imaginary life. “All of it.”

The table responds the way tables do to things like this. Warmth, knowing looks, Rick raising his glass in something that might be a toast. Juliane is smiling. Even Rosemary, he notices in his peripheral vision, has settled back in her chair with the particular satisfaction of someone whose comment has produced an interesting result.

Somewhere inside him, clear and cold, a voice says: stop.

He doesn’t stop.

“She’d have to prise herself away from her church windows first,” he laughs as he picks up his glass, and there’s real warmth in this part because this part is true, and the truth of it makes the rest of it worse somehow, makes the whole construction more dangerous because it has real feeling running through it like a current. “Which, for the record, is an actual competition. I’m losing to broken windows on a regular basis and I’ve made my peace with it.”

The table laughs. You laugh too - and he can’t tell, for the first time all week, whether the laugh is real or not.

That’s new. That’s the thing that should stop him.

It doesn’t stop him.

“But we’re getting there…” He squeezes your hand, looks at you and smiles, and the look has too much of the actual thing in it, the thing that’s been accumulating all week, the thing he told you he didn’t know what to do with yet. “That’s what it looks like, I think. When it’s right. You just - you want to build something. You know?”

He says it to you. He means it for you and you alone. And that is perhaps the most honest and most catastrophic thing he’s done all evening.

The table is warm around them. Someone tops up the wine. Rick says something approving. Juliane reaches over and pats the back of his hand that isn’t holding yours.

You are very still beside him.

Not visibly. Not in any way the table would catch. Your expression is exactly what it should be - warm, present, the person he brought here, the person who agreed to this, who has held the line all week with more steadiness than he deserves. But he knows the specific quality of your stillness now, the difference between the stillness of someone who is settled and the stillness of someone who is working very hard.

This is the second kind, and the smile you’re wearing is unfamiliar.

He watches you work out, in real time, what to do with a version of Steve Harrington who has just told his entire family that you’re talking about moving in and planning children, when the actual version of Steve Harrington - the one you made the agreement with, upstairs, in the quiet of their room - said just what’s true, nothing more than that.

Your thumb presses once against his hand.

Not a squeeze. Not the warm, deliberate pressure of earlier in the evening.

A firm tap.

His stomach drops.

He knows what that means. They’d agreed what that means, in a conversation on a harbour wall, with the whole ridiculous weight of Jim Hopper standing between them as a failsafe.

It isn’t Hopper. It’s smaller than that. Just your thumb, once, against the back of his hand.

But the message is the same.

You’ve gone too far.

He hears it.

He doesn’t quite stop.

“Anyway,” he says, the word coming out slightly too quickly, the pivot slightly too neat. “Nothing to announce. We’re not - I don’t want to steal my parents’ weekend.” A self-deprecating smile, offered to the table. “Mom would never forgive me.”

The table accepts it. Conversation turns. Rick launches into something. Juliane reaches for the bread.

Beside him, you reach for your wine.

Your hand has left his.

****************

The rest of the dinner passes the way evenings do when the thing that matters has already happened - the food arrives and is eaten, the wine is poured and drunk, conversation moves around the table in the easy, self-sustaining way of people who have known each other long enough not to need much tending. Steve laughs when laughing is called for. Answers questions. Performs the easy version of himself with the practiced fluency of a man who has been doing it since before he knew it was a performance.

Beside him, you do the same.

He can feel the strain of it - not in anything the table would catch, not in anything anyone would name. You’re too good for that. But the warmth that was there earlier in the evening, the real warmth underneath the performance, has pulled back from the surface. You’re present, appropriate, exactly what the occasion requires.

The smile you’re wearing is not your own.

He put it there. He knows he put it there.

Edith, at the far end of the table, catches his eye once across the candles. She doesn’t say anything. She just looks at him for a moment with the particular quality of attention that has always made him feel simultaneously seen and uncomfortable, and then returns to her conversation.

He looks away first.

When you lean toward him, an hour before the evening officially ends, and say quietly that you might head back - that it’s been a long day and you want to be fresh for tomorrow - your voice is even, your smile is in place, and there is nothing in either of them that the table could object to. He agrees immediately. They make their excuses. His mother accepts them with gracious efficiency, already half turned back toward finalising tomorrow’s arrangements. His father squeezes his shoulder on the way out and says something about getting some rest.

Nobody notices anything.

The cab is waiting on the gravel drive, ordered by the club without being asked. Steve holds the door. You get in. He follows.

The door closes.

The club recedes behind the rear window, its lights warm and certain across the dark lawn, and neither of you says anything.

The driver takes the coast road. The ocean moves alongside them in the dark, visible only as a pale line where the waves catch the moon. The cab smells like air freshener and someone else’s evening. Steve looks out his window. You look out of yours.

Four miles of silence.

He tries twice to say something. Neither attempt makes it out.

You don’t fill the quiet for him. You have been filling things for him all week - silences, gaps, the spaces where he didn’t know what to do - and tonight you don’t, and he understands why, and he doesn’t ask you to.

The cab pulls up to the beach house. He pays. You’re already out of the door by the time he gets his wallet away, already moving up the path, your heels in your hand, bare feet on the boards.

He follows you upstairs.

****************

The bedroom is dim, the lamp on his side of the bed still on from when they left.

You don’t wait.

The jewellery comes off first, dropped on the table. Then you reach behind your neck for the halter ties yourself, fingers pulling at the ribbon with the impatience of someone who has stopped caring about the dress entirely and just wants it gone. He watches you struggle with the knot for a second - the same knot he’d tied securely a few hours ago in this same room, in a version of the evening that feels very far away now - and he moves to you without thinking, his hands finding the ribbon.

You let him. Not warmly. Just practically.

He unties it.

The dress falls.

You step out of it, leave it where it lands - green chiffon dropped and forgotten, the shoes going somewhere behind you without you looking. The slip follows, pulled over your head in one motion and left on top of the dress, and for a moment you’re standing in just your bra and underwear in the middle of the room, already moving toward the dresser, already somewhere else entirely in your head.

He could be anyone. He could be furniture.

You pull out a t-shirt, pull it on, find a pair of shorts, step into them, all of it continuous, unbroken, the focused motion of someone who has one destination in mind and everything else is just an obstacle.

He stands where he is with the ribbon still in his hand.

“I’m sorry,” he says eventually.

You turn around.

Your expression isn’t what he expected. Not cold, not shut down. What’s there is worse - the open, raw version of you that he’s been learning all week, except that what’s in it now is hurt, and frustration, and the anger of someone who has been made to feel foolish by someone they had trusted not to.

“What was that?” you say. Quiet. Controlled. Like you’re holding something back by its collar, like you could say considerably more.

“I know,” he says. “I went too far -”

“You told your entire family we’re looking at fucking houses!” The control slips at the edges. “With good schools, Steve!”

“Rosemary -”

“I know what Rosemary said.” Your voice is still even, but only just. “I was sitting right there. I heard her, and then I watched it get to you, and you just -”

You pull both hands through your hair, hard and frustrated.

“- you just kept going. And I had to sit there and smile and back you up and I couldn’t tell which parts of it you meant.”

He opens his mouth, but you cut him off.

“It’s all bullshit.”

He goes very still.

The word sits in the room between them. He knows it in his bones before he knows why - the specific register of it, the flatness, something old and unwelcome turning over in the back of his chest.

“Your family, the way they treat you - all of it. And I could handle the performance, I knew what I signed up for. But you let me believe that what was happening between us was real, and then you turned around and used it like a prop. You performed at me, Steve! In front of all of them.”

He doesn’t try to defend himself. It isn’t the argument - the argument is fair, the argument he deserves.

It’s the bullshit that gets him.

He has heard that before. Not from you. From someone else, in a different house, in a year he’d spent a long time trying to get past. ‘It’s bullshit - acting like we’re in love.’ Nancy’s voice, flat and final, the sound of someone telling him clearly that what he’d thought was real had only ever been his own mistake.

You don’t know any of that. You can’t. You’re angry and you’re right to be angry and the words mean something entirely different in your mouth than they did in hers.

It doesn’t stop them going in exactly the same way.

“You’re right,” he says. His voice comes out weaker than he intends. “It was. I shouldn’t have -”

“Don’t. I’m going for a walk.”

“It’s late, -”

“I know what time it is.” You’ve pulled your cardigan on, already moving toward the door. Not storming. Just clear in your decision.

“Hey - wait.” He takes a step toward you. “Wait a minute, I need to say something.”

You stop, with your hand on the door frame. You turn back to look at him, and what’s in your face now isn’t just anger - it’s the exhaustion of someone who has been holding on all evening - all week - and is done.

He opens his mouth.

The words are right there - the real words, the words that have been sitting in him since the harbour wall and the bedroom and the beach and every quiet moment of the week that has been building toward this. He has been not-saying it for days and now, standing in this room with the ribbon from your dress still in his hand and the green chiffon on the floor between you, he almost has it, it’s there ready, he just needs to -

“Steve...” Your voice has lost its careful quality entirely. You’re looking at him, exhausted and angry, someone who has been patient for a long time and that patience has run out. “Whatever it is, just - no. Don’t say something we’ll both regret.”

And then you leave him.

The door closes behind you. Not slammed. Just pulled shut, with the particular finality of someone who has made a decision and means it.

****************

He doesn’t move for a long time.

The room holds the evidence of the evening - your perfume still in the air, the green dress on the floor where you’d pulled it off, the shoes kicked sideways near the wardrobe. The lamp on his side of the bed throwing its small yellow circle across the ceiling. Everything exactly as it was, except that the room is wrong now, too quiet and too full at the same time, and he is standing in the middle of it in his dinner clothes with a satin ribbon in his hand and an unfinished sentence going nowhere.

He stuffs the ribbon into his pocket.

He looks at the bed - your side, the pillow bunched with the same particular indent in it as when he’d lain with his head on your shoulder and told you he’d been lonely for a long time. The most honest thing he’d said to anyone in years, handed over in the dark like it was nothing, like you’d know what to do with it.

You had known what to do with it.

And then tonight he’d sat at a table and let his grandmother’s words get so far under his skin that he’d blown past every line they’d drawn together, said things that weren’t his to say, used you to shore himself up in front of his family like you were a prop and not a person, like the week hadn’t changed everything, like your hand in his under the table had meant nothing.

You performed at me, Steve. In front of all of them.

He tears his hands through his hair.

You’re right. He knows you’re right. The argument isn’t with you - the argument is with himself, with the part of him that heard Rosemary’s voice and went straight back to being desperate to prove something to a room that wasn’t really looking at him anyway. It’s the same room it’s always been. He just keeps hoping it’ll be different.

The first girl he’s brought home that I’ve actually believed.

He’d spent half a second being grateful for that - a fraction of relief, of being seen - before the rest of it landed.

Lord knows what you see in him. The rest of us have been missing.

And there it was. The faint, warm surprise that someone chose him, wrapped around the clear implication that they probably shouldn’t have. That it’s an anomaly. That it won’t last. That eventually you’ll work out what everyone else already knows.

He’s so, so tired of that.

He picks up his jacket from where he’d dropped it on the chair but doesn’t put it on. Just carries it. Leaves the room without knowing exactly where he’s going until he’s standing outside his father’s office door, the hallway dark and quiet around him, the rest of the house empty. He is alone.

The office smells like Danny - cedar and old paper and something faintly expensive, the lingering scent of a man who has always known exactly where he belongs. The desk is neat. The chair behind it is dark leather and imposing. On the wall, a framed photograph of the house taken from the beach, the whole thing lit gold in late afternoon sun, perfect and permanent.

There’s a couch against the far wall. Narrow. Firm. The kind of furniture that exists for appearances rather than comfort.

He sits on it. Doesn’t lie down yet, just sits with his sharp elbows digging into his thighs.

His shirt is still buttoned to the collar, his dinner trousers creased from the evening, his good shoes still on his feet. He should change, or at least loosen some buttons. He doesn’t. There’s something appropriate about being uncomfortable, about the stiff collar and the tight waistband and the shoes that have been pinching since the club. He’d dressed up for a performance and the performance had gone wrong and now he’s sitting in his father’s office at midnight still wearing the costume of it.

He puts his face in his hands.

It’s all bullshit.

He hears it in your voice and in Nancy’s voice simultaneously, layered over each other, and knows they’re not the same thing, knows you meant something completely different, knows you were angry and hurt and saying the truest thing you could about a week that has been, in many ways, exactly that. He knows all of that.

It still hurt him exactly the same way.

Because the fear underneath it is always the same fear. That what looks like love from the inside is just performance from the outside. That the people who leave are the ones who finally saw clearly. That he is, at the bottom of everything, someone people half-choose until they don’t.

He’d had something real this week. He knows he did. He can feel the truth of it even now, sitting in the dark in his father’s office - the harbour wall and the bedroom and the beach and your hand turning over in your lap, palm up, an offering. The way you’d said ‘always’ like it was obvious. The kiss he’d pressed to your temple at dinner, the one that had been only for you, that Rosemary had seen and filed away and used against you both.

He’d had something real and he’d panicked and he’d broken it.

The unfinished sentence is still there. It hasn’t gone anywhere. It sits in the middle of his chest like something with weight to it, pressing outward, with nowhere to go now that the house is empty.

He lies down on the couch.

The leather is cold through his shirt. The cushion is too thin. His legs hang off the end.

He stares at the ceiling of his father’s office in the dark and listens to the ocean through the window, and thinks about you somewhere out there in the dark, unable to stand being near him.

He doesn’t sleep for a long time.

[zelinkcrossing]

I FEEL INSANE HELLO THAT WAS DIABOLICAL THANK GOD I STOPPED LAST NIGHT WHEN I DID LIKE????

[nitashinori]

That post about death note being "everyone's first anime" (untrue statement) made me curious and now I want to gather data for science

Can you reblog this and tell me where are you from and what was your starter anime?

[levanswrites]

Hey there! I hope you're having a good day! I was wondering if you ever wrote a second part to This time last summer? I've been searching your blog frantically for the last 15 minutes and haven't been able to find it.

hi love! oh gosh i did have a pt 2 planned for this time last summer (it's still on my landing page under 'upcoming projects') but haven't visited the draft in a long time! thank you for giving me an excuse to go back and re-read it 🥺 It's got probably my favorite character study of steve I've ever written, so I'll post that bit here. I'm hoping I can come back to it some day and finish it!

.   *　✦　　.　 ˚　✦　 .

You want to tell him how often you think about leaving Hawkins. Not sometimes—all the time. So much that your bones ache with it. But the thought of vanishing in a big city where no one knows your name is just as terrifying.

You want to tell him how the thought of August sliding into September has started to feel like a countdown. How college isn’t just college, it’s distance. It’s new streets and new people and new lives.

But what scares you the most—lately, more than anything—is the thought of leaving him behind.

Of driving away and watching him shrink in the rearview mirror.

Of coming back someday and finding out that he isn’t here. Or that he still is. You’re not sure which would hurt worse.

But you don’t say any of that.

Like all else, you keep it tucked behind your molars, pressed tight to the roof of your mouth.

You swallow it down, and go back to wiping down the counters.

The store hums around you: buzzy freezer noise and a tinny Top 40 song from the ceiling speaker. Steve usually sings along to it under his breath, always just slightly off-key.

Tonight, not even a tap of his foot.

He still hasn’t looked at you.

Eventually, you can't take it.  

“Are you okay?”

His hands pause under the stream. Then they start scrubbing again, harder.

“Yeah. I’m good.”

“No, you’re not.”

He exhales through his nose. Pulls his hat off, runs a hand through his hair, then jams it back over the mess.

Then:

“My dad called today.”

Your hands still over the counter.

He doesn’t say much else. Doesn’t say he yelled again, or he called me a failure, or he didn’t even ask how I was doing—but you’d bet your last paycheck all three are true.

He just adds, barely audibly:

“Said I should be further along by now.”

You glance at his hands, clenched around a scoop so hard his knuckles are white.

“I told him I’m working here. That I’m… trying, you know? Being... I don't know. A responsible adult, I guess.”

Then, for the first time tonight, he looks at you.

Eyes red-rimmed, smile paper-thin.

He lets out a quiet snort, shaking his head.

“Sorry. Didn’t mean to get all… whatever.”

You step forward, brow furrowed. “Steve—”

“It’s fine,” he cuts in. “I just… he wanted me to get a real job. Not this. Something with, I don’t know. A tie, probably.”

He laughs under his breath, bitter and weightless. “He said I’m still acting like I did back then.”

Then.

The word hangs there, heavy.

You know what it means.

Then was trophies and hallways lined with crowds. A throne he never asked for and the fall he never planned.

Now is dishwater and sailor hats. It’s dented pride and busted sinks and a silence that feels like confirmation.

You grip the rag tighter, citrus bleach stinging at your nose.

People love to talk about Steve Harrington like they know him.

That he’s hollow. Coasting on charm and good looks.

But they haven’t seen the things you’ve seen.

Steve Harrington isn’t empty. He’s overflowing.

Overflowing with a need to be seen. To be enough.

To be chosen, kept. To matter enough for someone to stay.

Softness. Loyalty. All this love with nowhere to set it down. Arms full, waiting for someone to take just one piece.

But when no one’s ever taught you where your heart goes, when no one’s ever held yours gently, you start thinking maybe it doesn’t belong anywhere.

So it builds. Rises behind his ribs like a silent tide. Swells and crests and tips over, until he’s drowning quietly in places no one’s watching.

And the people who should’ve been watching, never did.  

You learned that a few weeks ago. 

He was on break, said he needed to make a quick call. You watched from the register as he hunched over the payphone near the Orange Julius, sailor hat crushed in one hand, the other white-knuckled around the receiver. Arm braced over his stomach, shifting his weight like his shoes were full of glass.

He spoke for maybe ten seconds.

Then nothing.

Just stood there, receiver slack in his hand, staring at the dial for what felt like hours before coming back inside.

He didn’t say anything until closing.

Not until you were sat on the curb outside Starcourt, neon lights buzzing overhead.

He told you his parents weren’t coming back for the rest of the summer.

“Extended trip. Business, I guess.”

Turns out, it kind of fucks you up when your dad picks up the phone for the first time in months, only to remind you to collect the mail.  

[zelinkcrossing]

INSANE INSANE INSANE INSANE INSANE

the concept that "king steve" wasn't enough for them even though a lot of times for parents it is really got me today because he isn't entirely proud of it either but without that validation it holds less value like UGHHHHHH

[morninglesss]

disparate youth, pt.5

Steve Harrington x f!reader // part one / part two / part three / part four / part five / part six / part seven / part eight // complete

Outer Banks, summer 1995. Steve’s parents are celebrating their thirty year anniversary with a week of parties, photos, and perfect appearances. Steve shows up out of obligation - and brings you as his “girlfriend” for survival. Tonight - one man braves a shopping trip with his not-so-fake girlfriend and his mother’s sharp eye. Back home, while the adults are away the kids will play. Oh yeah.

Word count: 10k

As always: Steve Harrington deserved better, so I gave him softness. 🌊

They’ve been walking for ten minutes before he realises his hand hasn’t left your waist.

Not hovering. Not posed. Just there, thumb hooked in your waistband, fingers settled against your denim cutoffs with the ease of something that forgot to be deliberate. He can’t pinpoint when it happened - whether you leaned in first or he pulled you closer or if it simply built up, the way warmth does.

Lucy and his mother are still inside the last boutique, locked in what appears to be an existential debate about earrings. The street hums around them - foot traffic, gulls, the distant percussion of someone’s radio from a boat in the harbour. Ordinary noise.

Your shoulder is pressed into his side.

He notices that first - the warmth of it, the easy weight of you leaning in without thinking about it. The kind of contact that has simply become part of the day, the way these things have been doing all week.

Then he notices his back pocket.

Specifically, your hand in it. Fingers curled loosely against his ass, settled there with the complete ease of something that forgot to announce itself. Not reaching. Not performing for anyone. Just there, the way his thumb tucked inside your waistband is just there, the way you’ve been finding each other all week without keeping score.

He becomes aware of these facts in the wrong order.

“Your mom is dangerous, by the way,” you murmur, your voice pitched low enough that it stays between you. “She pulled me aside near the mirrors in that last place. Said she has ‘a vision’ for Saturday - wouldn’t elaborate, just kept smiling like she knew something I didn’t. Started holding fascinators up against my hair.”

He winces slightly. “Fascinators.”

“Three of them. Very focused.” A pause. “Then she squeezed my hand and told me to ‘trust the process’.”

He huffs. “That’s ominous.”

“I asked if I should be worried.”

“And?”

“She just smiled. Then she left me to go talk to Lucy about shoes.”

He stares at the middle distance for a moment. “That’s actually worse than an answer.”

“Right?” You look up at him. “And then she winked at me.”

“She did not.”

“She absolutely did. Full wink. Eye contact maintained throughout.”

He shakes his head slowly. “I’m so sorry.”

“Are you, though? Because you look a little bit like you’re trying not to laugh.”

He schools his expression. Mostly succeeds. “I’m horrified.”

“She’s up to something,” you say.

“She’s always up to something.” He says it easily, the knowledge of a lifetime. “The trick is deciding whether you want to know what it is before or after it happens to you.”

You consider that. “Which do you recommend?”

“After,” he says. “Ignorance is genuinely -”

He doesn’t finish the thought.

His thumb is moving. Slow arcs from your waistband to warm skin, back again. He has no memory of starting, and he finds he has no particular interest in stopping.

He leaves it there.

Your fingers flex absently in his pocket while you talk - a small, unconscious curl of them, like you’ve forgotten they’re there.

He hasn’t forgotten.

“You’ve been like this all afternoon,” he says, keeping it quiet.

You blink up at him. “Like what?”

He lets the pause sit long enough that it could apply to either of them.

“Handsy.”

Your mouth curves slowly. “You started it.”

“I really didn’t.”

“Steve.” You squeeze once, lightly, in his pocket. “You did.”

He opens his mouth to respond - and stops. The kiss plays vividly in his head.

“Okay, that’s fair.”

The amusement in your face shifts slightly, becoming something more careful. Your fingers flex again inside his pocket but don’t withdraw.

“Does this bother you?” you ask. “If you’re not comfortable we can -”

“No.” The word comes out before he’s finished deciding it. He lets himself check anyway - registers the absence of tightness in his chest, the fact that his shoulders have relaxed somewhere since the last boutique without him noticing.

His fingers press a little more firmly at your hip, pulling you closer.

“I like it,” he says, simple as that.

You hold his gaze a moment longer than necessary. Whatever you’re looking for, you seem to find it, because your expression softens into something quieter than a smile.

“Good,” you say.

For a moment neither of you says anything, and the space doesn’t need filling.

Then you say, without particular weight, “Can I suggest something?”

He glances down at you. “Sure.”

“A safe word.” You say it simply, like it’s the most practical thing in the world. “For this week. Either of us can use it - no explanation required, no questions asked. Just -” you gesture between you, “- a tap out.”

He considers that. “You think we need one?”

“I think it would be nice to have one,” you say. “Just in case.”

He turns it over. The week stretches ahead - the rehearsal tomorrow, the renewal itself, the choreography of it all, and now this new thing sitting between them that neither of them has fully named yet. The idea of a clean exit, available to either of them, no damage done - it settles something in him he hadn’t realised was unsettled.

“Okay,” he says. “What word?”

You think about it for a second, head tilting. “Something that wouldn’t come up naturally in conversation…”

“That rules out most things at a Harrington dinner.”

You snort softly. “It should be something a bit silly,” you continue. “So it doesn’t feel heavy to say. You want it to be easy to reach for.”

He thinks for a moment, then grins. “Hopper.”

You stare at him. “Hopper? Like Chief Hopper?”

“Former Chief. Retired now.”

“Steve, that’s a person. A real person we know. He gave me a twenty minute lecture about snow chains in the line at Target last week. It’s summer.”

“Exactly.” He says it like this is airtight logic. “Nothing’s happening after that.”

You press your lips together, trying very hard not to laugh. “That’s either genius or the least sexy thing I’ve ever heard.

“Those aren’t mutually exclusive,” he says, entirely untroubled.

You look at him for a long moment. Then - “Hopper. Fine. Deal.”

“Either of us,” he says. “Any time.”

“Any time,” you confirm. “No explanation. No hurt feelings.”

“No hurt feelings,” he echoes.

He shifts his thumb against your hip, slow and absent.

You look up at him. “We named our safe word after a man who, according to town gossip, once threw someone through a plate glass window.”

“He’s very present in the mind,” he says, solemnly. “That’s the point.”

You laugh - properly, surprised out of it - and the sound does something unhelpful to his chest.

You hold out your hand formally, like you’re closing a business arrangement.

He looks at it. Looks at you. Shakes it once, decided.

“Deal.”

Neither of you lets go when the handshake ends. Not quite.

The boutique door swings open. Lucy emerges holding a small velvet box aloft like a trophy. Annabeth follows, already issuing instructions about the next stop and whether anyone has any Advil.

The noise rushes back in.

They separate - slowly. Your hand slides from his pocket. His fingers linger at your waist before falling. The air between them feels cooler once the contact breaks, and the absence registers in a way that surprises him.

He hadn’t noticed how warm it had been until it wasn’t.

Lucy spots something glittering two windows down and pulls Annabeth with her. They let the gap open naturally, drifting along the curve of the boardwalk until the boutiques thin out and the harbour opens up ahead.

The afternoon has softened into something easier. The crowds are thinner here, the noise less insistent, and they slow without deciding to. You stop to look at something in a window - he can’t tell what, some small ceramic thing - and he stops with you, hands in his pockets, not looking at the window particularly. Just waiting. Comfortable with the waiting.

You say something about the ceramic thing. He says something back. It isn’t important; it’s the kind of conversation that exists to fill the pleasanter silences, the ones that don’t need filling but get it anyway because the talking is also nice.

They pass a man with a dog that appears to have opinions about seagulls. You laugh - properly, suddenly - and he feels it like something illuminating inside him.

By the time the boardwalk curves toward the water, they’ve talked about nothing in particular for twenty minutes, and it has been, quietly, one of the better twenty minutes he can remember.

There’s a low stone wall at the water’s edge. Paper cups of something cold and overpriced - the kind of drink that tastes like melted ice cream and takes itself too seriously - and then just the wall, and the water, and the breeze coming off it in long easy breaths.

You tuck in beside him without asking. Thigh against his. Shoulder into his chest. His hand finds your waist again before he’s made any decision about it.

You sit like that for a minute without speaking.

“You know what’s weird,” you say.

He waits.

You’re watching the boats. Tracing the rim of your cup with your thumb. “We’ve never looked at each other like this before.”

He sits with it, and doesn’t reach for the deflection. “No,” he agrees. “We haven’t.”

Across bar tables. Over pizza boxes. In hospital waiting rooms. Christmas dinners with too much wine and not enough chairs and someone always ending up on the couch. He knows the way you laugh when something actually catches you off guard - different to your polite laugh, shorter, more surprised. He knows you cry at commercials but not at movies, and that you’ll deny both of those facts. You know which of his silences mean fine and which mean don’t. You’ve driven twenty minutes at midnight to sit on his kitchen floor and not ask questions after a particularly awful date, and he has done the same for you, and neither of you has ever needed to say thank you because that’s not the currency you deal in.

You’ve looked at each other as co-conspirators, as safe places, as the person in the room who would understand without being told.

Not like this.

“That’s why it felt harmless,” you continue. “Fake dating. It’s just us. We’re not -” you gesture between you, “- we’re us.”

“Yeah,” he sighs. “That was the logic.”

Your knee nudges his. Small. Deliberate. “And it still is. Mostly.” A breath. You’re still watching the water. “- except that one time.”

He doesn’t pretend not to understand.

Christmas, two years ago. Fairy lights strung thick across the square, the kind that blur at the edges when you’ve had enough Glühwein. Pine and spiced wine and frost on the cobblestones, and the school band playing something traditional badly enough to be charming. You’d stumbled on the kerb - your boots, you’d said, blaming the heels - and he’d caught you, hands at your waist, and you’d looked up at him with your breath clouding between you.

He remembers the exact pause. The way the noise around them went quiet without going anywhere. The way neither of you had moved, or said anything, or did the sensible thing and laughed it off. Just stillness, and your eyes, and the cold air, and the particular awareness of a moment that knows it’s a moment.

He’d gone home and replayed it in the dark until the edges wore smooth, then filed it away under wine and nostalgia and did his level best not to look at it again.

“That was nothing,” he says, too quickly.

You turn to look at him. Say nothing. Just look.

“We were -” he gestures vaguely. “The wine.”

One corner of your mouth moves. Not quite a smile. You look back at the water.

“Sure,” you say.

The silence that follows isn’t awkward. It isn’t comfortable either. It sits there like a door left slightly open, waiting for someone to decide.

“This feels different to what I imagined this week being,” you say, quieter now.

He looks at you fully. You aren’t flushed. You aren’t retreating. You’re just steady, in the way you always are - which is somehow worse, because it means you mean it. You aren’t trying this out. You’re just telling him.

“Different good?” he asks.

You consider it honestly, which is more frightening than if you’d answered straight away.

“Mm.” Your thumb has stilled against your cup. “I didn’t think I’d want this part.”

Want. It sits between them, quieter and heavier than it should be for a single syllable.

His hand has tightened at your hip without his input. Their knees are pressed together, no careful distance left between them. He’s not sure when that happened either - when the afternoon became a series of small distances closed without discussion.

He moves a fraction closer. His fingers flex against you. “You don’t have to,” he says - and he means it, except for the part of him that is very carefully not thinking about what it would mean if you did. The part that has been not-thinking about it, possibly, for longer than this afternoon.

You hold his gaze. Steady, still. “Yeah,” you say. “But I do.”

The honesty of it knocks the breath out of him cleanly, like a door opening onto cold air.

He opens his mouth. Closes it. Somewhere in his chest something has shifted off its axis and he can’t quite locate the words on the other side of it.

“I -”

“Steven!” His mother’s voice carries across the harbour. Bright, insistent. Their names, again. A wave.

The moment shatters.

He stands. Too quickly. He knows it the instant his body does it - the motion too abrupt, too relieved, weight leaving the wall before he’s decided anything.

For one fractional second, before he can stop it - good. Slow down. Think.

And then, immediately, with considerably more force: no.

He sees it happen in your face. Not hurt - you don’t go hurt, that’s not how you’re built - but something closes, careful and quiet, like a window being pulled. Not slammed. Just shut. You look away first, toward the harbour, toward his mother, and when you look back the steadiness is still there but it’s doing different work now. It’s holding something in rather than offering something out.

He did that. He knows he did that.

He drags a hand through his hair. Holds out the other one.

“C’mon.”

You take it.

Your hand is warm. Familiar in all the ways it has always been familiar. But there’s a fraction of distance in it now that wasn’t there this morning - something measured in your grip, a carefulness in the half-inch you’ve left between your shoulder and his - and he feels it like a drop in temperature.

He doesn’t let go of your hand.

They fall back into step with Lucy and Annabeth without ceremony, the afternoon resuming its motion around them - storefronts, salt air, the squint-inducing glare off the promenade. Lucy has already moved on to the next item on her internal agenda and is talking about it to anyone within range. Annabeth walks slightly ahead, bag at her elbow, the set of her shoulders suggesting she’s already thinking three stops further down the street.

He keeps hold of your hand.

He doesn’t make a production of it. Doesn’t squeeze, doesn’t adjust. Just keeps it there, your palm against his, thumb resting at the side of your hand - still, unmoving. A quiet correction for the thing he can’t take back on the harbour wall.

You let him.

After a minute, the half-inch closes. Your shoulder drifts back toward his. Not all the way - not the easy, unthinking press of earlier - but enough that he can feel the warmth of you through his sleeve.

He exhales.

They walk.

****************

The café Lucy chooses is the kind of place that has too many fonts on its chalkboard menu and not enough shade over its outdoor tables. Annabeth overrides the outdoor seating immediately - “I am not sitting in direct sun, Lucy, I’ve already had three hours of it” - and they end up inside, in a corner booth with cushioned benches, the afternoon sun still finding its way through the slatted blinds regardless.

It’s cooler inside. Quieter.

His head, which has been tightening steadily since mid-morning, takes exactly one minute of coffee shop noise and too-bright light to shift from manageable to something else entirely. The transition is swift and unkind - a gear change rather than a gradual build, the low-grade pressure behind his left eye sharpening into something with real weight to it. Not unbearable. Not yet. But pointed in a way that tells him exactly where this is going if he doesn’t get ahead of it.

He knows this particular progression. Has known it since he was nineteen, the first time it happened properly - the way it moves through its stages with the patience of something that has all day, the way no amount of willing it away changes the trajectory once it’s decided. He can manage it. He has been managing it. But managing it and it not being there are two entirely different things, and right now, in this too-bright booth with Lucy’s voice excited across the table and the light coming through the blinds at exactly the wrong angle, the distance between those two things feels considerable.

He says nothing about it. Orders sparkling water. Takes the seat that puts his right side toward the room, adjusts the angle of his head by a fraction, and folds both hands around his glass like that’s just where they live.

Lucy commandeers the conversation immediately, spreading her afternoon’s spoils across the table - earring box, more jewellery, a small wrapped something she’s refusing to explain, photographs she’d had developed at a place down the street. He watches her slide things across to you one at a time, providing full commentary on each, pausing only to check your reaction before moving on to the next.

Annabeth examines each item in turn as it reaches her end of the table, the focused attention of someone conducting a quiet debrief. She doesn’t contribute much to Lucy’s commentary. She doesn’t need to. She’s watching the room the way she always does - taking stock, filing things away - and at some point her attention settles on him.

“You’ve gone quiet,” she says, without looking up from one of Lucy’s photographs.

It takes him a second to realise she’s talking to him.

“Just tired,” he says.

“Mm.” She sets the photograph down. “You were quiet at breakfast, too.”

“Different kind of quiet,” he says, which is true and probably more than he meant to offer.

She glances at him then - not with warmth, but with the particular sharpness she reserves for things she hasn’t fully categorised yet. Her gaze moves briefly to where his hand is resting on the table, close to but not quite touching yours. She doesn’t comment on it.

He reaches for his water. Drinks. Presses two fingers briefly against his temple under the guise of pushing his hair back.

You notice.

Under the table, your knee finds his. Steady. Enquiring.

He presses back. I’m okay.

You don’t look convinced, but you let it sit.

****************

It happens forty minutes later, in the loose, directionless stretch after the food arrives and before anyone has decided what comes next. Lucy is showing Annabeth another one of her impulse buys. Everyone has settled into the particular ease that follows food - full, comfortable, the conversation gone soft at the edges.

“Steven.” Annabeth’s voice is light, conversational, the tone she uses when she’s about to say something she’s already decided isn’t a problem. “You have that look.”

He keeps his expression even. “What look?”

“The one that means you’re going to declare a headache and disappear for the rest of the afternoon.”

Lucy glances between them, smiling faintly, familiar with the script.

He opens his mouth.

“He has a migraine.” Your voice cuts in, quiet and entirely matter-of-fact. Not defensive. Not performing. Just corrective, the way you’d correct someone who’d mispronounced a word. “Not a headache. They’re not the same thing.”

A small silence.

Annabeth’s gaze moves to you. The smile doesn’t leave, exactly - it just becomes something else. Considered.

“Well,” she says, with gentle amusement. “He does have a flair for the dramatic.”

There’s a slight change in your voice when you answer. Nothing sharp. Just a door closing firmly.

“He doesn’t perform them, if that’s what you mean.” The pleasantness in your tone is not decoration.

“I only meant that Steven has always been sensitive,” Annabeth says. “To light, to noise.” Then, almost as an afterthought - “We did have him assessed when he was young. Turned out to be nothing particularly remarkable, nothing related to those heads of his.”

Something tightens in his jaw.

Nothing particularly remarkable.

He knows what the assessment was. He’s always known. The educational psychologist his parents drove him to in the next county, far enough away that no one they knew would see the car. The quiet conversation his parents had on the way home that stopped when he appeared in the doorway. The way the word was never said aloud in the Harrington house, not once, not even after his grades confirmed it year after year - as if not naming it meant it wasn’t there.

Dyslexia, added quietly to a file that was never mentioned again.

“He’s had four this week.” Your voice is still even. Still pleasant. “He took something before we left the house. It’s not working. He’s been managing it since before lunch without saying anything to anyone.”

You don’t look at him when you say it. You’re not asking for his input. You’re just making the facts available to the room.

Annabeth is quiet for a moment. Something moves across her face that isn’t quite guilt and isn’t quite recognition, but lives somewhere in the territory between them.

“Steven,” she says at last, turning to him. “Why didn’t you say something?”

He looks up. The question is genuine. That almost makes it worse.

“Didn’t seem worth the conversation,” he says.

She starts to say something. Thinks better of it. The table stays quiet a moment longer than is comfortable.

Then Lucy clears her throat and says, with the diplomatic instincts of someone who has survived too many Harrington dinners, “I saw a place two doors down that does real gelato. Should we?”

Outside, the afternoon has thickened into that particular heavy warmth that comes just before the day starts to turn. The light is still bright but softer now, angled differently, shadows beginning to stretch.

Annabeth and Lucy walk a little ahead, Lucy talking, Annabeth listening in the composed way that means she’s somewhere else entirely.

He falls back.

You stay with him.

After a moment, your hand finds his.

Not his wrist. Not a brush of fingers. His hand. Properly. Fingers threading through his, palm to palm, the grip warm and deliberate.

He looks down at it.

Then ahead.

His thumb shifts, settling in the space between your thumb and index finger, and he holds on.

They catch up with Lucy and Annabeth at the gelato place two doors down.

Lucy is already at the counter when they arrive, pointing at something involving mango and deciding aloud whether it counts as two scoops or one. She spots them over her shoulder, grins, then takes one look at Steve and turns properly to face them.

“How’s the head?”

“Still attached. Still sore,” he says.

She nods, no further interrogation, and turns back to the counter. “We should probably head back anyway. I’m melting and we’ve hit every shop worth hitting.”

While Lucy deliberates between mango and something involving caramel, Annabeth steps closer to Steve. She doesn’t make a thing of it - doesn’t touch his arm or lower her voice to signal significance. She simply opens her bag, produces a small prescription bottle, and holds it out to him.

Imitrex. Her name on the label.

She bought it - or rather, she’s been carrying it all day.

He looks at it for a second, then takes it.

“Thank you,” he says.

She nods once, already turning back toward the counter. “We’ll take them to go,” she says to Lucy, in the tone that settles things without discussing them. “I think we’ve done enough for one afternoon.”

****************

The house is mercifully cooler than outside, the air conditioning working hard as they come through the door. Voices carry through the house from somewhere - a cousin’s car in the drive, Lucy already calling out to someone - but he moves through the noise without stopping, one hand at the small of your back, steering you toward the stairs.

Annabeth watches them go up, but says nothing.

The bedroom is dim, the blinds pulled down against the afternoon glare, the room holding the particular stillness of a space that hasn’t been disturbed since morning. He closes the door behind you both and the noise of the house drops away immediately, muffled and distant and blessedly unimportant.

He sits on the edge of the bed and doesn’t move for a moment - just exists there, elbows on his knees, the mattress taking his weight for the first time since morning.

The pain is still there. It’s been there since before the café, really, since before the boutiques, since the drive in from the house when the sun came through the windscreen at the wrong angle and he’d turned his face away without thinking. He’s been mitigating it in small, careful increments all day - adjusting the angle of his head, avoiding bright windows, drinking water when he remembered, pretending when he didn’t.

The Imitrex has taken the sharpest edge off. But it hasn’t gone. The pain sits behind his left eye like something with weight to it, a dull, insistent pressure that pulses faintly when he moves too fast or the light changes. His shoulders ache from holding himself carefully for hours. His jaw aches from the same.

He’s too hot. The back of his neck is still prickling with the accumulated heat of the day, sunscreen and salt air worked into his skin, his shirt sticking faintly between his shoulder blades. The cool of the room is almost dizzying after hours in the glare - his body taking a moment to catch up with the change, still braced against a brightness that’s no longer there.

He reaches back and pulls his shirt over his head by the collar, the way he always has, the fabric dragging slow and reluctant where it’s stuck to his skin. He drops it somewhere in front of him. Doesn’t look where it lands. Doesn’t care.

The air hits his back and shoulders immediately - cool, fresh, almost sharp after the long press of the afternoon. He holds still and lets it settle over him, lets his skin adjust. The relief is so immediate it’s almost embarrassing.

He brings both hands up and presses them flat over his eyes, the heels of his palms firm against the sockets, fingers spread across his forehead. The pressure helps. It always has - something about the counterpressure, the dark, the feeling of his own hands as a barrier between himself and the light that’s still burning faintly at the edges of the blinds.

He breathes.

In for six.

Hold.

Out for six.

The rhythm comes automatically, worn into him now. Max’s voice is somewhere in the back of his head. She’d taught him this properly in the second year of her recovery - sitting on his kitchen floor with her physical therapy notes spread between them, practical as anything even then. She’d said it gave her something solid to reach for, “…when your body’s already panicking ahead of you.”

His body isn’t panicking. It’s just tired. Wrung out. Done with performing.

He stays exactly where he is - elbows on his knees, hands over his eyes, the cool room settling around him - and for the first time since morning, he stops holding himself so carefully.

“I need to lie down for a bit,” he says, from behind his hands.

“Okay.” The sound of you moving carefully in the dim room. The curtain rings shift softly on their rail, and the thin line of light burning at the edge of the window disappears.

“Better?”

He exhales. “Yeah. Thank you.”

A pause. Then, still from behind his hands, “Sorry. About today. Everything, it -.”

“Don’t,” you say simply. “Just, lie down, Steve.”

He lowers his hands.

The room is properly dark now, his eyes adjusting slowly. You’re closer than he expected, just at the edge of what he can make out - and he can see enough. The tiredness in your expression. The fact that you’re still here, in this dim room, in this damn house.

“Stay?” he asks.

“Yeah,” you say. “Of course.”

He toes off his shoes and lies back. One forearm settles over his eyes, instinctive. The other reaches out - not hovering, decisive - and finds your wrist, then your hand, drawing you toward him with a quiet certainty.

No performance in it. No audience to read it correctly.

Just him, needing you close.

You settle against the pillow and he turns into you, his head finding the curve of your shoulder, one hand resting loose at your waist. Your arm comes around him easily, and he exhales - long, slow - like something he’s been holding all day has finally been given somewhere to go.

The quiet of the room holds you both.

Outside, the house continues its distant assembly - footsteps, a burst of laughter, the deck furniture moving again as the cousins claim their territory for the evening. Annabeth had been clear at breakfast - the adults were going to dinner in town tonight, the house left to the “kids” for the evening. The sounds are muffled and far away, belonging to a different version of the afternoon. In here there’s only the hum of the air conditioning and the slow, deepening peace.

The line of his jaw softens, the clench he’s been holding since breakfast finally releasing.

After a while your fingers find his hair, moving through it in slow, gentle passes - the same lazy rhythm you’d kept at the firepit, nails grazing lightly at his scalp. His arm tightens fractionally around your waist, the only acknowledgment he gives.

The minutes stretch without needing to be filled.

Then, with half his face pressed into you so his voice comes out muffled - “…that dog, earlier, had very strong opinions.”

You shift against him slightly, and he can feel the smile in it. “About the seagulls specifically.”

“Very specifically. Like a personal grievance.”

“Turf warfare. Long history there,” you agree. “You could tell.”

Your hand in his hair, over and over.

“The ceramic thing in the store window,” he says.

“The little house…barn… thing?”

“Why were there so many windows on it?”

“It was very well-ventilated.”

“For a ceramic house.”

“I’m guessing the ceramic residents appreciate the airflow.”

He smiles - and for once doesn’t feel the need to say something to cover it.

Another stretch of quiet. The comfortable kind. The kind that doesn’t require anything from either of you.

At some point - he couldn’t say when - he’s turned further into you. His arm has found its way properly around your waist, no longer resting there so much as holding. Neither of you marked the moment it happened. It just did, the way these things have been doing all week, except quieter. More honest.

No audience. No reason.

Just this.

“The gelato was good,” he offers, after a while, his breath hot against your skin.

“Yours was better than mine.”

“You should have got the pistachio.”

“You did tell me to get the pistachio…”

“And yet…”

“- I wanted the lemon.”

“And how was the lemon?”

A pause. “Not as good as your pistachio,” you admit.

Your hand has stilled in his hair, resting there now.

The pain behind his eye has receded to something distant and manageable. The heat has left his skin. His body feels heavy in the way that precedes sleep, loose at the joints, no longer braced against anything.

He lies there in the cool and the quiet pressed against your side.

The performance falls away first. The careful management of expression, the monitoring of how he reads from a distance, the low constant hum of am I doing this right - it goes quietly, without drama, like a sound he’d stopped noticing until it finally stopped. The echo of his parents’ voices follow it. The week’s choreography. The shape of the story he’d told himself that this week would be - practical, contained, a favour between friends with a clean start and end date.

All of it.

Gone.

What’s left is simpler.

The warmth of your shoulder beneath his cheek. The weight of your hand resting in his hair. The slow, even rhythm of you breathing beside him, settled, going nowhere. His arm around you - not performing closeness, not managing it - just there, holding on because he wants to.

He notices, with something approaching wonder, that he isn’t waiting for anything.

Usually there’s a next thing - a correction coming. A moment where the room shifts and he has to adjust. He’s spent so long anticipating the next adjustment that the absence of it feels almost foreign - like a step he’d prepared for that turns out not to be there.

There’s no next thing.

There’s just this room. This quiet. The faint smell of your shampoo where his face rests on your shoulder. The particular way the air conditioning hums, low and constant, filling the silence without disturbing it.

And then, slowly - the way the tide comes in, not all at once but steadily, one increment at a time - something else arrives.

Not desire, exactly. Or not just that.

Something quieter. The recognition of something already present, already real, that he’s been carefully not looking at directly for longer than today. Longer than the almost-kiss on the beach. Longer, maybe, than Christmas two years ago with frost on the cobblestones and your breath clouding in the cold air.

He doesn’t name it.

He doesn’t need to name it to feel it settle into him like something coming to rest, filling the space where the noise used to be.

He just exists here. With you. His head on your shoulder. Your fingers in his hair.

And for the first time in longer than he can remember, that is entirely, completely enough.

He stays there. Lets it be true.

A little later, without particularly meaning to, he speaks. His voice comes out low and unguarded, the particular tone of someone talking from the far side of their defences.

“Can I tell you something?”

Your fingers flex, restarting their slow movement through his hair. “Yeah.”

A pause. Not the kind that’s looking for an exit. The kind that’s finding the right words.

“I’ve been lonely,” he says. “For - for a long time. Not sad. Not falling apart. Just…”

He breathes out slowly.

“Like there’s a frequency nobody’s been tuned to. And I got so used to it I stopped noticing. Stopped expecting it to be different.”

The air conditioning hums.

“And then this week,” he continues, slower now, the words coming with more effort, the medication and the dark and the warmth of you fraying the edges of him, “I keep noticing. All the time. How - not lonely this all is...”

He doesn’t finish the thought. He doesn’t need to.

His hand finds yours in the dark - not urgent, not searching. Just a slow drift of fingers until they reach you and stop there. His grip is loose. Already softening.

“Sorry,” he murmurs. “That probably doesn’t -”

“It makes sense,” you say. “It makes complete sense.”

He takes a breath and lets it settle.

“Okay,” he says. Small. Quiet.

And then, within a minute, his hand goes heavy in yours.

The last thing he’s aware of before sleep takes him is your hand in his and your fingers still resting in his hair. You haven’t moved.

He goes under with that.

****************

He surfaces slowly.

Not jolted out of sleep - just a gradual rising, like floating up through still water. The room is the same dim cool it was when he closed his eyes, but something has changed in the quality of the quiet - the house downstairs is louder now, voices and movement where there was stillness before, the particular energy of an evening assembling itself. He’s slept longer than he meant to.

The noise that woke him filters through the window - voices, laughter, things being dragged across the deck below with more enthusiasm than precision. He lies still for a moment, orienting himself. The pain behind his eye has retreated to a distant echo of what it was. His shoulders have unknotted somewhere in the hours of sleep. His body feels wrung out in the good way, the way it does after a long swim, loose and cooperative.

He becomes aware, in the same slow increment, of you.

Still here. Your fingers still in his hair, your breathing deep and even, your chest rising and falling slowly beneath his cheek. He isn’t sure whether you’ve slept too or simply stayed, and finds he doesn’t need to know. Either way, you’re here. Either way, you didn’t go.

He doesn’t move immediately. Lets himself have another moment of it - the warmth, the quiet, the particular stillness of a room where nothing is being performed. The thing he said before sleep sits somewhere between them, unheld. Neither of you reaches for it. It doesn’t need reaching for.

Eventually he shifts, carefully, easing himself upright without disturbing you more than necessary. He sits on the edge of the bed for a moment, scrubbing a hand over his face, then reaches for his glasses from the nightstand and pushes them on. The room resolves into focus - his discarded shirt on the floor, the curtains and blinds holding back the evening light, the ordinary quiet of a space that’s been kind to him.

He crosses to the window.

When he draws the curtain back and lifts the blind, the evening comes in all at once - warm air, salt, the amber spill of a sun starting to descend over the water. Beyond the deck, the beach runs alive with it.

Two of his cousins are struggling to hang a white bed sheet between two poles planted crookedly in the sand, arguing about the angle with the good-natured certainty of people who’ve made a head start on the drinks. Someone else is wrestling his dad’s projector onto a folding table he recognises from the garage, the cord connected to a series of extensions that lead back to the house. Chairs and loungers have been dragged to the sand in a loose arrangement, blankets thrown over the backs of them.

Then the breeze shifts, and it carries more than noise in through the open window - something green and earthy, unmistakable.

He huffs softly through his nose. Of course.

Behind him, he hears you move - the soft sounds of someone surfacing, settling, finding their bearings.

“Hey,” you say, voice still warm from sleep.

“Hey.” He doesn’t turn from the window yet. “They’re setting up outside. Looks like the movie’s happening.”

A pause, the quiet rustle of you sitting up. “How’s your head?”

He takes stock. The ache is still there, faint and distant, a memory of the day rather than the day itself. “Better,” he says. And means it.

He turns from the window then, and finds you sitting in the middle of the bed, hair rumpled, the dim evening light catching the side of your face. You look settled. Unguarded. Exactly as you did in the harbour, and at the firepit, and every other moment this week when no one was watching either of you.

Something in his chest does the thing it’s been doing all week.

He lets it.

“Give me ten minutes,” he says, reaching for his shirt from the floor. “Then we’ll go down.”

****************

By the time they make it down to the beach, the screen is up and the projector is throwing a pale rectangle of light across the sheet, the picture still finding itself as the tape loads. Someone has arranged the seating with the chaotic optimism of people who have never actually organised an outdoor cinema - chairs at odd angles, a blanket spread directly on the sand for the cousins who’d missed the rush for chairs, a cooler dragged too close to one side that half the group will complain about later.

The recliner is positioned slightly apart from the main cluster, angled toward the screen but set back enough to feel peripheral. You get there first, dropping into it and pulling your knees up, making room without being asked. He doesn’t hesitate. He swings a leg over, settling in behind you, his knees bracketing you, the recliner wide enough for both of them if neither of them is precious about space, which they aren’t. Not anymore.

You shift back into him. He makes room.

That’s all it takes.

Someone presses beers into their hands as the projector warms and the picture comes into focus, the familiar sight of Harrison Ford filling the sheet, earning a small cheer from the cousins on the sand. Lucy, cross-legged on a low deckchair nearby, raises her bottle without looking away from the screen.

“Raiders! Classic,” she whoops, to no one in particular.

He tips his beer back and lets the evening settle around him.

The fire crackles low in its pit, throwing orange light across the sand. The ocean moves steadily beyond the screen, its rhythm felt beneath everything, undisturbed by Indiana Jones or the assembled Harrington youth. The sky has gone properly dark now, stars beginning to show at the edges where the projector light doesn’t reach. Someone passes a joint through the group. It makes its way to him eventually, and he takes it without ceremony, draws twice, passes it to you over your shoulder.

You take it easily, deep inhales before you pass it to a cousin on your right.

He rests his chin at your temple, just lightly, and watches Harrison Ford sprint across the screen.

The weed is good. Not overwhelming - just enough to soften the edges of the evening, to make the firelight feel warmer and the sound of the ocean feel closer, to take the last of the headache with it as it goes. The week’s heaviness is still there somewhere, but it sits further away now, behind glass. Manageable.

Your back is warm against his chest. His arm has found its way around your waist, loose and easy, and you’ve settled your hand over his without either of you marking the moment it happened.

From along the sand, someone shouts a line before it happens, and laughter breaks across the group.

He smiles into your hair.

Then, from his left - from one of the younger cousins, Matt or Marcus, he can never remember which - a something. A voice, low and conversational, directed at him. Words arriving as shape rather than content, the way they do from that side. “Steve, man -” - and then the rest of it swallowed by the fire and the film and the distance between them.

He turns his head, angling right instinctively. “Sorry - what did y’say?”

Matt, or Marcus, waves it off easily, already distracted by something on screen.

“Nothing, doesn’t matter.”

He turns back.

You haven’t moved. But your hand, resting over his at your waist, has shifted - your fingers pressing once against his knuckles. Not drawing attention to it. Just there.

A moment passes.

Then, quietly, close enough that it doesn’t carry, “they really don’t know.”

Not a question. Just the thing settling into words now that you’ve had a few hours to sit with it.

“No,” he says.

“Your mom thinks you’re -”

“‘Contrary’,” he says. “‘Spacey’. Distracted. Too stuck up my own ass to bother listening.” The words come out bland, well-worn. “Take your pick.”

You’re quiet for a moment. On the sand, someone reaches for the joint while someone else lights a fresh one. The film plays on, the soundtrack swelling beneath it all.

“How long has she thought that?”

“Probably always.” A beat. “It was easier than explaining.”

“Easier for who?”

The question lands gently, but it lands.

He doesn’t answer straight away. His thumb moves against your hand, slow and absent, while he finds the honest version of it.

“For everyone,” he says at last. “Including me.”

You turn your head slightly, enough that he can feel it, and press your temple briefly against his jaw. No words attached to it. Just acknowledgement - of the answer, and of what it cost him to give it plainly.

He sighs.

On screen, Indiana Jones makes the swap - bag for idol, slow and careful - and holds his breath for exactly one second before everything goes wrong anyway. From the blanket, someone starts counting down before the boulder even appears.

His arm tightens around you, and stays there.

****************

The film rolls on.

He’s stopped following it. He knows the beats well enough that his ears catch the cues without his brain needing to engage - the music swelling, the cousins reacting, someone on the blanket shouting a line from memory slightly ahead of the film. It’s all background. Texture.

What he’s aware of is you.

The weight of you settled back against his chest. The specific warmth where your shoulder meets his collarbone. The way his arm has stayed around your waist since the conversation without either of you acknowledging it, like it’s simply where it lives now.

Then the wind picks up.

It comes off the water in a long, rolling gust, rippling the edges of the sheet-screen and drawing a collective groan from the cousins on the sand. Someone reaches for their hoodie. Someone else pulls a towel around their shoulders.

“Blanket?” you ask.

“Yeah,” he nods.

You lean forward to drag it from the back of the recliner, and in the rearranging that follows - blanket shaken out, the two of you shifting to accommodate it - something changes. Not dramatically. Just a quiet reorganisation of limbs that ends with you beside him rather than in front of him, the blanket pulled across both your laps, your leg pressed against his from hip to knee.

Neither of you comments on it.

The blanket settles. The film plays on.

His hand is under it now, resting on his own thigh. Close to where yours is. Not touching. Just close.

A few minutes pass. The joint makes its way back along the row. He takes it, draws once, passes it to you. You take it without looking at him, your fingers brushing his in the exchange, and he watches the side of your face while you exhale slowly toward the sky.

You pass it back.

He takes another pull and lets the warmth of it settle into his chest alongside everything else, and the edges of the evening go a little softer, a little more forgiving.

He tips his head down, mouth close to your ear.

“You good?” he says, low enough that it stays between you.

You turn your head slightly toward him. “Yeah,” you say. “You?”

“Yeah.”

The movie continues. The fire crackles.

His hand moves off his own thigh and onto yours.

The cut-offs mean his palm finds bare skin - warm, softer than denim. His hand simply moves to the inside of your thigh the way it’s been finding you all week without asking permission first, and stays there. His palm registers the difference before his brain does.

He goes very still.

Doesn’t move his hand. Doesn’t remove it either.

On screen, something crashes. The cousins react.

His little finger shifts - barely. A centimetre, maybe less. Higher. The movement is slow enough to be deniable and deliberate enough that he knows, with complete clarity, that he is not going to deny it.

Your breath changes. Not dramatically - just a small, careful adjustment, the kind that happens when someone is trying very hard not to react and is not entirely succeeding.

His thumb presses in, lightly, against the inside of your thigh.

“Steve,” you whisper, and his name at that volume does something he’s not going to examine right now.

“Mm?”

A pause, measured in heartbeats.

“You know what you’re doing,” you say. Not accusation. Just fact.

“Yeah,” he says quietly. “I do.”

Another moment passes.

Then you turn toward him - nothing sudden, just a small shift in the recliner, enough that you’re angled in, facing him more than the film. He mirrors it without thinking, the film becoming something that exists at the edge of his vision rather than in front of it.

The blanket stays across both your laps. Nobody is watching you.

Your hand moves under it.

He feels your fingers settle on his thigh - inside, the same as his, the same deliberate placement that makes the intention unmistakable. The warmth of your palm through the thin fabric of his shorts.

He keeps his face entirely neutral.

He is not feeling neutral.

On screen, Harrison Ford says something charming and roguish. His cousins laugh.

His hand moves higher. Fraction by fraction, fingers spreading slowly against your bare skin. He can feel the warmth radiating off you, the faint tension in the muscle beneath his palm, and he is aware - acutely, completely aware - of every millimetre between where his hand currently is and where it currently isn’t.

Your fingers flex against his thigh in response.

The breath leaves him carefully through his nose.

This is the game, then.

Neither of you has said so. Neither of you needs to. It’s simply there - established in the mirrored pressure of hands under a blanket, in the way both of you are pretending to watch a film you stopped caring about twenty minutes ago.

How far.

How high.

Who reaches the edge first and admits it by stepping back from it.

Hopper exists between you, solid and available and unspoken.

Neither of you reaches for the word.

Your hand moves. Slow and deliberate, higher on his thigh, and the effect of it is immediate and total - every nerve lighting at once, his whole awareness collapsing down to the specific pressure of your palm and the heat of it through the fabric and the fact that you are doing this on purpose and so is he and neither of you is stopping.

He moves his hand higher. A fingertip under the edge of your cutoffs.

Your breath stutters - just once, just slightly - and the sound of it, barely audible under the film and the fire and the ocean, hits him somewhere low and does not help at all.

He can feel your hand on him. He is, in fact, incapable of thinking about anything else - the warmth of your palm, the slight spread of your fingers, the pressure of it, high enough now that there is no reading of this that’s innocent, no version where either of you can claim you didn’t know what you were doing. You are both doing this. Fully. Deliberately. Eyes open.

And you haven’t stopped.

And neither has he.

His jaw is tight. His shoulders are tight. Everything in him is pulled fucking tight in one direction and he is holding himself back by an effort of will that is becoming, honestly, heroic.

Your fingers shift - just slightly, just enough - and his breath catches in a way he cannot fully suppress, a small, involuntary thing that he feels in his chest and his throat and everywhere else all at once.

He goes very still.

So do you.

The moment stretches.

He turns his head toward you. You turn yours toward him.

And the space between your faces is nothing - less than nothing - close enough that he can feel the warmth of your breath against his mouth, close enough that the specific details of your face have resolved into something almost unbearable to look at directly. The firelight on the curve of your cheekbone. Your lips, slightly parted. The way your eyes move to his mouth and stay there, and stay there, and don’t come back up.

He feels that like a hand around his throat.

He wants to kiss you.

He wants to kiss you in a way that has nothing polite or restrained or performative about it, nothing to do with his parents watching or the week’s choreography or any of the reasons this started. He wants it the way you want something you’ve been not-wanting for so long that the not-wanting has become its own kind of exhausting.

His hand is still on your thigh. Your hand is still on his. Neither of you has moved and neither of you is moving and the gap between your mouths is a single decision and he is so close to making it -

Around them someone on a blanket shouts something at the screen. Laughter breaks across the group, loud and sudden, and the world asserts itself for one jarring second - the fire, the cousins, the ordinary indifferent beach - before receding again.

Neither of you looks away from each other.

“This is a terrible idea,” you say. Breathless. The words barely making it out at all.

“Probably,” he says.

Neither of you moves away.

His fingertip moves - one slow, deliberate arc - and finds the edge of it. Denim giving way to something softer, a narrow border of cotton or lace, the difference unmistakable, even with barely any contact at all.

He stops there.

Right at that edge.

And you make a sound - quiet and involuntary, barely anything at all - and it costs him something he doesn’t have a name for to stay still.

He stays still.

Your hand shifts on him - pressure, warmth, the devastating patience of it - and he breathes out through his nose and does not move and does not speak and holds the edge with everything he has.

The air between your mouths is warm and charged and measured in millimetres.

He thinks about closing it.

He thinks about saying it.

Hopper.

The word is right there, solid and ridiculous and available, and it would work - it would do exactly what it’s supposed to do, break this open and let them both breathe.

He doesn’t say it.

Not because he doesn’t mean it. Not because he isn’t feeling everything the word would mean.

But because saying it would mean admitting how far over the edge he already is.

And he isn’t ready to give that up yet.

So he stays.

His hand on your thigh. Yours on his. The almost of your mouth. The fire burning down around you.

The credits begin to roll.

It happens gradually - the group stirring, someone stretching, a bottle set down, Lucy announcing that her back is done with the deckchair and she needs to stretch. The ordinary sounds of an evening fading, people collecting themselves and drifting toward the house in ones and twos, blankets gathered, chairs left for tomorrow.

Neither of you moves immediately.

Your hands stay where they are for a moment longer than they should, the world reassembling around you while you both hold the edge.

Then, slowly - by degrees, the way the evening itself has been unwinding - you separate. His hand slides from your thigh. You move a little. The blanket shifts.

You sit for a moment in the cooling air, side by side, not quite touching anymore.

“You almost said it,” you say to him quietly.

He looks at the fire. The embers have gone low and orange, pulsing faintly in the breeze.

“So did you,” he says.

You make a small sound - not quite a laugh, not quite agreement. Something in between, warm and private, belonging only to the two of you and the dark beach and the dying fire.

You stand, pulling the blanket around your shoulders.

He looks up at you.

In the firelight, with your hair loose and your feet bare in the sand and the ocean moving steadily behind you, you look - he doesn’t finish the thought. He doesn’t need to.

“I’m going in,” you say. Your voice is easy. No pressure in it, no expectation. Just the fact of it.

“Okay,” he says.

You look at him for a moment, and then you lean down and press a kiss to his temple. Warm. Natural. Your hand resting briefly at the side of his face before it falls away.

Then you go.

He watches you cross the sand toward the house, the blanket trailing behind you, until the light from the deck swallows you up.

He stays where he is.

Around him, the last of the cousins are pulling their chairs and blankets up closer to the dying fire. Someone has found a guitar from god knows where and given it to Matt or Marcus, someone else is opening another round of beers and someone else hands one to him without being asked. He takes it. Leans back. Lets the night settle around him.

The wind dies down, and the ocean keeps rolling in.

He sits with everything the evening has given him - your hand on his leg, another near kiss, the way you’d said you almost said it as though it were the most ordinary thing in the world. Your lips on his temple. The way you’d just gone. No drama. No demand. Just you, trusting him with everything.

He doesn’t try to organise any of it into something manageable.

He just lets it exist, the way he’d let the feeling in the bedroom exist - warm and certain and bigger than he knows what to do with.

Matt or Marcus gives up on mutilating a Pearl Jam song after sustained criticism and switches to something older, something their grandmother used to play in the car on long drives, and the complaints stop immediately. Someone sings along, quietly, and nobody tells them to stop.

Steve is on his second beer when Lucy drops into the chair beside him.

She doesn’t say anything at first. Just pulls her knees up, wraps her arms around them, looks at the fire the way people do when they’re not really looking at the fire.

He waits.

“She went in?” Lucy says, eventually.

“Yeah.”

She nods. Picks up a stick from the sand and pokes at the edge of the fire with it, not for any particular reason.

“She’s good,” she says. Not a question. Not quite a statement. Just the observation, set down between them.

“Yeah,” he says. “She is.”

Lucy turns the stick over in her hands. The fire pops softly.

“I’m glad you brought her,” she says. “For what it’s worth. Which I know is not much, coming from me.”

He looks at her sideways. “It’s worth something.”

She grins - quick, a little self-deprecating. “After the… the whole Robin situation.”

“After the Robin situation,” he agrees.

They sit with that for a moment, in the particular companionship of shared family history.

“This one’s different anyway,” Lucy says, eyes back on the fire.

He doesn’t answer.

She doesn’t push.

That’s the thing about Lucy - she’s sharp enough to see the whole picture and settled enough in herself not to need to prove it. She drops the stick into the sand, reaches over and steals a sip from his beer without asking, hands it back.

“Your mom’s going to be insufferable tomorrow,” she says, tone shifting into something easier, lighter. “She’s already decided the rehearsal dinner seating. I’ve been moved - again.”

“She moves everyone twice.”

“Three times, in my case. I think she’s punishing me.”

“For the Robin thing. Still?”

“Presumably.” Lucy sighs. “In my defence, I didn’t think anyone was watching.”

He gives her a look.

“Which is not a defence,” she concedes. “I know. I’m sorry. I was - making out with your fake girlfriend wasn’t my finest hour.”

“It really wasn’t.”

“Robin was lovely, for what it’s worth.”

“She is,” he says. “She still is.”

Lucy winces slightly. “Right. Sorry. Is she, uh - ”

“Lucy. I’m not giving you her number -”

“No. Sure, no, that’s cool, I -”

He smirks. “But if she asks… I’ll give her yours.”

She looks at him. Something in her expression is fond in the particular way of people who have known you since you were small and have chosen, repeatedly, to keep knowing you.

“You look better than you did this morning,” she says.

He thinks about the bedroom, the cool dark, the weight of everything setting itself down.

“Yeah,” he says. “I feel better.”

Lucy nods once, satisfied, and lets it go at that.

The guitar moves into something else. The fire breathes. The ocean rolls in and pulls back and rolls in again, patient and endless.

Steve tips his beer back and looks up at the stars.

He stays down there for a long time.

[zelinkcrossing]

HOLDING MY BREATH AGAIN OH THEY ARE INSANE THIS IS INSANE

i need to like go outside or get some air or SOMETHING lowkey the yearning is telling me it is bedtime

[morninglesss]

disparate youth, pt.4

Steve Harrington x f!reader // part one / part two / part three / part four / part five / part six / part seven / part eight // complete

Outer Banks, summer 1995. Steve’s parents are celebrating their thirty year anniversary with a week of parties, photos, and perfect appearances. Steve shows up out of obligation - and brings you as his “girlfriend” for survival. This time - Steve’s parents are in no danger of winning any parenting awards any time soon. He learns how to push, how to be pushed, and learns that he quite likes it. We’re also very much on the “Steve Harrington has a tummy now” bandwagon. 🎉

word count: 8.8k words

As always: Steve Harrington deserved better, so I gave him softness. 🌊

Breakfast is busier than Steve expected.

The house is full again - cousins and aunts and uncles and friends who “just happened to be nearby” and drifted in early enough to be seen before being gently redistributed toward whatever carefully curated pre-vow renewal activity Annabeth and Danny have lined up for them.

The same rotation every big event. The same choreography.

People arrive, deposit their laughter at the long table, tell the same stories they’ve been telling for twenty years, and then are funnelled toward boats or beaches or brunch reservations that keep them pleasantly occupied and neatly out of the way.

Managed. Positioned. Accounted for.

Steve doesn’t think of them as lesser, but he recognises the hierarchy. Always has.

Who gets the main table.

Who gets the patio.

Who gets the polite ‘we must do this again’ before noon.

And every now and then - usually when he’s been here long enough to feel the old patterns settle over him - he wonders how close he’s come to slipping down a tier himself.

“Maggie mentioned something interesting this morning.” The words float from Annabeth and down the table like a silk napkin.

Steve doesn’t look up right away. He’s cutting into a wedge of melon, the knife dragging softly across porcelain, sunlight pooling on the white linen like it’s been staged for a magazine shoot. The air smells like coffee and citrus and salt and too many people demonstrating performative ease.

But he knows that tone.

He looks.

Annabeth settles at the head of the table like a fixed point, everything else expected to orient itself accordingly. Even in artfully crushed linen she looks composed, curated, the napkin in her hand folded into something crisp and deliberate. Lucy is already leaning back in her chair nearby, smiling faintly, like she can sense entertainment coming.

“Apparently,” Annabeth continues lightly, her attention settling on you now, “and truly, don’t take this as criticism, dear - it isn’t meant that way -”

It’s always meant that way.

“- someone didn’t pack anything suitably striking for the rehearsal dinner and vow renewal.”

The word striking lands like a pin drawn slowly across glass.

The cube of melon slides from Steve’s fork and drops back onto his plate with a soft, wet sound.

Lucy snorts.

He doesn’t even notice it. He’s already looking at you.

You’ve gone still. Not dramatically. Just enough. Your shoulders draw in a fraction. Colour rises along your neck like you’ve been called out in class without warning.

“I- I didn’t realise -”

“You weren’t told,” Steve says, before you can finish.

His voice is even, almost mild. But there’s a tension beneath it that he doesn’t bother to disguise.

“If we’d known we were packing for a wedding, we’d have packed for a wedding. We packed for beach house. Dinners - ” He gestures toward the open windows, the dunes beyond, the heavy salt air drifting in. “ - Corolla.”

Annabeth doesn’t look at him.

That’s the move.

Her gaze stays on you.

“Of course you weren’t told. That’s entirely my oversight,” she says smoothly. “But when Maggie mentioned it this morning, I said, ‘well, that simply won’t do.’ Didn’t I, Maggie?”

From the pantry, Maggie’s voice floats back in cheerful agreement.

Lucy props her chin in her hand. “We can’t have you fading into the background,” she says brightly. “Harrington women don’t fade. It’s practically genetic.”

You try for humour. “But I’m not a -”

Annabeth’s brow lifts, just slightly amused. “Aren’t you?”

The table goes quieter than it has been all morning.

Steve sees the pause in you - the reset, the choice to tread lightly.

“I brought a couple of dresses,” you say carefully. “For dinners. They’re fine, I promise. You’re welcome to take a look.”

Annabeth reaches across and lays her hand over yours.

It looks warm.

It isn’t.

“Darling,” she says, her voice softening into an approximation of maternal, “- fine is for grocery shopping. Not for photographs that will sit on mantels for twenty years.”

She says it as if she’s offering you a gift.

Steve watches the way your fingers go still beneath hers. The way your smile lingers a second too long, carefully assembled, as though you’re already calculating the safest way to respond without seeming ungrateful. You nod, because that’s what you do when cornered in a room like this - absorb first, speak second.

Annabeth’s thumb presses lightly against the back of your hand before she withdraws it, satisfied in the way someone is satisfied when a problem has been quietly solved.

And he feels it then - not anger exactly, not even surprise, but a low, familiar irritation that tightens somewhere beneath his ribs.

It isn’t about a dress. It isn’t the word striking. It’s the ease of it. The way the decision slides into place without anyone asking whether you actually want it. The way his mother assumes authority over you as naturally as she arranges flowers or assigns seats. The implication that you’ll understand the impossible standards, that you’ll appreciate the upgrade, that you’ll fold neatly into the shape of things.

He knows that tone. He grew up under it. He learned how to stand still while it redirected him, how to swallow the small humiliations disguised as improvements. How to let himself be curated in front of people who were smiling.

Seeing it redirected at you unsettles him more than he expects - not because you can’t handle yourself, but because no one thought to ask whether you wanted to be part of the spectacle

Under the table, he shifts his leg until his knee brushes yours. The contact is light, almost accidental, but he means it. You lean into it just slightly, enough that he feels the weight of you there, and something in him steadies.

Annabeth smooths her napkin back onto her plate and begins talking about the shopping trip as if this has always been the plan.

Steve keeps his gaze on you a second longer than he means to, watching the way you compose yourself, the way you prepare to go along with it all.

That’s when the decision starts to form. If they’re going to manage you, he’s not leaving you to deal with it alone.

Annabeth’s eyes flick across to him. Quick. Measuring. “There’s a boutique on the boardwalk that owes me a favour or two.”

“Mom - ” he starts.

She continues over him, already listing possibilities. “We’ll make a day of it. Nails, perhaps. Something light and bright.”

“I’ll come.” The words drop onto the polished calm of breakfast like something dragged in from outside - wrong, disruptive, unmistakable.

Lucy blinks at him, then laughs outright. “You want to come with us?”

“Why not?” he says, already knowing this won’t be the end of it.

“Because it’s dress shopping,” she says, incredulous. “With women. Girl time.”

He shrugs. “So?”

Lucy leans forward, eyes bright with mischief. “What, you don’t trust us to take care of her for a few hours?”

There’s a hum of interest around the table now.

“She’ll survive without you, Stevie,” Lucy continues lightly. “It’s not as though we’re going to interrogate her.”

You shift beside him - subtle, but he feels it. The tension in your thigh against his. The way your shoulders square just a fraction.

Lucy notices everything. She tilts her head, studying him with exaggerated curiosity.

“So what is this?” she asks, sly and amused. “You suddenly allergic to letting your girlfriend out of your sight for a few hours?”

A ripple of laughter moves around the table - soft, polite, approved.

Harmless, on the surface. But not entirely.

Steve doesn’t smile.

He sets his fork down carefully.

“She’s not the one who needs supervising.”

Lucy’s brows lift. “Oh?”

He doesn’t raise his voice. “She brought what she thought she needed. Seems like she packed just fine. Mom and Dad are the ones who changed the brief.”

A couple of cousins suddenly find their plates fascinating. Someone makes a small, choked sound that might be a cough.

Lucy rolls her eyes, but there’s a flicker there now - assessment. She hadn’t expected him to hold the line.

“Relax, Steve,” she says lightly. “We’re trying to help her.”

“She doesn’t need rescuing.”

He leaves it there.

What he doesn’t say - and doesn’t need to - is that he’s watched this version of “help” unfold his entire life. It arrives wrapped in silk and leaves you subtly rearranged.

Beside him, you lean in just enough for your shoulder to brush his arm.

“I’m sitting right here, you know,” you murmur.

Not reprimand. Not embarrassment. A small reminder.

He glances at you, and some of the edge drains from his expression. “I know.”

Lucy watches that exchange closely now, something in her posture shifting.

For a second, it almost looks like she might push again. Instead she leans back in her chair with a shrug.

“Suit yourself,” Lucy says lightly. “Just don’t pretend you have taste once we’re there.”

Polite laughter moves down the table - socially sanctioned, carefully measured. The tension thins, but it doesn’t dissolve.

Steve lets it. He doesn’t bite. Doesn’t rise to it.

Annabeth turns to him fully now, folding her napkin with quiet precision before speaking.

“Steven,” she says carefully, “I’m not sure your input is required here.”

It isn’t loud, she doesn’t need it to be.

The atmosphere changes, just a touch.

He feels the expectation in it - the demand for an easy backtrack, a joke, an eye roll.

Instead he shifts his chair a little closer to yours and holds his mother’s gaze. “It is today.”

He doesn’t lift his voice or sweeten it for the table.

He just reaches for your hand and links his fingers with yours, holding there - not as a shield, not as a gesture - but as fact. We come as a pair.

Annabeth studies him, curious.

He doesn’t give her anything neat to file away.

From the counter, Danny’s voice cuts in. “So you’re choosing dresses over the open sea?”

It’s said lightly enough to pass for humour. It isn’t.

Steve turns.

His father is standing with the grapefruit half-carved in its bowl, the spoon resting inside it like he forgot what he was doing. A dish towel is still in his hand. He isn’t smiling.

“We’ve got the boat ready,” Danny continues, nodding toward the strip of blue visible between the dunes. “Rick’s already out there checking the lines. It’s flat as glass this morning. Couldn’t ask for better.”

He pauses, waiting. “You skipped golf yesterday,” he adds. “Figured you’d at least make the boat trip.”

The mood changes again, subtle and careful. A cousin suddenly very interested in their coffee. Lucy watching with keen eyes. Annabeth going still in a way that suggests she’ll intervene if this tips too far.

Steve feels it - the old pressure - the expectation that this is where he is meant to shrug, concede, step back into formation.

Instead, he stays where he is.

Danny studies him for a moment longer than necessary.

“I don’t get it,” he says finally, and there’s no performance in it now. Just frustration that’s been building quietly for years. “You used to be the first one down at the dock. I couldn’t drag you off that boat when you were a kid.”

There’s memory there. Something almost fond, but it hardens quickly.

“Now every time we try to get you involved - in anything, you’ve got one foot out the door. Like you’re just killing time with us until you can leave again. It would be nice, Steve, if you could even act like you gave a damn.”

That one lands.

Steve doesn’t look away.

“Involved,” he says, careful with the word. “Is that what you think this is?”

Danny lets out a breath, sharp through his nose. “Yeah,” he says. “Involved. Out on the water with your dad and with the guys who’ve known you since you were ten.”

He steps closer, lowering his voice - not enough to be private, just enough to make it pointed.

“I’m asking you to spend a day with me,” he says. “That’s it.”

There it is.

Not the boat.

Not the week.

Him.

Steve swallows. He hadn’t expected Danny to say it that plainly.

“And yeah,” Danny continues, frustration edging back in, “it’s starting to feel like you don’t want to.”

The accusation is quieter now. That makes it worse.

Steve feels you move beside him - not dramatically, just enough that he knows you’re bracing, maybe preparing to excuse yourself from the table, to make this easier.

He tightens his grip on your hand without looking at you.

“This isn’t about not wanting to,” he says, steady.

“Then what is it?” Danny shoots back. “Because from where I’m standing, it looks like you show up out of obligation and check out the second you can.”

There’s something brittle in that. Something wounded.

Steve feels sixteen again for half a heartbeat - told he isn’t serious enough, invested enough, built the right way.

“I come here and it feels like I’m late to something that’s already started,” he says instead, the words quieter than he expected them to be. “Like I’m invited to things but never actually part of how they’re decided.”

The room falls silent, the whole family and assorted adjacents watching Harringtons senior and junior.

Danny blinks, thrown off rhythm.

“That’s not -” he starts, then stops.

“It’s not just the boat,” Steve continues, not raising his voice, not performing at all. “It’s all of it. I come here and it feels like everything’s already moving without me. I either fall in line or I step aside.”

Danny’s jaw tightens. “So you step aside,” he says.

“Sometimes, yeah,” Steve answers.

The honesty spreads out between them, ugly.

Danny studies him, searching for sarcasm, for defiance. He doesn’t find it. “And that’s supposed to feel better? Because it doesn’t feel great from this side either.”

Steve hadn’t expected that, either.

For a moment, neither of them speaks. The house hums around them - distant cutlery, a door opening somewhere down the hall, the ocean pressing steadily beyond the dunes.

“I do give a damn, Dad,” Steve says finally. “I just don’t always know how to show it the way you expect.”

Danny’s mouth presses into a thin line. “You’re here,” he says. “But it doesn’t always feel like you’re in it with us.”

There’s no heat in it now. Just something worn down.

Steve feels the instinct to push back - to list the ways he’s felt sidelined here, the ways he’s learned to withdraw before he can be rearranged - but it falters. Because for the first time, he isn’t looking at the idea of his father. He’s looking at the man.

The hair at Danny’s temples has gone fully grey. The sun has left its permanent map across his skin, in lines and marks. The broadness that once filled doorways and board rooms feels narrower now, a little less indestructible. The hand holding the dish towel flexes once before going still, as if he’s searching for the right words and coming up short.

There’s no bluster in him right now. Just a man who doesn’t see his son often enough and doesn’t know why it feels like there’s always chasm between them when he does.

Steve feels something tighten in his chest - not defensiveness this time, not irritation - but a sudden, uncomfortable awareness that this version of his father won’t always be here to argue with. That these mornings, these invitations, even the clumsy challenges, are finite in a way they never felt when he was younger.

For a second, the room falls away - the cousins, his mother, the careful choreography - and it’s just the two of them, standing on either side of a conversation they’ve never quite managed to have.

He exhales slowly. “I’m not halfway out the door,” he says, and it comes out softer than he expected. “I just don’t know how to be the man you want me to be.”

Danny studies him, searching his face for sarcasm and finding none. “You used to,” he says, quieter now.

“Yeah, when I was a kid,” Steve answers.

And it isn’t defiance. It’s recognition.

Danny looks at him for a long moment after that, the frustration in his expression thinning into something less combustible and more difficult to name. His gaze drops - not to the floor, not away - but to where Steve’s hand is wrapped around yours, as if that detail is suddenly the centre of the equation.

He takes it in slowly. The proximity. The steadiness. The fact that Steve hasn’t let go once during any of this.

“You don’t have to make it complicated,” Danny says quietly. “I just wanted you there with me. That’s it.”

Steve hears the plea beneath it. He hadn’t expected to.

“I know,” he answers, and he means it.

Danny’s eyes move between the two of you again, recalculating. He can see that something about Steve is different - more rooted, less reactive - and that unsettles him almost as much as it irritates him.

He shifts the towel in his hands, glances once toward the bright strip of water beyond the dunes, and when he looks back his expression has settled into something guarded.

“Fine,” he says at last. “It’s your call.”

The words hang there, not quite neutral, not quite generous.

Then, after a breath, quieter: “I just hope this one’s worth it.”

He doesn’t raise his voice. He doesn’t even look directly at you when he says it. But the implication lands all the same - that Steve has chosen, that there’s a cost attached to it, that history suggests he doesn’t always choose wisely.

For a flicker of a second, Steve feels the old instinct to smooth it over, to laugh and promise he’ll be out on the boat next time, to turn the moment into something easier to swallow.

Instead, he tightens his grip on your hand - not possessive, not performative, just certain - and meets his father’s eyes.

“She’s not something I’m trading you for,” he says, quietly but without hesitation. “And I’m not walking away from you.”

The room is so still he can hear the distant hiss of the tide beyond the dunes.

“I’m choosing to be with her today,” he continues, more measured than heated. “That’s all.”

Danny studies him as if trying to detect bravado or defensiveness and finding neither. The irritation is still there, but it’s threaded now with something more vulnerable - the recognition that this isn’t teenage rebellion or casual drift.

It’s deliberate.

After a long moment, Danny exhales and nods once, the movement small and reluctant.

“Right, son,” he says.

Not agreement. Not approval.

Just acknowledgement that the ground has shifted and neither of them quite knows what to do with that yet.

Steve doesn’t feel victorious. He doesn’t feel triumphant. He feels bruised, but certain.

It’s not a win. It’s just a line he’s chosen to hold.

****************

In a display of some sort of awkward karmic balance, Aunt Juliane announces she’ll join her husband and the men for the day’s fishing, sparing herself the spectacle of Annabeth presiding over three twenty-somethings in varying states of thinly disguised irritation. Steve suspects it’s the wisest decision made all morning. Neither he nor you want to be conscripted into a fashion tribunal, and Lucy, for all her theatrical enthusiasm, is only there because she enjoys the friction of it.

After breakfast, Annabeth shepherds everyone toward the Mercedes with the efficiency of someone who believes organisation is a virtue in itself. Lucy darts ahead and calls shotgun as if it’s a victory worth winning, as if either of you would fight her for it. Steve lets her have the front seat without comment and folds himself into the back behind her, knees immediately punished by her insistence on shoving the seat back as far as it will go. He doesn’t bother protesting. If he shifts just enough to press his knees forward until she can feel the quiet retaliation through to her back, that’s between him and the leather.

He keeps his gaze fixed out the window at first, jaw still tight from the kitchen, from his father’s voice, from the old familiar script. The house recedes in the rear-view mirror - white clapboard, tidy shutters, expectation - shrinking until it becomes just another postcard façade against the dunes.

The radio hums up front, low and forgettable. Lucy chatters brightly about boutiques and silhouettes and “statement pieces,” tossing the words back over her shoulder as if she’s narrating a runway show. Annabeth answers in clipped, immaculate syllables, sunglasses down, manicured hands steady on the wheel. No one mentions the argument. No one so much as glances in his direction. The silence around it feels intentional, curated, as though acknowledging it would irrevocably stain the morning.

A headache begins its slow, insistent tightening behind his left eye, the familiar warning sign of one of his bad heads gathering momentum. He remembers packing the pills into his washbag and wonders, not for the first time, why he never thinks to keep some in his wallet. It would be practical. It would make sense. He has never been accused of being either.

He feels you shift beside him, the movement subtle enough that it might have been the car taking a bend. You slide closer along the back seat until your knee presses against his thigh and remains there, solid and unembarrassed. The contact is small, but it steadies him more effectively than any tablet ever could.

He doesn’t let himself overanalyse it. He doesn’t give doubt the chance to pry open the moment. He simply lets his hand fall, naturally, as though it’s always belonged there, settling over your shoulder and drifting down to your bare arm. Your skin is warm from the sun and softer than the leather beneath him, and his thumb begins its slow, absent journey upward, tracing the curve of your shoulder, the back of your neck, brushing lightly through the fine strands of hair at your nape. It isn’t calculated. It isn’t for show. He just needs to feel something that isn’t disappointment.

You respond without hesitation, moulding yourself against him as far as the rigid back seat will allow, turning until your head rests against his shoulder as though it were the most obvious place for it to be. Your hand slides across his stomach in a path that feels exploratory only in the gentlest sense, then retraces its route before slipping beneath the hem of his shirt. Your palm settles flat against the curve of his belly, skin to skin, warm and deliberate.

The warmth of your hand settles him in a way he can’t quite name, smoothing the sharp edges of the morning. It’s not sharp, nor startled. Just deeper, fuller, as though something inside him has been given permission to unfurl.

Your thumb moves lazily against his stomach, slow arcs that don’t ask for anything and don’t demand explanation. The contact isn’t charged; it’s anchoring. The steady pressure of your hand feels like a quiet assertion - I’m here. You’re here. We’re okay.

The hum of the engine and the rhythm of the road blur into something distant and unimportant. The tightening behind his eye eases by imperceptible degrees. His shoulders drop, the anger from breakfast softening at the edges until it becomes manageable, almost abstract. He tilts his head just enough to press his mouth into your hair, not quite a kiss and not something meant to be seen, simply an instinctive acknowledgment of the comfort you’re offering him.

For a few unguarded minutes, the world reduces itself to the press of your palm against his skin, the slow stroke of his thumb at your neck, the shared cadence of breath that begins to match without effort. He doesn’t think about his parents or what any of this looks like from the outside. He doesn’t think about what it means. He only knows that the noise in his head has quietened and that the tension he carried out of the kitchen has shifted, redistributed, made bearable by the simple fact of you leaning into him.

Lucy’s laughter flares up from the front seat, light and self-satisfied, and the car begins to slow, gravel ticking softly beneath the tyres as town gathers around them in sun-bleached storefronts and hand-painted signs. The shift from cocoon to daylight is gradual but unmistakable; the world presses back in through the windows long before the engine cuts.

”C’mon, lovebirds. We’re here.”

He doesn’t move at first.

Your hand is still warm beneath his shirt, thumb tracing those slow, absent arcs over his skin as though there’s nowhere else either of you needs to be. He lets his own hand drift once more over the back of your neck, fingertips catching briefly in your hair, committing the feel of it to memory without meaning to.

The car settles into stillness.

Doors open up front. A rush of coastal heat spills in, thick with salt and sunscreen and the distant tang of fryer oil, wrapping around them and dissolving the quiet pocket they’d carved out in the back seat. Lucy is already halfway out, calling something about starting on the east side of the street before the “good stuff” gets picked over.

He exhales, not heavy, just measured, and only then lets his arm fall from around you. Your hand slides free from beneath his shirt in the same gentle way it arrived, smoothing the fabric back into place, grounding him one last time before the day resumes.

For a moment, you look at each other without speaking.

He reaches up, brushing a loose strand of hair back from your face, thumb grazing your cheekbone in a gesture that feels quieter than everything that came before it.

Then he opens his door and steps out into the glare.

Lucy has already looped her arm through yours by the time he comes around the car, steering you toward the nearest boutique with the authority of someone who has appointed herself director of events. You glance back once, not uncertain, just checking, and he gives the smallest nod before falling into step a few paces behind.

Annabeth joins him without comment.

The sidewalk radiates heat through the soles of his shoes. The air is thick with perfume from the open shop doors and the distant churn of the ocean just out of sight. Ahead of him, Lucy gestures animatedly at a window display, already narrating how this will go.

His mother keeps her sunglasses on, which somehow makes it worse. The lenses turn her into something reflective and unreadable, all polish and control.

“You could make this easier, Steven,” she says at last, her voice pitched low enough that it never leaves the space between them.

He doesn’t look at her. He keeps his eyes on you up ahead, Lucy already drawing you toward the first window display. The sound of your laughter carries back to him, lighter than it was at breakfast. He holds onto that.

“I’m not trying to make anything harder,” he replies, keeping his tone level, neutral.

“No,” she agrees, smooth as ever. “You rarely try.”

The faintest pause. “But you do have a talent for… blurring things.”

His steps falter as a fresh wave of irritation hits. “I’m not blurring anything, what do you mean?”

She adjusts the strap of her bag on her shoulder, pausing just long enough that he has to fall back into step beside her.

“Steven. If she is important to you, then behave as though she is.”

He glances at her, irritation flashing sharp in his tone. “I am.”

“Are you?” she asks, without inflection. “Because from the outside, it reads as tentative. As though you’re… trying her out for size.”

That makes him stop half a second before he recovers.

“I brought her down here. For this week. I had her meet all of you. I asked her to walk into all this -” He gestures vaguely behind them, toward the disappointment and expectation still clinging to his shadow. “What exactly do you think that means?”

“I think,” Annabeth replies evenly, “that bringing someone into a room is not the same thing as committing to them in it.”

He exhales sharply. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“On the contrary,” she says, still composed. “I know exactly what I’m talking about. You did something similar with Robin.”

His jaw tightens. “Robin is my friend.”

“Yes,” Annabeth agrees. “And yet you allowed us to believe she was more than that. You curated that impression.”

“I didn’t - ”

“You didn’t correct it,” she says smoothly. “You let it solidify. You let the family treat her accordingly.”

His jaw tightens.

“And then,” she continues, “it unravelled. Publicly.”

There’s no accusation in her tone. Just memory.

“We were made to look foolish, Steven. Not because she is who she is - that was never the issue - but because you chose not to be honest. You let us construct an understanding. And you let it persist until it collapsed in front of half the family.”

The memory needles him more than he expects - not because she’s wrong, but because she’s reduced something complicated and tender and necessary into a neat, strategic failure.

“That’s not the same,” he mutters.

“Perhaps not,” she concedes. “But from a distance, Steven, the pattern looks familiar.”

Pattern.

He hates that word.

Ahead of them, the boutique window catches the sun and throws it back in fractured light. Lucy is already halfway inside, ushering you in with theatrical enthusiasm. You spot him in the reflection and glance over your shoulder at him, warm and trusting, and something in his chest tightens, not fragile but protective.

Annabeth lowers her voice further.

“I am not asking you to perform,” she says. “I am asking you to be decisive. If this young woman matters, then let that be evident. If she does not, then do not confuse the room.”

There it is.

Not loud. Not dramatic.

Clinical.

He feels the warmth from the back seat evaporate as though someone has opened a window inside him. The steadying comfort of your hand beneath his shirt recedes into memory. In its place, the old irritation rises - that sharp awareness of being observed and categorised.

“We’re not confusing anyone,” he says.

Annabeth turns her head fully toward him now, sunglasses reflecting the street back at him so he can see himself faintly in the dark lenses.

“You are confusing the room, Steven.” Calm. Certain. Assessment, not accusation.

He had thought they were convincing. He had thought the week was playing well - the touches, the laughter, the ease. He had believed he knew how to manage a room, how to present something clearly enough that no one would question it.

Apparently not.

“She’s not a prop,” he says, low, the words slipping out before he tempers them.

“I didn’t say she was.” A pause. “I am saying that if you want to be taken seriously, you must behave seriously. Decide.”

The word lands heavier than the rest.

Nearly thirty, and still being briefed before an event. Still being coached into the correct expression.

He feels that old pressure rise - the instinct to straighten his spine, soften his mouth into the right smile, deliver the polished version of himself that photographs well and offends no one.

He hates that he still knows exactly how to do it.

“I have,” he says, and this time the edge in it is unmistakable.

Annabeth studies him for a fraction of a second behind dark lenses, weighing something invisible. Then she inclines her head once - acknowledgement, not approval.

“We’ll see,” she says.

And she opens the boutique door.

****************

The door swings inward with a polite chime, and the air inside is several degrees cooler than the street, perfumed faintly with pressed linen and something floral that feels synthetic rather than natural. Annabeth steps in first, posture immaculate, and the assistant behind the counter straightens instinctively in response to the tone she carries rather than the words she uses.

Lucy takes command almost immediately, sweeping you toward a rack near the back as though she’s unveiling treasure. Annabeth engages the assistant with brisk efficiency, speaking in silhouettes and colour palettes, in neckline decisions and fabric weight, in terms that reduce the week into something manageable and picture-perfect.

Steve lingers.

He watches the choreography unfold - Lucy selecting options with theatrical flourish, Annabeth narrowing them down with a glance and a lift of one brow. The assistant smiles and nods and disappears toward the fitting rooms with an armful of hangers.

You go with her.

He feels it then - the shift from private closeness to public appraisal.

The first dress is too structured. The second washes you out. The third is declared “almost,” which is somehow worse than no. The fourth earns a long silence from Annabeth before she tilts her head and says, “No. It makes her look cheap.”

You step out each time with composure, a polite half-smile, eyes flicking briefly toward him before returning to Lucy’s commentary.

He tries to catch your eye long enough to give you something reassuring - a small nod, a look that says you don’t have to do this - but the room moves quickly, efficiently, as though your comfort is secondary to the outcome.

They move on.

The second boutique smells faintly of lemons and something woodsy. The process repeats itself with only slight variation. Annabeth confers with assistants in low, measured tones. Lucy narrates. You comply. Steve stands at the edge of it all, hands in his pockets, irritation accumulating in small, unremarkable layers.

By the third boutique, even Lucy’s brightness has dulled at the edges. The assistants are deferential, eager. Annabeth remains immaculate, frustration concealed beneath immaculate posture.

They find the rehearsal dress first.

Cocktail length. Pale sage green. The fabric skims rather than clings, summery without being naïve. When you step out in it, there’s a brief, collective pause - not scrutiny this time, but agreement.

“Yes, that’s it,” Annabeth says simply.

Lucy beams, her smile shining bright, and she claps.

You look at him, uncertain.

He nods once, slow, and this time the look he gives you is warmer, easier. That one feels right.

Buoyed by the small victory, Annabeth turns back to the assistant.

“Something more formal for the renewal itself,” she says. “Glamour - but not costume. Blue this time.”

The assistant nods eagerly and disappears again while Annabeth and Lucy confer on the necessary shoes and accessories.

Steve sighs and drifts toward the far racks, more to escape Lucy’s relentless commentary than out of any interest in chiffon versus silk. He runs his fingers absently along hangers he has no intention of selecting, letting the cool fabric slide through his hand. The quiet at the edge of the shop is a relief.

He hears Lucy before he registers the words.

“…I hung out with her after the party the first night,” she’s saying, voice lower now, conspiratorial in the way she thinks passes for subtle. “After he went to bed.”

Annabeth murmurs something in response he can’t quite catch.

“She was… careful,” Lucy continues. “Really careful. Like she didn’t want to say the wrong thing about them.”

A small, thoughtful pause. “He’s so wound up, all the time. Do you think it’s his job? Teaching’s so… hmm… maybe he’s bored?”

Annabeth doesn’t interrupt.

Lucy lets out a short, almost disbelieving laugh. “I haven’t even seen him kiss her. Not once, all week.”

The words land with far more weight than they deserve.

For a moment, he doesn’t move.

Confusing the room.

Tentative.

Pattern

It flashes through him all at once - the backseat warmth, your hand beneath his shirt, the way you had glanced at him through the window reflection, trusting. Annabeth’s voice overlays it: if she is important, let that be evident.

He turns.

And that’s when he sees you.

The assistant holds the curtain back and you step out into the cool, perfumed air of the boutique, and something in him stumbles.

Lucy inhales sharply.

Annabeth’s posture changes almost imperceptibly - not disapproval, not even surprise. Attention.

The room shifts - subtly, almost politely - but he feels it like a change in pressure.

The dress is nothing like the others. It doesn’t soften you. It doesn’t sweeten you. It doesn’t try to make you agreeable. Petrol blue satin catches the light and drinks it in, darkening and deepening as you move, pooling at your feet in liquid folds. It traces the line of your body without asking permission, sliding over your hips with a quiet, unapologetic confidence that makes his pulse misfire.

The back is bare in one clean, unbroken sweep of skin.

And it hits him - not as spectacle, not as display - but as exposure.

Not yours.

His.

He feels it physically: breath shortening, heat climbing under his collar, the sharp awareness of the way his hands had been clenched at his sides a moment ago. The argument with his father is still under his skin. Annabeth’s voice is still echoing somewhere in the back of his mind - tentative, confusing the room, decide.

And then there’s you.

You don’t step forward like you own it.

You step forward like you’re unsure whether you’re allowed to.

Your fingers brush the satin at your hip as though testing whether it belongs to you. Your shoulders hold the faintest tension, like you’re bracing for critique instead of admiration. And then - instinctively - your eyes lift and find his.

Not Lucy. Not his mother. Him.

The look isn’t coy. It isn’t triumphant.

It’s searching.

Checking.

Trusting.

The heat in his chest shifts shape.

It isn’t just attraction - though that’s there, sharp and immediate and almost dizzying. It’s something steadier and far more destabilising. The realisation that you are standing there in something bold and unguarded and still waiting for him to read the room with you.

For him to anchor it.

The air feels thinner because he’s forgotten how to breathe properly.

The pressure of the morning - the need to defend you, the need to prove something, the constant low hum of being assessed - tightens into something bright and unbearable.

You look like you belong in that dress.

You look like you don’t quite believe you do.

And that contradiction undoes him.

The squeak of his sneakers against the tile cuts through the boutique’s quiet before he’s fully registered that he’s moved. It sounds too loud, too abrupt, but he doesn’t slow. Awareness trails behind him, useless and late.

He isn’t crossing the room to make a point.

He isn’t crossing it to correct the optics.

He’s crossing it because something in him refuses to let that look - that trust - hang unanswered.

As he closes the distance, the satin catches the light again and for a fleeting second he sees you as the room must see you: demure, composed, elegant.

But he sees more than that.

He sees the hesitation in your posture, the steadiness you’re trying to project, the way your breath catches just slightly as he approaches.

He reaches you without ceremony. His hand lifts as naturally as breath and settles at the back of your neck, fingers sliding into the warmth at your nape, thumb brushing just below your ear. The contact steadies him instantly - proof of you, solid and real beneath his palm.

He doesn’t say your name.

He doesn’t glance over his shoulder.

He just leans in.

And in that final second before his mouth meets yours, all the noise - the assessment, the expectation, the demand to decide - falls away into something almost simple.

He is done letting the room define what this is. He is done being tentative for their benefit. He is done drifting.

He thinks only about closing the distance that has suddenly become unbearable.

When his mouth meets yours, it isn’t a performance of intensity - it is a deep breath he’s been holding all morning, maybe all week. Maybe longer. The tension in his jaw, the irritation coiled tight in his chest, the steady drip of expectation that built from breakfast onward - it all loosens in the contact, dissolving into something warmer and more simple.

For a breath, for a single crystallised second, he exists in the narrow space between doubt and confirmation.

And then you move.

Your hands come up, firm and immediate, fingers curling into his t-shirt as you lean into him without hesitation. There is no flinch, no calculation, no polite delay. You meet him fully, and the certainty of that response travels through him like an electric current.

It isn’t about Lucy anymore.

It isn’t about his mom, or his dad.

It isn’t even about correcting the room.

It’s about the simple, undeniable fact that this feels right.

His thumb shifts against your nape, not tightening, just anchoring, as if he needs the physical proof that you’re still there and not something he imagined. The satin beneath his other hand is cool and fluid; your skin beneath his fingers is warm and alive. The contrast steadies him.

The noise in his head falls away until all that remains is the steady rhythm of shared breath and the quiet realisation that whatever confusion existed a moment ago has nothing to do with the two of you.

When he finally pulls back, it is not abrupt. It is slow, reluctant, as if breaking the seal requires intention. He stays close enough that your foreheads nearly touch, his eyes open, searching your face for the only verdict that matters.

You look startled, yes. Flushed. But there is no uncertainty there.

And that - more than the dress, more than the overheard words - is what settles something deep inside him.

For the first time since breakfast, he is not reacting. He is choosing.

****************

He feels it when the kiss ends - not uncertainty, not rejection but the undeniable reality of what he has just done, here, in the middle of polished tile and curated lighting, under the careful silence of his mother and the open curiosity of the room.

The world seeps back in gradually. The faint hum of the air conditioning. The rustle of fabric somewhere behind him. The weight of stillness that only exists when people are trying not to react.

Your fingers are still twisted in his t-shirt, warm and firm, anchoring him more than he deserves in that second. His hand is still at the back of your neck, thumb resting just beneath your ear where he had found steadiness a moment ago.

And then the awareness arrives - slow, deliberate, impossible to ignore.

They are not alone.

He isn’t embarrassed. That would be easier to manage. Embarrassment is sharp and fleeting. This is something else. Exposure, maybe. The sense that something private just unfolded in a space that thrives on presentation and judgement.

He becomes acutely conscious of his hand against your skin, of the way he closed the distance without asking, of the fact that the impulse came from heat and frustration and the need to silence a room that had been dissecting him all morning.

He drops his hand first.

Not as retreat. Not as guilt. Just enough to give you back your space, to make clear that the closeness was chosen and can be released.

Your fingers linger in his shirt a second longer before loosening, and that detail settles somewhere deep in his chest.

“Sorry,” he says quietly, low enough that no-one else might hear.

The word isn’t flustered. It isn’t dramatic. It doesn’t carry shame. It’s an acknowledgement.

Not of the kiss itself - he doesn’t regret that - but of the way it happened. The publicness. The fact that he moved before he checked.

His gaze searches yours, steady now, not looking for applause or reassurance, just truth.

He wants to know that you were with him in it. He wants to know he didn’t mistake that look.

Lucy makes a strangled little sound that might be laughter before she catches it in her throat. Annabeth doesn’t move at all. The assistant, wide-eyed but professionally composed, murmurs something about quick alterations as if logistics might restore order to the room.

You blink, once and then again, as though stepping back into your body after being somewhere else for a second. Your hand drifts over the satin at your hip, smoothing fabric that doesn’t need smoothing.

“I - ” You glance down, grounding yourself in the sweep of blue. “I should get changed.”

There’s no rejection in it. No real retreat. Just a quiet reclaiming of balance.

He nods immediately, more gently than before. “Yeah. Of course.”

This time he doesn’t linger as you disappear behind the curtain. He doesn’t attempt casual indifference or hover near the racks. The air inside feels too curated, too watchful, and he’s in no mood for questioning from Lucy or his mother, so he turns toward the door instead and steps out into the street.

The bell gives a soft chime behind him, and the heat outside folds around his body like something solid and unfiltered. Sound rushes back in - traffic rolling past, a gull calling somewhere overhead, the faint crash of surf further down the road. The world feels unedited out here.

He drags a hand through his hair and lets himself breathe properly.

He hadn’t meant to do that.

Well, he had. But not here, and not like that.

The impulse had felt clean in the moment - necessary, even - but standing here now, he can separate the surge of frustration from the intention underneath it. He’d moved because he couldn’t stand the noise in that room anymore, because he saw you standing there in something bold and unguarded and looking to him for steadiness. He hadn’t moved to prove anything, not really. But he also hadn’t stopped.

That part settles heavier than the rest.

When the boutique door opens again, he turns.

You step out in your own clothes, the drama of the dress gone but not entirely erased, because the colour in your cheeks hasn’t faded and the air between you still holds the imprint of what just happened. For a moment you simply look at each other, the street moving around you in its ordinary rhythm while something quieter and far more significant settles into place between you.

“I didn’t check,” he says at last.

He lets the words stand as they are, unpolished and unshielded. They sit plainly in the space between you - not performative, not defensive, simply honest.

You watch him closely, weighing what’s underneath it.

“I know,” you say.

There’s no edge in your voice. No bruise.

“I should have,” he adds, and this time he holds your gaze when he says it, as if he wants you to see that he understands the difference between wanting something and assuming it.

You take a small step closer, enough that he can feel the warmth of you without touching yet.

“I was surprised,” you say softly. “That’s all.”

Relief doesn’t flood him. It settles, slower than that.

“You’re allowed to be,” he replies. “I don’t want to bulldoze you. Not to make a point. Not because they’re pushing.”

Your hand lifts then, resting flat against his chest, over his heart. The contact is calm, deliberate. He feels it immediately - not just the warmth of your palm, but the steadiness of it.

“You didn’t,” you say. “It didn’t feel like that.”

He searches your face for hesitation and doesn’t find it.

“I liked it,” you continue, quieter now, as though the admission is meant only for him.

The word liked hits heavier than he expects. It isn’t playful. It isn’t flirty.

It’s sincere.

He exhales slowly, something inside him recalibrating.

“I don’t want your parents to keep pushing you into corners,” you say. “And I don’t want you holding yourself back because you’re trying to manage them.”

Your fingers press slightly into his shirt, grounding him.

“If we’re going to do this,” you go on, the faintest tremor of courage in your voice, “then let’s actually do it. Treat me like your girlfriend. Not halfway. Not just when it’s convenient or when we’re being watched.”

There had been a stretch of months - maybe longer - where everything felt levelled out to the same shade. Not sad, exactly. Not dramatic. Just muted. Desire included. The dream had unsettled him because it had colour in it. The kiss had done the same.

Standing here now, with your hand steady over his heart, he feels it again - that slow, spreading warmth like colour seeping into something he’d assumed was permanently desaturated.

The air between you thickens, not with embarrassment but with intention.

“Kiss me when you want to,” you add. “Touch me when you want to. Don’t shrink it down because you’re worried about what happens later.”

His pulse shifts, steady but stronger now.

“We’re still us when we go back to Hawkins,” you say, holding his gaze so he doesn’t misunderstand you. “You’re not going to ruin me by wanting me,” she says quietly. “And you’re not going to ruin yourself by letting me want you too.”

The street noise drifts past you both, irrelevant.

“Down here,” you finish softly, “we don’t have to pretend this is smaller than it feels.”

He stands there for a long second, absorbing that - not just the permission, but the trust underneath it. The belief that he can want something without destroying it.

“You’re sure?” he asks, not because he doubts you, but because he needs to hear the steadiness in it again.

You see the calculation in his eyes and reach up, fingers brushing the line of his jaw.

You kiss him first - not deep, not urgent. Just a soft press of your mouth to his, barely anything more than a peck.

“I’m sure,” you whisper against his lips. “You don’t have to solve it. Just enjoy it.”

You draw back, just a little. “Besides, kissing you isn’t exactly a hardship, Steve.”

The space between you narrows almost imperceptibly after that. He doesn’t kiss you again - not because he doesn’t want to, but because he doesn’t trust what might happen if he does. Instead, his hands slide to your waist, slower this time, deliberate enough that you can feel the intention in it. He draws you in until there’s no polite daylight left between you, until the contact feels chosen instead of accidental.

Your breath catches - just slightly - at the closeness.

He feels it.

His forehead rests briefly against your temple, and he lets himself breathe there for a moment, steadying, recalibrating. The warmth of your body against his doesn’t spark; it hums. Low. Persistent. Not explosive, but building.

“I’m a little out of practice…” he murmurs, the nod he follows up with showing his agreement.

He presses a slow kiss to your cheek, closer to your mouth than before, and he feels the exact point where restraint becomes intention. His hands remain at your waist when he leans back, fingers splayed, thumbs resting at the curve of your hips as if committing the shape of you to memory.

You asked him not to hold back.

He realises, with a quiet jolt, that holding back has been the only thing keeping this manageable.

For a fleeting second, an image flashes unbidden - the two of you somewhere darker, somewhere less observed, the space between you no longer negotiated but erased. The thought lands heavy and warm and far too vivid.

He doesn’t shove the thought away this time. For once, wanting something doesn’t feel like the beginning of a mistake. He lets it exist - not acted on, not chased - just acknowledged, knowing he wants it, knowing that’s why it must wait.

When he turns toward the boutique door, he doesn’t separate from you. His right hand remains firm at the small of your back, his fingers spanning there naturally, his thumb slipping just beneath the hem of your top to rest in the warm dip of your spine. The contact is deliberate but unforced, and it steadies him more than anything else that morning.

Instead of reaching for your hand, you move first - your fingers sliding into the back pocket of his jeans, anchoring yourself there as you step in close.

The gesture doesn’t need commentary. It settles between you as naturally as breath - quiet, intimate, unmistakably shared.

There’s no performance in the way you move together now. No careful choreography. Just proximity chosen and sustained.

When the boutique bell chimes and you step back inside, his palm remains steady at your lower back, your hand still curled against him, and the difference is unmistakable - not louder, not dramatic - just closer.

He catches Lucy watching - not laughing, not baiting, just studying - and for the first time all morning she doesn’t look entertained. She looks convinced.

[zelinkcrossing]

FAVE CHAPTER ALERTTTTTTTTT OH MY GOD THAT KISS????? INSANITY

the worldbuilding is actually crazy cuz im sitting here like "i'm convinced" but then annabeth is like no bitch hold on and it makes it more realistic than i ever could have imagined. and its crazy too cuz i was thinking like "wait no steve j get on the boat its fine" and then as they go to the boutique im like shit we do need him there and saying we didn't would have been DOING WHAT HE HAS BEEN DOING ALL WEEK

[morninglesss]

disparate youth, pt.3

Steve Harrington x f!reader // part one / part two / part three / part four / part five / part six / part seven / part eight complete

Outer Banks, summer 1995. Steve’s parents are celebrating their thirty year anniversary with a week of parties, photos, and perfect appearances. Steve shows up out of obligation - and brings you as his “girlfriend” for survival. In today’s exciting update - brain betrayal! An empty house! Firepit fun times! And Steve has precisely zero chill.

word count: 11.7k words

As always: Steve Harrington deserved better, so I gave him softness. 🌊

Steve is dreaming. He recognises it, accepts it even, but that doesn’t make it feel any less real. The dream doesn’t ease in on him, and it doesn’t ask permission - it closes in around his slumber and consumes him.

He feels the heat at his back, immediate and unmistakable, a body pressed hard enough that there’s no room to doubt it. He can feel her without seeing her; the press of her hips against him, the solid weight of her thigh slung over his, locking him in place, the weight of her fitting to him like it was never in doubt.

An arm slides around his middle, not careful, not tentative. Fingers wrap themselves into the fabric of his shirt and pull him back, closer, until there’s no space left between them at all - until the line of her body fits flush to his, hip to hip, thigh to thigh. Her mouth finds the line of his neck - not quite a kiss, not quite restraint - just warm enough, close enough, that he aches for the promise of teeth.

Just the warmth of her hovering there, the soft spill of her breath across his skin. The almost of it stretches time thin. The promise hangs suspended - teeth that could follow but don’t, pressure that could deepen but lingers instead. The restraint is what unravels him. The waiting.

Everything slows.

He feels her everywhere - through cotton, through heat, through the electric seam where their bodies meet - and yet it has that softened, dreamy distortion, where sensation blooms before contact and lingers long after it should have faded. Cause and effect slip their order. The ache comes first. The touch follows.

It’s too much.

It’s everything.

His body reacts without consulting him, heat flaring deep and low, his skin burning everywhere he feels her touch. He wants to turn, wants to see her, wants to taste her mouth and her skin properly - but the dream won’t let him. It keeps her just out of reach, all sensation and pressure and implication, a wanting that tightens instead of releasing.

He presses back instinctively, unguarded in a way he hasn’t let himself be in years. There is no audience here. No expectation. No armour to manage. The friction is slow and dizzying, the slide of fabric against skin, the measured increase of pressure that feels both languid and urgent at once. His hands flex against the sheets, searching for something solid to grip, but even the mattress feels insubstantial, like it might dissolve beneath him.

The arm around his waist slips lower.

His hips rise lazily to meet the pressure, as if the motion has been happening for longer than he realised, as if this moment has been looping and looping, building without ever quite cresting.

Stay, he thinks - not just to her, but to the feeling itself.

Just stay.

The word echoes strangely, as though spoken underwater. As though it belongs to someone else.

He lingers on that suspended edge as long as the dream will let him, caught in that charged half-second where the wanting is sharper than the having, where his body feels truly awake for the first time in years. The world has shrunk to heat and pressure and the unbearable stretch of almost.

The dream holds him there.

Right on the brink.

Where the idea of it is enough to -

- And the dream drops out from under him.

He wakes with a sharp breath, heart hammering hard and fast, the sensation ripped away so cleanly it leaves him raw. His hand jerks against his stomach, fingers fisting in his shirt before he realises what he’s doing.

There’s nothing there.

It takes a second too long for the room to make sense. The ceiling above him is white. Unremarkable. Solid. The dresser. The door. The line of the wardrobe. Everything exactly where it should be.

Morning light spills watery-pale and diffuse through the sheer curtains, staining the walls with diluted honey. The distant rush of the ocean, muted now, less commanding than it had been in the dark. No music. Not even any voices. Just the ordinary sounds of morning, indifferent to whatever just dragged him out of sleep.

It feels too early to be this alert. Too early for his body to still be charged with something that isn’t happening anymore.

Too quiet.

Steve lies there prone, cheek pressed into his pillow, with his jaw tight enough to ache, trying to convince his body it’s over. That it was just a dream. Just a lot of leftover adrenaline and bad timing and a brain that never stays in its lane.

His heart refuses to cooperate, still skittering behind his ribs. His throat feels thick. His skin remembers.

Jesus.

He shuts his eyes again, just to give himself a second before he has to be awake in a world where last night happened, and this morning seems to exist just to prove it didn’t stop.

He waits it out until his heartbeat settles and his muscles slowly relax, and only then does he roll over.

You’re here.

Fast asleep, facing into the middle of the bed, curled near the edge like you’ve claimed that boundary deliberately. One arm is pulled in close, fist wrapped in the light sheet and tugging it tight against your body. Your mouth is slightly open, breath deep and even, hair a little wild where it’s been mussed overnight.

You look peaceful. Like you’ve gone somewhere he can’t follow.

There’s space between them - real, undeniable space. A stretch of smooth empty mattress in the vast bed that says nothing happened. No lines crossed. Nothing to worry about or to regret or explain.

Relief comes to him first, warm and grounding and sensible. Something else follows it, quieter and harder to dismiss.

Steve stays very still.

He watches the slow rise and fall of your shoulders, the way sleep has smoothed the tension from your face. You look wrecked in the best way - like someone who stayed up too late drinking and laughing with people who didn’t let you fade into the background.

His cousins, he thinks, fond and irritated all at once. Of course they kept you up.

He knows how they party. You deserve to sleep.

Carefully - beyond carefully - he eases himself out of bed. The mattress barely shifts. You don’t stir. He pauses anyway, hand hovering over the sheet like his body hasn’t quite accepted that the dream is over, then forces himself to step back.

The floor is cool under his feet, the thick pile carpet still holding the night, waiting for the morning sun to find it. He moves around the room quietly, gathering clothes with care - a t-shirt lifted, shorts folded once over his arm - closing doors and drawers slowly so they don’t make a sound.

He crosses to the window and pauses there, the pale morning light just beginning to chase off the dark. When he stretches, it’s long and unhurried, arms lifting overhead, spine easing open with a silent exhale. The hem of his shirt rides up, cool air brushing his skin, and the familiar pull follows - tight, insistent. Scar tissue doesn’t stretch the way the rest of him does.

He rubs at it absently, thumb tracing the raised line without looking, the gesture automatic. His body remembers before he does.

At the bathroom door, he stops.

He looks back.

You haven’t moved. Unaware. Peaceful in a way that feels removed from him, from the restless aftermath his body is still carrying.

He tells himself the dream doesn’t mean anything. That it was just the gin and the proximity, latent want catching up with him. That bodies remember things brains don’t agree to yet.

He lets himself believe it.

“Sleep.” The word barely leaves him. Then he slips out, closing the door softly behind him.

****************

The bathroom door clicks shut - quiet, but final. The sound settles into the room, like a line being drawn.

The routine takes over before thought does - turn on the shower, adjust the dial, step inside and brace himself for the first shock of heat. His muscles loosen by degrees as the water beats down, all surface, no meaning.

This is something he knows how to do. Stand still. Endure. Let it pass. For a moment, it’s all he can feel - the impact, the noise, the scald of it. Something real.

That helps him more than he really cares to admit.

The water tracks down his spine in heavy rivulets, gathering at the small of his back before slipping lower, and his body reacts anyway - not sharply, not urgently, but unmistakably. A heavy, warm rush of blood to the last place he needs it to be.

He rests one broad hand against the smooth shower panel and leans into it, fingers splayed, knuckles whitening as he forces himself to breathe.

The dream hasn’t burned off. It’s still there - low and wrong. Pressure where nothing’s touching him now. Heat pooling in places he didn’t ask for. His skin acting like it remembers something he’s trying not to.

Jesus.

Not this. Not now.

He tips his head back and lets the spray hammer down harder, like he can beat it out of himself. Water pounds over his chest, his ribs, his throat. He reaches blindly for whichever expensive shower gel his mother keeps lined up for guests and scrubs at his skin harder than necessary, like friction might reset him.

Nothing changes.

The heat spreads anyway. Under his hands. Down his spine. Every nerve louder under the water, wide awake when he needs it quiet.

This is supposed to kill it. That’s the point.

If anything, it leaves him more aware - of himself, of how long it’s been since his body has done this without being coaxed. Or scheduled. Or half-forced out of obligation.

He hasn’t even told Robin.

The gaps between bad dates got longer. Then they just… stayed that way. Easier to shrug when she asked. Easier to joke about being “busy.” Or “retired.” Like it was a choice. Like he’d decided.

He stopped keeping track somewhere along the way.

He told himself it didn’t matter. That maybe this part of him had just gone quiet. Powered down. A low hum he didn’t have to deal with. Safer that way. Less effort. Less disappointment.

It wasn’t misery, or heartbreak. It was nothing.

And now this.

It doesn’t line up with the version of himself he’s been running on for years.

Maybe it’s the hangover. Maybe last night’s still wedged somewhere under his ribs, all sharp edges and unfinished business. Maybe it’s just adrenaline burning through the last of it, misfiring, looking for somewhere to land.

That would be easier to swallow.

But the feeling doesn’t spike and vanish the way adrenaline should. It doesn’t flash hot and disappear.

It lingers, refusing to burn itself out.

A low, insistent awareness sitting heavy in his body, impossible to talk down. It feels almost deliberate in how calm it is, how certain - like it’s been there the whole time, waiting for him to stop pretending not to notice.

His body doesn’t seem particularly interested in context. Not in history. Not in caution. Not in the guardrails he’s spent years quietly putting up.

It just wants.

And that’s what throws him.

He stands there under the spray and lets the realisation settle into him, uneasy and unwanted, with nowhere obvious to put it.

It would be easy - far too easy - to stop thinking. To let the warmth and his hand blur the edges of everything else. To chase the simple, physical relief that’s right there within reach, uncomplicated and immediate.

He hasn’t trusted himself with that kind of ease in a long time.

The thought doesn’t repulse him - that’s the problem.

What unsettles him is how cleanly the want rises up. How little argument there is inside him against it. No panic. No moral outrage. Just a steady pull toward something he’s been pretending not to miss.

He closes his eyes for a beat and counts it off in his head.

No.

He isn’t doing this. Not here. Not with her asleep a few feet away, breathing evenly, unaware. Not with the morning still fragile and real around them.

He presses his forehead briefly to the tile, breath fogging the surface. The heat is sharp, almost punishing. Good. He can work with that.

The water pounds over his shoulders. Steam thickens the air, heavy in his lungs.

He focuses on what’s real - the burn of heat against his skin, the steady drum of water, the narrow confines of the shower pressing close around him.

Breathing in.

Breathing out.

He stays exactly where he is and lets the surge crest and fall on its own. Refuses to rush it. Refuses to feed it.

He knows how to stand still. He’s had practice.

Gradually, the sharp edge dulls. The heat recedes from a roar to something quieter, more contained. Still there - but manageable.

He waits until it’s fully under control.

Only then does he move.

When he finally turns the water off, the silence lands hard.

The rush and hiss vanish all at once, leaving the bathroom thick and damp, steam clinging to the ceiling and curling at the edges of the mirror. His skin feels over-sensitive in the sudden quiet, flushed from heat, every lingering trace of sensation exaggerated now that there’s nothing to drown it out.

He stands there a second longer than necessary, letting the cooler air settle against him.

Then he reaches for the towel.

He dries off slowly, methodically, grounding himself in the ordinary rhythm of it. Shoulders. Chest. Arms. Just skin and cotton and movement. By the time he’s done, the edge has dulled to something private and contained.

He brushes his teeth with more focus than the task deserves, scrubbing until the last trace of last night’s gin is replaced with minty freshness. Clean. Neutral. Presentable.

He drags the flat of his palm across the mirror, cutting a clear path through the fog. A blurred version of himself resolves in the streaked glass - damp hair, flushed skin, eyes still a little too bright.

He scrubs both hands through his hair, working it back by instinct, teasing the layers into something that resembles effort without trying too hard.

He doesn’t have the energy to care the way he once did - not about precision, not about perfection - but when the faint outline of the old Harrington hawk lifts at the front, stubborn and familiar, something like pride flickers low in his chest.

Still got it, Stevie.

It’s automatic. Half joke. Half reassurance.

He pulls on the clothes he brought in with him: swim trunks first, then loose shorts over the top. Nothing fitted. Nothing that clings. A soft t-shirt he’s owned for years, the cotton worn thin at the collar, the graphic faded into irrelevance.

Downstairs, the house greets him with fresh salt air and perfect quiet, the occasional call of a sea bird drifting through. The deck doors are wide, the coastal breeze moving lazily through the space. The place is spotless, not a glass or a crumb out of place.

The events team must have already been back for take-down and clear-out. The evidence of last night’s party has been completely erased.

Outside, the firepit has been scraped clean and restocked with fresh coals and kindling. The long bench table has been wiped down to smooth, bare wood. The yellow umbrella left open and patient, casting shade for no one yet. Beyond it all, the pool lies flat and blue and unreadable, like it’s holding its breath.

Steve stands at the island for a moment, hands braced on the counter, and lets the calm wash over him completely.

The dream hasn’t left him entirely. It lingers low and quiet now, coiled through him, but it hasn’t disappeared. It colours the way he moves through the kitchen, the way he measures the coffee grounds more carefully than usual, the way he lines the cups up by instinct.

Lucy’s.

Aunt Juliane’s.

Mom’s.

And one for him.

He stops himself before he reaches for another.

The act of it - of catching himself - sends a strange flicker through his chest. Not regret. Not quite relief. Just an awareness.

He hears footsteps from the rooms upstairs. Voices rise and fall, drifting down the stairwell - soft and a little tender-headed, laughter pitched lower than usual. The Harrington women appear one by one, sunglasses already perched on their heads or hanging from their collars, tiny leather bags slung from their shoulders, glossy hair pulled back in near-identical ponytails, all moving with the easy familiarity of people who belong.

“Morning, Stevie,” Lucy beams, warm as ever.

“Hey, Lu,” he replies, handing her a mug of fresh coffee before passing the others to his mother and aunt.

The women thank him like he’s done something special. Like this isn’t just what he does when he needs something to do with his hands. Annabeth leans against the counter, eyes closed, breathing in the smell of coffee like it’s medicine.

“You’re a saint, my love,” she murmurs through the steam.

Steve smiles at the rare, unexpected praise - small and reflexive - ducking his head shyly, like he’s been caught out by it.

“It’s no big deal, Mom,” he says, shrugging. “S’just coffee.”

Golf is discussed. Rick and Danny are already long gone, apparently - both left just after dawn, eager despite their hangovers, committed to the performance of it all. A day with the boys on the course. There’s a pause, brief but noticeable, where the invitation could settle.

Steve doesn’t let it.

“Golf’s not really my thing,” Steve says lightly, before his mother can tell him he has time to catch up. “I’ll pass.”

The decision feels easier than it should. He doesn’t examine that too closely.

The women’s plans shift smoothly around him - town, shopping, lunch somewhere breezy and overpriced, espresso martinis to chase any remaining fatigue away. The house fills with the noise of preparation. Bags being checked and gathered. Car keys hunted down. Jackets collected, tried on, and dismissed.

And then, like you’ve waited for the noise to thin, you appear in the kitchen archway.

Steve feels it before he sees you. That subtle change. His attention narrows automatically, heat flaring low and unwelcome in response.

You look rested and guarded all at once. Hair damp from the shower, pulled back loosely. Casual shorts and a Hawkins Tigers shirt - the newer style, one he’d picked up for you last Christmas from a school charity drive. You pause, taking in the room, the women, Steve already moving toward you with a mug in hand.

“Morning,” he says, too quick. Too bright.

“Hey, Steve,” you reply, voice still soft from sleep.

Your fingers brush when he hands you the coffee. It’s nothing. Barely contact. And yet his body reacts like it’s been waiting for the smallest excuse - like it recognises comfort before his brain does.

The dream flickers - pressure at his back, breath at his neck - and he shuts it down with brute force. Imagines his father on the golf course. Imagines Dustin eating pop rocks. Imagines the third-grade homework he left for future Steve to deal with after this hell-cursed week.

He looks beyond the deck to the ocean, watches the morning light on the waves.

This is daylight.

This is real.

This is manageable.

He keeps his expression easy. His tone light. He lets the Harringtons do what they do best - fill the space, make plans, move the day forward.

And all the while, under the surface, the heat stays with him.

Not loud.

Not demanding.

Just waiting.

****************

He’s certain he feels the house exhale when the front door finally closes and the Harrington women leave for town.

It isn’t silence exactly; the fridge hums on, steady and familiar; the wall clock ticks somewhere down the hall, too loud now that nothing else is competing with it. There’s a faint rattle from the fan above the stove, something loose his father mentioned once then forgot about. Ordinary sounds. Domestic ones.

But the pressure lifts all the same.

The performance is over. No more voices overlapping, no more plans being made at him, no more small, unconscious adjustments to make himself fit in the moment. The house settles back into itself, spacious again, like it’s remembering what it’s meant to be when it isn’t loud with people.

Steve stays where he is for a while, sun at his back, one shoulder leaned into the doorframe, coffee mug warm and solid in his hand. He doesn’t move right away. Just lets the quiet sink in around him, lets his breathing slow to match it.

His gaze drops to the island.

A ring from his mug has bloomed on the quartz surface - pale and perfect, a clean circle where the heat met stone. Temporary. Already starting to fade at the edges if he looks closely enough.

He tells himself that’s fine.

That it will disappear on its own if he gives it a minute. That nothing’s been marked permanently. That this - whatever this is - will lift just as easily, leaving no trace behind.

The thought doesn’t settle the way he expects it to.

He shifts his grip on the mug, thumb brushing the rim, and finally pushes himself away from the doorframe. The house waits around him, quiet and open, waiting for whatever comes next.

Across the room, you move more carefully now.

Not stiff. Not tentative. Just deliberate. The scrape of a chair nudged back into place instead of abandoned. The soft clink of a spoon set down in the sink, porcelain against metal, unhurried. You don’t rush to fill up the quiet the way most people do. You let it exist, give it room to settle.

He notices that even before he turns.

“You wanna…,” you start, then trail off, recalibrating mid-thought. A small pause - not uncertainty, exactly, just consideration. “I was thinking about going outside for a bit, sit by the pool. If that’s okay?”

It’s the if that gets him.

The need for permission baked into it. The way you’re asking, not assuming. Like you’re conscious of the space as much as he is - of the fact that the house is suddenly just the two of you, and that, after last night, your friendship rests on strange new terrain.

“Yes,” he says, a little too quickly, the word out of him before he’s finished thinking. Then he reins it in, softer. “Yeah. That sounds good.”

You nod once, easy, like that was all you needed.

Steve reaches for his sunglasses on the counter, mostly to keep his hands occupied, something solid to anchor them. He trails a step behind you, close enough to reach, not quite close enough to touch.

At the edge of the pool, the gate sits half-latched, the metal catch misaligned by a fraction. He notices it immediately. Not broken. Just wrong.

He steps in, lifts the latch, guides it home until it settles with a soft, definitive click. Small. Clean. He opens it. Closes it. Once more. Testing for drag, for slack. The mechanism moves smoothly beneath his fingers now.

Better.

He straightens.

The morning light is brighter than he expected. Not harsh - just full. The kind that makes everything feel already remembered. Shadows stretch wide across the deck, edges softened. The boards are warm beneath his bare feet, holding yesterday’s heat like it never quite let it go.

The air is layered - chlorine rising faintly from the pool, fresh cut grass sharp at the edges, salt drifting in from the beach beyond the trees. It smells like summer settling in. Like something staying.

A cicada starts up somewhere nearby, loud and unapologetic, sawing through the quiet as if it owns it. Steve exhales without meaning to. His shoulders drop a fraction.

He pauses just past the gate, sunglasses loose in his hand, and lets the moment press in.

The house behind him - quiet.

The open yard ahead.

You, a few steps away, turning your face toward the sun like you’ve already decided you belong here.

And that - that does something low and complicated in his chest.

He follows.

The pool sits there like an offering.

Blue. Still. Patient.

Steve squints at it, then at the stretch of empty chairs, the quiet sprawl of the garden beyond. No one watching. No commentary waiting to land.

Just space.

The decision arrives before the thought does.

“I’m gonna swim,” he says, already shifting forward. “If that’s -”

“Oh, sure. Have fun,” you say immediately, easy. “I’ll be right here.”

His chest loosens anyway.

He nods once. Tugs off his shirt and shorts without ceremony, drops them over the back of a chair. The air kisses his skin - cool for a second before the sun takes it back. He doesn’t pause. Doesn’t look at you again.

He steps to the edge and dives, clean and decisive.

For a moment there’s only the glide of him through blue.

Water closes over him, sealing off the world above. Sound collapses - cicada, breeze, house - replaced by the muted rush in his ear and the steady drag along his skin.

And it feels like relief.

Stroke.

Breathe.

Turn.

The rhythm catches him fast, slots into place like something his body’s been waiting for. His arms carve through the water, shoulders engaging clean and deliberate. Muscles wake in sequence - back, triceps, core - lining up and firing like they were trained to do exactly this.

They were.

There’s a ghost of muscle memory in it - early mornings under fluorescent lights, the slap of lane ropes, a whistle cutting through humid air. Chlorine in his hair all day. His name sharp and bright off the starter’s block.

Captain.

He’d been good. Not just decent. Not just reliable. Fast.

Stroke.

Breathe.

Turn.

The burn builds along his shoulders and down into his lats, steady and controlled. His heartbeat settles into the pace like it remembers the drill. Long reach. Clean catch. Don’t waste the pull.

Water presses and yields. Resistance, response. If he pushes, it answers. If he holds his line, it holds.

He starts counting without meaning to.

Twenty-five.

Thirty.

Forty.

Each wall exactly where it should be. Each turn clean. No almosts. No ambiguity. The body either does the work or it doesn’t.

Underwater, there’s no almost-kiss.

No steam curling off a mug.

No heat pacing behind his ribs.

Just effort and breath and the quiet certainty that he knows how to move through this.

By sixty, his shoulders are lit up, heavy in a way that feels well earned. His chest feels open, worked through. The tightness that had been sitting under his sternum has somewhere to go now - burned off, stroke by stroke.

He eases the pace, coasts the last few feet, palm sliding along tile as he reaches for the wall.

And that’s when he sees you.

You’re sitting on the edge of the deep end, legs stretched out in front of you, feet drifting beneath the surface. Sunglasses pushed up into your hair, catching the light. A book rests closed beside you on the hot concrete, abandoned after maybe three pages, the spine barely cracked.

You’re not staring.

Not exactly.

Just… there. Present. Watching the place where he surfaces each time, like you’ve learned the rhythm without meaning to.

Steve stays where he is, hands braced on the edge, water streaming off his forearms. His breath evens out. His pulse settles, solid and cooperative.

Nothing lunges at him.

He drags a hand through his hair, slicks it back. The movement is unhurried. Sunlight catches on the drops clinging to his shoulders as he pushes off and glides along the wall toward you.

“You’re a lifeguard now?” he asks, voice a shade rough from chlorine and breathing hard. “Didn’t realize I needed supervision.”

You smile and flick water at him with your toes. “Ha. Funny. No - this just seemed like the best seat in the house.”

He pulls himself up and out to sit on the poolside a few feet away, legs still in the water. The air bites immediately, sharp and welcome after the heat of the pool. Goosebumps lift along his arms and shoulders. Water runs off him in slow trails, darkening the concrete around him.

He exhales - long, deliberate.

For a while, neither of you speaks.

The quiet settles easily. The pool laps at the edge. Somewhere beyond the trees, the cicada keeps its steady rhythm. The sun sits warm and unhurried overhead.

You’re close enough that he can feel it - your presence, steady at his side - but there’s space between you. Nothing pressing. Nothing demanded.

Just this.

Steve rests his hands on the stone beside his thighs, fingers splayed against the heat. Concrete under his palms. Water cooling his calves. The contrast pins him in place.

Heat. Cool. Solid. Fluid.

He focuses on that. On the way sensation keeps him here, in his body, not drifting ahead of himself. His breathing evens out fully, deep and unforced.

He needs this.

So he lets himself have it.

Then you break the silence.

“So,” you say softly.

Your hand slides across the tile, slow and unassuming, until your little finger taps against his. Barely a touch. Light enough that he could pretend it didn’t happen.

He doesn’t.

He taps back. Once.

“I just… I wanted to check in,” you add.

The words land gently. No edge to them. No demand.

Steve keeps his hand where it is. Lets your finger rest there. The contact isn’t heat. It isn’t pressure.

It’s choice.

He tilts his head slightly toward you - a small shift that feels like an answer before he gives one. His eyes stay on the water, watching the surface settle, then ripple again.

“How are you feeling?” you continue. “After last night - your parents, I mean.”

Not the almost-kiss. Just the ritual humiliation that led up to it. The performance. The commentary. The way the room always tilts when they walk in.

He tips his head back for a second, blinking up into the sun, then looks at you. His shoulders rise in a shrug before he’s fully aware of doing it - muscle memory, older than the house, older than the pool.

“Same as always,” he says.

Automatic. Smooth. Ready.

You don’t contradict him. You don’t let it sit untouched, either. You hum softly, considering it like it’s something worth handling properly.

“Yeah,” you say after a moment. “I thought as much.”

Not dismissive or pitying. Just accurate, and aware.

You already understand enough about his parents to recognise the pattern. Familiar doesn’t mean harmless.

You nod once. “Okay. Then we don’t have to unpack it.”

You pause, then look at him a little more directly. “But what do you need today?”

Need.

Not what he can manage.

Not what he can tolerate.

Not what he can perform.

Need.

The word settles somewhere low and unfamiliar. Not uncomfortable. Just rare, unused.

He pauses, twisting the cord of his swim trunks around his fingers. Not because he doesn’t have an answer, but because no one’s asked him that in a long time.

Sunlight fractures across the pool’s surface, blue breaking and reforming with every small shift of water. For once, he doesn’t grab for the first response that would close this down cleanly. He lets the question sit. Lets it breathe.

“I don’t wanna talk about it,” he says finally.

The words land heavier than he expects. A refusal, yes - but a real one. His jaw tightens a fraction. “It’s not because of you,” he adds, quick, almost defensive. “I just… don’t wanna make it a whole thing.”

You nod immediately.

“Hey. I get it,” you say. “Thanks for saying it.”

No edge. No disappointment.

“We can do something else,” you add, easy. “Or nothing at all. The day’s all ours.”

There’s no disappointment in your voice. No flicker of hurt he has to brace for. You don’t ask him to reconsider. You don’t try to make it easier to swallow.

You just accept it.

“We can keep it not-a-thing,” you add lightly, like it’s an adjustment, not a sacrifice.

The ease of it catches him off guard.

He looks at you then - really looks. You’re loose against the sun-warmed concrete, one hand balancing your weight behind you, shoulders open. No expectation in your expression. No waiting. No quiet tally of what he owes you.

“And,” you add, softer now, “if there’s anything I can do to make this week easier, just tell me.”

A small shrug. “Or don’t. I’m flexible.”

Flexible.

That lands somewhere he doesn’t quite know what to do with.

He’s used to edges. To roles. To knowing where he stands because someone else already decided it.

Water slides down his wrist, cool and grounding. He feels it - the way he’s sitting here, open, sun on his skin, nothing between them but air.

“Just… hang out,” he says finally. The simplicity of it makes his mouth tilt, almost sheepish. “Like this. No agenda.”

He glances at you, then away again. “I don’t need a therapist right now.” A beat. Softer. “I just really need my friend.”

You don’t hesitate.

“Yeah,” you say. “I can do that.”

Your foot kicks out in the pool, toes breaking the surface. The movement sends a soft fan of ripples across the water, spreading outward until they reach him a second later, brushing against his calves - cool, easy.

Steve closes his eyes and lets the sun settle warm across his face. Lets the water lap at his legs. Lets his breathing stay slow.

The heat in him hasn’t disappeared.

It sits low in his chest, quieter now, banked instead of blazing. When he inhales, he can feel it there - steady, contained. Not urgent. Not demanding.

Just present.

It’s new. Not wild, not reckless - just unfamiliar enough to make him aware of himself in ways he hasn’t been in a long time.

Too much for today.

But it isn’t going anywhere.

And for the first time, that doesn’t feel like a threat.

****************

The day stretches long and loose around them.

They’ve been outside for hours without marking it - the sun climbing, stalling, beginning its slow tilt toward afternoon. Shadows slide across the deck boards and pale concrete, measuring time without asking anyone to keep it.

Steve has claimed one of the loungers near the water, sunglasses tipped low on his nose. The warmth settles into him gradually - not oppressive, just steady. It sinks into muscle, into bone.

He’s always loved summer.

The smell of it - sunscreen, chlorine, hot wood baking under open sky. The way heat pulls him out of his head and back into his body.

As a kid, it tasted like sugar and melted ice cream. Like soda gone flat in red plastic cups. Music spilling from open windows. Someone shouting his name across a yard. The slap of pool water against concrete. Laughter layered over everything.

He remembers liking it - not just the noise, not just the attention.

The ease of it all.

Being warm. Being wanted. Not having to think too hard about who he was.

He shifts deeper into the lounger now, one arm folded behind his head. The pool flashes and shifts just beyond his feet. The cicadas hum. Somewhere down the beach, a car door slams and distant voices rise and fall again.

It’s quieter than it used to be.

But the core of it feels the same.

Comfort in his own skin. Sun on his face. No one asking him to be more or less than what he is in this exact moment.

He lets the warmth hold him.

And with a simple, unshowy certainty, he knows he’s still good at this.

At summer.

At ease.

At being here.

Close enough that he’s always faintly aware of you without feeling like he’s keeping track. The awareness drifts in and out in small, ordinary ways. The soft rasp of magazine pages turning. The faint hiss and click of your Discman as you skip a track, a scrap of melody escaping into the heat before disappearing again. The shape of you in his peripheral vision - feet crossed at the ankles, knee tipped toward the pool like you might slide in without warning.

It’s easy.

Unremarkable in the best way.

At some point - he couldn’t say when - he realises he hasn’t thought about his parents in a while. Or the morning. Or even the almost-kiss from the night before. It’s still there, somewhere in the background, but it isn’t pressing at him.

For now, he’s just here.

Skin tacky with sunscreen. A thin sheen of sweat at his collarbone. His body heavy and loose against the lounger, muscles pleasantly slack. Nothing tugging. Nothing to manage.

The house behind them stays quiet. No doors opening. No one calling his name. Across the dunes, the ocean moves in its steady push and pull. A distant boat engine cuts through the air, then fades again.

Time loosens its grip.

Eventually, you stand, stretching without hurry - arms lifting overhead, spine arching as you ease the stiffness from your back. The shift pulls the light across the deck, and Steve cracks one eye open without meaning to, tracking you lazily as you pad toward the house.

“I’m gonna grab a drink,” you say, already halfway past him. “You want anything?”

“Yeah,” he replies, not lifting his head. “I’ll take a Coke. Thanks.”

“No problem.”

You don’t slow. You don’t make it an event. It’s just information, exchanged and done.

As you pass his lounger, your hand dips.

Your fingers skim lightly into his hair at the crown of his head - not a stroke, not quite a ruffle. Just contact. Familiar. Easy.

And Steve -

He leans into it.

Barely. A subtle tilt of his head, small enough to miss if you weren’t looking. His body answering before his mind bothers to interpret it.

There’s no flare of alarm. No rush to define it.

Just the simple, quiet pleasure of being touched kindly.

Sun on skin. Chlorine in the air. Coconut sunscreen. Cicadas buzzing steady in the heat.

His breathing stays slow. He doesn’t reach after your hand when it leaves. He doesn’t need to.

The warmth lingers.

When you come back, you don’t announce yourself. You step in close and press the cold bottle against his bare chest.

He yelps - higher than he’d prefer - shoulders jerking before the sound dissolves into a laugh. His hand flies up, trapping the Coke against his sternum.

“Christ,” he says, grinning now, fingers closing around it. “You’re a menace.”

Then, softer, warmer, once he feels the condensation slick against his palm and realises how thirsty he is:

“No, you’re a hero.”

You grin and drop back into your chair, hooking the headphones behind your neck as you start the disc, skipping through a few tracks before settling on one. Music filters out, tinny and imperfect - a song he half-recognises but doesn’t bother placing. It doesn’t matter.

The afternoon keeps going.

At some point, he drifts onto his stomach and falls into a light nap - stirring when a breeze kicks up, or when the sun shifts enough to find his eyes through the gaps at the sides of his sunglasses. Once, you move the umbrella without being asked, angling the shade so it falls across his face. He notices that later, when the heat eases, and the realisation lands quietly - a brief tightening in his chest, followed by something softer in its place.

Later still, you suggest food. Nothing fancy. Sandwiches scavenged from the fridge, eaten barefoot on the deck with crumbs brushed casually into the grass. He tells you a story about Dustin and Eddie while you eat - one of the harmless ones, amended and exaggerated just enough - and you laugh hard enough to almost choke, hand coming up to your mouth, eyes bright, caught in the moment.

The sound of it startles something loose in him. It hits low and sudden, a warmth that has nothing to do with the sun - familiar in a way that surprises him. He watches you catch your breath, still smiling, and feels the day settle more firmly into place around him.

The afternoon keeps giving without asking for anything back.

As the light finally starts to turn, gold edging slowly toward amber, Steve lies back with his eyes closed, the corner of his mouth tugging upward despite himself. The deck is warm beneath him. His stomach is full. Cherry Coke lingers on his tongue. The air smells like sunscreen and bread and summer.

He lets the moment exist without reaching for it, basking sleepily in the crumbs and the coconut of it all.

****************

But as with all good things, the lazy quiet of the day has to break eventually. The air splits with the sound of car doors slamming somewhere out front. Laughter follows, louder than it needs to be. Fridge doors open and close, ice clinks against glass, music flicks on inside the house and spills out onto the deck.

From his position on his stomach, one harm hanging off the edge of the lounger, Steve doesn’t open his eyes.

He hears you shift beside him - he’s tuned into it now. He hears the soft creak of your lounger as you sit up.

“Everyone’s home,” you murmur, not bothered.

He hums in acknowledgment, too lazy to shape it into a word.

He notices when you gasp, hears you lean toward the table, the rub of plastic dragged on metal.

“You’re gonna burn, Steve.”

He cracks one eye open, squinting behind his shades, trying to focus on whatever you’re doing. “M’not, s’fine.”

“You are,” you mutter, squeezing lotion into your palm as you slip from your lounger to his. “Hold still.”

Protesting seems like more effort than it’s worth. He stays where he is.

It’s automatic. Easy. The same way he’s leaned into your passing touch earlier, he yields to this without thinking.

Your hands land warm and slick across his shoulders. Slow, deliberate passes smooth over the back of his neck. Across the tops of his arms, down to his elbows and back up. Pressing gently into his shoulder blades, working the sunscreen into his skin, slow and methodical.

He thinks he might pass out from the bliss of it all.

“You’re lucky I caught you when I did,” you say, fingers working out a knot at the base of his neck.

Steve has no capacity for words. He hums low in his throat instead.

“You’re pretty pink.”

“M’not,” he groans into the cushion.

“You’re basically medium rare at this point.”

“And you’re rude.”

“Turn your head, let me get the other side of your neck.”

He obeys without thinking.

“You get bossy in the sunshine,” he sighs, groggy.

“Someone’s gotta look after you, Steve. These moles are not going cancerous on my watch.”

He cracks one eye open at that, shifting his sunglasses aside so he can get a good look at you. “Pretty sure I can look after myself.”

“Mm.” Your fingers press into the muscle at the back of his neck. “Evidence suggests otherwise.”

He makes a quiet sound - sort of a laugh, mostly something else entirely - as your thumbs work in slow circles, not caring that the sunscreen has been well and truly absorbed already.

“Do I need to pay extra for this?”

“Depends.”

“On what?”

“On how dramatic you plan to be about it later.”

He smiles lazily, tucking his hands under the cushion. “Hey, I’m very brave.”

“You squealed at a Coke bottle.”

“That was tactical surprise. And it was cold.”

“Sure it was.”

Your hands drift lower, smoothing over warm skin before spreading out again across his shoulders.

He shifts under you, just a little - not away. Into it.

“You gonna take requests while you’re at it?” he asks, softer now.

“You’re pushing your luck, Harrington.”

He lets that settle between you. Then, quieter still, the words falling just this side of teasing:

“Don’t stop.”

Your fingers pause for a fraction of a second - not retreating, more like you’re gauging something. Then they resume. Slower.

Your palm glides once down the centre of his back, deliberate this time, thumb pressing lightly before sweeping outward again.

“Relax,” you say lightly. “I got you.”

Your hands move up and settle warm at the base of his neck, thumbs circling.

Steve’s body reacts before his brain does - a tightening low and sharp that has nothing to do with sun or sunscreen.

Footsteps spill out from the house and onto the deck.

“Well,” his dad’s voice carries first, amused and easy. “Looks like someone’s got it made.”

You don’t snatch your hands away. You don’t jerk back like you’ve been caught out. You just let them rest there a second longer, palms warm against his skin, as if the interruption is nothing more than background noise.

Annabeth laughs softly. “We leave you two alone for a few hours…”

“…and little Stevie’s turned into royalty,” his uncle finishes. “Getting waited on hand and foot.”

A ripple of laughter carries across the pool.

Your fingers resume, lighter now. Practical. Finishing the job.

Steve keeps his face angled down, eyes closed. He wills his body into stillness, into laziness - into something that looks easy.

“Hard life,” he drawls, pitching his voice just loud enough to carry. “Wouldn’t recommend it.”

It earns another chuckle.

His mom steps closer, her shadow cutting across the deck.

“You’ve been out here all day?” she asks, a note of faint disbelief threaded through it. “You didn’t take her into town? Show her around a little?”

The question lands differently. Not teasing. More like assessment.

Your hands pause, briefly, at the base of his neck.

Something tightens in him - not low and sharp this time, but higher. Older. A reflex that predates you, predates this house, predates the ocean and the warmth and the easy stretch of the afternoon.

He should have done something.

Planned something.

Been something.

Steve shrugs without lifting his head. “We were good here.”

She exhales lightly - not quite a sigh. “You just laid around the pool all day?”

The word just hooks.

Before he can decide whether to sit up, to justify, to explain - his uncle cuts in with a laugh.

“Pool? Sure,” he says. “Young and in love with the house to themselves - what do you think they’ve been up to?”

Laughter carries again, and just like that, the tone shifts.

Heat floods him, low and sudden. Not shame - not exactly. The feeling of being perceived, dragged out into the open and dressed up in someone else’s assumption.

They’re wrong, but the alternative - the truth - feels closer to something he’s not fully comfortable naming.

Your hands remain light and unbothered.

“It’s been great,” you say easily, as if this is the simplest thing in the world. “Steve’s taken good care of me.”

It’s a deflection. But it isn’t defensive.

Annabeth makes a small noise of acknowledgement - half concession, half still-not-convinced.

“Well,” she sighs, “at least take her into town sometime. There’s more to this place than the deck.”

Steve bites down on his tongue.

“Maybe she likes the deck,” he replies, voice still lazy, but firmer now.

That earns another snort of amusement from Uncle Rick.

Your hands smooth once more over his shoulders before lifting away.

The absence of them feels immediate.

He pushes up onto his elbows, rolling his shoulders like he’s adjusting to being upright, to being seen.

Behind him, the house is loud now - music drifting through the open doors, bottles clinking, someone asking where the good knife is.

The day has shifted, even if the sun hasn’t quite dipped yet.

He stays where he is for a moment longer, cheek pressed to the lounger, listening to the house reassemble itself around him. The scrape of chairs. Someone arguing about charcoal. His mom calling for a serving dish that’s “definitely in the second drawer.”

There’s a familiar tightening in his chest - not panic, not even dread. Just the subtle awareness of stepping back into a role.

He pushes himself upright slowly.

The movement feels heavier than it should.

His shirt lies crumpled near the leg of the lounger, sun-warmed cotton twisted in on itself. He reaches for it, gives it a loose shake before dragging it over his head. The fabric sticks briefly where the sunscreen hasn’t fully absorbed, clinging to his shoulders before settling.

He stretches and sighs and reaches for his shorts next. Steps into them. Pulls the drawstring tight. Double knots it without thinking.

Small, practical tasks. Anchors.

You’re already standing when he looks up.

Not hovering. Not impatient. Just there - one hip angled toward him, sunlight catching in the damp ends of your hair, expression open in that way that never feels like pressure.

The noise from the house swells behind you - cupboard doors, a burst of music, someone arguing about who finished the last of the ice and Danny could you please go out to the garage for more?

You step closer.

Your fingers brush the inside of his wrist first, tentative enough to be deniable. Testing whether he’s still where you left him.

His pulse jumps under your touch, and he knows you feel it.

Your gaze flickers, just briefly, and your fingers curl fully into his hand.

The contact is warm from the sun, a little slick from sunscreen, needed in a way that makes his throat tighten.

He looks down at your joined hands.

Your fingers curve into his palm like it’s easy. Like it doesn’t cost you anything at all.

Back up at you.

There’s a question there - quiet, unspoken, hovering between you.

Are we doing this? Are we pretending again?

Or is this something else?

You don’t smile. You don’t overplay it. You just stay close, chin tipped slightly toward the noise of the others gathering ahead. Solid. Unflinching.

You’re not asking him to perform. You’re giving him the choice.

And that feels more dangerous than the teasing ever did.

His pulse knocks once, hard, at the base of his throat. The world feels bright and exposed in the afternoon sun. Chlorine, salt air, the birds on the wing. His dad’s voice somewhere up ahead. Too close. Too familiar.

If he lets go now, it will read as hesitation. As doubt. His father will spot it. His uncle will smirk. Lucy will raise an eyebrow later and file it away for commentary. It will become a thing - a tiny fracture in whatever story they’ve been selling all week.

But if he keeps hold of you, this stops being optics. It stops being a prop. It becomes intentional. Chosen. And that’s the part that tightens his chest - because it means you matter.

He waits for you to waver. To pull back first. To give him an out he can take without losing face.

You don’t.

You stay exactly where you are, your hand resting in his without tension or demand. No pressure. No performance. Just presence.

It would be so easy to retreat.

But the steadiness in you makes something settle in him instead of flare. The usual instinct to joke, to deflect, to loosen his grip before anyone notices he’s holding too tightly - it doesn’t land. Or if it does, it fades quickly, drowned out by the simple fact of your palm against his.

He inhales slowly, giving himself that single second to back out - and feels the choice crystallise instead of dissolve. This isn’t muscle memory. It isn’t him playing along because it’s easier than explaining. It’s quieter than that, steadier.

He turns his hand, fits his fingers between yours, and lets them settle there as if they were always meant to. He doesn’t do it for the audience. He does it because somewhere along the line, he stopped wanting an exit.

He doesn’t squeeze hard enough to trap you there, doesn’t slacken either. He finds that middle ground - firm, deliberate - the kind of hold that says I’m not going anywhere unless you tell me to.

His thumb shifts, almost absently at first, then settles into the shallow space between your thumb and index finger. The movement is small, but it feels intimate in a way he hadn’t prepared for.

At some point - he couldn’t say exactly when - the background noise of the deck stopped registering as threat assessment. He isn’t scanning for who might be watching. He isn’t bracing for commentary or preparing a line to undercut whatever they say.

He’s thinking about the warmth of your hand threaded through his.

About how natural it feels.

The ease of it unsettles him more than the teasing ever could. Because if this were only performance, he’d still be aware of the stage.

Instead, he feels… settled.

And that might be the most dangerous part.

A whistle slices through the air, sharp and carrying, and the spell fractures.

“Well, would you look at that,” Uncle Rick calls from the railing, voice thick with amusement. “Don’t they make a picture?”

His dad’s laugh follows easily, familiar and satisfied. “Told you, Rick. Young love.”

There it is. The narrative handed to them, neat and smug.

Steve rolls his eyes on instinct, the gesture automatic and well-practised, but he doesn’t loosen his grip. He doesn’t step away. If anything, his fingers flex slightly - not possessive, not defiant. Just present.

Beside him, your thumb presses once against his knuckles. Not clinging. Not asking. Just there.

He glances at you then, expecting to find some flicker of self-consciousness.

He doesn’t.

“Ready?” you murmur, pitched low enough that it brushes only his ear.

The question isn’t about the house. Or the dinner. Or the waiting family.

It’s about stepping back into the performance without losing whatever this was.

He hesitates - not long enough for anyone else to notice, but long enough to feel the weight of the afternoon lingering at the edges of him. Sunscreen and salt air. The heat of the sun still sitting on his shoulders. The memory of your hands earlier, casual and unthinking, and the way he’d leaned into it without panic.

He could pull back now. Reset. Re-establish distance.

Instead, he tightens his fingers fractionally, grounding himself in the choice he already made.

“Yeah,” he says, softer than the moment probably requires. “Let’s do this.”

And together, still joined at the hand, you turn and walk toward the house - not quite pretending, not quite confessing, but something far more complicated in between.

****************

The noise hits them first.

Cool air conditioning spills over skin still warm from the sun as they step inside, the shift in temperature almost disorienting after hours on the deck. Music hums from the radio near the sink - something bright and overfamiliar - and the kitchen lights glow against the fading daylight, making everything feel fuller, louder, closer.

Juliane is already stationed at the island, lining up plates in tidy stacks like she’s building order out of chaos. Lucy leans against the counter mid-story, gesturing with a beer in one hand and nearly knocking over a bowl of olives with the other.

“There they are,” Lucy calls when she spots them. “The mysterious pool hermits.”

Steve releases your hand as you cross the threshold, the movement instinctive rather than intentional. He angles toward the fridge, grateful for something to do, pulling it open and scanning the shelves like he’s been tasked with a mission.

You don’t hesitate.

You fold yourself into the space as though you’ve been part of it all day.

“Need a hand?” you ask Juliane, already reaching for a stack of small bowls before she answers.

She looks up, faint surprise flickering into approval. “Actually, yes - can you pass me those serving spoons? And the basil, if you see it.”

You find both without fuss. You ask where she wants the bruschetta tray. You taste the dressing when she offers you a spoon and nod thoughtfully before suggesting a little more salt.

It’s seamless.

Steve watches you move through the kitchen like this is just another room you’ve always known. You deflect what needs deflecting - answering questions about the day with lightness, not detail.

“Yes, it was perfect out there.”

“Honestly, we didn’t need much.”

When Lucy tries to pry for specifics, you just grin and ask her about the server she’d been flirting with at the party. The attention shifts effortlessly.

It’s not avoidance.

It’s control.

Every time you pass him, there’s contact.

Your palm brushes low across his back when you squeeze behind him for a plate. Your hip nudges his when he blocks the drawer you need. Your fingers tap lightly against his hand when he lingers too long at the fridge like he’s forgotten why he opened it.

The touches don’t draw attention.

They read as habit.

Some of it is performance.

Some of it is something else entirely.

He mirrors you without consciously deciding to.

When someone asks you about work, his hand comes to rest at your shoulder, fingers rubbing once absently against your collarbone. When Lucy hands him the bruschetta tray, he passes a piece to you first, holding it just out of reach until you glare at him.

“Don’t,” you warn, already smiling.

“You’ve got tomato -”

You swipe at your chin too late.

He laughs, reaches forward, and wipes it away with his thumb before the thought catches up with him.

The room barely registers it. It looks easy. Ordinary.

But the warmth of it lingers at the edge of his awareness.

The playfulness from the afternoon hasn’t evaporated in the noise. It threads through everything - the way you lean into him when someone bumps your shoulder, the way he steadies you without thinking when you nearly drop a bowl.

He notices something strange then.

He isn’t pulled tense with it.

He isn’t tracking every shift in tone, every raised eyebrow, every subtle judgement in his mother’s voice.

The kitchen feels loud, yes - crowded, yes - but not suffocating.

Because every time the noise swells, your hand finds him again. A press at his back. A squeeze at his fingers. A silent check-in.

You good?

He doesn’t say it out loud, but he answers it anyway, shifting closer when he can, letting his shoulder brush yours, anchoring himself in that small point of contact.

When his dad launches into a story from college, louder than necessary and already two beats too long, Steve catches your eye across the island.

You roll yours with theatrical exaggeration.

He grins before he can stop himself.

And for the first time that evening, standing in the middle of his family’s noise and expectation, he realises he isn’t alone in it.

****************

Dinner drifts instead of ending.

Plates sit in uneven stacks along the table, someone promising to “get them in a minute” with no real intention of following through. The firepit is lit without ceremony, flames catching in deep reds and orange as the sky fades from amber into ink. Cushions are dragged into loose formation across the deck, bodies folding into them wherever there’s space - bare feet tucked beneath thighs, second drinks sweating in relaxed hands, the soft crackle of burning wood stitching the whole evening together.

It’s nothing like the stiffness of the previous night. There’s no arranged seating, no careful hosting choreography, just the low hum of overlapping stories and no one particularly concerned with following the same thread at once. Someone presses a beer into his hand that he didn’t ask for; someone else is already arguing about music. The noise is warm and unstructured, comfortable in its disorder.

You settle into the corner of the couch and jump into the nearest conversation, natural as breathing.

He finds himself on the deck at your feet without consciously choosing it, lowering himself between your knees and leaning back against the cushion as if it were the most obvious place to land. The position feels easy, unremarkable - his weight resting naturally against you, the firelight warming his bare legs, the ocean breathing somewhere beyond the dunes.

For a while he lets the soundscape carry him: the weave of conversation to his right, the pop and shift of burning wood, the distant rush of tide rolling in and out of the dark.

Then your hand slips into his hair.

You don’t announce it or even look down. Your fingers simply find his crown while you continue talking, nails grazing lightly across his scalp in an absent, unselfconscious rhythm.

Something in him loosens.

Rick’s voice cuts cleanly through the hum. “So there’s really enough demand for stained glass restoration out there? In rural Indiana?”

Steve doesn’t bother opening his eyes. He feels the slight pause in your hand - not withdrawal, just adjusting - before you answer.

“After the quake?” you reply calmly. “Yeah. More than anyone expected.”

Your fingers resume their slow path along the curve of his head as you speak.

“The first phase was structural. Plain glass. Hospitals. Schools. Housing. That had to come first. But once the emergency response settled…” You shift slightly behind him, fingers flexing without disrupting the contact. “Beauty got left behind.”

Your thumb brushes the base of his skull, and he feels the difference immediately.

This morning, touch had felt like something happening to him - sudden, sharp, his body reacting before his mind could catch up. Now it moves through him differently. There’s no urgency to it, no edge. Just warmth spreading beneath his skin, steady and unthreatening.

“A lot of those church windows had been there for over a century,” you continue. “People weren’t just grieving buildings. They were grieving memory.”

He lets his head tip fully back against your thigh. The warmth of you there is solid and grounding. You adjust automatically to accommodate him, fingers spreading slightly without breaking your sentence.

“So they sent you in for that?” Rick asks.

“My company did. Right after the quarantine lifted. I moved out to assess what could be saved.”

He exhales softly as your thumb presses at the base of his neck.

“We started with the churches - stabilising what hadn’t shattered, rebuilding panels from old photographs. Then the city commissioned a memorial for the new town hall.”

The fire pops; laughter flares briefly from the far end of the couch.

“It’s a layered piece,” you explain. “Some of the glass fragments are from the original buildings. You can still see the fractures if you look closely. It’s not about pretending nothing broke. It’s about letting the break be part of the new design.”

Your hand slides forward, smoothing his hair back from his forehead.

He opens his eyes.

From where he’s sitting, the firelight catches along the curve of your jaw and the edge of your cheek. You’re focused on Rick, patient and unhurried, gesturing lightly with your free hand - the other still resting loosely in his hair.

You’re not trying to impress anyone. There’s no sharpness in the way you speak, no performance to soften or dramatise your work. You’re explaining it because it matters to you.

He realises he’s listening less to the content of your words and more to their cadence - the quiet certainty threaded through them. You don’t rush to justify yourself. You don’t shrink your work to make it more digestible. You simply speak.

Your fingers scratch lightly at his scalp again, and this time the sensation doesn’t spike. It settles. Warms. Spreads slow and heavy through him until he feels it in his chest.

He becomes aware, gradually, that he’s smiling - not the grin he uses when he’s playing a part, not the smirk that buys him distance, but something softer and unguarded.

You glance down, perhaps sensing the shift, and find him already looking at you.

Your smile changes, only slightly.

Warmer. Private.

You keep talking to Rick, but your thumb traces a small, absent circle near his temple as if to say, I know.

For a moment the noise of the deck recedes into texture. The fire becomes background glow. His dad’s voice blends into the wider hum of conversation. There’s no calculation running under his skin, no clenching for commentary or performance. Just the soft press of your thigh beneath his head and your hand in his hair, anchoring him there.

He isn’t analysing it. He isn’t trying to decide what it means.

He’s just here.

There’s a click.

Lucy lowers the Polaroid camera from her face, triumphant. “Oh, that one’s good.”

He barely registers it. Lucy’s been snapping photos all evening - shaking them gently to coax the images into clarity, lining them up on the table to pass around. They curl slightly at the edges as they develop, colours blooming into place.

He turns his face a fraction deeper into your thigh, eyes drifting closed again, and listens to you finish your explanation while the fire burns lower and the sky deepens overhead.

****************

As the fire burns lower, the conversation loosens.

The volume drops without anyone announcing it - stories trailing off, laughter coming softer now, Rick nursing the last of his drink instead of launching into another anecdote. The night stretches long and comfortable around them.

Lucy is still on the far end of the couch, carefully shaking a fresh Polaroid before setting it down beside the others. Juliane leans toward you, asking another question about the memorial, and you turn slightly to answer, still warm and intent in a way that hasn’t dimmed all evening.

Annabeth, meanwhile, has begun gathering the developed photos into neat stacks on the low table. She studies each one with quiet concentration before deciding its fate - some slid into a small scrapbook beside her chair, others lifted ready to be carefully arranged inside the wide wooden frame resting against the sideboard. She adjusts their spacing more than once before settling on a configuration that satisfies her.

She doesn’t rush it.

She chooses.

Steve notices the deliberation in the way she handles them - the slight tilt of her head, the way she steps back to assess the composition before committing.

The evening isn’t ending so much as settling.

When he finally shifts, it begins as a stretch - his head lifting from your thigh, your hand sliding from his hair with a soft drag of fingers through it, unhurried, as though you’re both reluctant to break the shape of it. He braces a palm against the deck and pushes himself upright, brushing off the back of his shorts before stepping carefully around the low table and the scatter of legs toward the house.

“I’m gonna turn in,” he says, easy.

“Already?” Rick calls, though there’s no real protest in it.

“Old man,” Lucy adds, not looking up from the photo she’s inspecting.

Annabeth glances up from the frame she’s adjusting, one hand still resting along the wood. “Alright, Steven. Sleep tight.”

You’re angled toward Juliane, mid-sentence, explaining something with the same quiet focus that’s threaded through you all night. You don’t stop speaking as he circles behind the couch on his way to the door.

He could walk past without touching you.

It would be easy. Casual. Unremarkable.

Instead, as he passes close enough to feel the warmth of your shoulder through the thin cotton of your shirt, he lets his hand drift.

His fingers brush along the curve of your shoulder first - a light, testing sweep - then settle there for half a second longer than necessary. Not possessive. Not performative. Just a quiet confirmation.

You lean into it instinctively, like you were expecting it.

Your hand lifts without looking, catching his wrist before he can pull away. Your thumb presses once against the inside of it - small, deliberate - and the contact lands heavier than the gesture should allow.

Not for the room.

For him.

“I won’t be too long,” you murmur, still half-turned toward Juliane, your voice easy enough that no one else would hear anything in it.

Your fingers tighten once - brief, certain - before releasing him.

The absence of your touch follows him the last few steps to the door.

He doesn’t look back. He doesn’t need to.

The sliding glass door closes behind him with a soft hush.

Outside, your voice carries faintly through the glass - animated, warm. Inside, the house has quieted. The music has been switched off. The kitchen smells faintly of woodsmoke and citrus.

He pauses in the hallway, intending to grab a glass of water before heading upstairs.

That’s when he sees them.

The Polaroids.

They’ve already been slid into the frame on the sideboard - the one his mom updates obsessively every summer with what she calls “this month’s memories.”

Danny and Annabeth, posed but relaxed, arms linked with easy familiarity.

The sunset spilling molten light across the water.

Lucy, Juliane, and Rick collapsed together on the couch, caught mid-laugh.

A seagull balanced one-legged on the fence, eyeing a scrap of leftovers below.

And then -

He steps closer.

There it is, positioned squarely in the centre.

Him on the deck floor, head tipped back. You above him, fingers tangled in his hair, looking down at him as though nothing else exists beyond the frame.

He doesn’t look like he’s pretending.

He looks -

He swallows before the word settles fully in his chest.

Happy.

Not the curated version of it. Not the polished grin he gives cameras out of habit. Something unguarded. Something that hasn’t been adjusted for anyone else’s comfort.

Annabeth has chosen that one.

Chosen to display it - to display them - in the middle of her carefully curated summer house.

She didn’t pick the sunset.

She didn’t pick the posed ones.

She picked this.

Picked him like that.

The knowledge lands slowly.

His mother, who notices everything. Who edits relentlessly. Who arranges and rearranges until the story of the week looks just right.

She saw this - and decided it was the one worth framing.

Worth keeping.

Something tight pulls low in his chest, unfamiliar and dangerously close to emotion he doesn’t have a clean name for. It isn’t embarrassment. It isn’t pride. It’s something softer. A quiet, disorienting sense of being… approved. Not for performance. Not for potential.

For this.

Upstairs, a tap runs briefly. Floorboards creak. The house settles into night.

Steve stands there longer than he intends to, staring at the image that feels both entirely ordinary and impossibly exposed - like someone has held up proof of something he hasn’t fully admitted to himself yet.

Then he reaches up, turns off the hallway light, and heads for the stairs.

[zelinkcrossing]

THE SWIMMING OKAY GRAYSON HAWTHORNE

the contrast between choice and requirement is hitting SO INSANELY HARD and steve's intentionality with it is DELICIOUS OH MY GOD AMAZING AMAZING WORK

[dailyjoekeery]

JOE KEERY as JOE KEERY STEPHEN MALKMUS Pavements (2024) | dir. Alex Ross Perry

[morninglesss]

disparate youth, pt.2

Steve Harrington x f!reader // part one / part two / part three / part four / part five / part six / part seven / part eight complete

Outer Banks, summer 1995. Steve’s parents are celebrating their thirty year anniversary with a week of parties, photos, and perfect appearances. Steve shows up out of obligation - and brings you as his “girlfriend” for survival. Steve gets punched in the solar plexus by surprise!BigFweelings, and his parents knock it out of the park. /s

word count: 9.8k

As always: Steve Harrington deserved better, so I gave him softness. 🌊

The deck has filled up while they were upstairs, crowded enough now that Steve has to angle his body slightly to keep from being jostled. He doesn’t mind it - the press of people, the steady hum of voices. It’s familiar territory. Some of them he even recognises: a family friend from Chicago, a couple of his father’s former associates, someone else who always asks about which age group he teaches and never remembers the answer.

He knows how to do this.

It’s muscle memory, drilled in early and often. Nod. Smile. Make eye contact just long enough to feel attentive, not long enough to invite questions. It’s so good to see you. You must have just arrived. Yes, the house is beautiful. Have you tried the salmon?

He moves through it easily, letting the small talk wash over him, offering nothing that sticks. His parents had been meticulous about this, coached him through dinners and fundraisers and club events before he’d hit double digits. How to stand. When to laugh. How to exit a conversation without seeming rude. It had been framed as polish. Preparation. You’ll thank us later.

And he had, for a while.

Now it’s just another Steve he can slip into, even when he’s tired.

Someone’s lit the lanterns strung along the fence, the glass catching the last of the daylight and softening it into something golden. The sky has slipped softly toward evening while he wasn’t looking, blue deepening at the edges, the ocean below darkening into something heavier and more reflective. To the west side of the grounds the house glows, all warm light and open doors, carefully inviting.

Platters have appeared on the low benches and newly placed tables - olives slick with oil, thin slices of melon wrapped in prosciutto, crackers and cheeses stacked with a precision that suggests a ruler and spirit level were involved at some point. Everything looks considered. Balanced. Designed to be admired before it’s consumed.

Servers in uniforms Steve doesn’t recognise move through the crowd with quiet efficiency, trays held steady, expressions neutral. They glide around conversations without interrupting them, refilling glasses, clearing plates, never quite meeting anyone’s eye. Steve sees the choreography automatically. He knows where they’ll step next. He adjusts his stance without thinking, making space smoothly.

Someone presses a drink into his hand. Gin, probably. He doesn’t ask.

He takes a sip anyway - sharp, clean, familiar - and lets the noise settle back in around him. Laughter rises and falls in pockets. Someone gestures too broadly and nearly knocks over a glass; someone else reaches out to steady it, fingers lingering a moment longer than necessary. The music hums beneath it all, inoffensive enough to be ignored.

Steve stands with his right shoulder angled toward the ocean, half-turned away from the centre of things, the silence in his left ear muffling most of the party noise enough to make it bearable. It’s a position he’s perfected over the years - present without being involved, available without being needed. Close enough to be drawn in if someone remembers he’s there, distant enough to slip away without comment if they don’t.

He lets the sound of the waves on his right side steady him, the rhythm familiar and unbothered by the party on the deck. Gulls and other sea birds cry somewhere overhead, sharp and insistent, then fade out again with the breeze. The ocean keeps its own time, the roll of the waves indifferent to lanterns and laughter and anniversaries.

Steve takes a measured sip of his gin. It’s cold and juniper-heavy, sharp enough to pull him fully back into his body. He holds the taste on his tongue before he swallows, shoulders dropping a fraction as any residual tension eases away.

He spots you across the deck without meaning to.

It’s not like he’s searching for you, not really - his gaze is loose, unfocused, drifting the way it does when he’s half-listening to the sound of the water and half-counting the beats between sips. Someone shifts, someone else laughs too loudly, a server slips past - and then there you are, revealed in the small rearrangement of bodies.

You’re standing with his grandmother.

For a split second, Steve feels a pinch of guilt, sharp and instinctive. He’d left you alone, left you to navigate the hectic Harrington ecosystem solo while he slipped out ahead to show his face and blend in. He starts to move without quite realising it, already preparing to cross the deck and intervene, to save you from whichever ambush might be about to strike.

Then he actually looks.

You’re fine.

More than fine. You’re engaged - not leaning in, not hanging back, just present in that easy middle space that invites conversation without demanding it. You’re listening to his grandmother with the kind of attention that isn’t performative: head tilted slightly, eyes warm, mouth curving at the right moments. When his grandmother says something he knows from experience to likely be dry and faintly wicked, you laugh expressively - surprised, delighted - like you didn’t expect it but appreciate it all the same.

Steve exhales again, slow.

He remembers how it happened: the two of you emerging from your shared bedroom changed into something a little less travel-crushed, the house busy now, the noise rising. His grandmother had caught sight of you almost as soon as you’d descended the staircase - gaze sharpening, curiosity piqued - and lifted her glass in a small, unmistakable summons. You’d glanced back at him then, eyebrows raised, silently asking is this okay?

He’d shrugged, helpless and fond. Go on.

You’d gone.

Now he watches as other guests drift in and out of that small orbit - an uncle, then someone’s wife, then another woman Steve only half-recognises - and you accommodate them all without losing the thread of the conversation. You answer questions cleanly, without apologising for yourself or trying to impress. When someone makes a comment that earns a quiet, collective eye-roll, you don’t resist it. You share it with his grandmother, just a flicker of expression, private and conspiratorial.

He watches as his grandmother’s mouth twitches into a smile, her hand squeezing yours. A welcome into the fold.

Steve feels something loosen in his chest.

He realises, distantly, that this is the first time he’s ever watched someone interact with his family without holding his breath. Without waiting for the misstep - the wrong tone, the awkward pause - the moment he’ll have to smooth over later with a joke or a gentle hand at someone’s elbow.

God knows how much he adores Robin and Dustin, but doing this week with you? It’s just easier.

You don’t need translating or defending, and, so far at least, he doesn’t feel like he’s developing a stomach ulcer from holding onto the rage that flares up when he catches one of his parents rolling their eyes at something innocently said, something that shouldn’t need correcting or cushioning.

You look up then, taking in the easy sprawl of bodies and voices on the deck, and your eyes land on him without effort.

The shift in your expression is immediate and unguarded. Recognition first, then something warmer, lighter. You don’t offer a polite smile or a carefully curated nod meant for public consumption. Instead, you pull a face - exaggerated, ridiculous - and lift your hand in a quick, unapologetic wave.

It’s stupid.

It’s perfect.

Steve snorts into his glass before he can stop himself, the sound half-lost in the noise around him. He feels heat bloom behind his ribs, quick and unexpected.

It’s the same warmth he gets when Robin catches his eye across a room and mouths something obscene just to see if he’ll crack. The same one that hits when Dustin launches into a thought mid-stream, no preamble, no apology - trusting Steve with the unedited version of himself.

It’s the feeling of being known.

He lifts his glass in return, a lazy salute meant only for you. You flash a bright toothy grin, satisfied, and turn back to the conversation like nothing happened.

Message delivered.

Steve stays where he is, the ocean at his shoulder, the lantern light blurring at the edges of his vision. The crowd swells and shifts behind him, voices overlapping, glasses clinking - but the noise doesn’t press in on his good ear the way it usually does.

Something has settled.

He realises - not with alarm, not with excitement, just with quiet certainty - that if he wanted to, he could cross the deck and stand beside you. He could slide into the space he knows you’d make without asking. He could add a comment, or not. Be included without effort.

And the strangest part is how little that thought concerns him.

No overthinking. No worry. Just ease.

Steve takes another sip of his gin, holds it there long enough to taste the zest and pine, the steady hush of the waves folding in around him.

He’s still at the edge of the gathering.

But for once, it doesn’t feel like he’s standing there alone.

****************

Annabeth doesn’t raise her voice. She doesn’t need to. She steps onto the low, flower-draped dais at the north side of the broad deck, yet more hydrangeas spilling over the edges in pale blues and whites. She looks effortless there - her silk dress catching the breeze, posture immaculate, soft curls and rose smile already in place. This is her element. Hosting isn’t something she does; it’s something she becomes.

She taps her glass once with the back of a spoon - light, precise - and the sound carries cleanly across the deck. Small talk fades instinctively. Laughter softens. People turn.

Steve feels it before he sees it, the subtle reorientation of the crowd, like a flock of starlings shifting midair.

“Everyone,” she says, smiling, not loudly but clearly enough that conversations taper off around the edges. “If I could steal your attention for just a moment.”

Annabeth never rushes this part. She savours it, holding out for the hush until she has it. Steve recognises the tactic. His mother always did know how to claim a room without raising her voice.

“We’re so happy you could all be here with us this week,” she continues. “It means a great deal to have the people we love in one place. Thirty years of marriage is… well.” She laughs softly, the sound rehearsed and warm. “It felt worth celebrating properly.”

A ripple of agreement moves through the group.

She looks out across the crowd - not searching, exactly. Taking attendance.

“Some of you have travelled here from a great distance, and some of you are practically neighbours now, but it means a great deal to us that you’re here to start this celebration week with us, from however near or far.”

Steve watches from the edge, the gin glass cool in his hand, and feels the familiar sense of being an observer to something that technically should somehow include him.

Then Danny appears.

He doesn’t climb the step so much as drift in beside Annabeth, timing it perfectly - a hand at the small of her back, a brief, practiced kiss to her cheek. The effect is immediate. Smiles widen. Someone whistles softly. Brief applause ripples through the group.

The Harringtons, fully assembled.

Steve has seen this his entire life: the way his parents shift when they’re being watched, how their bodies align without effort, how the years smooth themselves into something enviable when viewed from a distance.

Annabeth’s hand finds Danny’s - connecting palm to palm, fingers resting there rather than interlacing, a deliberate kind of contact. Not a grip. Not a display. Just enough to register.

Like saying grace, you’d said. Or being led to your execution.

The thought flickers through him, wry and unexpected, and he hides his grin behind his glass.

“Thirty years,” she says again, and the crowd responds with appreciative laughter. “Which feels impossible, until you realise how quickly time moves when you’re surrounded by people who matter.”

She gestures outward - inclusive, generous.

“And speaking of that,” Annabeth adds, her tone shifting just enough that Steve feels it register in his body before he understands why. Her gaze sweeps the crowd again - slower this time, more deliberate - the way it does when she’s about to hook a rope around something and drag it centre stage. “We’re especially happy to welcome some new faces this year.”

She runs through a handful of names Steve doesn’t recognise, joining in quietly with the polite murmurs in response as each name is called, clapping his free hand against his wrist as he nurses his drink.

Steve feels it before it lands - a faint tightening at the back of his neck, the instinctive awareness that he’s about to be singled out. He straightens without meaning to, shoulders easing back into something presentable, something learned.

Annabeth’s eyes find him and she gestures to his place on the edge, an arm held out to guide the gathering’s focus.

She lifts her chin just a fraction, smile firm.

It’s the look she’s always had when she wants something from him without asking for it outright. The look that says you know your part.

“And of course,” she says, her smile deepening as the words leave her mouth, “our beloved Steven.”

The adjective lands with a soft thud.

Beloved. Public. Unavoidable.

A few people turn to look now, interest sharpening into recognition. Steve feels it ripple - the reset, the subtle re-shelving of him from guest to subject. Someone near the drinks table says, “Oh, so that’s the son?” quietly, like a revelation. Another voice follows, warmer: “Well, he’s certainly grown up.”

Steve lifts his glass in response, reflexive. He doesn’t smile - not quite - but he makes his face agreeable. Acceptable. The version of himself that photographs well.

Annabeth doesn’t look away from him.

“And,” she continues, seamless, practiced, “his girlfriend - who we are just so delighted to finally meet.”

The emphasis, the pause, they sit just long enough to register, but not long enough to be rude.

Steve feels the crowd’s attention hesitate, then split - eyes flicking instinctively from him to the space beside him.

Empty.

There’s a beat where the distance becomes part of the performance, the fact that you are not already by his side, not already arranged the way his parents - and this moment - seem to expect you to be. Steve feels the familiar flare of self-consciousness, sharp and unhelpful, the old instinct to fix it before anyone else notices the flaw.

Then Annabeth’s gaze lifts again, tracking across the deck.

“Ah, there you are,” she says lightly once she spots you side by side with her mother in law, warmth returning to her tone like it was never absent. “Please, both of you, come up and join us.”

A ripple of movement follows the words. Heads turn. Bodies shift. The lasso tightens, attention looping through the space between you and him.

Steve hesitates, recognising the moment for what it is - a test, framed as an invitation.

Across the deck, you catch his eye.

Steve watches your expression change - the instant the understanding hits you, the quick assessment. You don’t freeze. You don’t rush. You don’t look embarrassed or flustered or uncertain.

You smile.

You excuse yourself from his grandmother with a light touch to her arm, a whisper Steve can’t hear but recognises by shape alone - polite, warm, unhurried. Then you turn and start toward him, moving through the crowd with an ease that makes the space open without resistance.

Steve feels something in him relax as you approach, something approaching relief rising the nearer to him you get.

This isn’t damage control.

This is collaboration.

By the time you reach him, the deck has quietened enough that he can hear the ocean again, steady and rhythmic beyond the rail. You stop at his side, close but not clinging, your presence slotting in like it belongs there.

Annabeth is still waiting.

She doesn’t beckon - she simply opens the space beside her, one hand lifting in a small, expectant gesture that assumes compliance without demanding it.

“Steven,” she laughs, all smiles. “Don’t keep us all waiting!”

It’s framed as inclusion. It isn’t optional.

Steve hesitates for the briefest fraction of a second - long enough to feel the old instinct kick in, the reflexive urge to shrink or deflect - and then you’re already moving, fingers brushing his wrist in a silent ‘let’s go’. He follows, steps light but deliberate, up onto the dais.

Danny stands where he’s been all evening, hand settled comfortably at Annabeth’s back, posture relaxed in the way of someone who knows exactly how he reads from a distance. The crowd’s attention sharpens again, the picture rearranging itself in real time.

The Harringtons - expanded.

Steve feels the comparison flicker - unspoken but present - the way Danny’s ease sets the tone, the way Annabeth’s smile catches the moment.

Before Steve can decide what to do with his hands, you shift closer.

You rise just enough to press a gentle kiss to his cheek - light, affectionate, unshowy. Not played for the crowd. Natural, not exaggerated.

It lands warm against his skin, steadying in a way he didn’t expect, a quiet echo of what the crowd has already been shown.

The response comes in pieces rather than all at once - a low murmur spreading outward, the subtle reshaping of faces as the image resolves itself. Approval settling. Curiosity easing into satisfaction. Someone laughs under their breath, the sound warm rather than sharp. Someone else smiles, slow and pleased, like they’ve just been reassured about something they hadn’t realised they were quietly tracking all evening.

Steve feels it in the shift of the air around him - the way the lasso loosens its grip, how the moment slides neatly into place instead of snagging on him.

Annabeth’s expression brightens, satisfied for now.

“Isn’t it lovely,” she says into the mic again, voice smooth and inclusive, the practiced cadence of a woman who knows exactly how to hold a room, “to have everyone together? It’s been far too long!”

Danny leans into the microphone then, already aligned, his arm tightening comfortably around Annabeth’s waist. The movement is easy, unexamined - a gesture made for the benefit of the crowd without ever appearing to be for them.

“We’re looking forward to a week of good food,” he says, voice authoritative and assured, “good company - and a few surprises.”

A ripple of intrigue moves through the guests, polite and eager. Steve feels it pass over him without catching.

Annabeth laughs softly, the sound light but deliberate. “Oh, don’t look so alarmed,” she says. “Nothing too scandalous.”

Her gaze dips then - not subtly - taking in the four of you arranged just so. A family. A unit. A composition that reads cleanly from a distance, edges smoothed, story intact.

“Well,” she says lightly, lifting her glass, “we won’t keep you all.”

Relief spreads through the deck like a released breath.

“To friends,” Danny adds.

“To family,” Annabeth finishes.

Glasses lift. A camera flashes. Applause swell again, brief and enthusiastic. Someone faceless near the back whoops, too loud but immediately forgiven. The moment breaks apart into movement and sound and conversation, the spotlight dissolving as efficiently as it formed.

And suddenly Steve is aware of his hands again.

Of the space between his fingers.

Of how easily this could tip - into stiffness, into self-consciousness - if he starts thinking too hard about where he fits in the picture now that it’s been shown.

So he doesn’t.

He turns slightly toward you and lets his hand find yours. Easy. Familiar. The kind of contact that doesn’t ask permission because it doesn’t need it. You respond without hesitation, fingers threading through his with quiet certainty.

The crowd exhales.

Steve doesn’t look at his mother.

He looks at you.

And in the lantern light, with the ocean steady behind him and your hand warm in his, he realises something with a calm that surprises him:

Whatever this is pretending to be, it’s working.

****************

The night loosens around them.

It’s subtle at first - rounds of fresh drinks poured without much ceremony, dinner jackets draped over chair backs, ties and shoes shaken off, laughter growing less careful. Someone’s swapped out the polite background mix for something with a beat, bass vibrating through the deck boards and coaxing people out of their seats. A few people drift toward the open space at the centre of the deck, swaying more than dancing, drinks lifted overhead like an act of faith.

The Harringtons are no longer fixed points in the gathering. Annabeth glides from cluster to cluster, all smiles and light touches to forearms, relishing every second as the gracious hostess, and Danny holds court with his boys near the bar with a story that’s already gained an extra flourish by the second telling. The house and grounds shimmer with life - voices overlapping, glasses clinking, the ocean steady and dark beyond the lantern light.

When his parents had invited them for drinks and snacks this evening, Steve had imagined restraint. A handful of people. A few beers around the pool with his grandmother, Juliane, Lucy and Rick. Snacks that came in bowls, not courses. Maybe something easy on the grill.

The scale of what now surrounded him suggested he’d misunderstood. Or, more likely, underestimated them.

He finds himself standing with you near the edge of the deck, half-turned toward the water. You’d stayed close after his mother’s little spotlight ambush, falling into the role of loved-up girlfriend as if it were second nature. The two of you drifted through small talk with the Harringtons’ inquisitive friends and neighbours together, until you’d carved out a quiet refuge at the very edge of the evening.

At some point - he’s not entirely sure when, but definitely after his third gin and tonic - his arm settles around your shoulders. Casual. Unthinking. Your body fits easily against his side, your arm looping around his waist without a second thought.

Steve doesn’t make the decision to touch you. It just happens.

When you resettle against him after retrieving fresh drinks from the bar, his hand shifts from your shoulder, fingers sliding down the line of your back. Not far. Not bold. Just a slow, absent stroke that follows the curve of your spine - until something in it lingers.

The contact tightens, barely. His thumb presses in as your breath changes beside him.

You still.

He stills too.

The world doesn’t stop, but it narrows, awareness snapping into place all at once. His hand is on you. Yours is at his waist. And suddenly neither of you is quite sure how long it’s been that way, or when it stopped feeling accidental.

The contact is brief.

Barely a second, really.

But it’s enough.

His fingers brush warm fabric, feel the subtle give of your body beneath it, and something sparks low and immediate inside him - sharp enough that his breath stutters, his hand going still like he’s been caught out.

You feel it too.

He knows because you do the smallest thing: your shoulders lift just a fraction, your breath catching before you let it go. Your fingers tightens at his waist - not pulling away, just an acknowledgment.

Steve freezes, heart hammering, unsure whether to move or pretend he already has.

“Oh -” he starts, then stops, heat blooming behind his ribs. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to -”

You tilt your head up toward him, close enough now that he can see the dark of your pupils in the lantern light. There’s no alarm there. No discomfort.

Just awareness.

“It’s okay,” you say quietly, your mouth near his right ear. “You didn’t do anything wrong.” You lean in a little closer, squeezing his side - not to steady him, but to keep him there. “If you keep jumping away every time you touch me, people are going to start wondering why.”

He lets out a small, conceding sound - half laugh, half wince. “I’m just trying not to make it… weird.”

You study him for a moment, your expression softened at the edges, the way it goes when you’ve had a drink or two and the night feels generous.

“It’s only weird if you act like it is,” you say. Then, quieter - closer - your shoulder settling fully into his chest. “You don’t have to flinch every time your hand finds me. I want you comfortable.”

He swallows. “I just -”

The words desert him.

You turn toward him without hurry, close enough now that your knees brush. Your hand comes up with no ceremony at all, fingers smoothing once over his collarbone before settling at the base of his throat - grounding. Certain. Intentionally there.

He stills, hazel eyes locked on yours.

“This is fine,” you say gently. “More than fine.” A pause - held deliberately. “If it feels good, Steve, you don’t have to stop.”

His fingers react before he can think better of it.

His hand retraces its path down your spine, slower this time, less tentative - lingering a little lower at your back, like he’s testing the waters.

This time, the sensation doesn’t startle.

It invites.

And he doesn’t tell himself to stop.

Your hand stays where it is, thumb warm in the hollow of his throat, fingers spreading just enough for him to feel the steady thud of his heart beneath your palm. You lean in, your breath ghosting his jaw.

“Anyone looking,” you murmur, “just sees two people flirting.”

His throat works over as he swallows.

“So,” you continue softly, fingers pressing in with quiet confidence, “you can either keep freaking out every time you touch me… or you can give yourself a break and just go with it.”

His breath leaves him in a slow exhale - something between relief and surrender. “You’re dangerous,” he mutters, not quite a joke.

You smile, unapologetic, and slide your hand a fraction higher - not claiming, but deciding. “Relax, Harrington. If anyone asks, you’re just being a very attentive boyfriend.”

That does it.

His hand settles fully at your lower back, firmer now, fingers spreading like he’s finally allowed himself the space. Not rushed. Not rough. Just sure. You fit into him easily, your hand still warm at his chest - a silent agreement held between bodies rather than words.

Then -

“Alright, alright, alright,” Danny’s voice booms suddenly through the microphone, louder and less polished than before. A squeal of feedback ricochets across the deck before someone hurriedly adjusts the levels. “Before everyone gets too comfortable -”

The spell snaps.

Steve’s hand stills - then retreats on instinct, fingers curling back to a safer place at your shoulder, as if he’s been caught in the act.

He forces a breath in through his nose.

Then another.

Jesus. Get it together.

His pulse is still loud in his ears, his skin too warm where your hand had been, the echo of it lingering in a way that feels wildly out of proportion to what just happened. A hand. A look. A second too long.

It’s the gin, he decides immediately - latching onto the thought like a life raft. Third gin and tonic, barely any food, summer heat, noise, nostalgia. That’s all this is. Chemistry-by-circumstance. Alcohol doing what alcohol does.

That explanation sits easier than the alternative.

He shifts his weight, schools his expression into something relaxed, normal and fake-boyfriend-shaped, because this is still pretend. It has to be.

Gin makes everything fuzzy, he tells himself.

Gin makes things feel bigger than they are.

And if his hand twitches at his side - if some part of him is imagining being able to touch you again sometime without an audience - well.

That’s just the gin talking.

He focuses instead on his father manhandling the microphone on the dais.

Danny clears his throat, already grinning, a telltale flush high on his suntanned cheeks.

“Annabeth’s going to kill me for this - m’sorry, my love, I really am…” he says, lifting his glass slightly in mock surrender.

The deck answers with appreciative chuckles.

“But since we’ve got most of you here,” he continues, rolling easily with the attention, “I figured it’s as good a time as any to let you in on the real reason for all of this week’s fuss.”

Steve feels your arm tighten around him again, warm and steady, as Annabeth steps back into place beside her husband, her smile sharpening into something deliberate and composed. The two of them settle into alignment without thinking, shoulders angled just so. She brushes some imagined dust from his shoulder, and kisses his cheek approvingly. A practiced silhouette.

“We… are… renewing our wedding vows on Friday,” Danny announces, lifting his glass higher.

The reaction is immediate.

Cheers break out across the deck. Applause rises. Someone whistles loudly from near the bar. Someone else claps hard enough to draw laughter. A few people reach instinctively for each other, arms sliding around waists, hands finding hands.

Steve barely hears it at first.

He’s still caught on the ghost of your skin under his fingertips - the echo of that accidental stroke lingering like a question he hasn’t answered yet. His body remembers before his brain does. The warmth. The ease. The way it hadn’t felt wrong.

You lean in, mouth near his ear as the noise crests around you.

“Well,” you murmur, amused, warm. “That explains the flowers and starched shirts...”

He laughs, unabashed, grateful for the normalcy of it - and for the fact that your arm never withdraws from his waist.

But Danny keeps talking.

“We thought - after thirty years,” he says, squeezing Annabeth’s hand, “it might be nice to do it again. With all of you. Properly this time, not in a run-down little court house in Indiana.”

More applause. Annabeth dips her head, pleased, touched in exactly the way people expect her to be. Steve feels it land in his chest like a dropped plate - not a shatter, just a dull, unexpected weight.

A vow renewal.

Of course.

Annabeth continues, buoyed by the reaction to her husband. “The club’s been wonderful - they’ve opened up the terrace for us. Dinner, a live band, dancing. We wanted it to feel…” She searches briefly for the word, then finds it. “Magical.”

Steve takes a sip of his drink. It tastes sharp.

“We’ll have a few events throughout the week,” Danny adds easily, as if filling in a spreadsheet. “Golf tomorrow. Dinner out Wednesday. And then Friday will be the main event.”

Someone asks a question about music. Another about accommodations. Annabeth answers smoothly, already several steps ahead.

“And of course,” Danny adds, voice brightening, “we’ll have a few people standing up with us.”

Steve’s attention sharpens despite himself.

It’s automatic. Old muscle memory. The part of him that learned, very early, to listen out for his name even when he pretends not to.

“Back in ’sixty-five I had my brother at my side,” Danny says, his voice dipping just enough to be felt. “And I miss him every day.” A pause - earned. “But I’m grateful to have family who’ve stepped into that place since. My brother-in-law Rick’s agreed to be my best man this week, and I couldn’t be happier.”

From the crowd, Rick lifts his glass in acknowledgment, already being clapped on the back by someone nearby.

“And we’ve got Thomas bringing the new rings,” Danny adds, gesturing vaguely toward the front of the deck - a distant nephew, someone twice removed. One of Annabeth’s favourites. Young, affable, useful, a rising star in Danny’s company. Someone who photographs well.

There it is.

Not a pause. Not a hesitation. Just the omission.

The words slide neatly into place, scene complete without him.

Steve doesn’t react outwardly. He knows better than that. His face stays neutral, polite, appropriately pleased. He even lifts his glass when the crowd does, a beat behind, the motion practiced enough to pass unnoticed. He’s learned, over time, exactly how much of himself to leave out of moments like this.

Inside him, something sinks.

It’s not shock - that would require surprise, and God knows there’s none of that. It’s the dull, familiar recognition of a pattern completing itself exactly as expected.

He feels you sense the change in him, even if you don’t know why. Your arm tightens around his waist, just a fraction - not possessive, not performative. A subtle check-in.

Steve knocks back the rest of his fresh drink, forcing the tightness in his chest to ease before it shows. He doesn’t look at the dais. Doesn’t look at his parents smiling in practiced unison, already basking in congratulations.

Instead, he looks at the lanterns shaking gently in the breeze. The dark line of the ocean beyond it. The open space waiting just past the edge of the deck.

For a few quiet seconds earlier, with his hand on your skin and no rules left to follow, he’d stopped thinking about how things were supposed to look.

Now the rules have snapped back into place.

And suddenly, he needs air.

Real air. Wind. Somewhere he isn’t being quietly weighed and found wanting.

He leans in toward you, voice low enough that it only just carries over the music.

“Hey - I’m gonna take a walk down the beach. Just for a minute.”

You don’t argue or ask why. Your hand slips from his waist, but not before it traces a gentle, acknowledging stroke across the small of his back. You tip your head toward him, mouth close to his ear.

“Okay,” you murmur. “Don’t let yourself get lost.”

A beat, softer now.

“I’ll find you.”

It isn’t a promise.

It’s a fact.

He nods curtly and eases away, the warmth of you lingering against his side as he turns toward the gate at the edge of the deck, the narrow path down to the beach beyond.

As he steps off the deck, the noise of the party thinning behind him, Steve understands the shape of things clearly:

He doesn’t want to disappear.

He just needs somewhere he doesn’t have to hold himself so carefully.

Just a little space.

****************

Steve kicks his shoes off at the path.

It’s barely a decision - just a reflexive pause, a bend to untie laces already loosened by the night, his socks stuffed unceremoniously inside before he leaves them tucked against the low fence. The sand beyond the path looks darker, cooler, more honest. He steps into it without hesitation.

The path through the dunes is narrow, edged with tall grasses that whisper as he passes through. The light from the deck thins quickly here, replaced by moonwash and the pale gleam of the water ahead. By the time his feet hit the open beach, the music is nothing more than a suggestion behind him.

Cool sand. Damp, packed firm near the tide line. A sprinkle of smooth pebbles and shells, the line of them set by the earlier high tide, every sharp edge smoothed away by the sea’s relentless rhythm.

Steve exhales heavily and keeps walking. Barefoot feels right. Calming. Like he’s shedding something on purpose - the careful posture, the polite smile, the version of himself that knows exactly where to stand so he doesn’t get in the way. Nature takes the wheel; a sharper wind coming in off the water, the steady rush and pull of the tide, waves hissing and retreating like breath.

He stops where the beach opens up fully, wide and unclaimed.

The night air presses against his arms, his sleeves now rolled up, the breeze salt-heavy and sharp enough to wake him up properly. Music from the house dwindles into something almost imaginary, the bassline reduced to a dull pulse he can feel more than hear. The ocean, by contrast, is oppressive. Honest. It crashes in and pulls back again with no interest in ceremony.

Steve digs his toes into the sand and lets his hands hang limp at his sides.

For a minute, he tells himself he just needed air. That he’ll head back up once the edge dulls. Once he’s rearranged his face into something neutral and passable.

But the thing he’s been holding down all night doesn’t let go that easily.

Best man. Uncle Rick’s name echoes again, unwanted. Not anger - never anger. Just that plain, familiar understanding that still manages to sting. His parents didn’t do it to hurt him. They didn’t do it at him… but that’s almost worse.

He presses his tongue to the back of his teeth and forces a breath through his nose, slow and controlled. He knows this script. He’s had it memorised since he was a kid.

It’s not personal.

It’s not a slight.

You’re being dramatic.

Except it is personal, even when it’s unintentional. It’s personal in the way absence always is. In the way omission leaves a shape you can’t help but notice once you know it’s there.

It’s Tommy and Carole and Nancy and Jonathan all over again.

It’s seeing Robin go off to college.

It’s watching Dustin follow a few short years later.

It’s always being the one who doesn’t get named.

He drags a hand roughly through his hair, fingers catching briefly, tugging harder than he means to. His chest feels tight - not panicked, not quite - just crowded. Like there’s too much sitting inside him with nowhere to go.

He turns toward the water at last.

The tide rushes forward, foaming white in the moonlight before retreating over shells and stones again. It reminds him, stupidly, of standing in the crowd earlier - his mother’s voice smooth and sure, his father’s laugh familiar and warm, the crowd responding exactly how they were meant to. The Harringtons, fully formed. Complete.

And him, standing just outside the frame.

Steve laughs once, short and breathless, the sound ripped away by the wind before it can become anything else. He scrubs a hand over his jaw, rougher this time.

He’d stood there earlier with his arm around you and felt - just for a second - like he wasn’t holding tight for the next correction. Like he wasn’t waiting to be repositioned or edited or quietly worked around.

And then the moment had arrived and reminded him who it truly belonged to.

He bends slightly at the waist, hands braced on his thighs, head hanging forward. He feels sick. The posture isn’t graceful. He doesn’t care. The sand shifts under his feet, cold between his toes, holding him in place whether he wants it to or not.

“You’re almost thirty,” he mutters to no one. “Get a fucking grip.”

The words land weakly, torn apart by the wind before they can do any real damage.

He tries to breathe through it instead. Slow it down.

In for six. Hold for six. Out for six. Hold for six.

The rhythm Max taught him - something she’d picked up in therapy after the coma, after everything. She’d said it helped. Said it gave her something solid to reach for when her body started panicking ahead of her thoughts.

His chest tightens anyway.

Not sharp - worse. Dense. Like something heavy is settling behind his sternum, pressing inward with every breath instead of easing. His throat goes thick and stubborn, like it’s closing around a word he never meant to say. He swallows once. Then again.

It doesn’t clear.

The breath he pulls in stutters halfway through, catching on nothing. His ribs ache with the effort of holding himself steady, shoulders creeping up toward his ears without his permission. His lip trembles, muscles jumping as he grinds his teeth together hard enough to feel it in his temples.

It doesn’t work.

Heat flares suddenly behind his eyes, fast and intrusive, and he stills, startled more by that than anything else. His vision blurs at the edges then completely, the dark water smearing into light and motion from the night sky above. He blinks hard, once, twice, like he can force it back down.

He hasn’t cried in… years. He doesn’t even know how long. Not properly. Not like this.

He straightens abruptly, fixing his stare on the water like he can will the tears back where they came from.

Nope. Not doing this. Not here.

Except his throat tightens anyway - a hard, unyielding pressure he can’t swallow past this time. His breath quivers once, then again, catching shallow and wrong, and something in his chest finally gives way.

The dam doesn’t break all at once. It cracks.

He takes off his glasses and slides them into his pocket, movements careful, automatic, like he knows what’s coming.

He doesn’t sob. He’s never been that kind of crier. But his shoulders tremble. His chest aches with it. Tears spill silently, tracking down his cheeks and dripping onto his shirt or into the sand below, swallowed without ceremony by the dark.

He cries because no one noticed.

Because no one ever does.

Because he learned early how to make himself useful and pleasant and forgettable, and it worked so well that now it’s the only shape people see.

It’s quiet. Unshowy. A brief rush of tears he didn’t plan for slip free, tracking down the side of his nose before he can stop them. He swipes at them roughly, annoyed with himself even as his chest aches harder for the effort.

He hates this part. Hates how small it makes him feel. How young.

Steve squeezes his eyes shut, jaw trembling as he sucks in a sharp breath and forces it back out. He sinks down into the sand, sitting heavily, knees bent, forearms resting there like he’s run out of options. The beach stretches on, vast and indifferent to him, and for once that doesn’t feel lonely. It feels safe.

He lets himself feel it then - really feel it.

The hurt.

The disappointment.

The stupid, persistent hope that one day they’ll choose him instead of just assuming he’ll be fine.

He presses his knuckles into his eyes, lets the tears continue, and breathes through them, shoulders shaking just enough to register. The wind steals the sound before it can become anything too embarrassing. The ocean keeps time.

Minutes pass. Maybe more.

By the time he drags his hands down his face and looks back toward the dunes, his eyes burn and his chest feels hollowed out - sore, but lighter. Like something’s finally been aired out instead of locked away again.

That’s when he realises how quiet it’s gotten.

Not the ocean - that’s reassuringly ever-present - but the absence of footsteps. Of voices. Of anyone coming to look for him.

Steve frowns faintly and glances back toward the house. The lights are still there, the party still very much alive, but no one’s followed.

A familiar thought surfaces before he can stop it.

Of course they haven’t.

He pushes himself back up to his feet, brushing the sand from his palms, already rehearsing the version of himself he’ll need to put back on before returning.

And then he hears it.

The crunch of steps in loose sand. Careful. Searching.

He stiffens instinctively, shoulders pulling tight - the reflexive panic of being caught like this, raw and unguarded. He turns halfway, ready to put the mask back on, ready to apologise for leaving the action.

You emerge a moment later, silhouetted briefly against the dim light from the house above before stepping fully onto the open sand.

Steve realises, with a small jolt of surprise, that he’s only really seeing you now.

Not because you’ve changed - you haven’t - but because the setting has. Your pewter-grey dress catches the moonlight differently out here now you’re away from the lanterns, the fabric moving softly around your knees as the wind comes in off the water. Bare arms. Bare feet.

His first instinct is absurdly practical.

Aren’t you cold?

The night breeze slides unhindered across the beach, sharper than it felt at the house, and he notices the way you tuck your shoulders in slightly as you walk. He foresees goosebumps rising along your arms. He almost says something - almost offers the shirt off his damn back - before he considers that you’re here because you chose to be, not because you wandered out unprepared.

You’re just here. Looking for him. Not caring if you’re cold.

Steve’s chest tightens, soft and strange, and he stays exactly where he is, feet buried in the sand, waiting for you to reach him.

Relief crosses your face followed by something softer when you take in his posture, the way he’s standing like he hasn’t quite decided whether to stay or go.

You slow as you approach, giving him space even now, careful not to crowd him.

“Found you,” you say quietly.

Steve clears his throat, suddenly very aware of his face, his damp eyes. “Here I am.”

“I didn’t want to rush you,” you admit. “But you’ve been gone a little while.”

There’s no accusation in it. Just concern.

Steve coughs a weak, self-conscious laugh and gestures vaguely at the ocean. “Got… distracted.”

Your mouth curves, but your eyes stay on his, searching as he gathers his thoughts.

“I didn’t want to make a scene,” he says after a moment, words tumbling out low and uneven. “I just - I needed to get out of there.”

“I know,” you nod, wrapping your arms around your torso. “Mind if I join you?”

He nods his head immediately. “No. Yeah. I mean - yes, please.”

You step closer, the sand shifting softly beneath your feet, and come to stand beside him. Not touching yet. Just there. The wind tugs at the hem of your dress, the fabric catching the moonlight like brushed metal.

For a moment, neither of you speaks.

Then you turn to him, voice soft. “You doing okay?”

Steve considers lying.

It would be easy. Reflexive.

Instead, he rolls his shoulders and lets them drop with a tired, defeated sigh. “No, not really.”

You nod again, like that answer makes sense. Like you expected it.

“Do you want to talk about it,” you ask gently, “or do you want some company while you don’t?”

The choice lands heavier than any question he’s been asked all night.

Steve swallows, eyes on the dark water. “Maybe… both?”

Your smile is small, kind. “Yeah. I can do that.”

You lace your fingers through his and stand with him facing the water, shoulders nearly touching, close enough that he can feel your warmth even with the wind cutting in off the ocean.

The sea keeps rolling in, and for a while neither of you says anything.

Steve hadn’t realised how loud the night had been until it’s gone - the music dulled by distance, the talking and laughter reduced to a faint, indistinct swell behind the dunes. Out here it’s just the surf, the sand and shingle shifting underfoot every time a wave pulls in and out. The almost-full moon hangs low over the water, pale and impassive, like it’s seen all of this before.

He lets himself lean into you properly then. Not all his weight - just enough to stop holding it all so carefully inside his own chest.

He stares out at the dark water and feels the ache catch up to him at last.

Not sharp and not dramatic. Just there, the way it always is.

He thinks about his father’s voice on the microphone, easy and assured. The way names had been said - chosen, honoured - and the absence of his that hadn’t even been noticed. He thinks about how practiced he is now at not needing to be needed, now even the youngest kids have left him behind. How early he learned to make himself smaller when there wasn’t room.

It’s stupid, he knows that. He’s nearly thirty. He’s built a life that works. He doesn’t want the Harrington approval the way he used to.

Still, it hurts in that quiet, old place that he never quite learned how to close.

You shift beside him, thumb brushing once over the back of his hand - not insistently, just soothing.

He lets his stance soften then, self-soothing, his breath coming slow and uneven.

“They didn’t even think of it,” he says finally. His voice comes out rougher than he means it to, scraped thin by the wind and whatever sadness is still caught in his throat. “I wasn’t… I didn’t cross their minds at all.”

You don’t rush to answer. You don’t contradict him or soften it into something more palatable.

“That… that really sucks,” you say instead, plainly. The words land clean. Accurate. No cushioning.

Steve swallows. She’s not wrong.

“Yeah,” he says. “It really does.”

He waits for the instinct to kick in - the one that tells him to backpedal, to make it smaller, to reassure you that his parents really aren’t all that bad and that he’s fine. That it doesn’t matter.

For once, it doesn’t come. So he keeps going.

“I keep telling myself I’m over it,” he says quietly. “That I don’t care. That I don’t need them to -” He shakes his head once, helpless. “But I still do. And I hate that.”

Your touch tighten around his.

“Wanting to be noticed, to be seen, that doesn’t make you weak, Steve,” you say softly. “It just makes you human. You deserve to be seen, babe. I think so, anyway.”

Babe. The word undoes something in him. He sighs shakily, grip a little tighter in your hand.

The ocean rolls in again, close enough now that the waves creep higher toward his feet before retreating. Cold water licks at his toes every so often, keeping him connect in the present, in his body.

“I didn’t want to be up there,” he says, gesturing vaguely toward the house, “feeling like this. I just… didn’t want to vanish either.”

You release your hand from his, staying close, moving to rub gentle circles into his inner forearm, squeezing his wrist gently every so often. It makes his skin burn, pleasantly.

“So you came down here.”

“Yeah.”

Another pause.

“It’s a good spot. I like it,” you add. Not brightly. Not gently enough to feel like pity. Just honest.

Steve tips his head back to the sky, eyes closing for a beat as the wind moves over his face. When he opens them again, the pressure in his chest has eased - not gone, but loosened enough that he can now breathe around it.

He’s grateful, for more than he can put into words. He turns into you without thinking, sliding his arms around you and drawing you into his embrace. The movement is instinctive, open - not asking, not checking. Just comfortable.

You respond immediately, arms coming up to rest behind his shoulders, holding him close.

Steve buries his face against the side of your neck, breathing you in, and for a few long seconds he lets himself stay there. Lets the ache ebb. Lets the night hold him.

“I’m really glad you came,” he whispers, his breath hot against your neck.

He feels you smile against his shoulder. “There’s nowhere else I’d rather be, Steve.”

He doesn’t mean to move. One minute he’s holding you, breathing in your perfume and just enjoying the feel of his arms wrapped around you, and then something tells him to move. It just happens - the way it always does when he stops thinking for half a second too long.

He lifts his head from your shoulder and finds your face too close, closer than he realised, the space between you narrowed by the simple fact of how you’re standing. The moonlight catches the curve of your mouth. Your breath ghosts warm against his lips, uneven now, a little ragged, just like his.

His heart kicks hard, sharp enough to startle him.

Oh.

Oh.

The thought bolts in fully formed and blaring: I want to kiss you.

Not abstractly. Not someday. Right now. Standing barefoot in the sand with salt in the air and his heart broken open from everything he’s been holding in.

His hands tighten at your waist without asking permission, fingers spreading as if to steady himself. You don’t pull back. If anything, you lean in - just a fraction - close enough that the tip of his nose brushes yours, close enough that the world narrows down to heat and breath and the soft press of your body against his.

It would be so easy.

The idea of it makes his stomach twist, heat pooling low and sudden, desire blooming where confusion should be. This isn’t how this was supposed to go. You’re his friend. His safe person. And yet -

Your hand slides to his chest, thumb grazing his collarbone again, and his breath stutters outright. His brain scrambles - trying to catch up, trying to decide if this is allowed, if it’s real, if he’s about to change everything by doing something he can’t ever undo.

You tilt your head.

Just enough.

His tongue darts across his lips - a reflex.

Then -

A cheer erupts from the direction of the house.

Loud. Sudden. Startling.

Someone squeals, followed by laughter and the unmistakable crack of fireworks going off somewhere down the beach - bright bursts of colour flaring briefly above the dunes, illuminating the bay in red, gold, and green.

Steve jolts like he’s been doused in cold water.

He pulls back instinctively, hands dropping from your waist as if burned. His heart is racing now, too fast, his pulse loud in his ear. He drags both hands back through his hair, giving them a task that doesn’t involve touching you any further, feeling disoriented, breath coming in and out uneven.

“What -” He laughs once, short and incredulous, shaking his head. “Jesus.”

You blink too, clearly shaken out of it, but when you look at him there’s no regret in your expression. Just the same wide-eyed what the hell was that recognition staring back at him.

“Wow,” you gasp, then release a too-high laugh as more fireworks explode above. “Talk about timing.”

Steve hums nervously, high pitched, raking his windswept hair back from his face. His face feels warm. Too warm.

“Yeah,” he says, rubbing at the back of his neck. “Yeah. That was -”

He stops talking, because he genuinely doesn’t know how to finish that sentence.

That was almost a mistake.

That was almost everything.

That was not what I expected to want.

You step closer again - not touching this time, just enough to be heard over the surf. “Steve, hey,” you say softly. “We don’t have to… define that almost-thing right now. It’s cool, okay?”

He nods immediately, relief and disappointment tangling together in his chest.

“Okay, sure,” he says, a little too quickly.

Another cheer rises from the house, followed by applause and someone shouting Danny’s name. The music pulses louder. The party is still very much alive.

Steve glances toward the lights of the house, then back at you, still trying to get his bearings. His emotions feel scrambled - tender and bare and faintly unmoored. He doesn’t feel ashamed, just confused and very off-balance, like he’s stepped somewhere new without meaning to.

“Probably should head back,” he says, gesturing vaguely toward the dunes. “Before they send a search party.” He says it anyway, knowing they wouldn’t.

You smile - small, knowing, just a little crooked. “Yeah. Probably.”

You fall into step beside him as you walk back along the beach, close but not touching, the near-miss hanging between you like an unanswered question. Steve keeps replaying it in his head - the closeness, the heat, the certainty of wanting - and each time his pulse jumps again.

What the hell was that?

Since when do I look at you like that?

He doesn’t have answers. Not yet.

They’re nearly back to the deck when it happens.

Lucy spots you first.

Steve sees the moment register on her face - the quick brightening, the way her attention sharpens - before she lifts a hand and calls your name, already weaving toward you with two more of his younger cousins in tow. There’s wine in her glass and nonsense in her smile, the unmistakable energy of someone who’s decided the night is still young.

“There you are,” Lucy says, slipping neatly between you. “We’ve been looking for you.”

You hesitate, glancing back at Steve, an unspoken this okay? in your eyes.

Lucy jumps in, eyes a little glassy, mischief spilling from her lips before her brain can rein her in. “I promise Stevie, I won’t kiss this one. Swear on Granny’s life.”

It would be easy to read him wrong in that moment - calm, steady, composed.

Inside, he’s anything but.

His pulse is still loud in his ear. His thoughts knot and snag, looping back on themselves. His body stays wired in a way he doesn’t have language for yet - only the knowledge that something has shifted, and it isn’t done with him.

He nods without thinking, barely acknowledging Lucy’s drunken promise. “Sure, go,” he says quietly. “I’ll… I’ll see you later.”

You smile at him - softer now, private - and for half a second it feels like the almost-kiss lives again in that look alone. Then Lucy is tugging you gently away, looping an arm through yours, already launching into a story that pulls laughter from you whether you meant to give it or not.

Steve watches you disappear back into the warm chaos of the deck - lantern light and music and voices closing around you like water.

He doesn’t follow.

The relief hits him immediately, sharp and undeniable.

He needs the space.

Not because he regrets what almost happened - he really, really doesn’t - but because the idea of climbing into bed beside you right now, of lying inches apart in the dark with that moment sitting unresolved between you, feels like too much to hold without breaking something.

He slips away the way he always has, quiet and unobtrusive, moving through the house without being stopped. Upstairs, the noise from outside dulls to a steady buzz, laughter and music bleeding faintly through the windows and walls.

He doesn’t mind the music. He knows he probably won’t sleep.

The bedroom is dim and cool, the sheer curtains stirring in the breeze from the open windows.

Steve sheds his clothes, showers quickly, and pulls on a T-shirt and shorts with restless, over-careful movements. He sits on the edge of the bed in the dark for an unmeasured stretch of time, elbows on his knees, thoroughly inspecting a single crinkle in the otherwise pristine wallpaper.

What the hell was that?

The question loops, unanswered.

He lies back eventually, one arm flung over his eyes, heart still ticking faster than it should. Outside, the music keeps playing and the ocean keeps rolling in, like it’s deliberately tormenting him - and somewhere downstairs, someone laughs as if nothing in the world has shifted at all.

He chews the inside of his cheek, giving himself something to focus on.

He’s grateful you’re being swept up, distracted, safe.

He’s even more grateful to be alone.

Because whatever just cracked open inside him - whatever want, whatever confusion, whatever dangerous, quiet truth he brushed up against out there in the sand - he needs darkness for it. Distance.

Tomorrow can deal with the questions.

Tonight, he just needs a little peace.

And space.

And the faint, unsettling knowledge that the line he thought was solid?

He knows it isn’t where he left it anymore.

[zelinkcrossing]

BYE WHY WAS I HOLDING MY BREATH FOR 9.8K WORDS

when he went out on the beach "grime of the world" started (because i decided if i was gonna get my steve fanfic bag i should intentionally listen to djo for the first time ever because school is done so we can be delusional) and it was just guitar and steve thinking and genuinely just feeling for a bit and it was SICKENINGLY GOOD THIS IS AMAZING

[morninglesss]

disparate youth, pt.1

Steve Harrington x f!reader // part one // part two // part three // part four // part five // part six // part seven // part eight complete

Outer Banks, summer 1995. Steve’s parents are celebrating their thirty year anniversary with a week of parties, photos, and perfect appearances. Steve shows up out of obligation - and brings you as his “girlfriend” for survival. You’re only supposed to be his buffer. But the longer the week goes on, the harder it gets to tell where the performance ends. Fake dating + there was only one bedroom? What could possibly go wrong?!

word count: 5k

As always: Steve Harrington deserved better, so I gave him softness. 🌊

Steve arrives before everyone else.

That part is deliberate.

The house is locked when he gets there, which shouldn’t bother him but does. His parents are out for the day, finalising the last of the arrangements before the horde of Harringtons and Harrington-hangers-on descend on the place tomorrow. His mother had talked him through the security system over the phone the night before, making him write and read back the codes until she was satisfied he wouldn’t accidentally set off every alarm and summon half of Spindrift’s security patrols in under seven minutes.

They have a system. One he’s learned how to move around.

The door slides open smoothly beneath his palm, glass cool against his skin. The place greets him with salt air and quiet wealth - pale wood, white linen, light spilling everywhere like it’s been waiting.

It smells like the ocean and citrus cleaner.

Someone’s already put flowers out. Pink hydrangeas and stargazer lilies in a wide bowl on the kitchen island, petals plump and deliberate, like they were chosen for how well they photograph. Steve pauses there longer than he needs to, one hand still on his duffel strap, the other resting uselessly against the counter.

This was where they came when Hawkins shut down.

He doesn’t think it like an accusation. It’s just a fact that sits strangely in his chest. They’d been on the coast when the quake hit, and when the quarantine followed, it had made sense to stay. The beach house was safer. Easier. They wired him money. Checked in when they remembered.

They waited it out in sun and space and safety, while Steve stayed behind in a town that felt like it was trapped in amber.

He shakes the thought off and moves further into the house.

Every room faces the water. That’s the first thing he notices. The ocean is everywhere - framed in glass, reflected in mirrors, humming low and constant through open doors and windows. Steve sets his bag down in the room his mother had told him to take - not a primary suite, not one of the rooms with balconies, just a nice guest room at the back with a partial view and someone else’s throw blanket folded at the foot of the bed.

Afterthought-adjacent.

He exhales, slow, steady, and rolls his shoulders. It’s fine. He’s used to this feeling - like he’s stepped into a life that was already in motion, like his presence doesn’t disrupt anything, just fills in a gap.

Outside, the deck creaks softly as the wind moves through it. Steve wanders out barefoot, a beer taken from the fridge cool in his palm, and leans his forearms on the railing. The beach stretches out before him, pristine and empty, sand as smooth as untouched paper. For the rest of the week it’ll be loud with cousins and laughter and the clink of glasses, but for now it’s just him and the sea and the low ache of something he hasn’t quite named.

He thinks, briefly, about leaving early.

About doing the polite thing, the expected thing. Showing up for the big party, smiling, staying just long enough to be counted, and then heading home.

Then he thinks about you.

About the way you’d looked at him over coffee when he asked - careful, curious, kind. About how you’d said yes without making him explain himself. About how you’d laughed and said, “Well. I’ve never been to the Outer Banks.”

Steve lets himself smile at that.

You’ll be here tomorrow.

Steve pictures it easily - you flying in once your installation is finished, apologising for being late even though he’d never once suggested you should cancel. He’d shut that down immediately. He wasn’t about to ask you to bend your work and life around his parents’ idea of a perfect week.

He’s here early because they wanted him here early. The three of them together in the house first, before the noise and the arrivals and the performance of it all. A unit. A picture that still makes sense if you don’t look too closely.

The thought of you stepping into it - into this place where everything feels perfect, and he never does - steadies him in a way he didn’t expect. Like he’s bringing something vivid into a space that’s always felt faintly pastel.

The ocean rolls in below, patient and endless. He could take or leave the beach house, but the water - the sound of it, the smell, the way it keeps its own time - makes everything else easier to bear. It reminds him that not everything is arranged for show.

Steve straightens, drains the last of his beer, and heads back inside to open windows, to make space.

This time, he thinks, he won’t be the only one who came because he had to.

****************

He hears the car before he sees it.

Gravel under tyres, unhurried. The sound carries easily through the open house. He’s in the kitchen, rinsing out a glass he already knows belongs in a particular cupboard. He dries it carefully, sets it back exactly where he found it, and waits.

The front door opens.

Annabeth Harrington comes in first, sunglasses still on despite the cool shade indoors, her pale linen dress untouched by the car. She pauses just long enough to take in the space - the counters, the flowers, the light - not checking for mess so much as confirming order. The kitchen is as it should be.

“Steven,” she says, leaning in to brush his cheek. It’s an air-kiss - proximity without weight - affection observed at a polite distance. Her expensive perfume wraps around him in a way her arms never do.

“Hi, Mom.”

Annabeth sets her bag down and slips out of her sandals. “We were tied up all day,” she says lightly. “Lunch ran long.”

Steve nods. It doesn’t occur to him to ask where they were. He already knows - a lunch club, a committee, a gallery thing, people who’ve folded this place into their lives the way he never would.

She looks at him properly then, her gaze taking inventory the way it always has - clothes, posture, the faint tiredness he hasn’t quite shaken yet.

“That job of yours… you must be exhausted,” she says. Not unkind. Just observational.

“I’m fine. School’s good, the kids are great.”

Danny follows a step behind, already mid-thought. He looks sun-browned and settled, like a man who’s grown into the life he chose and stopped questioning it years ago. Semi-retired now, technically. A word that seems to apply more to his calendar than his posture. Authority clings to him the way the salt air does - invisible, assumed, never needing to announce itself. Steve’s pretty sure he’s never relaxed a day in his life.

He moves through the house and into the kitchen with quiet certainty, opening doors without looking, crossing rooms as though they were extensions of himself. This place fits him.

“How was the drive from Norfolk?” he asks Steve, drawing open the sliding doors to the deck, his eyes drifting away from his son and out toward the water.

Steve nods anyway. “Yeah. Had to wait at the desk for the car, traffic was bad getting out. You know how it is.”

Danny hums, satisfied, thoughts already elsewhere - even as Annabeth glides in beside him with a glass of wine poured and ready for him.

“Still doesn’t get old,” he says, looking out across the ocean like it’s putting on a show just for him.

****************

Annabeth and Danny move through the house together without thinking about it.

They don’t touch much - not demonstratively - but they’re aligned in smaller ways: the way Danny steps aside just as Annabeth reaches for the wine, the way she answers questions he hasn’t quite finished asking. They’ve been calibrated to each other for decades, finishing each other's sentences, their movements smoothed down to efficiency.

High school sweethearts, everyone always says it like it explains everything. The Harringtons. A story people like to believe in.

To the outside world, they’re flawless. Successful. Enduring. The kind of couple people gesture toward at dinners and say that’s how you do it. Steve has heard it his entire life.

He knows better - not in a bitter way, just in the way you know something when you’ve grown up inside it.

There have been others. Always discreet. Always managed. His father’s absences explained away as work, his mother’s tennis schedule stretching longer and longer into the afternoons. None of it dramatic enough to fracture the image. None of it ever spoken aloud.

What holds them together isn’t fidelity so much as agreement.

They chose each other early. They chose the life. They chose the look of it. And they’ve never once invited Steve into that choice - not purposefully.

Watching them now, settled and seamless in a house that fits them perfectly, Steve feels the familiar distance settle in. Not sharp. Not new. Just established.

They are a pair.

He has always been adjacent.

Dinner is easy and well-practised. Annabeth pours the wine. Danny talks about the anniversary plans, who’s flying in when, how full the house will be over the week. Names are dropped into conversation that Steve half-remembers from childhood dinners where he’d been told to sit up straighter, speak more clearly, smile more.

“And you’re in the back room? White curtains?” Danny asks, casual, as if confirming a seating arrangement.

“Yeah, the - “

“Good. That room’s quiet.”

Annabeth nods, already moving on. “Your friend arrives tomorrow, you said?”

“Girlfriend. Tomorrow afternoon.”

“Well,” she says, a small smile settling into place, “that’ll be nice. I’m assuming the two of you will share?”

He’d been expecting it - his mother’s particular brand of curiosity, gossip-gathering disguised as vagueness. He has his lines rehearsed.

“There’s no reason not to. We’re together, so.”

“Mmm. Yes, you did mention that.”

Not warmth. Not dismissal. Just accommodation.

“What did you say she does again?” Danny says, rejoining the conversation after having drifted out of it minutes before.

“Windows, Dad. Stained glass conservation, it’s -”

“Stained glass, huh?” Danny cuts in, thoughtful rather than dismissive. “That’s not something I’d imagine Hawkins has much call for. Does she get a lot of work?”

Annabeth answers before Steve can finish.

“She keeps busy,” she says smoothly, as if this is information she’s already filed away. “It’s very specialised. Churches, art, restoration projects - isn’t that what you said, Steven?”

Danny nods, satisfied with the shape of the answer. “Makes sense,” he says. “Hard to scale something like that.”

Steve feels the familiar impulse - the old one - to smooth it over, to translate, to make it sound more impressive than it needs to be.

He doesn’t.

“She’s good at it,” he says instead, steady. “People seek her out.”

Annabeth glances at him then, just briefly. Not surprised. Not displeased. Simply noting the correction.

“Well,” she says lightly, “that’s fortunate.”

The conversation moves on.

Steve stays where he is, the words still warm in his mouth. He hadn’t raised his voice. He hadn’t explained. He hadn’t asked them to understand.

He’d just said it like it was true.

And for the first time all evening, that feels like it’s enough.

****************

After dinner, the house fractures neatly.

Annabeth heads upstairs, already mid-conversation on the cordless, her voice carrying faintly down the hall as she settles into one of the bedrooms to talk through schedules and arrivals. There are lists to be confirmed, timings to adjust - the quiet competence of someone who has always managed the order of things from a distance.

Danny disappears into his study off the living room, door closing softly behind him. Steve catches a glimpse of spreadsheets spread across the desk, reports faxed over earlier in the day, the low murmur of calculation resuming as easily as breath.

No one assigns Steve anything.

He’s done well enough. Said the right things. Filled his place at the table without much disruption.

So he takes another beer and steps out onto the deck instead.

The evening air is warm, the boards still holding the day’s heat. Beyond the railing, the ocean moves steadily, unconcerned, its rhythm unbroken by the house behind him. Steve leans his forearms against the wood again and lets the sound of it wash over him, shoulders loosening now that there’s no one left to perform for.

For a moment, it’s just him and the water - and the quiet relief of being finished.

He stays on the deck until the sky darkens properly, the house behind him settling into its evening rhythms. Doors close. Footsteps fade. Somewhere upstairs, his mother’s voice drops into the measured cadence she uses when she’s coordinating things that matter.

He lets it go.

He’s done what was required of him today. Shown up. Answered questions. Taken up the right amount of space without colouring over the lines. There’s a quiet satisfaction in that.

Tomorrow, at least, he won’t have to do it alone.

He thinks about you then, not in any charged or complicated way, just appreciatively. You didn’t hesitate when he asked. You didn’t tease him or overthink it or turn it into a performance. You’d listened, nodded once, and said, Yeah, alright. I can do that.

Robin would have, too. She had, once.

His mouth twitches as the memory resurfaces - his grandmother’s ninetieth birthday, the careful fiction of that trip unravelling in real time when someone had stumbled across Robin kissing his cousin Lucy in a quiet corner of the house. The sharp intake of breath. The pause before the whispers started. The room watching.

His mother’s expression - appalled, not by the kiss, but by Steve’s deception and the way it had collapsed so publicly.

The lie hadn’t just cracked. It had imploded.

Lucy had guessed immediately, of course. Known Robin wasn’t his girlfriend. Known what Steve had been doing, and why. She hadn’t meant to ruin things for him - she’d sworn that later, earnest and miserable - but intent didn’t matter once the damage was done.

The Buckley bridge is thoroughly burned now. The Harringtons remember. Annabeth, especially.

Which makes this - you - different.

You don’t play at it. You don’t improvise chaos into the margins. You don’t clock the deception and file it away like a secret you might use later. You just show up. Do what you said you would. Make space for him without asking for anything in return.

Steady. Sensible. On his side.

Steve lets the thought settle, warm and grounding, and turns his attention back to the deck - the light, the noise, the movement of it all - carrying that quiet certainty with him like something he didn’t realise he’d been missing until it was there.

The thought of having someone else in the house - someone who knows how to read a room, who won’t need translating, who can exchange a look with him across a table and know exactly what it means - makes his tension drop for the first time all day.

An ally. That’s all.

And right now, that feels like exactly what he needs.

Steve finishes his beer and heads inside, locking up the way he was shown, moving quietly through the house like a guest who understands the rules. Upstairs, he leaves the bedroom window wide open and lets the sound of the ocean pour inside.

Tomorrow will be busy. Loud. Harrington-heavy.

Tomorrow, at least, he’ll have backup.

****************

Steve positions himself with his right shoulder angled toward the speakers above the gate.

It’s habit now, ingrained enough that he doesn’t think about it - a quiet adjustment so the announcements come through cleanly, so he doesn’t have to ask anyone to repeat themselves. The airport is loud in a diffuse way, sound bouncing off glass and tile and bodies, and he lets his left side deafness drown the majority of it out.

He’s early. Of course he is.

He leans back against a railing, legs crossed at the ankle, a coffee cooling in his hand. His glasses sit easy on his nose - they always do - the world crisp and manageable through the familiar frames. He doesn’t think about them much anymore. They’re just part of him now, like the way he tilts his head to listen, like the scar on his belly that pulls faintly when he turns too fast.

What’s different is everything else.

The shirt is linen, soft with wear, unbuttoned lower than he’d ever risk back in Hawkins, sunglasses hanging at the join. The sleeves are pushed up, the collar open enough that the thin silver chain at his throat catches the light when he shifts, glinting against the dark thatch of hair there. Beige cargo shorts skim his knees, comfortable sneakers planted easy on the polished floor. He looks… loose. Not careless - just a little more free.

Beach Steve, Robin calls it.

He’d dressed this way without thinking, and only realised it standing here, unobserved. This version of him makes his mother purse her lips and say something about his posture. He knows she’s already threatened to task Maggie - who comes in to clean three times a week - to raid his suitcase and starch everything in sight while he’s out. He doesn’t let that thought linger for too long.

Steve scans the arrivals board, then the crowd, attention sharpening as the doors slide open and passengers begin to spill through. He straightens a fraction, alert now.

There.

You come through with your bag slung over your arm, hair escaping whatever effort you’d made earlier, eyes already searching. When they land on him, your face shifts - not surprise, not assessment. Recognition. Relief.

Your gaze flicks over him, quick and instinctive, and he sees the exact moment you register it: not the glasses - you’ve seen those a hundred times - but the looseness of him. The open collar. The ease in his stance. The fact that he looks like he belongs to the light and heat pouring in behind him.

You smile before you reach him.

“Hey, you,” you smile, wrapping him in a one-armed hug with your bag caught between you.

“Hey,” he squeezes back, easy.

You start apologising immediately, because of course you do - late flight, tight connection, something about baggage. He cuts you off gently, shaking his head.

“Don’t,” he says. “You made it.”

You pause, looking at him again, slower this time.

“You look… relaxed,” you say. “Is that a beach-house thing, or an airport miracle?”

Steve snorts softly. “Give it ten minutes in the traffic out of here, then we’ll see.”

You laugh, and something in his chest settles - uncomplicated, familiar.

He takes your bag without asking and falls into step beside you as you head toward the exit. When you talk, he angles himself toward you automatically, right side open, listening. You don’t comment on that either - you never do.

Outside, the doors slide open and warm air rushes in, salt-thick and bright. Steve blinks into the sun, swapping his glasses over, adjusting easily.

An ally, he reminds himself.

But walking beside you, shoulders loose, shirt open to the breeze, he realises something else, too - something small, but real.

This version of him feels easier to be.

And for the first time since he arrived, he doesn’t feel like he’s about to put armour back on.

****************

The car Steve hired for the week smells faintly of sunscreen, coffee, and the generic pine air freshener swinging from the rear view. The radio’s tuned to the local pop station and he’s already singing along under his breath - every word of Waterfalls, no hesitation - before the realisation catches up with him.

He drives with one hand on the wheel, the other resting loose against his thigh, the windows cracked to let the heat bleed off. You sit angled toward him, knees tucked up slightly, bag at your feet, already halfway into problem-solving mode.

“Okay,” you say. “Let’s get our story straight.”

He grins, tapping his fingers on the wheel. “Knew this was coming.”

“You invited me to impersonate your long-term girlfriend in front of your parents and extended family for a week,” you remind him mildly. “I’m absolutely allowed to mind-map.”

“Please don’t actually make one.”

Your smile is infectious. “No promises.”

You start with the basics. How long you’ve been together. Where you met. Who asked who out. Steve answers when he can, shrugs when he can’t, lets you fill in the gaps with a confidence that suggests you’ve done this kind of narrative stitching before.

“Farmers’ market,” you say. “You were enamoured with my baubles - that part’s true enough,” you add with a smirk.

“Yeah.”

“And we didn’t date straight away,” you add. “Friends first. Slow burn.”

Steve snorts, eyes still on the road. The corner of his mouth twitches like he’s trying not to smile. “My mom will hate that. She wants me married off by thirty.”

“Tick tock, Harrington.”

The line settles between you, easy and companionable, the road stretching out ahead in a long, sun-bleached ribbon. The radio murmurs on, something forgettable now, and Steve adjusts his grip on the wheel as the conversation naturally shifts gears.

You talk about boundaries next. What’s believable. What’s comfortable.

“No pet names,” he says immediately, too quick. “I’ll end up insulting you.”

“Well, we can’t have that,” you agree without hesitation. “That would raise questions.”

“Minimal PDA,” he adds. “My parents get weird.”

You consider that, eyes flicking briefly to the road, then back to him. “Define minimal, and define weird.”

He gestures vaguely with his free hand, already regretting this. “Weird - I’ve mentioned mom’s marriage plans. PDA? You know. Standing close. Occasional arm.”

You blink at him. “Occasional arm?”

Steve glances over, wary.

“Jesus, Steve,” you continue, deadpan. “Maybe I should throw in a flash of ankle and really scandalise you.”

He laughs, despite himself. “I’m serious.”

“I know,” you say, still amused. “I’m just trying to picture how Victorian we’re aiming for.”

He shakes his head, jaw tight but smiling. “Just - normal. Nothing showy. No tongue at dinner.”

You hum, thoughtful, and then reach over and take his free hand, experimentally.

Steve glances down. Your fingers slide between his, interlacing easily, decisively.

He stiffens. “Oh. No. That’s -”

“Not a fan of interlinked?” you ask, openly entertained now.

“I just - ” He tries to extricate himself, failing because you tighten your grip. “I prefer folded. Like this.”

He demonstrates, turning his palm up so your hand rests on top of his, contained, tidy, fingers separate but together.

You stare at it for a beat, then at him. “That looks like we’re about to thank the Lord for what we’re about to receive.”

“It looks respectful.”

“It sorta looks like you’re escorting me to my execution.”

“Okay, but -”

“Nope,” you say, already rethreading your fingers through his. “Interlinked reads as more affectionate. We’re madly in love, Steve. We’ll go with that.”

Steve exhales, long and suffering, but he doesn’t pull away again. His thumb shifts despite himself, settling against the side of your hand, grip loosening as the argument resolves itself in your favour.

“You’re going to win all of these, aren’t you?”

“Aw look at you, you’re learning!”

He shakes his head, breaking into a bright grin despite himself.

The road hums beneath the tyres, the afternoon stretching ahead of you, and for the first time since he asked you to do this ridiculous, generous thing, Steve thinks he might actually be looking forward to the week.

Your joined hands rest easily between you, no longer a point of debate.

He keeps driving.

You keep holding on.

By the time the house comes into view, the sun slanting low over the drive, the plan is mostly settled. You’re aligned. Coordinated. A team.

Steve feels… ready.

****************

The house is much louder than Steve expected it to be.

He hears it long before he opens the door - voices overlapping, laughter spilling out through the open windows, the low clink of glass on stone. Cars crowd the drive at slightly careless angles, already claiming space. A cork pops, followed by a cheer when the bottle overflows.

Welcome drinks, then.

Steve slows without meaning to, the guest set of keys warm in his hand. For a split second, he considers the mechanics of it - who’ll see him first, whether his mother is already in host mode, whether his grandmother will comment on the pounds she’s sure he’s gained since the last time she saw him, like it’s a record she’s been keeping.

Then you squeeze his hand.

Not tight. Not urgent. Just there.

You feel it too - the noise, the shift in atmosphere - and you tilt your head toward the house, mouth quirking.

“Looks like we’re fashionably late,” you murmur.

“They’re early, actually,” he says, automatically.

You smile at that. “Of course they are. Shall we?”

You step inside together.

The entrance hall and kitchen are buzzing, the details clicking into place - the counters, the island flowers, the view of the water framed through glass. He knows it by sight rather than feel. But it’s different now. Messier. Alive.

His grandmother sits at the head of the island, a glass of something pale and bubbly in her hand, silver hair immaculate, posture relaxed in the way that only comes with age and authority. Aunt Juliane - whom Steve hasn’t seen since a long-past funeral - leans against the counter, mid-story, while Uncle Rick nods along dutifully beside her. Their daughter, Lucy, watches everything with the kind of sharp curiosity that makes Steve feel briefly catalogued, her champagne still untouched.

Conversation stutters as Steve feels the shift of attention turn toward them.

Annabeth turns first.

“Steven,” she says brightly, already moving forward - and then, seamlessly, “And here she is - ”

Air-kisses. Floral perfume. Steve barely has time to register it before it’s happening.

You step in before he can fill the silence.

“Hi, Mrs Harrington,” you say, smiling easily. “It’s so lovely to finally meet you!”

Steve senses it then - the smallest adjustment. The way his mother stills, just for a beat, reassessing.

Something shifts.

Not dramatically. Just enough.

Annabeth’s smile sharpens into something warm and practiced as she takes you in - your posture, your clothes, the fact that you’re still holding Steve’s hand. She reaches out, touches your arm lightly.

“We’re so glad you could make it,” she says. “Steven’s told us all about you.”

Steve resists the urge to laugh.

His grandmother turns next, her gaze assessing but kind. “Well,” she says, lifting her glass, “it’s about time.”

You laugh, just a little, like you’ve been let in on the joke.

Introductions blur together after that. Names, relationships, questions asked out of politeness rather than curiosity. Someone presses a drink into your hand. Someone else asks how your flight was. Steve answers when needed, fills in gaps, but mostly he watches.

He’s struck by how easily you settle into it.

You read the room the way he never quite learned to - gauging who needs eye contact, who prefers distance, when to speak and when to let silence do the work. You turn your body toward him without clinging, keep your hand in his without making a show of it. When his aunt asks what you do, you answer simply, confidently, without dressing it up or sanding it down.

Steve notices his mother listening - not interrupting, not correcting, just filing things away. He catches his father hovering near the deck doors, gaze drifting back more than once, noticing the way Steve stands less hunched than usual, shoulders loose, presence steady.

He feels it, the quiet surprise of being observed without being appraised - and realises, distantly, that he’s not doing anything different at all. He’s just not doing it alone.

Around them, the house keeps filling in. Voices rise and overlap, greetings called across rooms, someone laughing too loudly from the deck. More Harringtons filter through the kitchen - a hand claps Steve on the shoulder in passing, a name he half-recognises called from behind him, a stranger introduced as family. The air grows warm with bodies and perfume and wine.

Lucy catches his eye at one point, eyebrow lifting, mouth twitching like she’s spotted something interesting. Steve ignores her.

The drinks keep coming. The noise swells. Someone turns music on - low, inoffensive. The house hums with it all, a careful chaos layered over its usual polish.

After a while, Steve leans toward you.

“We should drop our bags,” he says under his breath. “Before the martinis come out.”

“Ah,” you say. “Pre-cocktail escape window. Lead on.”

No one stops you as you slip out of the kitchen and up the stairs, conversation folding back in behind you like you were never the point.

Only when the door to the bedroom closes behind you does Steve let out the breath he’s been holding.

He smiles at you, tired but genuine.

“See?” he says quietly. “Survivable.”

He has no idea what’s waiting for him in the wardrobe.

The room is immaculate.

Not hotel-clean - intentional. His suitcase is gone. His duffel, too. In their place: the wardrobe door stands open, revealing his clothes hanging in neat, starched rows. Shirts pressed crisp enough to hold shape on their own. T-shirts folded with military precision in the drawers. Even his underwear, stacked neatly with frightening technique.

Steve closes his eyes briefly.

“Please tell me this is a joke,” he says.

You step in beside him, taking it in with open fascination. “Wow.”

“Maggie,” he mutters. “She’s been in my things.”

“She’s very thorough.”

“She’s starched my casual wear.”

You pick up one of his shirts, rubbing the fabric between your fingers. “This could stand up on its own.”

“My mother hates a wrinkle,” he says flatly.

You glance at him, then at the room, then back again.

“And she didn’t tell you?”

“She… threatened,” he says, like this is a known phase in a longer process.

“Just… took the liberty?”

“Always does.”

You don’t joke this time. You set the shirt back carefully, then turn to him.

“Well,” you say gently, “at least we know where we stand. And, where your shirts stand.”

Steve exhales, slow and resigned. “Yeah.”

He looks around his room - their room, now - and feels the old instinct rise. Adjust. Conform. Put the right version of himself back on.

Then you drop your bag onto the bed with a thump and start rummaging through it, letting your belongings fall where they may.

“Okay,” you say briskly. “Rule number one: if she touches my clothes, I riot.”

That gets a laugh out of him before he can stop it.

And standing there, in a room that’s been curated without his consent, with someone who’s very much here by choice, Steve realises something important.

This week might be survivable after all.

Maybe even… okay.

[zelinkcrossing]

oh DUDE I LOVE A SOCIALLY ADAPTABLE YN CUZ MEEEEEEEEEEE! LIKE THATS TWIN AND IM EXCITED THAT HE IS SO COMFORTED BY IT

[scarymonsters-andsupercreeps]

I’ve had enough

[morninglesss]

Happy Friday, I am once again thinking about my close personal friend Roommate!Steve. Do you think the friend group was shocked or saying things like “about time” when they found out?

THIS JUST HAPPENED I HAD NO CONTROL OF MY TYPING.

NSFW/MDNI

Sorry for blue balling you Steve, coitus interruptus is no joke.

The plan had been simple. Robin was coming over. Just Robin, just a casual dinner, just the two of you and her and a bottle of wine and a conversation that Steve had been quietly building toward all week. He’d said as much that morning, leaning against the kitchen counter with his coffee, watching you make toast.

“Tonight”, he’d said. Not a question.

“She’ll be cool with it. She probably already suspects.”

He’d nodded, then stolen a bite of the slice you’d just buttered.

It was going to be simple.

The doorbell rings at six forty-three and Steve goes to answer it, then comes back to the kitchen doorway with an expression you have learned, over months of learning his expressions, means there has been a development.

“So,” he starts.

You look at him over your shoulder. “So.”

“Robin brought Eddie.”

You put the wooden spoon down. “Okay?”

“And Dustin just got back - Robin ran into him at the grocery store this afternoon, so…”

You look at him for a moment, and grin. “So we have the Three Stooges in the living room.”

“Yeah” he confirms, rubbing the back of his neck.

From the hallway, Robin’s voice, bright and carrying. “I can hear you both, the apartment is not that big.”

Steve looks at you. The tonight conversation, unspoken, acknowledged, set aside.

You turn off the burner, and move the oiled pan to the side.

“Order pizza,” you tell him. “The number’s on the fridge.”

The apartment is small, and it fills up the way it always does when more than two people are in it, immediately and completely. Robin takes the good end of the couch by prior claim and the authority of someone who considers herself a founding member of the household regardless of whose name is on the lease. Eddie drops onto the middle cushion and puts his feet on the coffee table with the ease of a man who has been putting his feet on other people’s coffee tables his entire life. Dustin, who has grown approximately three inches since Christmas and is wearing a university sweatshirt with the sleeves pushed up, takes the armchair and immediately starts explaining his finals schedule to anyone willing to listen, which is Robin, who loves him, and not Eddie, who loves him too but is already reaching for the tv guide.

Steve comes in from the kitchen and surveys the wreckage of his quiet Friday evening.

“Beer?” he asks the room.

“God yes,” says Robin.

“Yep,” says Eddie, without looking up from the paper.

“I’m good,” says Dustin. He looks at Steve. Then at you. Then back at Steve. Something moves across his face that is too quick to catch. “Actually, yeah. Beer.”

You settle onto the far end of the couch, the one Robin hasn’t claimed, and Steve comes back with bottles distributed between his fingers and sits next to you on the arm and the distance between you is exactly what it always was, what it has to be tonight, just two people on a couch who happen to live together. His knee doesn’t touch yours. His arm doesn’t find the back of the cushion behind you.

It’s fine. You’re fine. You may have been fucking like rabbits for five weeks but you do still know how to be in a room with him in front of other people.

His little finger finds yours hidden against the arm of the couch, very briefly, and then it’s gone.

You take a long drink of your beer.

The pizza arrives at seven thirty and gets set up on the coffee table in four open boxes, and the volume in the room goes up the way it always does when Eddie and Dustin are in the same space and Robin is on her third beer. The TV is on but nobody is watching it. Eddie’s explaining something about a band, a new band, a band Dustin hasn’t heard of but should have, and Dustin is defending his position with the conviction of a studious twenty-one year old who has decided he knows things, and Robin is watching them both with the fond exasperation of someone who has been watching versions of this same argument for years.

Steve is next to you and you are not touching him.

It shouldn’t be difficult. You’d gone most of the year not touching him without it registering as a thing you were not doing. Now the not-doing of it is all you can think about. The specific not-touching of his arm or his knee or the back of his hand. The effort of not turning toward him when he says something under his breath that’s only for you, which he keeps doing, small quiet observations about the room that die in the six inches between you.

“He’s going to talk about Corroded Coffin,” Steve says, almost soundless, eyes on the TV.

“In the next three minutes,” you agree, at the same volume.

“I’d bet on it.”

“What are we betting?”

He doesn’t answer, but something happens at the corner of his mouth.

Across the room, from his new spot perched on the arm of Dustin’s chair, Eddie pipes up loudly. “Look, I’m just saying, the Corroded Coffin demo tape holds up, okay, that’s not even a controversial -”

You look at your beer bottle.

Steve coughs.

It’s Robin who does it first, and she does it without knowing she’s doing anything at all.

She’s telling a story, something that happened at her parents’ house, involving a neighbour’s dog and a misunderstanding about a garden gate, and she’s good at stories, always has been, and everyone is leaning in slightly without realising it. She gets to the part about the gate and she puts her hand on your knee for emphasis, the way she always has, the comfortable contact of an old friendship, and you laugh in the right place and she takes her hand back.

Steve, beside you, goes very slightly still.

Not visibly. Not in any way the room would catch. Just a quality of stillness that you feel through the couch cushion, and you don’t look at him because you can’t, and you take another drink of your beer and tell Robin to go back because she’d skipped the part about the garden gate handle.

Under the cover of the retelling, Steve’s little finger finds yours again, wedged against the arm of the couch.

Stays this time.

You don’t move your hand.

Eddie notices at nine fourteen.

You know this because you happen to be watching him when it happens, for no particular reason, just your eyes landing on his face in a lull between sentences, and you catch the exact moment his gaze drops to the couch arm and then comes back up, casual as anything, landing somewhere in the middle distance. He reaches for another slice of pizza. Says something to Dustin. Doesn’t look at either of you again for several minutes.

But his mouth has done something. Just for a second. A compression, controlled, a man making a note of something for later consideration.

You move your hand.

Steve, without looking at you, reaches for his beer.

You look at the TV.

By ten o’clock the pizza boxes are ruins and the conversation has moved through three distinct subjects and landed on Robin’s new apartment, which she’s describing in the way of someone who loves it and wants everyone to love it with her. Dustin is asking good questions. Eddie, back on the couch, has his feet on the coffee table again and his head tipped back and is either listening or thinking about something else entirely.

Steve leans slightly toward you to reach his beer from the table and his shoulder presses to yours for the two seconds it takes, and you feel the warmth of him through your shirt and he sits back and the warmth stays.

“I’m just gonna…” you say to no one, and get up.

You don’t look at Steve.

You’re at the kitchen sink with a glass of water you don’t need when you hear his footsteps in the hall.

“Hey,” he says, appearing in the doorway. “Thought you might want -”

“Close the door,” you tell him, point to it behind him.

He closes the door.

The noise from the living room drops to a murmur, Robin’s voice and then Eddie’s and then Dustin’s laugh, muffled and distant and entirely manageable from here.

Steve leans back against the closed door and looks at you across the kitchen and neither of you says anything for a moment because neither of you needs to.

“This was supposed to be a quiet dinner,” he says.

“I know.”

“Just Robin.”

“I know.”

“I was going to tell her tonight.”

“I know that too.”

He exhales. Runs a hand through his hair. You watch him do it and think about the lake, the trees, his hands at your waist, and then you stop thinking about it because you are in the kitchen and there are three people twelve feet away.

“Come here,” you say.

He crosses the kitchen.

The first kiss is supposed to be quick. A stolen thing, a pressure valve, something to get you both through the rest of the evening. His hands find your waist and yours find the front of his shirt and the kiss is soft and certain and tastes like beer and five weeks of knowing exactly how to do this.

But it’s not quick.

His hands move from your waist to your back and you go toward him rather than waiting to be pulled, and the kitchen counter is solid behind you and the noise from the living room is very far away and it’s been hours of sitting next to him and not touching him and the not-touching has been making you insane since approximately seven fifteen.

“We should go back,” you say against his mouth.

“Yeah,” he agrees, and kisses you again.

His hands move up your back and yours find the bottom of his shirt and he makes that warm, low sound he makes when you touch the skin there, the one you feel more than hear, and you stop thinking about going back.

“Steve...”

“I know, we’ve got time,” he whispers against your lips.

“We’re supposed to -”

“Ssh.” His mouth finds your jaw. Your pulse. The specific place below your ear that he found three weeks ago and has not forgotten. “Five more minutes.”

“You said that five minutes ago.”

He just smiles.

Five minutes becomes ten becomes you losing track of the minutes entirely. His hands move from your waist to the counter either side of you and you pull him in by the shirt and the kiss goes from stolen to something considerably less innocent, his mouth moving to your jaw, your throat, the place below your ear that makes your eyes close and your hands tighten in his hair.

“Steve.” Not a protest. Just his name.

“I know,” he says, into your neck.

His hands find the bottom of your shirt and the warm skin underneath and you inhale sharply at the contact, your hips tilting toward him without your permission. He feels it and makes a low sound and pulls back just enough to look at you, his expression the focused certain one, nothing held back.

You reach for his belt.

His breath goes out of him. “Here?”

“Everyone’s watching TV,” you say. “Door’s closed.”

He looks at you for one more second. Then his hands are at your waist, turning you, and you go with it, your hands braced on the counter, and he presses close behind you and his mouth finds your neck again and his hands work at the waist of your jeans and you stop thinking about the living room or Robin or the evening or anything at all except his hands and his mouth and his cock and the five weeks of knowing exactly what he can do with all three.

The kitchen is quiet except for your breathing and the muffled rise and fall of the TV from down the hall. His jeans join yours somewhere near the kitchen floor. He kicks your feet apart just as far as they can go with your jeans still caught at your ankles, and he finds you slick and ready and pushes in and you both go still for a second. You arch your back and press back into him and hear the breath catch in his throat.

“Okay?” he murmurs, lips against your ear.

“Yeah, yes. C’mon, fuck me while we have the chance,” you whisper over your shoulder.

He does, hard and fast, his hand over your mouth to choke back your moans while he whispers all his wicked thoughts into your ear. It’s too loud, despite the attempts to stay quiet, which is why neither of you hears the door opening, or the footsteps that follow.

What you hear, eventually, is Eddie’s voice, loud enough to carry across the kitchen and stop you in your tracks.

“Y’know,” Eddie drawls, in the considering tone of a man who has given this a great deal of thought in the last two seconds, “I spent most of high school dreaming about your ass, Harrington. Never thought I’d get to see it in the flesh.”

Steve’s whole body goes rigid.

There’s a suspended, silent second that feels like it stretches on forever. You can hear Eddie nodding, almost, the sound of a man genuinely moved by and thankful for his own circumstances.

Neither of you move. Steve is frozen, stood so still you can feel the throb of his pulse inside you.

You hook your little finger over his, both hands braced on the countertop.

“I’ll see you guys back in there. Have fun.”

You hear the sound of Eddie’s empty bottle being left on the table by the door, and then he pulls the kitchen door closed behind him.

The kitchen is very quiet.

Steve pulls out and straightens up, fastens his jeans, and stares at the closed door with the expression of a man watching his life rearrange itself around him.

“He saw,” you say.

“He saw,” Steve confirms. Flat. Still staring at the door.

“The whole -”

“Ass situation. Yeah.”

You press your lips together and pull your clothes back into some semblance of order.

“I have to go back out there,” he says, to no one.

“We both do.”

He looks at you. His hair is a disaster. You suspect yours is worse.

“Give it two minutes,” you tell him. “Let him settle.”

“When does Eddie ever settle?” Steve drags a hand down his face. “He’s never going to let me live this down. I’m going to be hearing about this when I’m forty.”

“When we’re forty,” you correct, and something in his expression shifts, the disaster of it briefly giving way to something else entirely.

He tucks his shirt back in.

“Two minutes,” he says.

Eddie makes it back to the couch in what he considers to be a very reasonable amount of time, all things considered. He sits down. He picks up his beer. He looks at the TV.

Robin looks at him.

She has known Eddie Munson’s face for the better part of a decade. She knows what it looks like at rest, which is never entirely at rest. She knows what it looks like when he’s pretending to be calm, which is what it’s doing now, badly, his cheeks pink and not from exertion, his mouth compressed around something he is physically restraining himself from saying.

“Edward,” she says, pointedly.

“Nope. Nothing,” he says, the picture of innocence.

Robin looks at him for another second.

Dustin, from the armchair, looks at Eddie. Then at the door. Then back at Eddie. He picks up his beer and says nothing, which from Dustin requires visible effort. “Oh boy.”

“What did you do?” Robin asks.

“I didn’t do anything!” Eddie squeals. “I just went for a beer.”

“Where’s the beer now?”

Eddie looks at his empty hand.

“I… got distracted,” he says.

They hear them before they see them, footsteps in the hall, and then the door opens and Steve comes back into the living room first, and if his shirt is slightly less tucked on the left side than it was an hour ago, and if his hair is doing something it wasn’t doing before, Robin doesn’t notice it immediately because she’s still looking at Eddie’s face.

Eddie, to his credit, is looking at the TV.

You come in behind Steve and fold yourself back onto your end of the couch and reach for your beer and take a drink, and everything is normal, everything is fine, this is just two people who live together coming back from tidying the kitchen.

“Everything okay?” Robin asks.

“Yep,” Steve says, dropping back onto the arm of couch.

Robin looks at him. At you. At Eddie, who is a portrait of calm, which is the least convincing thing she has ever seen in her life.

“Munson,” she says.

“Mmm,” he says, to the TV.

“Look at me.”

He looks at her. His face is a carefully constructed nothing that is doing none of the work he needs it to do, the tips of his ears still pink, a compression at the corner of his mouth that is going to break open into a grin approximately eight seconds from now.

Robin turns to look at Steve.

Steve is looking at the TV.

She glances at you.

You are also looking at the TV.

She turns back to Eddie.

The compression breaks, and collapses into hysterical laughter.

“Oh my fucking god,” Robin shrieks.

Dustin puts his beer down on the arm of the chair with a precise and deliberate movement. He looks at Steve. Then at you. Then at Steve again.

“No fucking way. How long?”

Steve, to his credit, doesn’t try to deny it. He exhales through his nose and tips his head back against the wall.

“Five weeks,” you say, because someone has to.

“Five weeks,” Dustin repeats. He sits back. He nods, slowly, with the gravity of someone receiving information that confirms something he has suspected for considerably longer than five weeks. “Okay.”

“Okay?” Steve looks at him.

“Yeah.” Dustin picks his beer back up. “Okay.”

“That’s it? That’s all you’ve got?”

Dustin shrugs. “I mean. I’ve known you my whole life, Steve. I could give you shit for weeks if you want?”

Steve stares at him.

“Robs,” Eddie says, with great feeling, turning to her. He spreads his hands. “I walked into that kitchen and, and -”

“Eddie, no,” you warn.

“I’m just providing context.”

“You really don’t need to provide context.”

He looks to Robin again. “I went in for a beer -”

“There was beer in the living room,” Steve says, to the ceiling.

“I wanted a cold one.”

“They were all cold.”

“I wanted a specific cold one.” Eddie gestures expansively. “The point is, I walked in there and -”

“Eddie,” Steve says.

“Harrington.”

“I will end you.”

“Bit late for that, buddy. I’ve already seen -”

“Eddie.”

Robin makes a sound. It starts as something controlled and professional and ends completely sideways, her hand over her mouth, eyes bright and helpless above it.

“You thought I didn’t know,” she says, muffled, to you.

“You knew?!”

“I set up the living situation.” She gestures at the apartment. “I have been watching you two -” She waves her hand between you and Steve. “For months. The foot thing alone -”

“What foot thing?” You ask, as if you don’t know.

“Steve has a foot thing?” Dustin looks horrified.

“It’s not a thing,” Steve says, in a tone that confirms it is absolutely a thing.

“He rubs her feet,” Robin says, acting it out like a game of charades.

“I’ve been watching him do that for months and I thought he was just being ‘helpful Steve’,” Eddie ponders.

Five weeks ago you had stood in the hallway and said don’t and meant something you couldn’t finish and he had looked at you like you were something he’d been trying very hard not to want. Ten feet away from that spot, Robin is laughing properly now, the hand-over-mouth version losing the battle, Eddie is gesturing with an empty beer bottle, and Dustin is watching Steve with the patient expression of someone who has been waiting for a something like this for a very long time and is glad to have finally seen it happen.

Steve’s little finger finds yours on the couch cushion.

“I was going to tell you tonight,” he says to Robin.

“I know you were.” She wipes the corner of her eye. “I was going to let you. I had it all planned out in my head, how I’d react. Then I saw Eddie and Dustin in town and I knew this’d be more fun.”

“Yeah, for you,” he says.

“I thought so.”

Eddie points at the ceiling. “Nobody has acknowledged the incredible restraint I showed in that kitchen. I want that on record.”

“You did not show restraint,” you say. “You made a speech.”

“It was like two sentences. For me, that’s practically a haiku.” He looks at Steve. The grin softens, just slightly, into something genuine underneath. “Five weeks, huh.”

“Five weeks,” Steve confirms.

Eddie nods. Looks at you. Looks back at Steve. “Good,” he says simply.

He reaches over and takes the last slice of pizza.

“Someone get me a beer,” he says. “A real one, from the kitchen. And disinfect the bottle - fuck knows what these freaks have been doing with them.”

Later, after Eddie has told the story twice more with increasing embellishment and Robin has extracted a full account of how it happened and when and Dustin has asked three pointed questions and seemed satisfied with the answers, the evening settles back into itself. The TV murmurs. The pizza boxes have been cleared. Robin has her legs tucked under her at her end of the couch and is arguing with Eddie about something inconsequential, her voice warm and easy, the soft register of people who have been friends long enough to argue about nothing and enjoy it.

Dustin is asleep in the armchair, which he will deny in the morning.

Steve’s arm is around your shoulders while you sit in his lap. Not hidden, just there, the way things are now, the way things have been for five weeks in private and are apparently going to be in public from here on out, which feels, against all expectation, like relief.

“It’s about time you crazy kids got it together,” Robin says from her end of the couch, sleepily.

Eddie, eyes still on the screen, raises his beer.

From the armchair, eyes still closed, Dustin mumbles “yep.”

[zelinkcrossing]

THE TIME STAMPS HELLOOOOO THATS SO GOOD

[tinfoileddd]

Another Summer!Steve thot... hosting a cookout and Steve's the grillmaster. He's got your kid piggybacked onto him, looking over his shoulder and invested in the whole process.

summer (sun)!coach!steve x single mom!reader a blurb continuation of in the summer sun, set roughly a year after wc: 732 || divider by @/saradika-graphics

The thing about Mia is that when she loves, she loves with her entire heart.

You’ve known this about her since she was two years old and came to you in tears because a stuffed animal had a small rip in its arm, refusing to be consoled until you dug up an old sewing kit and stitched it back together under her watchful eye. And since then, her love for the wider world around her has only grown, shaped by fleeting interests and a keen eye and an endless curiosity to know.

So when you finally allowed her to meet Steve as Mom’s Boyfriend and not Coach Steve—

(Well. You shouldn’t have been so worried about her reaction, especially now that she follows him around like a little duckling.)

And ever since that fateful day, you’re having a harder and harder time imagining what your life looks like without Steve. Not just him, but his gaggle of friends, too, who you’re sure must have been weary when Steve announced that he was dating a single mother, but have instead been nothing but kind and accepting of you and your daughter.

Robin, who’s taken a personal interest in making sure Mia doesn’t grow up with Steve’s taste in music (“Seriously, saying The J. Geils Band is your favorite band is criminal, Steve!”). Dustin, who found out about Mia’s lasting orangutan obsession and has a new fact to share with her whenever they cross paths. And then there’s Max, the one who grilled you upon your first meeting, who has decided that it’s her life’s mission to teach Mia how to skateboard, pretending like she doesn’t hear your concerns on the matter whenever the subject is brought up.

(Steve assures you that Max looked into proper protective gear and stole his checkbook to order child sized kneepads.)

(You worry anyway.)

All of which leads you to now, sitting in Steve’s backyard during Memorial Day weekend, a cold beer in hand as you watch the chaos unfold around you.

It starts out simple. Steve’s friends crash land into the pool, you help set up snacks and drinks on the folding tables brought out just for the cookout, and everyone keeps an eye on Mia as she wanders from person to person, soaking in all the attention and praise that they tend to shower her with. Steve presides over the grill, wearing a rather silly Kiss The Chef! apron that Robin gave him for Christmas, and he waves you away to take a break just as he starts up the grill.

An hour slips by without notice, softening you between the buzz of alcohol and good company, when out of nowhere — and you’re not quite sure what even happened — Mia steps on a bug or a rock or something and no amount of fawning or assurances convinces her that she will, in fact, survive such a tragedy.

Not until Steve offers to carry her around on his back, anyway. Her tears dry up faster than you’ve ever seen and she immediately clings to his back in a manner easily reminiscent of the orangutans that she so loves. 

(You’re beginning to suspect that, quite possibly, all of this might have been an elaborate ploy to get a piggy back ride, which you find hilarious considering if she’d simply asked he would’ve done it with no questions asked.)

So you sit at the edge of the pool, legs submerged, and you watch as Mia imperiously teaches Steve how to flip the food that he’s grilling, one small arm wrapped around his neck while the other is pointed at something that you can’t see. Steve nods, as if he isn’t nearly twenty-seven years old and has known how to grill food far longer than your daughter has been alive, following her instructions with an air of seriousness in spite of grin splitting across his face.

There’s a splash of water, and Robin swims up to where you’re sitting, resting her forearms on the concrete next to you.

“She has him wrapped around her fingers,” Robin comments, her gaze flickering between you and Steve.

“Yeah,” you agree. “Not sure if I should be concerned or not.”

She laughs, a tinkling little sound, and says, “He’s exactly where he wants to be. Trust me.”

Your chest warms with an emotion you can’t quite identify. “Yeah,” you say again. “He really is, isn’t he?”

[zelinkcrossing]

showing this to any future men i date to be like "hey so this is what you want right??? when we have kids this is what you're gonna be like??"