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steddieas-shegoes · 2 years ago

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Chapter 4

Chapter 1 / Chapter 2 / Chapter 3

Steve arrived home to Robin anxiously pacing.

“Steve! Oh my God. I thought you died.”

“Robin, I literally talked to you an hour ago.”

“You could’ve died in the last hour!”

He smiled at her dramatics. She had his location the entire time, and she easily could have called him any time in the last hour if she was that worried.

She wrapped him in a hug, which was shocking enough on its own, but Steve couldn’t help his confusion when she also kissed the top of his head.

She held him for over a minute and Steve started to wonder if someone had died and she didn’t know how to tell him face to face.

“Robs?”

“Dingus?”

“Is everything okay?”

“Are you okay?”

Steve realized Eddie had probably told her everything. Oh for fuck sake.

“I am begging you to never bring anything of this up to me ever. Like, even if you think it’s okay to talk about it, assume it isn’t. I am never going to talk about this with you. Not ever. Not even on my deathbed. Not even when I’m drunk.”

“Eddie said you should.”

“I will. With Eddie. Not you.”

Steve turned to walk to his room and ignore Robin for the rest of the day, but he could hear her footsteps following him.

He sighed and turned around.

“I’m fine. Eddie took care of me. I’m going back there tonight so we can talk. I’ll keep my location on and you can check in with both of us, okay Mom?”

“Wait wait wait wait. You’re going back there tonight?” Then, she seemed to remember how he even ended up with Eddie. “WAIT! Your tattoo! Show me!”

Steve could do that much at least. He’d been talking about this tattoo for so long and he was really excited about how it turned out.

Eddie had unwrapped it and done the first round of cleaning and moisturizing, making sure Steve was paying attention so he could do it by himself today.

He hadn’t been able to look away from it for nearly ten minutes, the colors more beautiful after the redness of his irritated skin went away.

He held his wrist out to Robin, unable to keep the smile from his face as she looked at it and smiled up at him.

“He did great with this. Will is gonna flip.”

“I hope he likes it. He has an appointment with me tomorrow so I’ll be able to show him.”

Will was one of his best kids. He never had to actually worry about his future, Will knew exactly what he wanted, got good grades, had nearly perfect attendance, and worked towards his goals without any help from Steve. He’d been through a lot though as a child, and his mom had insisted that he regularly meet with Steve just to talk.

He came to appointments once a week, but him, along with his two best friends Dustin and Mike, would often spend their lunchtime in Steve’s office. They weren’t exactly popular, and bullies targeted them often for their size and their interest in more nerdy things. Steve let them, even though the principal had told him he was setting them up for failure in real life. Steve always said this was real life and feeling safe wasn’t a failure.

But this tattoo would really mean a lot to Will. He hoped so, at least.

“When are you going to Eddie’s?”

“7.”

“Bring protection.”

“Nothing’s gonna happen.”

Robin just gave him a look and walked away.

Nothing was gonna happen. Eddie said so.

– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

When Steve got to Eddie’s place, he was already home, and…cooking?

“Something smells good.”

Steve made his way into the house, brushing past Eddie and looking around. He hadn’t spent much time noticing things earlier, but now he could.

There was a lot of art on the walls, but none of it looked like what was at the shop. This looked more abstract, with a few random watercolors sprinkled in. He noticed pictures frames along the shelves and bookcase that held more records than books. The coffee table looked cluttered, mostly books and sketches spread out along the top.

The couch was old, but looked comfy, and the armchair in the corner seemed mostly unused. A few hats hung from the corner it was placed in, none of them looking like anything Eddie would wear.

Did he have a roommate? Is that how he could afford a house?

“You can set your stuff in my room if you want. You remember where it is?”

Eddie’s voice being so close behind him startled him, but he immediately relaxed when he felt a hand on his hip.

“I remember.”

Eddie squeezed his hip once before letting him go, walking towards the kitchen instead of following Steve.

Steve took in the pictures hanging up in the hall, but didn’t get a close look at any, already rushing to get back to Eddie so they could talk. Robin had given him another look before he left that said there’d be more than talking happening tonight, but he really trusted Eddie when he said they’d be taking it easy.

He dropped his bag on Eddie’s bed, smiling to himself when he saw that the bed was made.

Eddie didn’t seem like the type of person to make his bed, so maybe he was trying to impress him?

Steve shook the thought away. Nothing is happening tonight. He may not even want you in his bed after you talk.

He made his way back out to the kitchen, where Eddie was closing the oven door and placing a casserole dish of something that smelled like heaven on the stove.

“What did you make?”

“Breakfast casserole.”

“Breakfast? For dinner?”

Eddie smirked. “No laws can hold me down.”

Steve resisted the smile he felt trying to creep onto his face.

Eddie really did a number on his whole “I don’t smile for anyone” exterior.

“What’s in it?”

“Well, normally I do a french toast one that has fruit and maple syrup, but you didn’t seem like the type to enjoy that.”

“Excuse me? That sounds amazing,” Steve crossed his arms across his chest and stared at Eddie.

“We can have that next time.”

Next time, next time, next time.

“This one is hashbrowns, cheese, eggs, and bacon with biscuits as the base.”

“That sounds…heavy.”

“We can eat heavy. We don’t have any physical activity to commit to later.”

Steve couldn’t help it, he started pouting.

A small part of him had hoped that maybe after they talked, something would happen. Not necessarily sex or even subspace, but some making out, maybe some handjobs? Yeah, he’d hoped.

But he recognized the boundaries Eddie was setting, and he respected him for sticking to them, even if he really wished he didn’t.

Eddie poked Steve’s bottom lip playfully.

“No need to pout. If our discussion goes well, maybe next time?”

“Promise?”

“You’re gonna be trouble, aren’t you?”

“I dunno. Am I?”

“And a brat. Noted.”

Steve had never, not even at peak spoiled rich kid, been called a brat. Not even jokingly. He was a little offended, but he could see the hint of a smirk on Eddie’s face letting him know that would be part of their discussion.

“Are we gonna talk during dinner or after?”

“That’s up to you. I’m happy either way, sunshine.”

Steve felt warmth spreading in his chest at the nickname. He’d never been called sunshine either. Being terminally grumpy since your teenage years kind of eliminates that possibility.

“I have some questions so maybe we could start there during dinner?”

Eddie nodded and turned to grab plates and forks for dinner.

“Before you start though, I wanna make sure you know that I will always be honest and do my best to answer your questions, but there are some things I don’t know. I’m not a professional. I’m certainly experienced, but there may be things you want to know that I’ve never done. I don’t want to mislead you, so if there’s stuff you still need to know after this, I have contacts who can probably help.”

Steve felt so out of his depth here. Eddie had fucking contacts for this.

“Stevie? You okay?”

Steve shook himself out of his thoughts. He couldn’t let himself feel nervous about this. Eddie was kind and wanted him to understand and wouldn’t expect anything of him. He could do this.

“Yeah, I’m okay. Sorry. Just feels a little overwhelming.”

Eddie paused mid-scoop and glanced at Steve. He set the serving spoon in the dish and walked the few steps over to Steve, wrapping his arms around him gently and hugging him to his chest.

Steve quickly found his spot, nuzzling against his collarbone like he belonged there.

“That’s why we’re taking this slow, having discussions first. You can’t go into all of it the way you did last night. It’s dangerous.” Eddie rubbed his back slowly and Steve fought back the noises trying to escape from his chest. “I won’t feel comfortable doing anything at all with you until we’re both comfortable, okay?”

Steve nodded against his chest.

Eddie pulled back and tilted his chin up to look at him.

“You have to use your words, sunshine.”

“Okay.”

“You understand what I said?”

“I understand.”

“Good boy.”

Steve couldn’t contain the whine he let out. Jesus Christ, what was happening to him? He’d never been like this. He’d never made that noise before in his life.

“Alright, sunshine. Let’s eat.”

Steve didn’t want to separate from him, but Eddie didn’t go too far. He made sure Steve was right next to him as he grabbed their plates and walked to the table, setting them down next to each other instead of at the chairs across from each other.

“Don’t want you too far,” Eddie said with a fond smile.

Steve hated the way his heart skipped a beat. Eddie was going to send him into cardiac arrest if he kept this up.

But he did his best to ignore it, take a deep breath, and sit down in the chair.

His anxiety was high, and he was worried he may not be able to even eat, but Eddie took a bite and looked at Steve expectantly.

Steve picked up his fork and took a bite.

“Damn, this is good.”

“Thanks, sunshine. It’s hard to fuck this one up, but I’m glad you like it.”

Steve smiled at him and took another bite.

Where to begin?

He knew Eddie would let him lead, acting as more of a guide for the conversation than anything else, but Steve suddenly didn’t know where to begin.

“Um. I guess I kinda wanna start by saying something?”

Eddie nodded, smiling softly at him and showing him that he could be patient with whatever Steve needed to say, even if it took him some time.

“I’m not, like, a virgin. I mean I know when it comes to this stuff I kind of am, but I’ve had a lot of sex. With women and men. I mean, I almost got engaged once. I’m not new to that.” He ignored the amused look on Eddie’s face and continued, though his voice wavered. “And I’ve seen some stuff in porn or whatever. I’m not completely oblivious to how this works.”

“I don’t think you should go off of what you’ve seen in porn.” Eddie cleared his throat. “Sorry to interrupt, I just didn’t want you to think that’s accurate at all. Most vanilla porn isn’t even accurate, let alone any type of BDSM stuff. I don’t want you to think I have a dungeon or something with whips and chains attached to the walls. That isn’t what this is about for me or most anyone, really.”

Steve felt himself flush.

He’d said he wasn’t a virgin, but he’d never talked so openly about sex with anyone. He reminded himself that Eddie was still very much a stranger to him, and this kind of talk is something that close friends or significant others might have.

“What is it about? For you, I mean?”

There. That was a good start. Learning more about what Eddie did might help Steve understand what he was trying to accomplish.

“I mean, for everyone it’s about power and control or submission. But everyone has different ways of accomplishing those things and things they’re comfortable with.” He took another bite and chewed while he seemed to think of his answer. “For me, it’s about being in charge of someone’s release, whether it be sexual or not. Making someone feel good in a way they can’t experience on their own or with someone else. Having the power to know exactly what they need and give it to them or hold back. Find what makes that person tick and use it to make them feel better than ever.”

“That’s what you like? Seeing someone else get off?”

Eddie let out a small chuckle.

“I guess in a simplified way, sure. But that doesn’t always happen. You didn’t get off last night did you?”

“No, but I was dropping apparently.”

“Before that though. You still got to subspace, and you stayed there a while, even though you never got sexual gratification from it. You just felt good. Sometimes feeling good just means a plateau, not a peak and then fall, ya know? I like to help someone maintain that plateau as long as possible.” He took another bite and nudged Steve to do the same. “I love helping someone peak, too. But that isn’t always on the table.”

“What if I want it to be?”

“Getting ahead of yourself, sunshine. How about you have a couple more bites while I talk?”

Steve nodded and took another bite, watching Eddie as he formed his thoughts.

“Sex is obviously a part of this. I won’t say it doesn’t end that way most of the time. But there are parts of this that aren’t sexual at all that are still just as good. Your tattoo wasn’t sexual at all, right?” Steve shook his head. “Exactly. But you got there. Sometimes, it’s more just giving up the control. Some subs don’t even like the sex parts, you know. They like someone to give them rules and tasks to follow and punishments for when they don’t. I have a friend who is a sub who doesn’t even take off his clothes during his sessions. It’s different for everyone and it’s usually trial and error. That’s why safety and trust is such a big part of it.”

Steve felt like his head was spinning.

“Is that why people use safewords?”

“Yeah or the stop light system, or in some cases, just physical signs. That has to be agreed on before you ever go into a scene, even if it's someone you’ve done scenes with before and trust. You may love being spanked until you bruise on Saturday, but end up hating it on Monday if you’re not in the right headspace for it. It’s not just the sub trusting the dom with everything, it’s the dom trusting that the sub will use their safeword if they can’t keep going. Sometimes that’s hard for people to understand. It goes both ways. Both parties have control, just in different ways.”

“You know a lot about this.”

“I’ve been in a few serious relationships with the dynamic and all my friends have been part of the scene for years. What I don’t know firsthand, I’ve heard plenty about.”

“Okay, but what if I do want the sex stuff to be part of it?”

“If you do, then you have to be open about hard limits before you start. You have to have a safeword and use it if things start to go bad. You have to let yourself test the waters, but not jump into them if that makes sense.”

Steve nodded. It did make sense. He was probably jumping the gun a bit, but he felt like maybe he could trust Eddie to find and test his limits.

“So you wouldn’t wanna do that with me?”

“I didn’t say that, Stevie.” Eddie turned to him and placed his hands on his knees, massaging them lightly. “I’m not a jump right into anything kind of guy, even with just plain vanilla sex. But I’m really careful about starting with sex stuff right off the bat. Oh, stop pouting, sunshine. I’m not saying no.”

“But you’re saying no now.”

Steve knew he was still pouting, and maybe being a bit unreasonable. He normally took things slow too, at least when it came to more than random handjobs or blowjobs at the club. It still made him feel like Eddie might not be interested in him the way he was interested in Eddie.

“I’m saying not yet. There’s a difference. I’d love to be able to do that with you. But you need to experience more first.”

“Like what?”

Eddie studied his face for a moment. Steve felt like he could see right through him, which would have alarmed him more if he wasn’t certain that Eddie was going to be able to make him float again.

“You like to be praised.”

It wasn’t a question, but Steve nodded. He’d figured that much out at least.

“That’s a good start. You can be praised for a lot of things. Sometimes just being told to sit still and being told you’re doing good can make a person float, you know.”

Steve didn’t think he could do that. He certainly believed some people could, but he figured it would take a lot more for him.

“I don’t think I can do that.”

“Do you want to try?”

“Now? I thought we weren’t doing anything tonight?”

Steve was suddenly overwhelmed with nerves again. Despite the fact that he’d wanted something to happen when he first got here, he was now wondering why the hell he thought that was a good idea.

“It doesn’t have to be now. But it would certainly be a good start when you’re ready. Simple, non-sexual, easy to safeword out of if you get uncomfortable, unlikely to drop from it. It’s just an idea. You can always say no.”

Steve didn’t want to say no. He was nervous, sure, but he wanted it. He wanted to try. He wanted to make Eddie proud.

“Could we try tonight?”

“If you finish your supper and we talk about a safeword, yes.”

Steve took three more bites and ignored Eddie’s laughter at his clear excitement.

“So, what can we use for a safeword?”

“Up to you, sunshine. Mine is Metallica.”

“Can I use yours?”

Eddie thought about it for a moment.

“For tonight, yes. But you should have your own in the future.”

“Don’t like sharing?”

Steve smirked at Eddie, who rolled his eyes but smiled fondly back at him.

“More like you may not want to keep doing scenes with me and having your own safeword is best.” He got up and brought their plates to the sink while Steve waited patiently in his chair. “You can go sit on the couch. I’ll be there in a couple minutes.”

Steve sat on the couch with his hands folded in his lap, trying to push away any nerves he had over what they were about to do. If all went how he hoped, he’d maybe go to subspace again. Eddie sounded like he could get him there, but he didn’t know exactly what Eddie would have to do.

He didn’t have to wait long.

Eddie came into the room and sat down next to him, wrapping an arm around his shoulders and pulling him into his side.

“Alright. We’re gonna relax for a few minutes first. You’re tense and you won’t be able to just go right into it.”

“Oh. Sorry.”

“Nothing to be sorry for, sunshine. Just let me hold you for a few minutes, okay?”

Steve wanted nothing more than to never leave Eddie’s side, his arm wrapped just tight enough around him so he felt like he couldn’t escape, his body warming him up just enough for comfort.

He didn’t know how long they stayed like that, and he didn’t really care, all he knew was the next time Eddie moved, he had to open his eyes.

“Alright, sunshine. Gonna move you a little so your head is in my lap, okay?”

“Mhm.”

Eddie adjusted him so he was laying with his head in his lap and his legs out along the length of the couch. He had a hand in Steve’s hair, scratching at his scalp gently, while his other hand was tracing circles on his arm.

“Mmmm. ‘S good,” Steve mumbled against Eddie’s thigh as he let his eyes slip closed again.

“Good.” He felt a gentle tug on his hair and his eyes shot open. Eddie was smirking down at him, but went back to gently scratching at his scalp. “Just testing. You remember the safeword?”

“Metallica.”

“Good boy. You use it the second you feel like you have to.”

Steve ignored the flutters in his stomach at being called a good boy again.

It went on like this for a little while, nothing new happening. Steve started to wonder if Eddie understood what the purpose of this was, when he suddenly felt Eddie stop all movement.

He whimpered, then felt Eddie’s hand tug at his hair harder.

“You have to stay quiet, sunshine. Keep being a good boy for me.”

His tone was different. Not quite stern, but not as soft as before either. Steve didn’t have to know him better to know that he should listen to him.

“I’m going to watch a show. You just sit right there for me and look pretty.”

Oh. Jesus Christ.

Steve was already hard. From that? Really Steve?

He managed to stay quiet this time, but he knew the second Eddie touched him again he would moan.

But Eddie didn’t touch him again.

He turned on the tv and casually looked for a channel. When he found one, he watched with his hands by his sides, not even resting against Steve’s skin.

Steve knew this must be part of it or they wouldn’t be doing it, but he felt himself growing frustrated at not getting any attention.

Minutes passed like that. Steve wondered when Eddie would acknowledge him again, but didn’t want to risk saying something.

Then a hand was in his hair, playing with the ends as if Eddie had never stopped.

Steve let out a content sigh and closed his eyes again.

“Being so good for me, sunshine.”

Steve smiled to himself, keeping his eyes closed so he could relax fully against Eddie’s lap.

The noise from the tv turned distant, but the fingers in his hair felt like fire. Or maybe ice. Both? Could be both. They just felt nice.

Steve drifted, not realizing he was going until he was already gone.

Eddie knew the moment it happened’ Steve’s entire body relaxed entirely against him and the couch, and he let out a sigh that could’ve been held in for years with how loud it was. He didn’t open his eyes, but Eddie didn’t need to see them to know they’d be glazed over.

“So perfect, Stevie. Feeling good, huh?”

“Mmm.”

Eddie smiled down at him, even though he wouldn’t see it.

He wouldn’t let him stay down for long, just for the rest of the show.

Not that he was watching the show.

Not when he had Steve in his lap, floating away because of his gentle touches and words.

Chapter 5

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#steddie #steve harrington #eddie munson #stranger things #chapter 4 #grumpy sunshine trope #tattoo artist eddie munson #guidance counselor steve harrington #dom/sub #dom eddie munson #sub steve harrington

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marrowfrog00 · 10 months ago

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You Stir My Natural Emotions

A/N: Hi, this is a post I made a while back on my Ao3 and since I'm dragging ass on writing anything new...I thought I'd rest on my barely-there, crusty, dusty ass laurels until inspiration strikes or I put my back into actualizing my idea-rs.

CW: MDNI, Smut (characters are 18+), Mentions of Trauma, Broken Bones, Misunderstandings, Idiots in Love, Quarreling, Canon Typical Violence, Flashbacks, Descriptions of female anatomy, Oral (f receiving), P in V, Protected Sex, Adaptive Sex, Mentions of deceased grandmother, Not formatted b/c fuck that r.n., lmk if I missed anything

wc: 13.9k

Steve’s polo was pasted to his back with the sweat of high Midwestern summer. He glanced back at his Bimmer, parked behind Nancy’s station wagon, more than a little uneasy at the prospect of leaving it on the narrow shoulder of the county road.

His destination, an unauthorized swimming hole with a somewhat rickety, decommissioned dock, didn’t have a proper parking space. Not like the well kept county-owned lakeside park on the other side of the water. That spot had designated parking but would no doubt be littered with desperate, unadventurous families trying to beat the heat.

People unlike his friends, who frequented the busted but perfectly functional East shore of the lake.

He bushwhacked through noxious weeds and nettles, feet seeking out the half-worn path that would take him to the meeting spot. He reached the little bluff, where he had to cut little switchbacks to make it down the hill without breaking his ankle. When he reached the last tree stand he heard the rowdy voices of his friends carry across the shallows of the lake.

And just in time, too - the polyester and mesh of his swim trunks were chafing him under his Jordache jeans.

He could see the backs of Robin’s and Eddie’s heads in low seat beach chairs. They were clandestinely passing a flask between them while Nancy and Jon sat on a blanket beside them, Nancy rubbing sunblock on her boyfriend’s shoulders, pausing to push her sunglasses up the bridge of her nose.

She noticed Steve’s approach, head shooting up with a bright smile. “Hey! You made it!”

Eddie, Robin and Jon’s heads shot up in reaction, each of them shooting him a half-enthused greeting.

“What took you so long, dingus?” Robin crowed, clearly half-tipsy.

Steve scoffed, pulling his polo over his head and tossing it by the cooler.

“Well, someone called out today and I had to stay on an extra hour and a half at the store waiting for coverage,” he sniped back with no heat. Robin blew a raspberry at him.

“Strip down, Big Boy, you’re wasting daylight,” Eddie shot lazily. He stretched out on his beach chair, limbs quaking at full extension like those of a freshly-awakened cat. His chest was on full display, the white cast of badly-applied sunblock streaked across his tummy.

Steve rolled his eyes - there was nothing if not daylight to waste, the sun smiling at them all meanly from high in the sky.

He shuffled his jeans down his legs before kicking them in Eddie’s face, who expertly dodged the attack with a guffaw.

Over on the dock, Max and El lay shoulder-to-shoulder on their stomachs, giggling over a glossy magazine while Mike and Lucas hollered off the edge, filling their super soakers from the dock’s edge. Will was buried in a sketch pad, toes dipped in the water.

Steve’s hands were planted on his hips as he did a quick headcount. A force of habit these days. He narrowed his eyes in search of the missing two.

“Where are Dustin and Teenie?” he asked, noting suspicion in his own voice. The very two people he always had eyes on (if he could help it) were missing from this idyllic tableau. Nancy craned her neck to look toward the lake.

“They’re in the water,” she said as if it were obvious. “They’ve been in there forever.”

Steve felt his stomach clench uneasily but tried to school his expression into something nonplussed as he started toward the dock.

“Why is she in the water?” he muttered to no one in particular, noting the worried pitch in his own voice.

He saw the four heads of his nearly-adult friends turn toward him in unison as he walked past them.

Robin chimed in then, through a hiccup “Psh, she’s fine Steven. We reinforced her.”

Steve ignored her.

Max and El glanced up at him, muttering uninterested twin-greetings to him as he stepped gingerly between them. Will let him scooch past.

“Hey!” came your voice. “Do not shoot water in each other's mouths, this water is stagnant,” you barked. “That’s guaranteed dysentery.”

“Sorry,” Lucas and Mike responded in unison.

Finally, yours and Dustin’s forms bobbing in the water came into view. Dustin was sputtering and rubbing his face with the hand not holding his own super soaker, clearly having been on the receiving end of Lucas and Mike’s attack.

You were a few feet away from him, straddling a neon orange pool noodle.

You were wearing that infernal bikini…the spring green one with ditsy white flowers and an underwire that smooshed your bust into a juicy-looking sculpture shaped by the hands of an unfair, horny god.

Your hair was damp around your face. Even behind your red cat eye sunglasses, you appeared unimpressed until you caught sight of Steve and beamed at him.

“Stevie!” you squealed.

He didn’t waste another moment taking in the sight of you before he shoved off the dock and waded the short distance over to you and Dustin.

“Hey, Steve!” he heard Dustin greet sweetly. Steve ignored it, leveling his gaze at you.

“Teenie, what the hell are you doing in the lake?”

Your pretty smile fell at his words. You hesitated a moment before you fixed your face into a sardonic expression.

“You’re looking at it, Stevie.”

“Your arm, Teenie! Your cast!”

Steve didn’t notice how every head had turned toward the two of you at his little outburst. At that, you pulled your left arm out of the water, where it had been obscured. It looked like Swamp Thing, dark and soggy, water running off of it in rivulets. Steve saw that it was covered in a black rubbish bag, secured with silver duct tape (plus a derelict shoe lace) at your elbow.

“It’s sorted, Stevie.” Steve heard conciliation in your voice. “The plaster’s bone dry underneath, ya happy?”

No, he wasn’t happy.

Frankly, Steve didn’t care who had rigged the dry bag around the cast securing your fractured ulna. If he had, his money would have been on the braintrust that was Eddie and Robin, but who knew with this ragtag group? It wasn't as though the lot of them hadn’t crafted a bevy of improvised weapons and structures and clothing in the past.

Steve’s blood was boiling. He shouldn’t have had to tell you to stay out of the water, you should have just known.

Yeah, lake day had been your idea, but he’d had a very different design for this day in his head when you’d proposed it.

He thought the kids would splash around in the shallows while you and him (plus the other four sort-of grown ups) lounged at the water’s edge.

The two of you would lather each other in sunblock (you with your good arm) and share a beer or two, and he would stare discreetly and shamelessly at your half-naked, prone body behind the safety of his Ray-Bans while some sappy love song played over the boombox and he pretended you were his and he wasn’t tap dancing around his feelings that he'd only sort of started realizing were feelings and-

“Steve,” you uttered sharply, snapping him out of his daydream.

Right. He had been busy giving you the business about reckless swimming.

“You’re a terrible swimmer on a good day,” he scolded. “You really think you can hold your own with one arm?” he reasoned, gesturing at your form.

You pushed your sunglasses to the top of your head and glared at him, unimpressed.

Dustin chose then to speak up, mildly. Steve almost forgot he was there.

“We’re touching the bottom, Steve. We’re being safe, we’re touching the bottom,” he tried with a chord of desperation.

Steve looked between the two of you. A nasty little smirk on your face threatened to emerge.

“Yeah, we’re touching the bottom.” You demonstrated your point by bouncing up and down on your toes a few times. Steve had to ignore how your boobs bounced with the motion. “And I have this, for buoyancy,” you added, smacking the end of your pool noodle into the water and sending a spray of water into Steve’s face.

Dustin cackled suddenly at Steve’s sputtering. Lucas, Mike, El and Max joined the hysterics shortly thereafter. Will hid a snicker behind his sketch pad.

It should have broken the tension. It should have been the hard reset on the fun that Steve had almost ruined with his poop-pantsery.

“What about Dustin?” Steve tried then. He was feeling outnumbered here. And a little stupid, frankly. But righteous. Like, how the hell was he supposed to feel when he leaves the lot of you alone for one afternoon and the two (arguably) most vulnerable people are just hanging out with no one to stop you drowning?

Dustin’s blue eyes grew big and confused at the mention of his name. You looked at the young curly-haired boy reflexively.

“What about ‘im?” you shot back.

“He doesn’t have collar bones!” Steve barked, gesturing at the boy.

Dustin looked a little hurt by the observation, true though it may be. Steve winced a little at his own insensitivity and immediately wished he could walk it back. “Sorry, bud,” he offered.

Dustin seemed immediately appeased at his correction and shrugged as if to say “no problem.”

You weren’t ready to let it go, however. A mean guffaw escaped from the back of your throat before you replied “Dustin is fine. He’s a very capable swimmer,” you spat. Unlike me, Steve heard you mutter snarkily under your breath.

You flicked Dustin’s nose lightly and winked at him, and he preened under your attention. All the kids did. You had that way about you, is all.

Sensing the tension on the water, Eddie, Rob, Nance and Jon were stood up on the shore, looking on with mild concern.

Steve noticed you noticing them and then you shook your head and declared “Know what? I packed sandwiches and nobody has touched them, so…andiamo.”

With that, you abandoned your pool noodle and lifted yourself out of the water and onto the dock by your good arm.

I would have helped her, Steve thought to himself bitterly, watching you drop hard on your knees before getting to your feet.

He sated his need to help by pushing Dustin onto the dock by his butt, much to Dustin’s annoyance.

A bit later, everyone was seated on the shore, the last of the sandwiches having been polished off.

The tension had waned for everyone else and the ambient murmur of jovial conversation had returned.

Eddie was seated at Steve’s side, yammering in his ear about a road trip he wanted to take with you all sometime next Spring.

But Steve’s gaze was trained on you, across the circle, engaged in quiet conversation with Nancy and Robin.

You had pulled your shorts on, leaving them unbuttoned over your bikini bottoms. Your oxford shirt with the sleeves cut off was unbuttoned, billowing open down to your navel. The trash bag had been removed from your arm carefully with the help of the tiny scissors on Dustin’s swiss army knife.

You smiled wryly at some joke that Robin had made. Your face was free of makeup, eyes a little tired, but sanguine.

“Ya listening to me, Stevie boy?” Eddie asked, cutting through Steve’s haze.

“Sorry dude,” Steve shot back mindlessly, willing himself to pry his gaze away.

Eddie merely sniggered at his friend’s lack of manners. “That was quite a spectacle the two of you put on earlier.”

Steve scowled at him, knowing damn well what he was talking about, but choosing to feign ignorance.

“Dunno what you’re talking about.”

Eddie was unbothered by Steve’s pretend-game, continuing, “Like, you two guys pitch each other a lot of shit and it's usually good natured, but lately it's been…” Eddie sucked on his teeth as he pondered the right adjective. “Sticky.”

“Ed, man, shut up.”

“Nah,” Eddie said on a deep inhale. “Figure your shit out, Harrington. It’s embarrassing.” Eddie sunk back down into his chair.

“Teenie Ween’s always been a sweetheart as long as I've known her but lately, you've been bringing out the worst in each other and it's exhausting.”

Steve’s face scrunched up in confusion, pondering Eddie’s cryptic words.

“I’m sorry,” Steve said absently, though he didn’t know what he was sorry for.

Eddie just smiled back at him from behind a pair of aviators.

Soon, the sun started to dip and everyone was a little sun drunk and over the day. Belongings were packed and the troupe of you made it up the bluff and through the thicket of overgrown weeds, back to the road.

(⁠๑⁠♡⁠⌓⁠♡⁠๑⁠)

It was the transportation arrangement that really clinched the awkwardness of the outing.

Nancy had hauled everyone to the beach earlier that day, sans you. You had been dropped off by a boy called Allen Miles and the mention of his name grated on Steve’s very spine.

Before you and Steve could devolve into another bitching match, Nancy pursed her lips and made a sound declaration that Steve would drive you, Dustin and Robin home.

Nevermind that her station wagon would still be stuffed to the gills clown-style. And you wouldn’t even have the buffer of El at the ready since she was staying at Max’s house. You fought her on it, too.

“Does dad know you’re staying over with Max?” you asked her, almost pleading with her to give you a reason to pull elder sibling rank on you.

“Yes,” she hissed back at you haughtily. You deflated, knowing that you would be dropped off last.

Maybe you could pretend to fall asleep during the ride so you didn’t have to deal with Steve alone.

Looks were exchanged and car doors were slammed before you all set off into the twilight. Robin, who typically called shotty, practically shoved you into the front seat of Steve’s car. You didn’t want to make a scene in light of the day’s events, so you went without quarrel.

Dustin and Robin droned on in the backseat about…something. You couldn’t have recounted even a smidgen of their conversation with a gun to your head.

You were focused on Steve next to you, seething. You could feel it coming off of him.

Your jaw clenched as Robin fixed you and Steve with an exasperated look that you could see in the side view mirror before leaving you with a cheeky adios!

Dustin took up the mantle of filling the silence but soon enough, you were parked in front of the Henderson residence.

The boy parried a moment before seemingly deciding he couldn't say or do anything to pop yours and Steve's acidic little bubble. The pair of you watched his mom greet him at the door before pulling away.

The thing was, today hadn’t happened in a vacuum. You and Steve had always gotten along pretty famously as far as your friends and built family were concerned. Certainly enough to make it through a world of unconscionable shit alongside the rest of them.

But when reality as you all knew it was falling to pieces, nobody had the presence of mind to tune into the frequency that the two of you were on. They didn’t notice the intricacies of the geological formation of your relationship.

You had materialized - yes! materialized - out of nowhere back in the fall of ‘83. You’d been sucked into the Upside Down from another time and place entirely. The unwitting and unlikely victim of a quantum hiccup twenty years in the future near your home on Nellis Airforce Base in North Las Vegas.

Your slime-covered, barely animate fifteen-year-old body was discovered and carried out of the Upside Down by Hop. He, in a hazmat suit, you in your ripped, bloodied Catholic school uniform while Joyce stumbled alongside him with Will in her clutches.

For weeks, you’d been near-catatonic, held in the custody of Dr. Owens while a cadre of shady G-men (plus Hop and Joyce) had tried to piece together your journey.

You barely registered that you had leapt back in time and ended up somewhere you didn’t know a soul, half a decade before you were even born.

For you were traumatized and plagued with guilt over the death of another teenage girl. A girl that had desperately wanted to get back to where you found yourself by accident.

You'd tried pulling Barb off that sticky wall, even though part of you knew she was already dead. Soon, you surrendered to your exhaustion and found yourself glued to the same wall, a grotty vine prodding at your lips, trying to make a home in your esophagus right as Hop and Joyce happened upon you.

Eventually, your body healed and you came out of your stupor. You went to live with Hop. You didn’t have anywhere else to go, and besides which way, the best conclusion that the scientists from the DoE could come up with was that if you were going to go back “home”, it would be the way you came. So you had to stay close by.

They paid a stipend to keep you fed and kept - you were an investment, afterall. Moreover, you were a liability and a paradox, and this was the best arrangement Owens could come up with.

Hop got used to having you around, never trying to force the matter of you returning home. In the weeks when you’d lost track of El, you would sometimes stand timidly in front of the towering man until he promised you that you would find her.

Neither of you could stand the guilt of her being out there on her own. Eventually El showed up and he decided that you would all carry on as though you had both been there the whole time.

Nobody wanted you to go back home. How would you get there? How would you survive a second time?

You started school in January of ‘84, sticking close to the walls.

Nancy and Jon felt responsible for you and kept you close. By default, that meant Steve, too. But Steve was suspicious of you.

You were freaky to him and despite what he’d seen in the Byers house, he couldn’t really comprehend your being there.

Sometimes, when you were all hanging out, a brand new song would come on the radio - like the DJ would make a big production of stressing the just released single - and then you’d absentmindedly mouth all the words perfectly.

Other times, you’d say non-sequitur things that would turn out to be quotes from movies that hadn’t been released when you’d uttered them.

The most unnerving was when Nancy’s father was hemming and hawing at the breakfast table one morning you were all over at the Wheeler house.

He was pouring over a newspaper article about some sick murderer on the loose, reciting the most sordid details while Karen Wheeler stood at the stove flipping pancakes, scolding her husband for discussing it in front of the kids.

Suddenly, you paused with your glass of orange juice poised at your lips and muttered the name Alton Coleman with a vacant look in your eyes. Days later, Alton Coleman was apprehended.

Karen and Ted Wheeler had missed it, luckily. But when Nancy had pressed you on the issue, wondering if you were tapped into some latent psychic ability that you and her could use to fight crime, you'd disappointed the girl by informing her that one of the last things you'd seen on TV before you “leapt” was a documentary about Alton Coleman. And it had only stuck with you because you'd gone over your actions in your last days at Nellis with Owens until you were blue in the face.

Then there was the style stuff. You seemed totally confused about what you referred to as “big, crispy hair,” not to mention your general aversion to spandex and high-waisted jeans.

You wore your hair with minimal volume, kept your clothes and makeup neutral, toned down, boring.

Nancy thought it was because you’d been to Catholic school and you were “demure” as she put it.

But Steve had quickly clocked that you thought everything around you was cheesy and dated but you didn’t want to stand out or accidentally make a statement by dressing from your own time. So you dressed like a bland schoolmistress and let Jonathan make you mixtapes because a constant rotation of Top 40 artists eventually set your teeth on edge.

You stopped telling Steve who the one-hit-wonders were because he was really rooting for Dexy’s Midnight Runners and he got all salty when you told him.

Nobody tried to meet you where you were at culturally, because all of you were a little worried that if you divulged secrets from the future, it would create some kind of extra rip in the universe. So you kept your trap shut except to say that you didn’t really like your time either and that, really, the ‘80s weren’t so bad in some ways.

Plus, you practically drooled at the sight of Eddie Van Halen and Mickey Rourke whenever you got the opportunity. They were so hot, you'd lament in a pained wail at the TV, as if you weren't living in the very time in which they were dropping your panties.

Steve rolled his eyes every time you did this. Little Miss Catholic School swooning over rock stars and greasers. How original. Your crush on Spock from Star Trek…Well that broke up the cliché a little.

Steve slowly started to feel more at ease around you, distracting himself with his romance with Nancy.

And you started to branch out, making friends outside of the people that knew too much for their own good.

You started wearing acid-washed denim over bolder colors, teasing your hair a bit, adopting high-waisted jeans (which made your ass look delectable, Steve grudgingly noticed - as did Allen Miles, apparently).

You were still on the shy, mild side, but you weren't such a wallflower. People knew you by face and name now.

Steve thought being from the future made you naturally more magnetic or something. Like you were always two moves ahead of everyone. That made him kind of nervous, though, so he still watched you in his periphery.

He told himself it was to make sure you didn’t slip up and involve anyone else in your freakish situation. He’d watch you in the cafeteria, the courtyard, laughing with your small circle of casual pals, looking for any indication that you were spilling your guts and making yourself look like a headcase in the process.

Best case scenario, you’d wind up in an asylum or something. Worst case, you’d end up in a gulag with electrodes inserted in every square inch of visible flesh. Months of his low-key recon suddenly became moot the night of the Halloween party in ‘84.

Steve had just had his heart crushed by Nancy in a spectacular fashion, when he pulled over on his way home.

He was trying to stave off waves of fresh pain in his chest, sat at the wheel of his car, gulping air, willing the sting of rejection to sink to the depths of his loafers. Toto’s Africa provided the soundtrack to his misery.

He startled at a gentle rapping at his window. He looked up to see you, haloed in the streetlight, wearing a copper lamé dress with a high split in the leg and a dip at the shoulder. Your eyes were smoked out, making your confused glare even more intense.

Possessed Dana Barrett, you’d explained, offering him a bite of your candy apple. He refused it, so you chucked it out the window into a storm drain, licking your sticky fingers.

You'd taken Nancy's little brother and his friends trick-or-treating and they'd cajoled you into being Possessed Dana Barrett to round out the Ghostbusters cast. You wanted to be Slimer but you didn't know how to pull it off on such short notice, and Joyce Byers had loaned you this gown from the days of disco, and why was he so long in the face, anyway?

Steve was just desperate enough to ask you to hang out at his, which turned into a request for you to stay over at his. He'd never had his heart broken by someone he’d chosen, and part of him wanted to hide.

But he knew going home to his empty house and the silence would taunt him. You went along with it easily. You almost didn't even seem confused as to why he was asking you.

You washed your face and used a spare toothbrush he had. The sleeves of the pajama top he'd long since outgrown still reached past your fingertips. He'd stared at you as you rolled them up your forearms, one leg crossed over the other, hanging off the edge of his bed.

It felt strange but comforting and he allowed himself to wonder if he'd ever get to see a lover or even his wife do those same dainty motions in a bigger bed. In a shared bed, one day. He wondered if he'd remember the sight of you, right now.

You and him were laying in his bed, top and tail - platonic 69’ing, you'd joked, immediately clearing your throat when Steve didn't laugh -, when you broke the silence telling him, “Talk to her. In a couple days. She was drunk, Steve, she didn't know what she was saying.”

He had to remind himself that you were talking about him and Nance.

“She was hurtfully clear about it,” he retorted. A beat passed before you offered an anecdote about your first time getting drunk at a Christmas party on base.

You'd snuck a bunch of drinks with some other Air Force brats throughout the night before loudly declaring to a room full of military families that you were going to invent the hoverboard from Back to the Future.

Steve didn't know what Back to the Future was and you quickly corrected course, telling him to get some sleep.

That was the night the two of you became something like friends.

The next day he woke up with the red painted toe nails of one of your feet lodged in the crook of his arm. He didn’t hate it.

Mere days later, after you'd blocked Lucas Sinclair’s body with your own and gotten Billy Hargrove’s backhand for your trouble, after he'd watched you clutch the Mother Mary medallion around your neck and recite whispered, rushed prayers to a god you scarcely believed in in the back of an abandoned school bus before fighting otherworldly monsters alongside him, and going back into that hell mouth because you'd been down there before and couldn't let the rest go in without knowing what they were up against…

Steve felt ready to let Nancy go.

He still cared for her, he still didn't like how it ended, but his world felt bigger and less stifling now. And he didn't need to hold onto the last dregs of something that would stay just that…dregs. There were possibilities all around him. He didn't want to cling to someone that didn't want him back.

Yours and Steve's friendship was quietly strengthened over two more reality-rocking apocalypses. One of those included his initiation to the Back to the Future franchise. “Ooooh,” he'd loudly declared in the theater, finally understanding your reference while off his face on Russian truth serum. You’d looked over at him with bleary eyes, shooting him finger guns, grateful for the vindication.

In between, and after the mall fire, there were lots of jokes, cookouts, Midwest adventures and plenty of heretofore platonic 69ing in his bed. Top and tail sleepovers followed by rote, cozy breakfasts at the county’s diners.

You would mewl a miserable sleep song on those mornings until he reminded you of the very existence of French toast.

Sometimes it was just the two of you, sometimes your friends joined. But it was almost agonizing in its closeness and familiarity. And it grew out of the impossible.

A shrink could have told Steve that the bitching between the two of you that occasionally oozed to the surface like liquid rock was a trauma response. The shrink would have gone on to explain that Steve was projecting his fears onto you because you were an easy target. You'd experienced it together and he had access to you. And Steve would need to find another shrink because he'd know they were only half-right.

Yes, you'd become fixtures in each other's lives and had shared experiences out of the ordinary. But the same could be said of Robin or Dustin or Eddie, etc. and yes, he mother-henned them all, but when it came to you, he couldn't be talked out of it. Because as important as Robin or Dustin or Eddie, etc. were to him, it was your ass that he couldn't seem to crawl out of, and it annoyed you as much as anyone else.

You'd been very sweet and mellow about it up to this point, but things were getting confusing between you two. Hence the pool noodle incident and passive aggressive defiance.

You started buttoning your shirt up just for something to do with your good hand and after a prolonged and uncomfortable silence, Steve spoke. “Allen Miles,” he said simply.

You stopped at the top button of your blouse. “Allen Miles,” you parroted back.

You saw the tip of his tongue poking out of the corner of his mouth. “Allen…Miles,” he tried again, testing the name on his tongue.

You picked at your cast, tracing the well-wishes in Robin's loopy chicken scratch with your thumb. “Is a person that exists,” you said flaty, as if to staunch whatever shit was about to come out of his mouth next.

“Allen Miles is a douche-dick,” he sing-songed quietly enough that you could have pretended not to hear.

Unbelievable. You sniffed at the insult. “What'd Allen Miles ever do to you?”

“Why'd he give you a ride today?” he asked, dodging the question. “You could have piled in with everyone else.” Ugh. He sounded like Hop.

The simplicity and faux-calmness of the statement took you aback. Was he for real right now? “He works at the rec center on Saturday mornings and I had physio-therapy there today. He offered,” you countered, trying not to sound as defensive as you felt - though the words came out in a rapid stream almost as if they’d been rehearsed (they weren’t). You bit the inside of your cheek. An argument was a-brewin.’

Steve turned off the narrow highway onto the skinny, heavily-wooded trail to the cabin. He was seething and neither of you knew why. “So he waited for you to get done with PT?”

“No,” you shot back, not fully understanding the anger under his line of questioning. “His shift ended a half hour after I was done. I waited for him.”

A scoff. “He made you wait for him?” He posed the question as if it was the most distasteful thing he could imagine.

“He didn’t make me do anything! He didn't have to drive me in the first place!”

“Well then why didn’t you come to the store! If you were waiting for a ride, you could have waited for me!”

“That would have taken hours! What is your problem?”

“Just-” Steve took a deep breath, flicking his gaze to you briefly as the Bimmer trundled down the beaten path to the cabin. “I just wonder about Miles, ya know? He’s a little sleazy around you, what if he just wants to get in your pants? What if he’d-”

Steve was the Larry Bird of cutting himself off, apparently.

“What if he’d made a move?” you offered.

“Exactly,” Steve said, pointing at you.

“What if he had?” you questioned honestly.

The cabin came into view, mercifully, only a moment later. Your head was swimming. Steve had been acting so short with you the last few weeks. It had ramped up when you’d broken the arm.

It was a stupid accident, really. Max had begged you to take a run on the skateboard, something you’d never done. She’d egged you on and you’d done it and you’d gone flying over a stop skid in the church parking lot.

She had to run into the church and have the secretary call you an ambulance. In hindsight, you were lucky you hadn’t broken your face open. You knew when to take a W, so you didn’t dwell on the possibilities too much.

Steve had heard you were in the hospital and had a conniption. Granted, he hadn’t stayed on the phone with Max long enough to hear It’s just her arm, she’s fine.

You’d been hopped up on morphine and called him a fruit loop for getting his panties in such a twist.

And ever since then, you two had been walking a razor’s edge. Where it had once been easy to diffuse your little tiffs, you seemed to be perpetually living under one another’s skin.

Steve threw the car in park and whipped over to face you. “What do you mean what if he had?” You did not appreciate the falsetto that his voice had taken on to impersonate you.

“I mean what I said, Steve! What is your deal?”

“He could be a total dirt bag, Teenie!”

You sighed to yourself and pinched the bridge of your nose. You were suddenly so tired. “He didn’t make a pass at me, Steve. He was very sweet and cordial and I got there in one piece and I really need you to back off right now, please.”

This was it. This was your limit. You wanted to crawl out of your skin. You huffed quietly to yourself before telling Steve “I need you to not talk to me for a while, okay?” And at that, you grabbed your bag from between your feet and got out of the car.

You heard Steve government-name you before you closed the door and skulked toward the cabin. The tears came fast and you were grateful that Steve didn’t follow you. Instead he gripped his steering wheel and internally scolded himself for everything that had just transpired.

Steve knew he wasn’t always the brightest, but how? How did he always end up shooting himself in the foot? He chanced a look at the cabin and lingered for a moment after he saw the light in the mudroom off the side that served as your sleeping quarters had turned on.

He gave more than a passing thought to going in after you, but he wasn’t going to fuck it further by pushing you when you’d explicitly asked for space. Plus, he was chastised, but he was still fussy, and he didn’t fully trust himself to not keep digging this hole deeper.

After a moment, he gathered himself and left the property, turning up the radio and letting Talk to Me by Stevie Nicks rub the salt in as he made his way back to his empty house.

Inside the cabin, you watched Steve’s headlights disappear as you wrestled your Detroit Red Wings jersey over your cast. It was the only sleep shirt that you could get over your cast at the moment.

Your tears had subsided, slurped back up into your tear ducts for the sheer fact that you didn’t want to waste anymore tears on Steve Harrington.

He probably didn’t know it, the beautiful dolt, but over the years that you’d known him, he’d kept pushing on the same bruise, and it had gotten even more difficult for you to cope.

He'd gone for the throat harping on Allen Miles, whom you were not interested in like that. Steve's over-the-top paternalistic revulsion at the thought of you getting some hurt your feelings and made you feel like he'd only ever see you as a fragile little sister figure that he needed to coddle. Like your having sex was some kind of aberration.

Having him treat you that way with the way you felt about him twisted your heart.

You were tired of having a big and important part of you ignored. A part that you’d never talked with anyone, especially Steve, in great detail. The sexual part. The (gag) sensual part. You were eighteen going on forty-eight, already whinging internally about how you were a woman™ dammit and you had needs™.

You weren’t seasoned, by any means. You’d had a handful of secret fumbles with secret partners and you’d made discoveries about yourself.

A of all- and this one you’d suspected since puberty hit - you got turned on easily. Like sloppy, soppy, pushing down on your vulva like you were hiding a boner turned on. And for no reason.

Sometimes it happened when you saw Eddie Van Halen on MTV or Mickey Rourke in Rumble Fish or LeVar Burton on the cover of TV Guide.

Sometimes it happened when you had to go to a stupid school spirit assembly and had to look at boys in their stupid, short basketball shorts and/or girls in their cheerleading regalia.

Sometimes it happened when you watched Eddie’s band practice in Gareth’s garage and saw the young Munson trash around all sweaty, handling his guitar expertly.

Once, it had happened when you saw Robin throw a balled up Dixie Cup into a bin at a considerable distance and she’d celebrated excessively and it was cute.

You knew you didn't want to fuck Eddie or Robin -it would be weird beyond weird. It's just that you could appreciate them.

The same way you appreciated the nasty smacking noises Nancy and Jon made when they were making out in what they thought was a private moment and you knew they were gonna bang later.

Your friends did sexy things, and sometimes it turned you on.

Mostly, though, it happened with Steve. At least once a day (usually more), he did something that accidentally got you going. A hand on his hip, and hand through his hair, a smirk, a wink, a smile, a whisper in your ear, a casual touch on the small of your back.

This was to say nothing of how he made you feel emotionally. How unguarded and at peace you felt when he was around. How physical closeness felt as natural as breathing, and you were not hugged enough as a child, so that was saying something.

Sometimes you'd give each other long lingering hugs and it made you wish you could fuse your flesh to his. You wanted to be his Kuato, always melded to his tummy. And you knew it was weird but so what? Nobody needed to know.

B of all - you liked being touched. And snogged. And railed. And held tight. Which you discovered on your own and in secret, no thanks to Steve. Because Steve usually had a squeeze waiting in the wings somewhere.

And even when he didn’t, he was preoccupied either with healing from his first great heartbreak or pondering how to rebound from said great heartbreak. Despite your raging hormones, you knew you wanted nothing to do with either of those. So you outsourced your sexual energy.

As soon as you'd gotten over your hangups about the cheesy, neon, teased to high-hell vomit pile that was the 1980s in America, and you'd leaned into it just a little bit, you started getting noticed. And you discovered, thanks to Francis and David and Chelsea (separately), that you did not just enjoy sex in theory, but also in practice.

The kicker, though, was that while you physically enjoyed the sex that you’d had, you realized when you were coming down from the high that something might be missing. You could have an orgasm that you felt in your very boots, but you wouldn’t ever ask the person that had just rocked your world to drive you to the airport or buy you French toast, much less trust them with your heart.

Your stupid, stupid heart. It beat for a boy that seemed to think you had the sex life of a castrato.

You flopped down on your bed and stared at your ceiling. You felt kind of bad brushing Steve off like that, even demanding that he not talk to you.

You hadn't chanced a look back at his face when you'd left his car, but you knew you would have seen that hardened, confused look that he got when he was hurt. That look that always crushed you and made you want to kiss his face and whisper sweet words until he broke out into that cocky grin of his.

You rolled over and closed your eyes, wishing he was next to you, that you could feel his weight and body heat, that you were holding him by the crook of his elbow and pressing your face into his bicep. That you could somehow transmit your thoughts without speaking them out loud and that he would at least be gentler with you and not infer that you were sexless anymore. Even if he didn’t want you like that.

You settled into that lukewarm fantasy, of the memory of him, and let yourself drift to sleep.

(⁠๑⁠♡⁠⌓⁠♡⁠๑⁠)

Steve was sitting on his floor leaned against his bed, holding one of his most prized worldly possessions. It was a candid Polaroid of the two of you.

It was taken at the fair last year. It was a little overexposed with the lights from the rides surrounding you, but the figures of you two were clear as day.

In the photo, Steve was holding your wrist to his chest with a crooked grin, mouth poised near your ear. It looked like he'd just whispered something to you. Your head was crooked to the side and down, like you were trying to worm away from his grasp, your eyes closed with the intensity of your laugh. Your face was glowing with the fair lights and there was a streak of white on your cheek. You both looked sublimely happy.

Steve smiled at the memory. You'd made a game of forcing bits of funnel cake into his mouth when he wasn't paying attention when finally, he'd caught you before your next “attack” and smeared powdered sugar from the pastry onto your cheek as revenge.

His first thought when Jonathan had presented him with the memento at the end of that night was that he was looking at you like a boy in love and he wondered how many times he'd been caught looking at you like that, without photographic evidence.

The bitter memory of you telling him I need you to not talk to me for a while roared back into his consciousness and slapped him in the face. You'd sounded hurt, on top of being pissed.

Did you really want to date Allen Miles? You said he hadn't made a pass at you. Did it hurt your feelings because he didn't make a pass at you and Steve had just dug the knife in more? He'd throttle Miles if he'd hurt your feelings. Fuck that guy.

Or were you worried about Steve's opinion of your choice in boyfriends? Was Allen your type? What was your type? He knew Eddie Van Halen and Mickey Rourke and LeVar Burton were your type but that weird trinity did not clarify things for him.

Steve tried to recall what, besides his shortness with you, could have triggered you to react the way that you did. By now, he knew that whatever it was, it was his fault. He would love to pawn the blame off on you but you were usually blameless, especially to him. You were sweet and gentle and always seemed to anticipate and prioritize other people’s needs at your own peril.

He'd given you space like you asked but it had been a couple days now. He was starting to feel like he was jonesing.

He was hoping you would have come to visit him at the video store by now, jumping on his back and hugging him like a koala, whispering in his ear that all was forgiven and things could go back to normal, like how they were before you'd broken your arm.

But when Steve thought about things going back the way they were, it made his brain itch. He felt like something was totally different and the two of you couldn't go back if you wanted to. Moreover, he didn't know if he did want to. He wanted…

Steve's thoughts were interrupted by the phone ringing. He slid the Polaroid of you two back into his bedside drawer and hastily picked up the receiver. Please be her, please be her, please be her.

“Hello?”

“Steve?”

Nance. “Nance?” Fuck it all. Steve bit back his disappointment. “What's up?”

“Is Teenie over at yours? I tried to call her but El said she's not home but she's not working today, either. I know Robin was scheduled at the store today. I thought she might be with you.”

Steve's jaw clenched involuntarily. Were you with Allen Miles?

“Um,” Steve said with a little choke. “No, no. She's not here. Everything okay?”

“Yeah, everything's good. It's just that I was emptying the cooler and I found that Mother Mary medallion she always wears? It must have slipped off her neck. It was her grandmother's and I thought she might be bugging out thinking it was lost forever and-”

“I'll come get it,” Steve interrupted. He was already pulling his sneakers on. “You gonna be home for a minute?”

“Oh.” A pause. “It's no big deal, Steve, I'm running Mike to the cabin tomorrow, I can just drop it off then.”

Steve was pacing now, thinking he might be losing his line back to you. You did love that necklace even though you'd abandoned the Church forever ago. Your grandmother was the only person from back “home” that you were sentimental about - and she'd died not long before you'd ended up here.

That necklace was the only tangible piece of your former life that you really cared about. Maybe you'd be more inclined to listen or even share oxygen with him if he brought it back to you.

“Uh, it's cool. She actually left her uh,” Steve began, looking around the room then down at his feet, “uh, her shoes, yeah. She left them in my car when I dropped her off the other night.” Lie.

He heard Nancy laugh, a little disbelievingly. “She left her shoes in your car.” It came out as a statement.

“Psh, yeah. They were all sandy from the beach and she hates the feeling of leftover sand in between her toes.” Half lie. You had told him that, once. “Anyway, I'll be by in like ten.”

“Ste-”

Steve dropped the receiver back in the cradle and made a mad dash for Nancy’s. Nancy was waiting for him on the front step when he arrived. When she dropped the necklace in his waiting palm, he held it gingerly and stared at it like a holy relic.

Nancy cleared her throat. Steve met her eyes and he could see something like suspicion dancing behind them, along with a little smirk. “You better go find Teenie. Poor girl’s walking around without shoes, afterall.”

Nancy was always too smart for her own good - or anyone else’s for that matter. He thanked her as if she’d given him the world and went on his merry way.

(⁠๑⁠♡⁠⌓⁠♡⁠๑⁠)

Steve decided to make a pitstop back at his house instead of going right over to yours. He’d been planning on going to the cabin and waiting for you if you hadn’t gotten home yet.

But after he left Nancy’s, he thought that this might not be the move. You were really mad at him and he wanted to show you that he could listen and respect your wishes.

He spent a good twenty minutes pacing around his living room trying to come up with a gameplan on how to return your necklace without ruffling your feathers further.

Maybe he should buy you an obnoxiously large teddy bear?

No, if you hated it, he would be stuck with an over-large, cutesy reminder of his failure.

Or maybe he could hire one of those dorky barbershop quartets to show up at work and sing you a song about how he knew he was a dipshit, but you meant so much to him, please take him back?

No, no. You would die of embarrassment and probably haunt him for the rest of his days.

He was still holding your necklace, gripping his hair by the roots when he heard the doorbell.

Maybe it was Dustin or Eddie. Maybe he could bounce some ideas off them, he thought as he jogged toward the door.

He opened it and felt the air leave his lungs when he saw you standing there. You were staring up at him, eyes wide, swaying your shoulders a little bit the way you did when you were nervous.

You were wearing his favorite dress of yours. This beige thing with tie straps and red flowers on it. The first time he’d seen you wear it, you’d been all dolled up in a way that was almost salacious. Now you wore your hair down with barely a stitch of makeup on and Steve thought you looked…

“Hi,” you said shyly.

“Hi,” he said back, his voice sounding small in his ears. He cleared his throat, hoping that if he found his voice again, he wouldn’t sound so broken. “Come in?”

You didn’t hesitate, thankfully. You walked past him, minding your cast and stopped in the foyer before you turned to him. You shrugged one shoulder bashfully.

“Nancy said you had my necklace.” Your face scrunched up in confusion. “Also, something about shoes?”

Steve pushed the door shut and walked over to you.

“Uh, yeah, I might have lied to her and said you left your shoes in my car so I’d have an excuse to take custody of your necklace.”

The confusion on your face deepened.

Steve held your necklace out to you and you let him drop it into your good hand.

You both stood there for an awkward moment. “I missed you,” you said.

Steve felt his heart soar and opened his mouth to respond but you cut him off.

“Will you help me?” you asked, holding up the necklace and then your cast to make your point.

“Yeah, yeah,” Steve said, rushing to your back. You handed him the necklace and bunched your hair up in a fist, holding it out of the way.

Steve took a moment to appreciate the back of your neck, the downy hairs at your hairline, the little birthmark at the junction of your shoulder. He looped the necklace around you and clasped it, checking that the spring in the clasp was still sound.

“All set,” he said.

You spun around to meet him and he saw you touch the pendant at your decolletage with a little smile. “Thank you.”

“I missed you too,” Steve rushed out, hands shoved in his back pockets.

The look you gave him back was soft and dazed and he felt his heart kick in his chest. You cocked your head at him. “Why were you so upset about Allen, Stevie?”

Steve didn’t detect even a hint of anger in your question. You just kept staring at him softly. Steve walked over to the couch and perched himself against the backrest. His thumbs rubbed dual patterns on the suede upholstery while he thought up a response. The best he could come up with was “Do you like him? Allen, I mean? Like…romantic-wise?”

He glanced up at you bashfully, dreading the answer he was sure would come.

Your eyes narrowed, but not meanly. You walked over to him and planted your hip against the couch next to him.

“No,” you said, simply.

Steve released a relieved exhale from deep in his chest. You weren’t done, though. “But Stevie, why…I mean why did you get so mad at the thought of Allen and I together?”

Steve felt his eyes bug out but tried to school his expression into something less obvious. He shrugged when he finally met your eyes again. “Teenie, I just.” He wet his bottom lip. You wore the same soft, contemplative expression but he thought he could see your breathing kick up as you waited for him to finish.

Steve was right. You were trying to stop yourself from hyperventilating. You hadn’t come over here to confront Steve, not really. You really just wanted to see him again and figure out what he was playing at, purloining your necklace from Nancy in an obvious attempt to get back in your good graces. It would have been a cute gesture if you weren’t so worried about what was coming next.

But two days of feeling like your brain was leaking for its singular fixation on your Stevie and how much you missed him had finally gotten the best of you. You came round the moment you could. You knew it was time to face the music, come what may.

“I just want…whoever you hang out with or end up being with…I just want them to treat you with respect. And I want you to have fun and feel safe and…”

God, he was beautiful. Didn’t he know? How could he not know?

Steve seemed to be at a loss for words now, so you offered some.

“I could have those things with you,” you breathed out almost dreamily.

Steve's eyes went wide again and you felt like your heart was going to break because that look could have meant…so many things. Not all of them good.

You backed away from his side slowly, ready to make a break for it, but Steve caught you gently by the upper arms and stood at his full height. He stared at you like you were a brand new lifeform.

“Teenie?” he said in a too-tiny voice.

You were looking right into the void, free-falling into the hinterworld of your own heart.

“Stevie, do you think of me like a little sister?”

Steve's eyebrows shot up with something like horror before he cleared his throat and shook away some thought known only to him.

“Ew, no, Teen.”

You bit your lip and stamped your foot just a little bit, feeling a little unmoored. You worried suddenly that you wouldn't get the answers you wanted.

Steve had loosened his grip on you just a smidge. He was absently stroking your arms with his thumbs.

“One of the kids then. Dustin or Max or-”

“No,” he answered immediately, shaking his head decisively. “No.”

And you knew. You knew he meant it.

You backed away, feeling singed by his sincerity. You paced the length of the runner behind the couch and slid a nail along your cast making little zipzipzip noises to fill the quiet. You turned to him after a moment.

“So what's happening with us. Why are we being so weird with each other?”

Steve put his hands on his hips. “You broke your ass, Teenie,” he said sternly. “It could have been your head!”

“It wasn't though, it wasn't my head!” Your voice had a desperate edge. “Way crazier stuff has happened to me, to both of us! All our friends…”

He looked at you like you were speaking a different language. He shut his eyes tight like he was willing the memories away. He gathered himself quickly.

“Right, and if things had gone differently, we don't know what could have happened!”

Both of you were breathing hard, tears stinging your eyeballs. It's like you had awoken a sleeping beast by merely mentioning its existence.

Steve gestured into the air and stared into the distance as he continued. He was so fuckin’ pretty, you thought then. Even when he had big fuckin’ feelings that his pretty fuckin’ self couldn't contain in his pretty fuckin' meat prison.

“Every time something happens to you, it's like I can't stop thinking about it.” Steve's tented his fingers at his temples to demonstrate his point, eyes wide and unblinking like there was a movie playing behind his eyes that he couldn't look away from.

You started taking slow, tiny steps toward him, like he was a wounded rabbit and you didn't want to frighten him off. You wanted to hold him.

“I spin out and I can't stop thinking about you dying.”

Two more tiny, furtive steps toward him.

“Or being born.”

“Oh, Stevie-” Wait. “Wait, being born? What?”

Steve had pulled at his hair and it was messy in that perfect way.

“Your birthday, Teenie.” He said it both frantically and like you were dumb for not following. “It's 1986, your birthday is less than two years away and we don't know.” He practically whimpered your name, willing you to understand.

It hit you then. You'd forgotten yourself for a minute, how absurd your life was. The very thing that was whispered among your friends and found family - spoken in a hushed manner for fear of speaking it into reality (or causing you an existential crisis.) You always heard them, though.

You had almost…almost found it funny how nobody seemed to think that the thought didn't cross your mind at three in the morning most nights.

The question of what would happen when the day of your birth - the one on your original, undoctored birth certificate that you'd left in a banker box back on Nellis AFB - finally rolled around. The day you would find out to what extent you were an actual paradox. If having been evicted from your mother's womb on that day would cause you to be slurped back into the Upside Down…Or if you would blink out of existence.

But the question hadn't woken you up since Spring Break. Because the positive to having a psionic demon vampire picking apart your psyche is that sometimes you got good intel.

You felt so warm all of a sudden, watching Steve watch you with his eyes wide and desperate and his scrumptious lips pushed into a sad pout, looking so young. You'd never been so touched in all your life.

You strode over to him and pulled his collar to encourage him down, closer to your height.

His arms looped around your middle. It was automatic. The half-crazed look on his face dropped away, replaced by an expression that told you he was taken aback but that he didn't hate this.

“I love you,” you declared, firm and resolute, yet quaky with emotion. You hoped he knew that this wasn't like the other times you said it. And that you could table the birthday discussion until after…

You squeezed his face and pushed your mouth into his as you looped your broken arm around his neck.

Steve gathered your hair away from your face and returned the kiss without a moment’s hesitation.

His mouth was warm and soft and a little tacky from how he'd been licking his lips nervously moments before. Your lip balm provided just the right amount of slide for your lips to tangle together perfectly.

Steve stumbled with you in his arms against the nearest wall. You took great care not to accidentally dicknail him in the side of the head with your cast as he hoisted you up, cradling your thighs in his hands.

Through his panting, he managed, “Do you mean it?”

Both of you knew what he meant. Did you mean I love you? Did you mean the kiss? The answer to both was a resounding fucking yes.

“Yes, Stevie. I want this. I want you so bad-”

Steve dive-bombed your mouth with his own, caressing your tongue with his. You opened your mouth wider to let him riff on it.

You shuddered when you felt his crotch press into yours. The feeling of his hardening cock pressed into the space that was rapidly becoming drenched with your horniness and love for this boy combined with the slipperiness of your tongues moving together was beyond your wildest dreams.

Steve couldn't believe this was happening. He couldn't believe that the only thing standing between you two and your mutual desire to jam yourselves together like you were trying to fuse into a superbeing was that you thought he didn't think you were sexy or mature or whatever the fuck.

If his blood supply wasn't rushing to his crotchal region right now, he might have done some psychological forensics to figure out how you'd arrived at that conclusion.

And fuck him if you didn't know what you were doing. This clearly wasn't your first heavy make out. Normally, that thought would make him jealous as all hell. But he could feel it. The rightness of this and he knew it didn't matter.

He pulled back from your mouth and let himself stare at you shamelessly. Your mouth was kiss-bitten and -oh - you already had this sexy, flushed glow painted from your cleavage to your cheeks.

You wore a beautifully profane expression, half-helpless and half-threatening as in I'm going to eat you if you don't eat me first. Your irises looked almost feline.

He stole one more kiss from you before he hoisted you over his shoulder like a sack of flour. He expected you to protest but you just grunted slightly at the impact and braced yourself as much as you could for what turned out to be a short commute to Steve's room. You were too turned on to question his method.

Steve deposited you on the bed and you scrambled up to your knees to pull him forcefully into another kiss where he stood. You started nipping and biting sucking at his earlobes, his jaw, his neck, his chest.

Steve felt almost overwhelmed. This the hottest thing that had ever happened to him. You two were feral for each other and probably would have looked completely insane if you’d had an audience. Unlike his previous encounters, nothing about this felt stilted or transactional or lopsided.

In spite of how erotic it was, though, it also felt tender. Like this thread between you had been pulling taut for god knew how long before it had almost snapped. And as soon as you'd stopped resisting it, it pulled you into one another. He needed to be sure that you felt the same, though. He wouldn't risk another communication breakdown.

He pulled your face away from his neck by your hair and you looked startled but not displeased. Your lips curled into a dozy smile at the show of force. Steve was all business, though.

“How far do you want this to go?” You both chose to ignore the way his voice gave a little.

You swallowed as you stroked his chest. “Um, well, I really want you to make love to me but, like…I'll take whatever you give me.”

Steve closed his eyes in quiet supplication to whatever force was allowing this.

He smiled at you with his tongue poking at the back of his teeth. You returned it with a goofy giggle. God, you two were idiots.

“Game on then, baby,” Steve said.

Steve insisted on going down on you. You didn't strictly need it. You were so turned on that you could already feel that ache inside where you'd opened up to receive him.

You were almost worried that you might end up accidentally waterboarding him with your cunt for how wet you were already, but you needn’t have worried.

After he'd fluffed the pillows behind your shoulders and pulled your soaked panties off of you, he didn't waste a minute exploring down there with little kisses and bites to your thighs before he finally dove in and got to work.

Within minutes he had you shivering and moaning, letting nonsense fuck language spill from your lips as you scratched his scalp in little circles.

Steve was painfully hard in his shorts but he would have stayed down here for millenia if you'd let him.

Soon, you were gripping his wrist and writhing. Your legs were bent and rigid like a Barbie doll's but quaking with the intensity of your orgasm.

You let a sharp cry escape from your chest. It was high-pitched and wild and unguarded and it was the most beautiful sound Steve had ever heard.

He looked up at you. Your head was resting at an angle like it was too heavy for you to hold up. He let himself enjoy the sight.

With your eyes still closed, as though you were in a deep trance, you started groping with your good hand, uncoordinated at your shoulders until you found the tie straps on your dress and undid them.

Without communicating it out loud, Steve pinched the fabric of your dress's bodice while you lifted up on your elbows so he could pull it down.

God, you were beautiful. Not just your tits. Yes, your tits were insane, but it was just you. Every inch of you, every plane on your body and, outside of your physical form, your gravity and orbit. He would never escape them and he didn't want to.

Steve crawled up your body, leaving smooches up your tummy and along your breasts and neck until he got to your mouth. You pulled him into you, kissing him stupid.

“Off,” you said bossily, breaking the kiss. Tugging at his collar. “These, too,” you insisted, pinching the cuff of his jeans between your toes.

Steve chuckled and pulled the shirt over his head. He got to work on his belt, kissing the tip of your nose.

“You want it like this?” he asked, indicating the missionary position you were in.

He got his belt free and shimmied his jeans away and down the bed, not wanting to leave you.

You bit your lip, eyes cast down lustfully, and Steve noticed you were checking out the tent in his boxers.

He snickered. “My eyes are up here.”

You giggled at him, flicking his nose.

You two settled into a cozy silence and just stared at each other. You cleared your throat. “My favorite is being on top, usually,” you began. “But it might be hard with this.” You lifted your casted arm.

Steve deliberated for a moment. You could have told him you liked it upside down on a hammock and he would have found a way to make it so. But the thought of you riding him was making his dick weep. He would make that so, no problem.

“Teenie-on-top it is.” He gave your naked thigh a couple of light slaps. “Up,” he instructed.

You pushed up onto your knees as he leaned over to his nightstand, extracting a loose condom packet. He stood up and pulled his boxers down.

When he looked at you, you were sitting on your haunches, knees splayed wide. Your arms were limp at your sides, hair a fucked out mess. You stared at his cock with what looked to him like reverence, mouth agape.

“Oh, Marone,” you whispered to yourself with a gulp, fisting your hair at the scalp.

Steve snorted. You were so cute it made his chest hurt. He explained his plan as he ripped the condom foil open and rolled it over his cock.

“I'm going to hold you up so you don't put weight on the arm. I've got you, just trust me, ‘kay?”

He didn't know if you'd been paying attention to what he said. You sprung up on your knees and collapsed into him and gave him a searing kiss on the mouth. “‘Kay.”

Steve slid into bed and guided you by your hips to straddle him. You held your casted arm off to the side, balancing like you were getting into a rowboat as you braced your good hand on his forearm.

“Good?” he asked.

You hummed as you began moving yourself over his cock. Steve's breath hitched, but he kept his grip on your hips firm as you acquainted your bits with his.

Your slickness and his spit had cooled a little but soon he could feel a pool of warmth. He was at your entrance. Your skirt was ruched around your waist, the straps of it hanging limply. His favorite dress.

You locked eyes with him as you reached between you and guided him inside. You sheathed him in inside you completely, pretty much immediately. No adjustment period needed. Your body had waited long enough.

Both of you had done so much waiting.

You rocked your pelvis against him, getting used to the sensations. It felt like coming home, it felt so right.

Steve’s cock was like a pleasure-seeking missile. It found enclaves in your body that you'd never have discovered on your own.

Your cunt hugged him, letting you and him both know how rich the landscape of your body was. You could feel everything and everything felt so good.

Steve was still holding onto your hips but he was squeezing his eyes shut and writhing and moaning. You really fucking knew what you were doing. Or maybe this was just a long time coming. Maybe it was destined.

The sounds of his moans were like a cool drink of water on the hottest day of the year. You wanted the sound bottled. You wanted to bathe in it.

You braced your good hand on his chest and gripped his elbow with the other as you changed up the angle and pace. He was caressing your g-spot now and when you moaned loudly at the sensation, he gripped you tighter, encouraging you to devour that feeling. Your clit found his mons and pretty soon, playtime was over.

You were both panting and moaning and before you knew it, you were right there. Your pussy was fluttering. Steve's stomach was taut, his upper body having gone rigid. His face was red and the veins in his forehead were prominent with his exertion. He was trying to delay his own orgasm until you were ready.

You folded over then, collapsing forward and cradling his head between your upper arms. Electric bubbles of happiness fizzed in every part of your cunt, sending effervescent kisses up your spine and down to your toes. You thought your broken arm might have healed, even.

“FuckStevieBaby,” you whined, pressing your forehead into the dip of his shoulder.

Steve was a goner. He moaned your name pathetically as he pistoned his hips up into you, helped by the wetness of your cum. Heat lightning overtook his body as he felt himself spill inside the condom and he saw sparkles.

Your skin was pasted to his with sweat.

You shakily made yourself up to a seated position and looked down at him like you were getting to see the Northern Lights for the first time.

He returned the gaze. Except to him, you were the Northern Lights and the Milky Way and a lofty angel with wings of purple fire. Jesus, when did he get so poetic?

He sat up and wrapped you in his arms, kissing you and pulling you into a hug. It wasn't unlike the ones you'd shared before, nudity notwithstanding.

It was a hug that said hi, I'm here, I've got you, always.

You let your heart rates ramp down before he lifted you off his softening member, but keeping you in his lap. He drew circles on your sweaty back.

“I love you,” he said into your collarbone.

Your heart did a little dance in your naked chest.

“I love you, too. More than anything.”

Steve pulled you both down and situated it so you were both laying on your sides, facing the other. He clasped your hand in his.

“No, I mean I love you.” It was emphatic despite the sleepiness in his voice. “I'm in love with you and I want to keep you. I want us to do this. I want people to know we belong to each other.”

If anyone else on planet earth had said those words to you after you'd just fucked, it would have sounded like cro magnon-freshly-emptied-balls possessiveness.

But not with him. It's like you could see tomorrow in his beautiful brown eyes. You two were finally, blessedly on the same page.

“I've belonged to you since…” you rolled your eyes upward like you were thinking, when really you actually knew… “Halloween ‘84.”

Steve smiled at your confirmation. But also in bemusement.

“The night me and Nancy-”

“It was when I was on your bed,” you interrupted. “Right here in this spot. I was rolling up the sleeves of that stripey old man PJ shirt you loaned me.”

“I remember,” he whispered, swallowing the emotions bubbling up.

“I saw you looking at me and for just a second, I let myself think…”

You had let yourself think, this feels so easy. I'm about to spend the night in a boy's bed for the first time and it feels so easy. What if he wasn't heartbroken? What if he didn't think you were a freak? What if you'd done this a before in a thousand and one lifetimes? That's how easy it felt.

“I never stopped being yours, Stevie.”

He scooched closer, ran his index finger down the bridge of your nose, kissing you one more time.

“I hope you never do.”

“I never will.”

Steve got a faraway look in his eye as he looked past your shoulder.

He didn't want to burst this bubble, but if he felt this way now, what would it be like less than two years from now. Less than two years away.

You clocked it immediately, you little mind-reader.

You couldn't let him stew in his fear anymore. You hadn't meant to drop the subject before, but you had the pressing matter of showing him how much you loved him to attend to.

“I'm not going back, you know.”

His eyes shot to you, suddenly way more alert.

“How-”

“Creel.”

Steve propped himself up on his elbow and studied you. You never brought this up. In fact, if any of your family's little misadventures ever came up in conversation, even briefly, you would excuse yourself from the room. Everyone learned to keep that talk to a minimum around you.

Besides that, Steve didn't like talking about when you'd been Vecna’d. It had been in the same manner as Nancy had been. Not meant to destroy you but to show you things. When the group had asked you what you saw, you simply told them “me.”

At the time, you had made the executive decision that what you had been shown wasn't valuable to any fact-finding that would help you defeat your foe. And when you were pressed for more, when Dustin had accused you of a party infraction by withholding, you'd leveled him with a deadly glare and stated “Not this, Dustin. Not now.” You had been so uncharacteristically severe that everyone silently agreed to leave it.

You turned over on your back and stared at the ceiling.

“Before Spring Break, I was having a really hard time.”

Steve remembered. The recesses of his memory held images of you looking off into the distance, refrains of sorry, what? whenever you got caught out.

You'd buried yourself in schoolwork, picking up extra shifts at the bowling alley, packing your calendar with babysitting gigs. Like you were trying to erase every moment of idle time, pulling away from everyone.

Steve had worried but when he talked about it with Robin, she'd dismissed it as paranoia. Think about it, Steve, what's she's been through. It catches up.

He figured Robin might know something he didn't, hurtful though it was. He'd dropped it.

“You were dating around and Nancy was missing Jon. El was gone, Hop was gone. Max was totally checked out. And I started wondering, like..”

Your eyes were wet, now, voice a little choked. Steve brushed your cheek and that seemed to give you the resolve to keep going.

“I started to worry that I would never find someone that could really know me. That I couldn't ever really move on and grow up because the people that did know me were all…”

You gestured vaguely into the air.

“I felt so out of place all of a sudden. And for the first time since I got here I just wanted to go back. I wanted to go back to where I made sense. Even though I didn't like my life before…”

Steve's heart broke at the thought that you'd felt so abandoned. He could kick himself for being so flip about it back then.

Your story took you over then. It was so cemented in your mind, it might have been inscribed on tablets.

You'd blinked. One minute you were at the mouth of the gate. The next minute you were in some sort of cathedral. But it was in ruins. The exposed sky was red. The air was stale..lightning flashed a deeper crimson across the sky.

There were pews made of shaley stone. What would have once served as a wall was crumbled around the arrangement.

He stood at the pulpit, a stone monument, cracked with angry looking clefts glowing with smoldering fire. He clutched each side of it, staring you down.

He breathed your name in a dulcet huff.

“You don't belong. You belong nowhere. You're a reprobate. Abominable. An orphan in time.”

He was hideous. And massive. You hadn't seen him until now. You'd only heard conjecture on what his visage might look like.

He was slimy and twisted and hairless. The sinews of his skin were a swampy gray, eyes ringed with red. For his florid yet cruel indictment of you, he was foul. You could taste him just by looking at him.

You were paralyzed with revulsion and fear. You were worried that you might actually pee your pants.

“You have nowhere to return to. You absconded from your problems, as you've always done. But I have nothing but good news for you.”

You glanced around, not daring to move your head. You only saw more waste, more nothingness, more anger and despair scratched into the landscape that surrounded you. You wanted to go home.

Suddenly you knew where home was. It had never been so clear. It was with the people that had held and kept you since you'd been sucked through a leak in space-time.

“You can make a home here. You can join my menagerie. You'll never suf-”

“Don't listen to him, Ladybug,” came a sharp, familiar voice behind you, coated in the accent of her mother country.

You spun to meet her eyes...Your grandmother was sitting on one of the rock pews. She looked as elegant and warm as ever. She was wearing the satin wrap dress she wore to Easter mass the last year she was alive.

You stumbled over to her. She stood and opened her arms as you fell into her.

Suddenly you forgot that you were in a red-tinged hell scape with a slimy vampire at your back. Wherever this was, wherever she was, was a sort of paradise.

You held her tight. You could smell her familiar shalimar perfume over the fetid ozone stink of this place. The wings of her upper arms were soft in the crooks of your elbows. She shushed your crying and stroked your hair.

It was her. You knew, beyond what it was to know, that it was her.

You heard Creel growl behind you, startling you out of your grandmother's arms. She held fast to you and tilted your chin to look at her. You heard the air around you twist like warped steel, Creel’s voice laced through it, muddled and distorted to something imperceptible.

“He is a liar. He will lie to deceive you.” Her accent made it sound like “day-seef.”

You missed her. You missed the way she talked. You missed how severe she was when she wanted to make a point.

She'd found you. Outside of time and space and a living vessel, she'd found you in this hopeless place.

Her eyes burned into yours. “Your father is fine. He knows you are fine. He doesn't know how he knows, but I've seen to it.”

You could hear that desperate argumentative groaning trying to pierce through. Your head was hurting. You had pressure in your ears.

“Your place is with your friends. Never stop thinking of them and you will never lose.”

The world around you started to crumble and fall away. You saw those big spires of rock around you crash into the ground.

You gripped her hands that held your face. “I love you,” you sobbed.

She smiled at you as everything caved in. You closed your eyes and felt her kiss your forehead.

When you opened them again, you saw Steve. He was cradling you and hyperventilating. He seemed to register that you were back. Relief washed over his face and his breathing returned to normal.

“Did I pee my pants?”

Steve had the courtesy to glance down to your upper-thigh region.

“If you did, it must not have been a lot.”

You broke into a sob and let him hug you while your friends rallied to get you away from the gate.

From then on out, you heeded your grandmother’s advice. You never stopped thinking of your friends and you didn't fail…You got Hop and El back.

You had your friends.

You had Steve.

You had shut your eyes while telling Steve the story but you opened them now. You turned your head to face him.

“I'm sorry I didn't tell you,” you told him through tears. “I didn't know how.”

Steve didn't know what to say. He stared at you with gentle eyes. He didn't want you to cry anymore.

He kissed you lightly and stroked your side. “It's okay. I get it.”

He did get it. He understood all at once why you couldn't tell them back then. You didn't want to make it about you.

Max was still in danger. The world was still in danger. You'd been gifted a secret weapon that you had to wield and you didn't want anyone to hear what you'd seen and tell you that you'd been bamboozled by Creel and blunt your weapon with doubt.

You'd known in your heart that it was real. Steve knew now because you knew.

You were tired then. Well and truly sleepy. Steve accepted you into his arms.

You two fell into silence, breathing in tandem, stroking each other.

You felt Steve's chin wag on the top of your head when he asked “What do you think will happen on your 20th birthday?”

You smiled into his chest. You loved that Steve-flavored curiosity whenever it showed itself.

“I dunno, Stevie. Maybe nothing. But if anything does, you'll be there to find out with me, right?”

He scratched lines up your back as he answered.

“Can’t wait.”

(⁠/⁠^⁠-⁠^⁠(⁠^⁠ ⁠^⁠*⁠)⁠/

#steve harrington x fem!reader #steve harrington x you #steve harrington smut #steve harrington friends to lovers #ao3 fanfic #adopted hopper reader #steve harrington angst

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