#i promise its coming im just dramatic and long winded but i pinky swear!!!

[feralwritings]

three's company

interlude I: 1985

words: 6.3k

masterpost | part one | part two

steve, eddie, and reader are 18+ in this fic unless otherwise stated (such as a flashback) but will be 18+ in every intimacy scene.

warnings: graphic depictions of violence, depictions of physical injury, discussion of hospitals and medical care, ill-advised post injury sex but hey what are you gonna do when you see your bestie's tits for the first time.

tags: enthusiastic consent, vaginal fingering, nipple play, handjobs, protected piv sex, wound care leading to intimacy, riding, so loving and then so heartbreaking so strap in and strap on .

July 11th, 1985

“A week after the catastrophic fire that took place at STARCOURT Mall, recovery teams are still working diligently to recover the remains of Hawkins residents. As the death toll rises, the question persists: how can this once small town recover from such loss? The decrease in the Hawkins populace has already resulted in economic strain, and with Mayor Kline behind bars, there is a great deal of uncertainty among the town. With the loss of Chief Jim Hopper-“

Steve twisted the dial on the radio sharply, turning it off. 

Jesus, what a fucking week. 

In and out of the hospital, a couple of CT scans and a prescription of painkillers later, Steve had been given the all clear to resume to somewhat normal activity, but had been advised not to partake in any strenuous activity. 

Does being held hostage and beaten by Russians count? He wanted to say, but as soon as that thought had popped into his mind, the image of his messy signature on a NDA flashed right after. 

His injuries were comparable to everyone else’s, in a way. Except for hers. 

God, she was such a reckless little idiot. Fucking off on her own to confront Billy in some vain attempt to distract him and the Mind Flayer long enough for everyone to escape. It hadn’t worked, of course, and she’d missed the firework fight and hadn’t been found until rescue crews arrived at the mall, laying facedown on the asphalt, unresponsive and bleeding from innumerable places on her body.

He remembered spotting her ruined face being wheeled away on a gurney. It wasn’t something that he would forget any time soon. He’d been carted away with Robin in their own ambulance, thankfully to the same hospital, but the doctors wouldn’t allow him to find her until they had ascertained that his injuries weren’t life threatening. 

Once they had done so, he was finally allowed to visit her. 

As he ducked into the small hospital room, he briefly wondered if he was prepared for what he was about to see. Her condition, he’d been told, was stable and not life threatening, but he had also been told that she wasn’t out of the woods yet. When he asked what that meant, the doctor fixed him with a look of mixed pity and annoyance, and informed him, for probably about the seventh time, that any further answers to his pressing questions would be a violation of her patient confidentiality. 

Thankfully, when he stepped fully into her hospital room, he found her awake and alert, flicking furiously through a stack of magazines and newspapers.

“Hey,” he said quietly, trying not to startle her. 

She looked up, face breaking into a smile beneath the cannula that was sitting against her cheeks. 

“Hi,” she rasped, reaching for him automatically. He rushed over, bending to give her an awkward squeeze, before pulling up a chair to her bedside. 

“What’s this about?” He tugged gently at the oxygen tube situated beneath her chin, and she rolled her eyes. 

“This,” she flitted an annoying hand over her face, “Is the reason I’m still stuck in this fucking hellhole. I can’t breathe too well on my own yet, due to the four -four!- broken ribs, so they’re keeping me here until that improves.” 

“Four?” He breathed, eyes darting automatically to her torso, before looking back into her face, “Jesus, what happened?”

She shrugged, “I have no idea. Doc thinks it’s a combination of things - the concussion, being knocked unconscious, trauma, whatever.”

Steve felt a sour taste in his mouth then, and reached out to grasp her hand in his, needing to feel her pulse underneath his fingertips. Behind her, a monitor showed various vitals, signs of life being transmitted from her body, through wires, to machines, but it wasn’t tangible enough. Her warm hand in his, the steady pulse in her wrist was, and she gave him a sympathetic little smile, jostling his hand affectionately. 

“I’m fine, Steve, really. In no time, I’ll be back in fighting fit, completely ready to rip some son of a bitch from the Upside Down a new one.” 

Steve pouted, “Don’t joke about that.”

She returned his pout and gave his hand an apologetic squeeze for the joke not landing. 

“What are you doing?” He pointed to the newspapers and magazines, and she shrugged noncommittally. 

“Nothing. Just being incredibly bored. Trying to figure out what the general public are saying and what they think happened at the mall.”

“You don’t have to worry about that,” he said, eyeing the papers warily before turning his gaze back to her, “Owens will make sure that we’re safe, okay?”

“I know,” she thumbed the edge of a newspaper, “I just worry. About the kids. And Robin. She’s new to this bullshit and I just want her and the kids to be safe.”

“And they will be, okay?” Steve squeezed her hand.

She looked at him, eyes searching over his face. She took her hand out of his, using it to fiddle with the hem of her hospital gown.

“I hope you’re right.”

He looked over her face, bent back towards the stack of papers on the tray table.

“Why,” he breathed, “Why did you go after him by yourself? You could’ve been killed.”

She looked at him, opening her mouth to respond, but evidently she didn’t have anything to say. She shrugged.

“I mean it,” he pressed, “Why?”

“I don’t know?” She said, looking at him with a mix of confusion and annoyance, “Why does it matter?”

“It matters,” he scooted closer in his chair, “Because you could’ve been killed.”

“You said that already-”

“And, you keep doing it. Putting yourself in danger when you don’t need to.”

“Steve,” she sighed, pressing the heels of her hands to her eyes, “I was trying to distract him so the kids could get away.”

“And look what happened! You’ve been laid up in a hospital bed for days now, and you can’t even go home cause your lungs aren’t working.”

“Why exactly are you getting on my ass about this now?” She asked, staring at him, “What does it matter? It’s done, it's over with, just let it go-”

“You don’t know that. We have no idea if it's over or if it's going to happen again, and if/when it does, you’re going to be there, and you’re going to take another unnecessary risk, and you’re going to get yourself killed-”

“Steve, I’m an adult, I don’t need your fucking permission to-”

“It’s not about-”

“Excuse me.” They both looked around to see a doctor, standing in the doorway, arms folded across a clipboard, a stern expression on her face.

“Hi,” She said softly, and Dr. Whatever (Steve couldn’t read her name tag from where he was sitting) arched an eyebrow.

“You should be getting some sleep, Miss.”

“Right.” She sank back against the pillows, glancing at Steve, mouthing ‘I’ll see you later’.

He took his cue to go, passing by the doctor on his way out, sparing a final glance over his shoulder at her. She was staring out of the window, mouth pressed into angry line, and right before the door closed, she brushed away a tear.

His destination came into view. Her house was dark and quiet, with only her little pickup parked in the driveway. He pulled up to the curb, got out and made his way across the wilting grass to her doorstep.

When he knocked on the door, he expected one of her parents to answer, so was therefore shocked when the door opened and he saw her, leaning heavily against the frame, hair tied back messily, clad in sweatpants and a loose muscle tee, looking weary and dizzy from the journey to the door. 

“Holy shit,” he muttered, stepping inside without hesitation, arm winding around her waist. She sank against him, sighing a little.

“What are you doing here?” She breathed, looking up at him. 

“Selling encyclopedias,” he deadpanned, and he felt his heart leap when she rolled her eyes affectionately at him, “I came to see how you were. Where are your parents?”

Her small smile twisted into a sour grimace, “Indianapolis, with your parents.”

“Oh yeah. The conference,” he sighed, “Never mind that both their kids were in a burning building a week ago.”

She scoffed at that and then winced. 

“Ribs still hurting?” He asked, and she nodded, gesturing towards the couch. 

Together, they walked over to the couch. She sank back onto the cushions with a sigh, and from the side, through the slits in her muscle tee he could see the heavy bruising littering her ribs. He could also see the side of her breast, as she wasn’t wearing a bra, but he looked away pointedly, staring at the TV that was playing softly. 

She looked at him, “Your face still looks like shit.” 

He laughed out loud at that one, throwing his head back, “So does yours, dumbass.”

She quirked a split lip at him, “How's your head?”

“Better. Not as mushy. Yours?”

“Haven’t had any complaints yet.” 

He looked at her so fast he got a crick in his neck. She was worrying her split lip with her teeth, barely containing a smile. 

“Oh, ha ha. Very funny.” He sighed, willing his heart rate to go back down. It’s not like he would be uncomfortable with the idea of her having sex, but there’s a flare of misplaced protectiveness and jealousy that he knows, realistically, he has no right to feel but he feels it ebbing away at him all the same. 

“I thought so,” she adjusted on the couch, sinking further into the cushions, elevating her back so that there was about an inch of space between it and the backrest, “Irony always is.” 

He let that statement float in the air, too taken aback to comment on it. She kept wiggling, adjusting like she couldn’t get comfortable. 

“What’s wrong?” He asked, watching as she huffed out a frustrated breath. 

“My back. I dunno what Billy did but the doctors said that I have a huge fucking cut right in the middle. Can’t wear a bra for like, three weeks.”

Steve felt his blood run cold at that. When he’d seen her in the hospital, she hadn’t mentioned it, nor did any of her doctors when he was around, so the knowledge that there was yet another injury that Billy had inflicted on her, that she now had to contend with, alone, made him feel a renewed sense of anger. 

She sat up rather suddenly, arm twisting awkwardly to press against the middle of her back, “Fuck, the gauze came loose again. I’ll be right back.”

She stood without another word, and hurried to what he knew to be the bathroom.

He let her go, as she never asked for his help unless she absolutely needed it. He sat there, in that room that was as familiar to him as his own home. He’d known her since they were babies, spent more time in this house than he could even remember. It hadn’t changed much, save for some of the more modernized decorations. Out with the 70s, in with the 80s, and a fresh coat of paint to boot. He wondered when it had happened.

A grunt of pain brought him out of his reverie, and he sat up a little straighter, calling out, “Hey, you okay?”

A beat of silence, two, and then-

“Not really! Can you,” another grunt, “Can you come help me?” 

He found her in the bathroom, shirt rucked up in the back as she tried in vain to press a new bandage over her wound.  He couldn’t see it, as her hands and the shirt were still covering it, but a flash of angry, red skin was enough to make his throat close up a bit. 

“I can’t get it to stay,” She pouted, letting her hands fall to her sides again. 

Hesitantly, he approached her, fingers skimming under her shirt, feeling for the edges of the bandage. When he pressed it into place against the soft muscle of her back, it wouldn’t stick, and even when he held it there for a few moments, it still came loose. 

“We’ll have to wrap something around it to keep it in place,” he mumbled, glancing around the bathroom. Evidence of her taking care of herself was littered everywhere, empty bandage packages, blood soaked tissue in the trash, antiseptics and ointments. 

“The doctors said I couldn’t because of my ribs. The compression might keep them from healing.”

“Something loose, then, like an ace bandage, just enough to keep it on you.”

She tilted her head in consideration, “Yeah, I guess that could work, I don’t know how I’d wrap it, though, twisting like that is gonna be hell on my ribs.” She said, more to herself than him. 

“I’ll do it,” Steve offered, and she caught his gaze in the bathroom mirror, arching an eyebrow. He stared right back, returning her incredulous expression.

“Steve, I would have to take off my shirt.”

“So?”

“So? Have you forgotten the part where I have tits?”

“Can we just-“ he turned her around by her shoulders, and she looked up at him with an unreadable expression, messing with the split in her lip again, “Can we just get you taken care of without this being weird? I mean, you did it for me last year.”

It was true. After Billy had beat the shit out of both of them, but mostly Steve, she’d taken care of him, holding an ice pack to his head as he rested in her lap, cleaning off his face, bandaging his wounds. She’d been so careful and methodical about it too. 

She sighed through her nose, “Fine.”

She retrieved the bandage from the first aid kit and handed it to him, and then hesitated again, before slowly starting to lift her shirt. She struggled at the halfway point, and so he helped her pull it all of the way off, her hair flopping back into place after the fabric had brushed against it. 

Now that the shirt was gone and the bandage was loose, the cut was thrown into greater relief, he felt that the word ‘cut’ to describe what he was seeing was an understatement. 

It was a gash, about four inches long, a couple inches wide, deep enough for healing to be a raging bitch but not deep enough for stitches. The skin had started to granulate back together, but Steve had had his shit kicked in enough times to know that she should be farther along in healing than this. 

“Why is it still so bad?” He ran his fingers along horizontal scratches that were littered around the cut. Drag marks. 

“I kept opening it up in the hospital, when I’d wake up thrashing and screaming, you know, as one does.”

“As one does,” he agreed quietly, unnerved by her cavalier tone. He caught her eye again in the mirror, “Jesus, you’re lucky he didn’t sever anything.” 

She scoffed softly in response. 

“Arms up,” he instructed. She laced her fingers behind her head, snapping her eyes shut against the pain that was blooming across her bruised rib cage. 

He began wrapping, making sure it was loose enough to not compress her ribs but tight enough to keep the bandage in place. He couldn’t help brushing the skin of her breasts, but instead of apologizing over and over again he elected to ignore it, and she was breathing shallowly anyway, more focused on the pain in her ribs than anything else. 

When he was done, he unlaced her fingers from behind her head and helped her lower her arms back down. 

“Thanks,” she breathed out, reaching for her shirt. 

He got there first, and started pulling it over her head. She turned, slotting her arms through the sleeves. 

When his fingers brushed against her hips, both of them caught their breath, staring at each other. 

Steve curled his fingers around her hips, finding himself incapable of letting her go just yet. They’d been through so much, together and apart, and he couldn’t help but feel if he let go too soon, she’d disappear, stolen by some many tentacled or many teethed thing from the Upside Down. 

Billy very well could have killed her. He certainly tried, and whether or not it was because of the Mind Flayer possessing him or it was just what he wanted to do, Steve couldn’t quite see past the fact that he had almost lost her, without telling her…anything. 

He’s not sure what she means to him. He’s not sure what he even means to himself - mortality is weird once you’ve faced it more than once, and Steve can’t help but feel like they’re living on borrowed time.

He knows that she’s always been there. Their lives, running parallel to each other, crossing sometimes but ultimately, they drifted apart. Ships in the night.

She looked up at him, eyelashes fluttering as she blinked. Pretty eyes, once so bright and curious now jaded and weary, their luster giving way to darkness. 

“Steve.” she said. 

It wasn’t a question. 

They moved in tandem, the first brush of their lips achingly shy, eyes half lidded to gauge the others reaction, but the next kiss, and the next, and the next were so very far from shy. The gentle, barely there grip of his fingers on her waist had turned into his forearms braced around her, pulling her as close as she could get.

She stood on tiptoe, arms wound around his neck, moving her mouth hungrily against his, pretty little sighs falling from her mouth. 

She was so soft, so warm against him. Her breasts, god, pressed against his chest as he hugged her close to him, and his palms ached at the thought of cupping them. 

They half walked, half stumbled to her bedroom. Given the fact that they were both concussed, and he could only really see out of one eye, it took longer than it normally would have, due to their lack of depth perception.

She fumbled for the knob as he pressed her against the door, one hand braced behind her knee, pulling her leg up to wrap around his waist. She made a guttural little noise then, giving the doorknob a final, frustrated twist until it sprang open, and they toppled through it. 

Miraculously, they found their way to the bed and not the floor, Steve flopping back against the mattress first, pulling her on top of him. She landed a little heavily, arms braced on either side of his head. 

She recovered well enough, legs scrambling to kneel on either side of his hips as she pulled him up for another bruising kiss.

He gripped her thighs through her sweats, ran them up her sides and cupped the soft line of her jaw, before delving his fingers into her hair. Everywhere he could touch, he did. The sides of her breasts through the slits in the muscle tee, her ass, the meat of her hips, the smooth muscle of her back.

With one hand braced on the small of her back, he ran the other along the waistband of her sweats, and she hummed into his mouth, her own hand squeezing his wrist in encouragement. 

Delving beneath her sweats, he found that she wasn’t wearing panties, and for some reason, the knowledge that she hadn’t been this entire time sent his arousal into a higher tailspin than it already had been. 

When his fingers brushed between her folds, he found her to be devastatingly slick. She gasped into the side of his neck, her head lolling along his shoulder. 

It seemed incredible, somehow, that Steve had gotten her like this. Needy, wet, canting her wide hips against the heel of his hand as he slipped his fingers inside her. It made his head swim with delight, but that could’ve just been the concussion. 

Regardless, there was no way she didn’t know that he was hard in his jeans. Indeed, her hand, nimble, chipped nail polished fingers were already (deftly, what was that about) unzipping his jeans, before she stopped altogether, looking at him with those eyes of hers, innocent and a little nervous. 

“Is this okay?” She asked, huffing out a breath, a strand of hair fluttering as she did. 

He looked at her incredulously, and he twisted his fingers a little inside of her, as if to remind her, “Given the fact I’m literally inside you right now, yes, it’s okay. You’re cute for asking, though.”

She looked flustered at the compliment, breaking eye contact, but he could see the small smile that crossed her lips, and she continued her ministrations, smirking at his choice of underwear.

“Shoulda known you were a tighty whities guy. Your jeans are so damn tight you couldn’t wear anything else.”

“I didn’t think they were that tight?” He gaped at her.

“Oh please,” She rolled her eyes, “You could put a quarter in your back pocket and tell if it was heads or tails.” 

“Oh, my God,” Steve brushed his thumb against her clit in retaliation, earning a low growl from her in return, “Exactly how long have you been staring at my ass?”

“Just about as long as you’ve been staring at mine,” She arched a knowing eyebrow at him. 

And there it was. Not necessarily a confirmation, but definitely an implication that they had always felt something for each other. Noticing each other, not just across the room in school, or when they were with everyone else with danger looming over them. No, they’d noticed each other in the quiet moments. He’d noticed when she switched from glasses to contacts, having broken two pairs in two years. She’d noticed when he started to get jumpy at small noises. They’d both noticed how they'd grown from chubby, carefree toddlers splashing each other in the kiddie pool to the people they were now, on the cusp of the rest of their lives yet still tied to this small town and its small minded people and tied to what lay beneath it, a dark and sinister mirror world that they’d been charged with keeping at bay. 

He brought her in for another kiss, a bit softer this time, brow furrowing against hers, a strange swooping feeling in his chest, a little bit like the sensation of falling when on the brink of sleep. 

She pulled him out of his briefs, breaking their kiss to lick her palm and take him in hand, running her thumb over his slit. 

“Holy fuck,” he murmured, eyes rolling in the back of his head as she jerked him off. He cupped her breasts with both hands, feeling her nipples pebble against his palm. He tweaked them, and her hand slipped on his cock, and she let out the loudest noise yet. Evidently, her nipples were very sensitive. 

“I wanna take this off,” he tugged at the collar of her muscle tee, and she caught her breath, hesitating.

She looked at him, eyes full of trepidation and somehow, someway, he understood. That she hadn’t been naked in this context with him, with the afternoon sun streaming through the window, outlining her soft, lush skin in an angelic glow. He wanted to see all of her, in all of her thick, curvy glory, no matter how bruised or battered she was from Starcourt. He wanted to see the expanse of her plush tummy, run his tongue along the valley between her heavy breasts, dig his fingers into the supple skin of her thighs. God, he wanted her. All of her. 

“I want to see you.” he cupped her jaw, thumb braced under her chin. 

“One of your eyes is still fucked up,” she muttered, looking away shyly, “You won’t be able to see much of anything.” 

“Baby,” he whispered, bringing her face close to his, “I want to see all of you.” 

She’d melted into his touch when he called her baby, eyes shining a bit. 

“Are you sure?” She breathed. 

He nodded. Together, they pulled off her muscle tee, and his breath caught in his lungs. 

She had scars. He recognized a few, the ones he’d been there for. The one along her right hip, evidence of an old, deep scrape from the time she’d fallen off her bike when she was ten. He remembered that, pulling her up from the asphalt as she tried not to cry. He’d taken her to his house, two terrified kids knowing nothing about wound care, standing in his bathroom, panicking over what to do. He’d poured half a bottle of rubbing alcohol on it, pressed five superhero bandaids over it and called it good. It’d gotten infected, and she wouldn’t stop picking at it, so the scar remained longer than it should have. 

The one beneath her clavicle, courtesy of their first run in with the demogorgon. A sharp, taloned hand had swiped blindly through the strobing Christmas lights and caught her in the chest. Thirteen stitches later, here it still was, raised and shining. 

The one from Billy, when he’d thrown her into Joyce’s hutch, shattering the glass and embedding a piece just above her belly button. Not deep enough to hit anything important, but enough to leave a scar a couple inches long. He remembered her pulling the piece of glass out and staunching the blood herself with a paper towel and some duct tape. 

He bent forward and worshiped her with an open mouth, pressing kisses wherever he could reach. He ran his lips along the inside of one of her breasts before taking a nipple into his mouth, rolling the hardening nub gently between his teeth before soothing it with the flat of his tongue. She choked out a high pitched gasp, one hand flying to his hair to curl her fingers into. 

“You like that?” He smirked against the silky flesh, gazing up at her through his eyelashes as he hitched her higher on his lap. He settled against the headboard, back aching from supporting both of them for so long. She nodded fervently, her snark disappearing in the wake of her utter and all encompassing arousal. 

He gave her other breast the same treatment, and watched in fascination as her brows furrowed and her mouth fell open in a shuddering little moan. 

He’d barely touched her between her legs, only enough to gauge how ready she was for him and to tease her, but now he slipped his fingers beneath her waistband again, sealed his mouth over her nipple, and got to work. 

“Oh, fuck fuck fuck,” She whined, tossing her head back, “Steve, I’m gonna- holy shit-“ her thighs trembled as he flexed his fingers inside her, feeling her cunt flutter around his fingers, thumb flicking relentlessly over her clit. 

She came with a choked sob, hand flying to cover her mouth as he worked her through it. Her warm, wet cunt gushed around his fingers, and they could both hear how wet she was, even through the barrier of her sweats. 

When she finally stopped twitching, breathing heavily against his shoulder after collapsing against him, she straightened up, brushing a lock of sweaty hair out of her face before shoving clumsily at her sweats, managing to get it off her ass and fully off of one leg before she settled against his bare thighs again, looking at him, hands braced on his shoulders. 

“I’m on birth control.” 

“What?” He was still reeling from the sound she made when she came. 

“If we fuck you’re not going to get me pregnant. Most likely. It’s new.” 

“I could just pull out?”

“Yeah, and James Clark pulled out of Samantha Kearns and then her parents sent her away for nine months to live with her aunt and then they had a miracle baby in their forties.” 

“How-“ Steve huffed out a laugh, she truly was something else, “How do you know that?”

She fixed him with a look, “James is a redhead. So is that baby.”

“You’re…observant.” 

“Point is, it won’t matter whether or not you pull out, so are you going to fuck me or not?” 

“So demanding,” He teased, settling a hand on her ass, moving her closer, lining himself up with her entrance, “When did you get so bossy?”

“I’d like to call it - oh, fuck - motivated,” She let out a deep sigh as she sank down on his cock, one hand reaching up to curl around the decorative ridge of her wooden headboard, her other hand digging into the meat of her own fleshy thigh, leaving little half crescent dents against her skin. 

He brushed his thumb against the bruised skin of her cheek affectionately, “You okay?” 

She nodded through gritted teeth. He could feel her clenching around him as she struggled to relax, taking too much too fast. This wasn’t entirely uncommon - he was thicker than most, and he’d learned that girls deeply appreciated being well prepared before he sank into them. In her case, though, it might be different. He honestly didn’t know whether or not she’d done this with anyone before, and a rush of guilt flooded through him - he hadn’t thought to ask. 

She gave one long, experimental roll of her hips and he sucked in a breath, staying as still as he could. 

“Don’t let this inflate your ego,” she said softly, rolling her hips again, and he felt her start to relax, and her expression became less pinched and more open, lips separating in a gentle moan, “You’re just so big.” 

Lengthwise, somewhat, girth, definitely. With her on top he was definitely deeper than he normally would’ve been, fully sheathed inside her wet, silken warmth. It was intoxicating, the way they moved slowly against each other, languid, as if they had all the time in the world. 

He palmed at her breast, “I’ll try not to.”

Kissing had gone painful, due to their matching split lips, blood slowly oozing from hers and his throbbing, so they settled for resting their bruised heads together, breathing the same air, absorbing one another through presses of hands into skin, murmurs of closer and more and please whispered into the afternoon air of her bedroom.

“You feel so good,” Steve sighed into her mouth, catching hold of her hand, lacing their fingers, “So fucking good for me.”

She whimpered a little then, and he cracked open his good eye to look into her face. Her eyes were screwed shut, brows knit closely together, jaw loose. He watched as goosebumps erupted across her skin, ghosting his lips along the ones that were scattered across her shoulder like little constellations. 

She twitched around him, the swooping arc of her hips against his becoming steadily faster. She tugged at his t-shirt, nestling her head in the space between his shoulder and jaw, mouthing clumsily at the veined column of his neck. 

He angled his hips, lifting and rolling her onto her back, placing a pillow underneath her head. Her hair fanned out against the pillowcase, face a mask of pleasure.

“This okay?” He asked, and she nodded hurriedly.

“How’s your back?” He wrapped a hand around her waist, lifting her up the tiniest bit.

“What?” She spluttered, eyes flying open in confusion, before her expression cleared, understanding what he meant, “Its fine, I’m fine, just-”

She laughed hoarsely as he sunk back in, and he kissed her stupid for it, until she was a needy, moaning mess beneath him again. As his stomach started to twist, he knew that he was about to come, and he told her as much, pressing the words into the soft skin of her neck as he kissed her there.

She nodded, running her hand through his hair, which only sent him closer to the edge, and he snaked his hand between their bodies to rub clumsily at her clit. It had the desired effect, she began to clench around his cock, but it was the tremble of her thighs, her mouth against his and the way she breathed out his name, like a hit to the solar plexus, that had him coming, collapsing into her with a barely contained shout that he muffled into the plush skin of her breast.

They laid there for a while, breathing heavily against each other. At one point, Steve rolled off to the side, arm still slung around her waist as they fell into weightless, dreamless sleep.

Steve woke up first.

Night had fallen outside, strips of pale moonlight seeping through the blinds, slits of light shadow laid delicately across her body.

She’d turned to her side in her sleep, one hand resting up by her face, pressing into her cheek, and the other curled in the sheets towards him, like she’d reached for him in her sleep but hadn’t quite gotten there.

She looked almost angelic, which was odd considering that her body was still marred with bruises and lacerations and scars, evidence of her participation in the battle they’d been fighting.

He felt the anxiety spike in the nerves of his spine, flooding his mouth with an acrid, sour taste as he realized what this could mean.

If they moved forward together, it was only a matter of time before they were thrown back on the front lines, and with each passing year, the war only got worse. Losses increased, for fucks sake, so many people had died in Hawkins this year that it was affecting the local economy, which had already been in shambles due to the construction of the mall, and now that the mall wasn’t even there, he had no clue how Hawkins would ever recover.

He didn’t care about the economy though, he cared about her. About Robin, Nancy, the kids, Jonathan, Joyce. About this little family he’d found himself ingratiated into, a family that was without its patriarch, Hopper, who somehow had kept them on some sort of track, and it was him that they could look to when they were scared and he’d look right back, sturdy in the face of otherworldly horrors.

But now Hop was gone. And the Byers were moving, and Eleven’s powers were gone, and it all just seemed so hopeless.

She snuffled softly in her sleep, nuzzling her face into the pillow, pulling her legs up a little more. She was cold.

Steve knew he couldn’t stay. He wanted to, god, he wanted to. But he couldn’t be with her, and end up having all those memories only to relive them while he stares down at a cold slab of granite with her name and birthday and death day on it, knowing that she’s six feet below him, withering away. He can’t face the possibility of missing what they could have had for the rest of his life. He already missed it, laying beside her. There’s no guarantee that it’ll happen, that she’ll die by the hand of something from the Upside Down, but the fear of it is enough to make him withdraw into himself.

Today, with her, the press of her cut lip against his and the feel of her soft, supple skin beneath his fingertips will have to be enough. This one time, this will have to be enough. This will have to satiate the desire, the need that, suddenly, he realizes, has been the undercurrent of the last couple years, when she crashed back into his life in ‘83 after the unceremonious and cold dissolution of their friendship back in middle school.

He hated himself for it, but he pulled himself out of her soft bed, grabbed the blanket that hung over the footboard and covered her in it, ran a hand through her hair and across the bruised skin of her cheek before withdrawing, getting dressed, and ducking out into the night air, warm and inviting, though he couldn’t feel it through the cold shame that was coursing through him.

He didn’t cry on his way home. He didn’t cry when he crossed the threshold.

The one and only time the tears ever fell were in the shower, mixing with the warm spray hitting his face, and he could pretend that the hot, prickly feeling in his eyes was exhaustion.

She woke to the sound of the front door closing.

The other side of her bed was still warm, the pillow still creased where his head had lain.

She was a little sore, a little cold, wrapped in a blanket that she didn’t remember grabbing.

She blinked blearily, willing the foggy remnants of sleep from her mind as she sat up, hissing at the ache in her ribs, and the rolling sort of pain in her head. And her back. And just about everywhere else.

With the blanket wrapped around her loosely, she padded to the front room and looked out the peephole, just in time to see Steve’s BMW peel out of her driveway, the silhouette of the strong line of his nose and the fluffy coif of his hair briefly outlined by the orange streetlight before he drove out of view.

Right, she thought to herself, moving away from the door and walking numbly down the hall to the bathroom, shedding the blanket as she went.

Of course, she stared at her reflection in the mirror, peeling off the ace bandage and ripping the gauze from her skin, uncaring of the way the gash on her back stung and throbbed.

He never would have stayed, she turned the shower on, stepping into the hot stream of water, sinking to the sterile shower floor, legs pulled to her chest, arms wrapped around her knees.

No one is ever going to stay, she stared at the water swirling around the drain, wishing that she could turn into liquid and go with it.