#mass v class

[kyuala]

oh my god i could probably talk abt this forever and i literally wont shut up about it until the world cup rolls around but do u guys wanna know abt the covert coup they tried to stage 2day

[sjofn-lofnsdottr]

Something I find funny today:

I idled in Radz-at-Han a lot, over the course of Endwalker's life. I liked the day and night themes, and I loved how lively the city felt, with people arriving at the aetheryte and running off to whatever business they had there. It felt natural to go there, hit up the endgame gear vendors, then hang out by the retainer bell in the aetheryte plaza, people watching. And if I needed the market board, I would port back to Dusk's house, rather than go to Sharlayan, a place I just do not vibe with.

I HATE going to Solution 9. I dart in, spend my tomestones/books/whatever and then L E A V E. I hate how sterile the city is, I hate the droning lo-fi theme, I hate the immobile crowd of crafters all facing away from each other as they mindlessly grind their scrips (even as I understand it, I promise <3). I hate all the NPCs still wearing those goddamn regulators. I can't stop thinking about how awful I found the place during the MSQ, how the only place that felt alive to me in the entire place is the seedy area where the raids are. It's dystopian as fuck to me.

And when I need a marketboard ... half the time I port to Tuliyollal. Because that place is alive, it has day and night themes, the mass of crafters there get up and move more than once in a blue moon because they're mostly still leveling, so are running off to hand in leves or get their new class quest or what have you, while other people run by to whatever business they have there.

And I love that, I love that Solution 9 gets such a visceral reaction out of me, this long after I first arrived there. If it's supposed to feel Wrong - and I have every reason to believe it is, of course - they did a fantastic job of making it Wrong and keeping it Wrong, even with people doing their little MMO endgame tasks in it. And I love that Tuliyollal is such a stark contrast to it, long after the MSQ stops pointing it out to us.

[cherrycolored-punk]

can you keep a secret?

pairings: modern! brother's best friend! Steve Harrington x fem! Reader

author's note: ok, ok, ok. I've had these two in my head since I first wrote it. I needed to repost it and decided to make it a one-shot instead. These two were too horny for a second part, let's be so for real.

w/c: 5.1k

warnings: SMUT, unprotected p in v, fingering, oral (reader receiving), praise kink, sorry if I forgot anything 💙

Pool water trickles down your spine, summer heat almost suffocating as you lay out to dry. The air is filled with the buzz of cicadas and crickets, the sound of sprinklers running on nearby manicured lawns. Music plays faintly from the radio on the side table, and you hum along. The sky was a watercolor blue with a stroke of tangerine and cotton candy pink; cirrus clouds were brushed delicately into the vast canvas. 

Being home from college meant you finally had time to lose your head in the clouds and get lost in the stars once the sun had set. There wasn’t the constant worry of a term paper or an early morning class you swore you’d get to despite all the warnings from the student advisors. There was only possibility. You could feel it—the turn of a page, the change of a season. Things would be different. You just didn’t realize how different they would be.

“Hey, Punky,” a familiar voice calls out, drawing closer as it did. You didn’t need to open your eyes to know who it was, the sound of his steps and the smell of his cologne giving him away. Bergamot and cedar, a slight hint of tobacco.

“Hi Stevie,” you greet around the lollipop you’d been sucking on, eyes still closed, enjoying the sun. 

You could feel his eyes on you, gaze roaming over the expanse of your legs and up to your chest. The seconds pass like minutes, silence settling between the two of you as he takes you in. The way your bikini hugged your curves and the way your nipples were pebbled beneath your skimpy top. He swallows hard, words getting lodged in his throat. You did your best to hide the way his gaze affected you, the way your breathing sped up, or the way you squirmed in your seat.

“Have you seen your brother?” He clears his throat, shakes his head, and hopes you don’t question the time it took him to ask a simple question. 

You smirk to yourself, a cherry lollipop pulled out of your mouth with a loud pop. You open your eyes and tilt your head. Gaze trained on him so they didn’t linger on the swell of his biceps.

“Probably inside setting up for the party,” you shrug, completely casual and not at all having palpitations from how he looked at you. 

You press the lollipop to your lips, swirling your tongue over it, and watched his adam’s apple bob as you did. It had always been cat and mouse, a game of boundaries and lines never crossed. You turn onto your stomach, head turned away from him as you do. He looks at the curve of your ass, the way your bikini bottoms got lost in it. Steve’s shorts feel tighter, strained. He clears his throat again, pointing towards the sliding glass door even though you weren’t looking.

“I’ll go see if he needs help,” he vanishes behind the door, eyes lingering before disappearing into your home, and you could finally breathe.

—————

Music pulses through the speakers, overwhelming and all-consuming. Your welcome home party was full of people you didn’t know or didn’t talk to, strangers that your twin brother was acquainted with. You eye the mass of people over your cup from your corner of the room. Watch as they dance to an early 2000s Spotify playlist, get lost in the sound, or play tonsil hockey on your couch. Tequila settled in your chest, warm, and you felt like you were floating. 

Mingle. Mingle. Mingle. Your inner voice screams, clawing its way to your cerebellum so that you’d move. So that you’d do anything besides stand on the wall at another house party. But you walk past everyone, through the crowd, and to the pool house that sits on the edge of your yard. 

The moon was bright, light illuminating everything around you in a glow. Lightning bugs buzzed around you. You could still hear the music, the sounds of the party muffled by the sliding glass door. You take another swig of your drink before placing your plastic cup on the table next to you and reclining on the cushioned seat.

“Having fun?”

“A totally rad time,” you nod, words laced with sarcasm, watching Steve as he approaches. 

He gives you a sideways smirk; eyebrows raised as he takes another sip of whatever fills his red solo cup and sits near your feet on the edge of the chair. Steve had always been attractive in an obvious way. His hazel eyes bore into yours, and you avoid his gaze focusing on the new freckles that dotted his cheeks and created a path to his jawline. His caramel-brown waves were shorter, sat just above his ear, and defined his cheekbones in a way that made you want to trace them. He is wearing a dark blue t-shirt that clings to the muscles of his arms and black jeans that accentuate the meat of his thighs. 

You want to sink your teeth into them.

“You’ve never been a good liar, Punky,” he’d caught you, watching as you took him in, and did the same in return. Steve works to keep his jaw from going slack and takes too many sips of beer as he eyes the way your hips flare under the satin of your red dress. You nudge his shoulder lightly, ignoring how the brief contact felt like electricity, and grab your cup to take another swig of your drink.

“You look really pretty tonight,” he manages, the roll of your eyes making his smirk grow wide.

“Not pretty enough for anyone to flirt with me,” you sulk, and takes a few more sips of the amber liquid.

“That’s because Derek would actually kill anyone who touched you,” he laughs as he thinks of how often he’d be warned not to go anywhere near you. He had his King Steve reputation to thank for that.

“Perks of being Derek’s annoying little sister. No one even sees me,” you huff with a dramatic sigh.

“That’s not true,” he tiptoes around a confession, the truth that lingers between the two of you but was never spoken.

“Oh please, I am a pariah in my own house.” You lift a hand towards the two-story tudor, your welcome home party evidence that no one necessarily gives a shit whether you were there. You play with the lip of the cup, rubbing your thumb over the sticky lipgloss left there.

“We can have a little party of our own out here,” he wraps a warm palm against your knee.

“Don’t throw me a pity party,” you pout.

“Ms.College Elite is the only one who has my attention tonight,” he urges.

“What do you say, Punky?” And you debate, mouth twisted to the side as you look at the hot tub and back at him.

“We’ll need more beer,” you shrug. What was better than a party of two?

“Atta girl,” he gives your knee one last squeeze before sneaking back through the glass door and towards the kitchen. 

You stand and strip out of your dress, staying in just your bra and panties. The summer night feels cold against your skin and sends a shiver through your spine. You sink into the hot tub, wincing slightly as your body adjusts to the temperature before lazing back and watching the stars. Steve returns moments later with a six-pack in hand.

“You got in without me?” He teases, eyes focused on your face and ignoring the way the water made the fabric of your bra just a bit more translucent.

“Sorry about it, King Steve,” you mock, splashing water at him as he pulls at his shirt and flips off his shoes. He hesitates as he unzips his pants, suddenly unsure and looking back at the house.

“Is this a party of one?” You tease, hiding the way the possibility stung.

“Not a chance,” he pulls his pants down, green boxers clinging to his sun-kissed skin, and you try not to linger at what they reveal. There was truth to the whispers around school and you giggle to yourself as he climbs into the jacuzzi.

“Not what a guy wants to hear when he’s stripped nearly naked,” he pokes at your side before grabbing a beer. He holds one up as a question, and you nod as you reach for it, his fingers brushing yours.

“I promise my giggles have nothing to do with the way you look,” even though they kind of did, you just don’t want to talk about his endowments.

“Sure thing,” he chugs his beer, red blossoming in his cheeks the longer he sits in the warm water.

“I mean it, I promise. Scouts honor,” you hold up four fingers.

“It’s three fingers, you dingus,” and he splashes water at you as you laugh.

“Watch my beer,” you whine and try to block it from the onslaught of water. 

You press one palm against his chest, turning your back to him as he continues. His chest flexes under your hand, rough hairs rubbing against your palm. Steve tries to reach around you, big hands grabbing for the can of beer as you lean in to take a sip, back flush against him and ass pressed to his center. You feel his arms wrap around your waist and pull you closer, lifting you in the air until your beer can slips from your hands and plops into the water.

“My beer!”

“Way to go, Punky,” he laughs, warm breath fanning your ear, and you turn to look at him.

“It’s not my fault. You’re the one who attacked me!” You push away from him, palm pressing into his pec once more.

“Only because you laughed as soon as I took my pants off. Talk about a blow to the ego,” his hand presses where yours just was.

“Oh please, Harrington. Like you haven’t always been told you’re something out of a Calvin Klein ad,” you roll your eyes, back pressing into the side of the jacuzzi. 

Steve’s cheeks darken to a shade of red, the tips of his ears crimson at your words.

“Something out of a Calvin Klein ad?” He teases, inching closer until he was floating in front of you.

“Like you don’t know you’re some kind of beautiful, Stevie. I’m sure all the girls you’ve dated said as much,” you ignore the way your heart races being so close to him, the way his gaze makes heat pool at your center.

“Maybe cute, sometimes hot, but never some kind of beautiful,” his words come out lower, nearly a whisper. You lift your shoulder, attempting to bring levity to the butterflies springing free and taking flight in your abdomen.

“Well, now you know, don’t let it go to your head,” you nudge him, a small giggle escaping from between your lips as you turn to the side to put distance between you so that you can breathe, but he holds onto your hand and pulls you towards him, chest to chest. 

Your breaths come out shallow, eyes searching his for an answer. He shakes his head, words lost, as he takes you in and looks at you how he’d always wanted to. 

He was cast in a glowy haze, string lights shining orange and yellow against his sun-kissed skin. Steve eyes the pout of your lips, debating, adam’s apple bobbing as he throws all caution to the wind. He closes the small space between the two of you, watching as your eyes flutter close as an answer to an unspoken question. Do you want this too? 

Your noses brush, breaths shaking as his lips hover over your pout before he takes the plunge. His kiss was softer than you had imagined as his lips eased over yours. Tasting like beer and a hint of spearmint mixed with the taste of your strawberry lipgloss. Your hand brush against his bicep and up to his neck, twisting into the waves of his hair. You pull lightly, bringing him closer, lower, swallowing his gasp of surprise as the kiss becomes hungrier, more urgent. 

The world around you disappears, the noise of the party ignored as you focus on the way he felt pressed against you. The way his hands explore the skin of your abdomen, the curve of your ass, and the lines of your thighs. His touch consumes you, leaving a line of electricity wherever the two of you are connected. He kisses you like he’d wanted this, like he’d wanted you, for years. 

He rubs your face with his hand, thumb pulling at the side of your lips so you’d open up for him. Steve slides his tongue over yours, lifting you onto his lap. You wrap your arms around his neck, anchoring yourself to him as the kiss turns filthy and his fingers dig crescent moons into your sides, pushing your center onto his arousal. He sucks at your bottom lip, swallowing your moans as you begin to grind against him. The water sloshes against your hips, the sound covering his groans and your sighs. 

You wanted him, needed him. Steve pulled away, hands firm and stilling your hips as he looked at you with glassy eyes. The realization hung in the air, lines already crossed, and boundaries breached.

“We shouldn’t be doing this,” he says it like a question. Like he needs convincing, but you were just as lost, lips bruised and a little dazed as you took him in. Your chest heaves, breaths coming in shallow as you shake your head. You shouldn’t be doing this.

“Can you keep a secret?” You ask, and he nods, his lips back on yours rougher than before. 

Steve’s fingers dig into your flesh, jutting his hips up to meet yours as you rock against him. He swallows your whines, nose pressing into your face as he tries to get closer. His fingers trail up your thighs, slip under the fabric of your panties, and rests them on the fat of your ass. Steve pulls away and eyes the way your lips are pouty and bruised.

“Is this okay?” He asks, eyebrows raised, and you nod, needy for more. For him.

“Don’t stop,” you plead, and he presses open-mouthed kisses to your neck, nipping at the tender flesh as he trails to your cleavage. 

Your chest arches under his touch. Head tilted back as his tongue dances along the line of your bra, nipples hardening under his warm breath. 

You are lost in the moment, head under water, electricity coursing through you like a live wire wherever Steve touched. You want to blame the alcohol, want an excuse for making out with your brother’s best friend in your hot tub as you circle your hips against his length and swallow his groans. You kiss a trail from his jaw to the space between his neck and shoulder, sucking a bruise and kissing it sweet. Steve tilts his head, giving you more space to make your mark, eyelashes fanning his cheekbones as he watches you.

“I’ve wanted this for so long,” he admits, breathy and eyes a little hazy. 

You pull away from him, hands resting on his shoulders as you took in his darkened gaze. Questions swirl in your head, the answers found in how he still holds you close, almost like a plea.

He opens his mouth to say more but a loud bang from the house had the two of you scrambling, heads turned and looking for the source of the noise. Afraid you’d been caught, and your chests heave as you wait, moments passed in shared silence, watching as people began leaving the house.

You weren’t ready to stop. Needy to feel his lips pressed everywhere they could reach. Your fingers pressed into his jaw until he faces you.

“Pool house,” you instruct and climb out of the hot tub, pulling him along. He follows without question, the sounds of his wet footsteps trailing right behind you as you push the door open. 

The moment that it closes, he turns you around and pins you to the door. You suck in a breath as his lips hover over your skin, warm breath causing goosebumps to sprout in anticipation. 

Steve chuckles, enjoying how affected you are by him. His knee slots between your legs, balancing you against him as his teeth graze your exposed shoulder. He runs one hand over your hip and the other twines with your hand above your head. Electricity shoots through you, hips rolling back against him as you search for the friction you desperately need. 

He tugs at the strap of your bra with his teeth, pulling the fabric down before switching sides and doing the same to the other. You feel his absence as he pushes off of you to unhook your bra, his fingers making quick work of the hook. The lace loosens from your body, and you allow it to fall onto the floor before turning to him. 

You watch as he swallows hard, his eyes dancing over your exposed skin, highlighted by the moonlight streaming through the curtains, painting you in a pale glow. 

“You’re beautiful,” he whispers, fingers itching at his sides to reach out and touch you. 

Slowly, you approach him and reach for his hand guiding it up to your supple flesh. He cups you with a groan, his thumb brushing over your perked nipple. You push on his chest, guiding him backward towards the couch at the center of the room until he plops onto the cushion with a huff. 

His hands automatically reach out when you straddle him, one leg on either side of his lap. He wastes no time, his mouth creating a hot trail along your naked flesh, making your brain melt. 

Steve’s tongue swirls over one of your nipples, and he sucks it between his lips, watching you with hooded eyes as your head falls back in bliss. Your hands curl in his hair automatically, holding him against and tugging as you swirl your hips against his hardening length. It drives him wild, watching you like this. An image he’d always pictured, but his imagination definitely didn’t do it justice. 

His fingers push under the fabric of your panties once again and grip your ass, spreading your cheeks apart as he begins to meet each swirl of your hips with a rut of his own. He needs you, wants you, in a way that he’s never wanted anyone before.

“Baby-” he groans against your skin, releasing your nipple and pressing his face between your breasts.

The nickname makes butterflies swarm at your center.

“Steve,” You whine, desperate for there to be fewer layers separating him from where you need to feel him most. 

He flips you onto your back suddenly, caging you between his arms and kissing down your body. 

“I need to taste you,” he groans against your skin, dragging his tongue against your abdomen and to the tops of your panties. He hooks a thumb underneath the fabric, and you lift your hips so he can take them off, watching as he discards them absently. 

You’re completely exposed, every inch of you revealed to him, but the look in Steve’s eyes has never made you feel more beautiful. He watches you with an intense regard, almost reverently, as he takes in every inch of you.

“Fuck, honey,”  he breathes and swallows harshly, “so fucking perfect.” 

Steve kisses over your hip bone and down the tops of your thighs, savoring the feel of your soft skin beneath his lips. The stubble along his chin rubs against you just right, and you reach out to curl your fingers back into his hair. 

He’s trailing kisses back up your legs and to your inner thighs, creating an agonizing pace. Teasing, licking, sucking. Leaving his mark. Your hips rise involuntarily, seeking the release you need, desperate for his touch, and he obliges with a swipe of his tongue along your slick folds. 

“Oh,” you gasp, hips falling back against the couch. His chuckle against your sensitive flesh sends vibrations straight to your core, and before you can protest, his tongue is dragging against your slit. Pushing deeper until his nose is pressed against your bundle of nerves.

“Taste so sweet,” he murmurs, sending another wave of vibrations through you, and your cunt clenches at his words. Lost in the feeling of his movements and what was to come. 

His tongue pushes at your entrance, dipping into your center and humming as he tastes more of your essence. 

“Steve,” you grip his hair as his tongue darts in and out of your cunt, creating a lewd noise that fills the pool house. 

He groans against you, nearly losing his mind at the way you moan his name. Watching as you buck against him with each swipe of his tongue.

You whine as he pulls away from you and raise yourself onto your elbows to look at him, jaw falling open when you see his chin glistening with your arousal. 

He watches you as he traces his middle finger over your slit, gathering your slick before pressing it against your cunt. You stretch over him, sucking his finger into your sopping hole until he’s knuckle-deep inside you. 

The sensation has you falling back against the couch, head swimming with need.

Steve bends down and flicks his tongue against your clit, curling his finger inside you as he does. His pace is slow at first, gradually picking up speed to match the flick of his tongue and you’re already close to coming undone. 

The sound of his fingers sinking into your center is vulgar, his pace making your breath quicken.

Every nerve in your body is on edge, and you feel close to combusting. Each lap of his tongue sends a jolt of electricity through your body. He adds another finger, stretching you more, and you hum at the sensation. Your hand cups one of your breasts, fingers pinching your nipple, as your breath quickens and you approach the edge.

“Oh, fuck, Steve,” you moan again. 

Steve’s lips wrap around your clit, and he sucks, making you jolt against his face. You hold him there, grinding as you chase your orgasm.

“That’s it, baby,” he groans against you, eager to make you come undone. His words sending you ever the edge.

Your hips lift as your center unfurls, your body stiffening as it courses through you. A feeling that takes your breath away, makes your toes curl, and is felt through every inch of you. Your screams are trapped in your throat, focused on the feeling as you clench around Steve’s fingers and grip his hair. 

Seconds drag on like minutes, and your legs begin to shake. A guttural moan escapes your lips, and goosebumps sprout along your skin as you continue to hold him there.

“Steve,” you keen, and he swears you’re driving him crazy. His fingers don’t stop, and his mouth doesn’t slow as he laps at your release. Groaning as he licks you clean. 

You’re panting, core sensitive, and aching as his fingers continue to drive into you. 

“Please-,” you plead, and he smiles against your skin, his fingers slowing before pulling out of you. You watch him with half-hooded eyes as he licks your spent from his digits, groaning as he tastes your sweetness.

He kisses your bud, the sensitive flesh of your inner thighs, and creates a trail up your body. Taking his time to savor the way your soft skin feels underneath his lips. You gasp when they press into your neck, when his tongue swipes before his teeth graze your pulse. 

“So fucking pretty,” he whispers and kisses your jaw, his hard length pressed into you.

Your hand reaches between your bodies, and you run a hand over his boxers, gripping his cock - slowly stroking him through the fabric. Satisfaction thrums through you as you watch his jaw go slack, his hips bucking to meet each of your movements.

“It’s my turn,” you whisper and kiss his jaw, but he shakes his head, swallowing hard.

“Next time,” he insists, and your heart thuds at the thought—next time.

You continue to stroke him, dragging your tongue across his lower lip and humming when you taste yourself there. 

It’s all too much and not enough.

“I need you,” you whisper and pull his lower lip between yours. 

“Baby,” he groans, one hand gripping your hip and the other cradling your face. 

“Are you sure?” He asks, pulling away and meeting your gaze. Measuring your sincerity. 

You nod rapidly and move your hand to the top of his boxers, pulling at the fabric. Holding his gaze. He springs free against your center, and you inhale deeply, hand running along his hard flesh. You stroke him once, running your thumb along the vein on the underside of his cock before swiping it over his tip coated in precum. 

You yearn to taste him, to feel his length against your cheek as you pull him into your mouth, but he’d said next time. You bring your thumb to your lips and lick the precum from it, your gaze never leaving his as you suck it clean.

“Fuck-” he shakes his head, and you push at his chest until he’s seated. You straddle his lap, one leg on each side of his, and reach between your bodies to line him up with your entrance. His tip pushes at your entrance, and you gasp at the pressure, anticipating the stretch that he’s going to be. 

You sink onto him slowly, and he watches your face as you take every inch. The way you gasp, how your eyes squeeze shut, and the grip you have on his shoulders is enough to send him over. He lets out a groan when he’s feeling seated in you, his fingers gripping your hips and leaving marks.

“So fucking tight,” he breathes, jagged and affected, “So perfect.” 

You’re hyperaware of every place you’re connected; his naked chest pressed against yours, his hands on your hips, and his throbbing cock deep in your center. It drives you wild, makes you feel a little drunk on his touch, and slowly you lift your hips. He cups your ass to help your movements, guiding you up and down his shaft. 

“Oh my god,” you moan as you increase your pace. 

He drags a tongue over your pebbled flesh and kneads your breast as he pumps up into you. The sound of your skin slapping against each other intertwines with your breathy moans spilling from your parted lips, and your nails dig into his shoulders. He ruts up to meet the rhythm of your hips, pumping into you at a brutal pace, and watches how well you take him with hooded eyes.

“Take me so good, honey,” he mewls against your breast, and your grip on his shoulder tightens. His hand leaves your tit and traces over your abdomen until his fingers meet your clit. 

“Fu-,” you breathe, words lost as he begins to draw mean circles against your sensitive bud. 

“I’m gonna,” you try to say between moans.

“Come for me, baby,” and the desperation in his voice makes it sound like he’s begging. 

Your legs squeeze shut, hips faltering, but he pumps himself into you. He watches the way your tits bounce with each thrust, the way your head falls back, and your mouth falls open as you come undone. 

“Holy shit, Steve,” you cry, and a strangled groan leaves his lips when he feels you clench around him. 

The orgasm rushes through you, even more intense than before. Heat creeps into your chest as your walls flutter around him, and you dissolve into pleasure. He grips your hips, continuing to pound into you as he chases his own release.

“I’m so close,” he grunts, his hips stuttering and abdominal muscles tightening. He lifts you off of his lap as his release spurts onto his stomach in white streaks, and you moan at the sight of it. Wishing you could feel him fill you. His fingers press into your flesh, his breaths shaky as he holds onto you.

He looks beautiful and disheveled, his chest red from the intensity of his orgasm. Unable to form a coherent thought, let alone speak. 

Steve taps your thigh and you move off of him, watching as he disappears into the bathroom. You sit there, suddenly nervous, suddenly feeling exposed, and begin to look for the little clothes you wore when you led him inside. 

When Steve returns, he finds you pulling your panties back on near the door. Your bra already pulled back into place.

“Running off?” He laughs and reaches down for his boxers near the couch. You spin around to face him with a nervous smile.

“I just thought you’d want to,” you pause and wave your hands around, unsure of yourself, “y’know?” 

He can’t help the chuckle that escapes his lips as he pulls his boxers into place and approaches you, his hands wrapping around your waist.

“Making me feel a little cheap, honey,” he teases and kisses your cheek, holding your face between his hands. Surprising you with how tender he was being.

“I’m sorry,” you whisper, and he catches the way your brows furrow. 

“What is it?” He asks you softly, studying your face.

“I just didn’t know if you meant what you said and thought I’d spare you the awkward conversation,” you sigh deeply and meet his gaze.

He doesn’t speak but presses a kiss to your lips, softer and slower. Sweeter. You follow the path his lips create, sighing at the feel of them.

Steve pulls away and smiles at you, his hooded gaze dancing between your tired one.

“I mean everything I said,” he states and rubs a thumb over your cheekbone.

You nod, trying to hide the wide grin that threatens to overtake your face.

“Next time?” You repeat and rolls his eyes, affectionately.

“Next time, I’m taking you on a date,” he promises and leads you back to the couch. He pulls you on top of him, rubbing circles against your arm.

“Oh, a date with King Steve?” you tease and poke him. Just like before. 

“Shut up,” he responds, his voice thick with fatigue and something that sounds like affection. 

He pulls you closer, tucking you between his arm and his chest. His head pressed to the top of yours and the sound of his soft snores lulls you to sleep. 

[connorthemaoist]

We must not depict socialism as if socialists will bring it to us on a plate all nicely dressed. That will never happen. Not a single problem of the class struggle has ever been solved in history except by violence. When violence is exercised by the working people, by the mass of exploited against the exploiters—then we are for it! And we are not in the least disturbed by the howls of those people who consciously or unconsciously side with the bourgeoisie, or who are so frightened by them, so oppressed by their rule, that they have been flung into consternation at the sight of this unprecedentedly acute class struggle, have burst into tears, forgotten all their premises and demand that we perform the impossible, that we socialists achieve complete victory without fighting against the exploiters and without suppressing their resistance. -V. I. Lenin, 1918

[lovebugism]

hi hello "love you on purpose" absolutely devasted me with it's cuteness and i cannot wait for part two!!!! 💗

✶ ┄ LOVE YOU, ON PURPOSE (ii)

part one | part two

summary: steve can't seem to stay away from the local freaks. he's more surprised to find himself falling for one of them. you have trouble believing that someone like him could want you in the first place. he wants to prove to you that he's not king steve anymore. (18k)

pairing: steve harrington / eddie's bff!reader

tags: strangers to friends to lovers, mutual pining, idiots in love, slight angst, hurt to comfort (sorta), fem!reader TW smut 18+, lots of intimacy and affection and awkwardness, p in v sex, talks of insecurities, reader has an allison reynolds-esque transformation but with a better ending (outfit inspo x, x), probable typos

a/n: welp. here it is. the final part of this 30k+ word fic. it was very fun and very painful to write and i'm very glad it's finally done and out in the world! thanks for all the love on the first part btw reading all the feedback has easily been my favorite part of writing this <3 with that being said, get comfy, get a snack, and enjoy! xoxo

˗ˋˏ ♡ ˎˊ˗

Falling over you is the news of the day.

If yearning had a shape, you’re pretty sure it’d look an awful lot like you. 

The clumsiest of humans, fresh into her adulthood but still feeling like a child most days. Soaking wet, born yesterday. A caterpillar weaving her cocoon and trying to figure out where she fits in the world. The girl who decides she belongs right next to this big, boisterous, multi-colored butterfly she couldn’t stand a year or more ago.

And Steve Harrington, he was… Well, he was the kind of poem people spend their entire lives trying to write. 

He was the perfect mixture of beauty and warmth, of mystery and obscurity — the line where the pink of a sunset meets the purple of a starry night. He was all of this rolled up into a twenty-something-year-old boy. A fumbling butterfly that’s getting used to his new wings.

Maybe if you were talented enough, you could write the thing yourself. There’s something powerful in knowing that you could compose some dainty requiem so much bigger than yourself. A beautiful thing that would stand the test of time because there would never be anything else like it. 

It wouldn’t be because of you, though. You passed Ms. O’Donnell’s English class by the skin of your teeth, so your writing leaves much to be desired. It would be your muse that would enamor the masses come the next several centuries, because there will never, ever be another Steve Harrington.

At the very core of this poem would read a universal truth: I have fallen in love with his enigmatic being, and now I’m dealing with the consequences.

Well, you’re trying to deal with them, at least. You’re not having a very easy go at it.

Most of the time, you feel like a thousand bricks have piled on top of you. The jagged edges scrape up your arms and press varying shades of purple into your skin. They crush you underneath their weight, but you don’t try too hard to climb out from under them. You couldn’t even if you wanted to.

You feel a little stuck underneath all the feelings you have for Steve. 

You’re not quite sure what to do with them all. They’re too heavy to lift; there’s too much of them to crawl out. It all leaves you feeling a bit trapped. 

It’s a good kind of trapped, though. 

Once the hurt passes, the weight starts to feel like you’re being swaddled in a blanket. Or a cocoon. 

As scared as it makes you, as overwhelmed as you feel, you don’t want this puppy-like adoration to end.

But sometimes, the scrapes sting more than they usually do. The scabs split and start to weep. The faded bruises turn purple again, then to blue and black, and they ache all over. They remind you that girls like you don’t end up with guys like Steve, and the harsh realization turns the comforting weight of being in love into feeling like you’re being buried alive.

Steve is a pretty boy. He’s a rich, prettyboy who wears vintage jeans and drives a new Beemer and has never wanted for anything in his life.

And you’re… whatever the total opposite of that is.

You wear whatever’s cheapest at the thrift store or what Eddie lets you steal from his closet. You drive a rust bucket that belonged to your dad until he lost his license, so the thing practically rotted in the backyard until you got yours. And all you’ve ever done is want for things because you’ve never had anything.

And the one thing you want the most is something you’ve never been able to admit to anyone. Not even Eddie. Not even yourself. 

Screw new clothes or a car fresh off the lot. You don’t want popularity — you don’t even want money (though it certainly wouldn’t hurt). You want so desperately to be loved that it makes your bones ache.

All you want is someone to hold your wrists and kiss your palms, to cradle you when the thunder is too loud and the cracks of lightning make you shake, to be a hiding place where you can keep every secret and be certain it stays safe.

You want someone to smile at you the way Steve smiles at you. You want to feel held the way he makes you feel held — without ever touching you. You want to feel wanted the way he makes you feel wanted.

You want Steve. 

And you’re not sure how long silly love songs will substitute your yearning.

“What do you think about Steve?” you ask Eddie out of the blue.

He was in the middle of a rant about his latest campaign, but you hadn’t heard a single word of it if you’re honest. The butterflies in your stomach were too loud.

The boy sits across the room at his desk, back hunched, while he scribbles ideas into his tattered Dungeons and Dragons composition journal. You’re sprawled out in the middle of his bed like you have been for the past hour, making constellations of Steve’s face from the marks on his ceiling.

“I think he’s an asshole,” Eddie answers without missing a beat.

It makes you roll your eyes. You shouldn’t have expected anything less out of him, really. You toy with the frayed hem of your crop top and rephrase. “Okay, but do you think he likes me?”

“I know he likes you,” he scoffs. “That’s the problem.”

You smile widely to yourself, then purse your lips to the side to keep it hidden. There’s no one looking to see you grinning like an idiot, but it doesn’t make you feel any less like one.

“He wants to take me on a date tonight,” you confess out loud for the first time.

It wasn’t like you to keep something like that from Eddie. Or anything. At all. But you found yourself hiding it like some kind of dark secret. A distant part of you was terrified that it was all in your head, but it’s been three days since Steve asked you now. Which means you’ve spent three days pinching yourself.

You haven’t woken up yet.

“Like, a date date,” you clarify and rise on your elbows to study the boy across the room. 

You feel the need to explain yourself because movie nights and rides around town and hanging out in the break room after closing don’t feel nearly as serious as Steve wining and dining you. It feels much more official now, as though the line between liking someone and like-liking them has been drawn.

“And I’ve never been on a date date before—”

“What about the one time you went out with, uh…” Eddie trails off as he aggressively erases something on his paper. He stills and squints over his shoulder at you. “What was his name? Matt? Marcus?”

“Mason,” you correct and try not to shudder at the memory. “And I left him at the restaurant because he asked me how big my boobs were within the first ten minutes, so he doesn’t count.”

A grin pulls at the boy’s face. He chuckles to himself. “Oh, yeah.”

“And I know I shouldn’t be so nervous about it ‘cause it’s just a dumb date, like… We’ve been alone together a billion times now, you know? It’s just…” you ramble in one breath, then trail off with a huff. You flop back onto the mattress rather dramatically. “Steve Harrington doesn’t date girls like me. He dates girls like Nancy Wheeler. And, as far as I’m concerned, they were a matching made in fucking heaven— I mean, I didn’t know them back then or anything—”

“Obviously,” Eddie murmurs. “That was a train wreck.”

“—But they looked fucking perfect together, Eds!”

The image of them walking the hallways of Hawkins High isn’t hard to picture. You can still see Nancy in her pretty pleated skirt and pink manicured nails and Steve with his stupid hair and brand new Ray-Bans. They owned the school like their parents owned Hawkins — it was practically kismet. 

You try to picture him and you together, and it doesn’t come as effortlessly. 

It’s like trying to wedge pieces from opposites puzzles together; it just doesn’t work. 

And it’s different from anyone Steve’s ever dated. It’s different from anyone you’ve ever dated. People look at him and his pretty girlfriend and gush, “oh, wow, they look good together.” People look at you and a guy with smudged eyeliner and heeled boots and whisper in disgust, “oh god, they deserve each other.”

You won’t get any of the kindness that Steve is used to, only stares from strangers as they try hopelessly to figure out whether or not you’re dating — because surely, he wouldn’t stoop low enough to date someone like you.

“And I don’t wanna…” you waver, trying and failing to put your fears into words. “I don’t know, I guess I’m just scared.”

Eddie shakes his head to himself. “You don’t need to be scared, okay?” he mumbles, his attention still turned down to his notebook.

“Oh, thanks, Eds. I’m cured,” you monotone.

“I just mean that—” he cuts himself off with a deep sigh and swivels in his chair to face you completely. “Steve’s a douchebag, alright? But he’s a good douchebag.”

Your brows furrow. “…What?”

“He used to be an asshole and everything, but… I don’t know, I guess he turned out to be a pretty good guy— and if you tell him I told you that, I will kill you,” Eddie explains in one breath. The half-hearted threat spills from his mouth,and he goes suddenly soft. “He’s not gonna hurt you, okay? I promise. I mean, the guy’s practically a fucking teddy bear.”

A smile pulls slow at your lips. 

It’s the nicest thing you’ve ever heard him say about Steve, despite having been friends with him for nearly a year now. The foreign kindness comforts you well enough. If Eddie didn’t think Steve was every bit the good douchebag he says he is, there’s no way he’d let you go anywhere near him.

“Yeah?” you mutter.

“Yeah,” he echoes with a huff, obviously upset about having to admit such a truth. Then he shrugs. “And if he does hurt you, I’ll beat him up. Which, with his track record, I’m guessing it wouldn’t be too difficult.”

A laugh tumbles from your mouth. “Thanks for looking out, Eds.”

He only grumbles in response.

And even though he complains the entire time, he drops you back off at your place and helps you agonize over what to wear. He sits on your bathroom counter to keep you company while you shower, then holds your makeup bag in his lap while you get ready. He only comments once about how differently you’re doing it.

Then the boy lounges on your bed, legs crossed and back propped on the headboard while you rifle through your closet. In true Eddie Munson fashion, he’s got something to say about everything you pick out.

Your white sweater is too tight, he tells you, and the fuzzy texture feels too weird. The plaid skirt you pull from the depths of your closet is too “christmas-y” and “totally not your color.” He tells you he likes your boots better as he helps you with the finicky buckle of your Mary Janes, then snaps the band of your knee-highs when he stands again.

Eddie tells you all of this because it’s easier to tease you than to say what he really thinks — that it feels like you’re in high school again and trying out styles that don’t suit you.

He loved you the way you were, in black and leather and silver chains and fishnets, because he knew that’s what you felt good in. You found your identity in your unconventional style and you sparkled in it.

And you were still pretty like this, dressed in brighter colors and looking like the girls that used to bully you in high school, but it’s so obviously not you. More than anything, it irks him that you’re doing all of this for Steve ‘The Hair’ Harrington.

But Eddie knows that you’re nervous — he can tell by the way you’re talking a thousand miles a minute and checking your appearance in the mirror every couple seconds like something might’ve changed. He also knows that you’re still skeptical about this whole thing. Because you have no idea that Steve looks at you like the whole world could crumble around him, and he wouldn’t even blink.

You don’t know that you have nothing to worry about.

So Eddie figures he’ll wait to make fun of you. Save all his teasing remarks for when you’re gushing about the date the next day.

But you’re already aware of all this — how different you look. You hardly recognize yourself when you look in the mirror. You’ve traded in your shades of black for something brighter. Your blowsy hair is clipped back out of your face. Your makeup is more conventional and modest than you’re used to.

You look less like the freak you usually are and more like a wild thing that’s been tamed.

You feel pretty. 

Or, at the very least, the idea that Steve will think you’re pretty makes you feel pretty.

It makes all the imposter syndrome worth it. 

You stand in front of the full-length mirror and tug the scratchy socks up and over your knee when they start to slip down. You rise once more, giving yourself another once over, then nod in approval — pleased with the costume you’ve put on.

A fleeting through with a mean, green, bleeding heart and a mind of its own scratches bitterly at the confines of your skull.

Eat your heart out, Nancy Wheeler.

˗ˋˏ ♡ ˎˊ˗

The ghost in you, she don't fade.

Steve, riddled with chronic feelings of inadequacy, overcooks the chicken and spritzes too much cologne on himself.

He had always been the kind of boy that loved things a little harder than he should’ve. 

Ask any plant he’s ever owned that he accidentally killed with every leaf he overwatered, frightened that anything less would be neglectful. He was always so scared of them dying that he suffocated them until they wilted anyway.

He thought he might’ve grown out of all that until he realized he did the same thing with Nancy. 

He squeezed her too tight and she squirmed at his smothering, called him bullshit and pushed him away so she could breathe again, then stomped on his heart until she was certain it stopped beating for her.

And therein lies the state of limbo Steve Harrington has lived in all his life — between loving something too much and not enough. He hasn’t yet found that balance that stops plants from dying and people from running away.

He isn’t quite sure how to be anything other than the man he is now. 

His conscious clings to your every move. He thinks about when he’s awake, and when he isn’t, he hopes he’ll be lucky enough to dream about you. He bothers you at work all day, then asks if you want to go for a ride when you’re off because he hates being away from you. The nights get too cold when you stray too far. And even though he’s never been much of a chef, he offers to cook for you because he wants to show you he cares enough to try.

Steve’s the kind of guy that overcooks his chicken because he’s terrified that you’ll get sick if it’s not done enough. He’s the kind of guy that douses himself in cologne, then breaks the bottle because he’s terrified of not smelling good enough. He wants everything to be enough for you. 

Steve Harrington, for once in his life, wants to be enough for somebody. 

But now all he is, is a stupid boy that never learns, who smells like he’s trying to overcompensate for being a terrible, terrible chef. 

When Nancy broke his heart, he wasn’t sure he’d be able to be this person again. Steve was scared he’d become someone he didn’t recognize — someone who didn’t care enough to water plants because, hey, they’re gonna die anyway, right? Because he gave and gave and gave, and had nothing to show for it but a stupid wilting flower.

Steve made a dark room of his broken heart. A boogeyman lived there, too. It made him scared that he’d never be able to love someone like he loved Nancy.

But then you came out of nowhere — this beautiful, loud, and mysterious thing that exudes every color of the rainbow when she laughs, despite her blacker-than-black wardrobe. You smile at him like you’ve never been hurt, like a sun that’s never known the night. It makes him feel like he can be that too.

The two of you seek a similar solace in one another. You fill each other’s voids without effort and without trying, like puzzle pieces or halves of an orange.

Steve met you and he realized that he didn’t get his ability to love from Nancy. He had always been a lover, a boy who could love something deeply, and that didn’t go away when she broke his heart.

And sometimes it was awful. It was painful and frightening more than it was anything else — love. It was doubtful and envious and distant. 

Love makes you selfish and creepy and uncharacteristically overbearing. Love makes you worry about your hair and overcook your chicken and drench yourself in cologne. Love takes a hell of a lot of hope, and that’s what he feels like when he’s with you — hopeful. Like he’s never been hurt before.

A surge of optimism and apprehension hits him like a bolt of purple lightning just behind his ribcage when the doorbell rings. Mostly because he knows you’re waiting on the other side of it. His hands shake when he opens the door, but not because he’s scared. He’s just full of hope and buzzing with its foreign intensity.

Steve finds the rest of his life standing on his front porch, dressed in all the trappings of his past.

You’re smiling wide when you see him, the same whizzing ball of hope that he is now, and clutching a bottle of wine. You’ve traded your usual grocery store alcohol for something bottom shelf from an actual liquor store. The sunshine grin you’re wearing is about the only thing familiar about you now.

With your hair pulled back, brows combed neatly to match the pretty makeup you’ve spotted gingerly on your features, dressed in foreign colors with knee-high socks and kitten heels — you look nothing like yourself. It’s a costume you’ve got on, still so pretty but pretending in some way.

It has Steve startled for a moment, thinking Halloween came a whole six months earlier and he never got the memo. Then he realizes you must’ve gotten all dressed up for him, even though you never had to. Just like he didn’t have to try and play chef to impress you.

Both of you are just stupid idiots who care too much, making it painfully obvious despite your best efforts to keep it hidden.

“Hi,” you grin sheepishly through a foreign, pale pink, and glossy mouth.

Steve’s too busy gaping at you to respond in a timely fashion.

The wind billows through your hair and sends strands of it flying in your face. And even though he can’t remember a time when you’ve ever worried about the wild halo on your head, you’re quick to tuck them back into place again. 

With most of it pulled back and combed with obvious intent, your face is left unhidden. Your neck and shoulders and collarbones are too. And you’ve got on this tight sweater and pretty skirt and tall socks that make your legs look longer. All of your usually concealed features are heightened. 

The dainty swipes of mascara, eyeshadow, and blush only accentuate them further, though your spots are attentively covered with foundation that isn’t exactly your shade. It’s a bit lighter than your skin tone, like you’d gotten it some time ago when you were still a bit paler.

You look less like the loud, plucky girl he’s come to know and someone more timid, delicate, and polished.

You’re so pretty he damn near forgets how to speak. His tongue swells and every word he could use loses meaning at the sight of you. But it isn’t you, and that only confounds him further.

It’s like you’ve covered yourself in body paint. The real version of you is hidden somewhere underneath it all, glimmering somehow more golden than the flaxen you’re playing pretend in.

When Steve realizes he hasn’t yet answered you, it feels like it’s been ten minutes or more. In reality, no longer than five seconds have gone by.

“Hey,” he greets finally, in an exhale that gets caught in his throat halfway through. He clears it and smiles shakily. “Hi.”

He steps to the side of the doorway and ushers you inside. He wipes his sweaty palms on his slacks when he thinks you aren’t looking, but you catch him in the act when you turn to face him again. Your grin widens and you trap it between your teeth.

“Smells good in here,” you compliment, walking slowly backward with your hands clasped behind your back.

“Thanks,” he accepts your flattery with an awkward hand on his neck. “Yeah, uh— I kinda burnt the chicken a little bit, but everything else should be good. At least, I hope it’s good. It’s kinda hard to mess up a salad, right?”

He laughs under his breath, then starts to ramble without realizing it.

“I’m not the best cook, as it turns out. I mean, I thought I could at least fake it, you know? Fake it ’til you make it, or whatever that bullshit saying is — but there is no faking the tornado I just had in the kitchen. I don’t think I’ve made a bigger mess in my life. But, uh, yeah… And don’t worry! I didn’t put tomatoes in the pasta. Or the salad. Or the sauce. I know you don’t think them, so…”

You’re in the middle of beaming and trying very hard not to laugh when he hits you with that one. 

Steve, like you, is having a very hard time shutting up just now. He’s in the same web of nervousness that you’re spun up in too. He’s all tangled and trying to weave words that make sense, though everything things his mouth in half-thoughts.

But then he says something so strangely profound out of nowhere, and it makes your pounding heart stop without warning. He’s just talking about fucking tomatoes, but you understand that — in some weird, roundabout way — that it’s much deeper than that.

You’d told him the mundane little detail in passing some time ago. At the diner, when you picked the fruit from your burger with a grimace on your face. You said it tasted like battery acid and tainted everything it touched. He took it back to the counter when you weren’t brave enough to. 

“Here you go, Punchy. Your battery-acid-free burger,” he’d joked when he set the fresh plate in front of you.

And he remembered all that. He tucked that tiny piece of information about you into the very back of his mind so that he could use it to make you happy later on.

That’s adoration at its core, you figure. Somewhere in all those minuscule remember-ings.

“You remembered that?” you wonder aloud in a bemused sort of whisper.

Steve has already moved on. He’s rambling about the broken spout of his cologne bottle but stops the second he realizes he’s doing it.

Of course, I did, scoffs the little voice in his head. I’m sorta obsessed with you, as it turns out.

He doesn’t tell you that, though, for reasons he finds are quite obvious — the most significant of which would be running you off entirely. So instead, he just shrugs and tries to be cool, despite having already established how terribly uncool he is.

“Yeah. I remember everything.”

When the two of you settle at the dining table, Steve realizes he’s eaten most of his dinners alone until now.

His parents stopped caring sometime around middle school. His dad got too busy with work, started staying after-hours to catch up on paperwork or screw his secretary. And his mom didn’t care because she was too busy getting wine-drunk on the phone with whatever book club friend that was just as miserable as she was. 

Steve would fork at his cold pad thai while he listened to his mother’s muffled rant about who went where and who wore a hat.

He couldn’t find it in himself to eat in his room. The empty dinner table was the only sort of stable routine he had in the swirling uncertainty of being a teenage boy.

But now he’s got you. 

He hopes he never stops having you. He doesn’t want to go back to being alone like that again, not after he’s found someone that can fill an entire room with their laugh.

The cackle you let out at Steve’s terrible, terrible cheese pun — “yeah, I guess you could say I cooked this all on my provol-own — echoes through the dining room. Even though he knows you’re laughing at him and not exactly with him, he figures it’s a small price to pay to keep hearing such a heavenly sound.

It reminds him of the real you, the one underneath all the foreign regalia. 

The rays of your usual sunshine peek from the clouds you hide behind. You’re way too bright to stay hidden.

Steve can tell you’re watching his every move. You eye him from across the table with the intent of doing everything he’s doing, lest you might do something wrong. He puts his napkin in his lap, so you put your napkin your lap. He cuts his chicken with his fork and knife, so you cut your chicken with a fork and knife — though you quickly realize you’re not quite as dexterous as he is for all that.

It’s endearing. The kind of cute that makes his heart hurt just a little bit. He hides his smile and happily abandons the conventional things he’d been taught to do. He eats with his fingers and then licks the pads of them, grinning when you giggle and do the same. 

It’s not something he’s used to — grabbing pieces of cut chicken with bare fingers and slurping noodles without having cut them first — especially not when he’s trying to impress a girl. But he can tell the lack of etiquette makes you more comfortable, and that’s all he really cares about.

He offers you another serving once you’ve finished your first. You decline politely with the mutters of “oh, no, I couldn’t,” but he’s seen your appetite. You could down five burgers at the diner and not break a sweat if you’re feeling hungry enough.

It’s one of those little heart-wrenchingly adorable things you do that both shock and enamor him. But, for a reason he can’t name, you’ve decided that part of yourself was too deplorable to add to your costume.

Steve only scoffs at you in response. He scoops more chicken and pasta onto your scrapped-clean plate despite your refusal.

You’re grateful he doesn’t let you get away with your stubbornness. Truth be told, you were still sort of starving.

He’s just grateful you don’t think his mediocre cooking skills total a complete dealbreaker.

Steve tries to fight you when you offer to help him clean up the kitchen. He tells you to make yourself at home on the couch while he tidies up, ushers you to pour yourself a glass of wine and pick out a record while you wait for him. 

But you have issues with authority and take little fondness in being told what to do. So, in true Punchy fashion, you do the exact opposite of what he tells you to do.

You roll up the sleeves of your pretty sweater and stand next to him at the deeply set sink in his kitchen island. “You wash, I’ll dry?” you offer.

He doesn’t argue, only nods. 

He’ll let you take the blame for not wanting to be too far away from him. It’s easier than admitting his own guilt in the matter. ‘Cause sometimes his heart breaks when he blinks and he has to miss you for the faintest fraction of a second. 

“You seriously don’t have to, you know—”

“Stop saying that,” you scold and snatch the dripping plate from his hands. You swipe a towel over the ceramic with a meticulous ease. “I actually like doing dishes, okay? I do them at all time. I’m practically a professional at this point.”

“Yeah?” Steve laughs, shooting you a grin as he dunks his hand into the warm, sudsy water.

You love that stupid smile so much you’ve started to hate it. 

It’s soft and so sincere, just wide enough to reveal the dimple in his left cheek. The gentle grin drips with so much honey you can practically taste it. It’s so tender it makes you feel unworthy, so full of love it fills you with a distant rage that he might’ve looked at someone else with it.

You have to duck away from his gaze before he can catch you blushing. 

“Yeah. That’s, like, my one chore when I’m over at Eddie’s,” you respond with a shrug. “Because, you know, Wayne’s always working and Eddie’s… Eddie, and he really shouldn’t be trusted with anything remotely sharp or breakable, so…”

“What about when you’re home?” he wonders, simply for the sake of keeping the conversation going, but noting how the mention of home makes you tense.

“Uh, yeah. I mean, considering every time I go back, it looks like there’s been a tornado, doing dishes is just one part of the shit pile that I need to clean up, you know? My parents are usually on some bender — or still passed out from said bender — to take care of the place while I’m gone.”

Steve sees how distracted you’ve gotten as you keep wiping down a bone-dry plate.

“But, uh, anyway. Point is, I think I’m destined to have a career as a professional dishwasher.”

When your gaze flits back to Steve’s, he forces a smile at you.

He’s noticed how you always seem to talk about your best friend and his uncle without ever mentioning your parents. He understands now that it’s because they weren’t your family, not like Eddie and Wayne were. The small Munson clan was your home, it seems, and he fights to steer you back that way.

“So, you stay with them most of the time, then?” he redirects innocently as he hands you a freshly washed wine glass.

“Yeah. I think I’m pretty much Eddie’s personal caretaker these days.”

“Wow,” he marvels playfully, wide-eyed and grinning. “On top of being a professional dishwasher? You’re really doin’ it all, aren’t ya, Punchy?”

“Mm-hmm. I am a real jack of all trades, Harrington,” you joke back with a commendable finesse and flash a teasing smile up at him. The pastel-colored lipstick has mostly disappeared from your mouth now. You look more like yourself.

“And Eddie— he’s got this crazy scar on his hand from when he was a kid, and he was helping Wayne wash the dishes. He, like, blindly reached into the water or something and stabbed himself. Knife went straight through his palm.”

Steve winces.

“Yep. Now he says he’s too traumatized to help do the chores,” you reminisce with a distant laugh and set the glass upside down on the drying rack. “I don’t mind, though. I like doing them on my own. Gives me time to think, you know?”

“I’m standing right here,” the boy beside you scoffs, feigning offense.

“You can be the exception, Stevie,” you assure with a grin.

Maybe it’s the look you give him. Maybe it’s the nickname he used to hate, but now makes his heart skip a beat or two — or three. Maybe it’s all those things and the way your fingers brush his wrist when you move to take the pot from his hands. Either way, something shifts and he forgets how to use his fine motor skills.

The pan slips from his fumbling hands and yours and plops back into the water. The metal bangs loudly when it hits the bottom of the sink. Both of you jump back to avoid the splash.

“Shit. Sorry,” he apologizes, eyes scanning your form to make sure he didn’t make a total mess of you.

“It’s okay,” you promise with a gentle laugh and swipe the towel in your hand over your sweater to remove the droplets clinging there.

Steve scrunches his nose. “I feel like I might’ve just ruined my co-dishwashing privileges.”

“Just a little,” you quip.

You give him no warning before bringing the waffle-patterned nettle up to his cheek to dry him off, too. He flinches at the suddenness of the action but melts into your touch without thinking twice.

“You know, you have a pretty cool scar, too,” you tell him, mostly out of the blue, while you dab at the stubble on his jaw.

Steve’s gotten used to all your abrupt mannerisms and the way you flip-flop between topics with an expertise only you seem to possess. He likes that about you, though. There’s never a quiet or still moment when he’s with you.

“Yeah?” he hums back.

You nod and move down to his neck. “I felt it a while ago, during our Night of the Living Dead marathon—” of which Steve has no recollection. He can’t remember a damn thing from those movies, but can still feel the tingle of your mouth against his own. 

“—On the back of your head. Felt pretty gnarly.”

You switch the towel to your other hand and use your free one to swipe through his hair. Your fingers muss at his hour or more of hard work, but your touch is a far better reward than nearly quaffed hair. You weave through the chocolate strands until you reach a marred, barren line.

“Right… there.”

Steve, still buzzing with your touch, manages a breathy chuckle. “Uh, yeah. It’s a… It’s a really long, really stupid story.”

“Wanna give me the short version?”

The grin you give him is impossible to say no to.

“I’m a super klutz,” he summarizes with a shrug and a sloppy grin. 

He mourns the loss of your touch when your hand slips from his hair. “Well, now I have to hear the story.”

“It’s dumb. Like, seriously—”

“I like dumb,” you assure quickly to stop whatever self-loathing he was about to spew. “I’m best friends with Eddie Munson. I think I can take it.”

“Touché,” he chuckles under his breath. The remaining dishes are left forgotten in the depths of the soapy water when he turns his back to him. He leans his weight on the countertop and grips the edges of it in his hands. “You see, I did this really smart thing when I was a baby where I’d, you know, crawl backwards—”

“Crawl backwards?” you repeat with an incredulous laugh.

“Yeah. I’d push with my hands — beep, beep, beep,” he flattens his palms and presses them against thin air to demonstrate it for you. “Always in reverse. I mean, it makes sense, right? You gotta push to move.”

“Sure,” you shrug. A laugh tumbles from your mouth shortly after.

“Did that until I reversed my way down a flight of stairs and hit my head pretty damn good,” he concludes with a wince. It’s like he can still feel the pain sometimes.

“Wow,” you marvel. “So, like… When people ask if you were dropped on your head as a kid, the answer would be—”

“Yep…” he sighs, then laughs when it makes you laugh. He looks over at you with sparkling cinnamon eyes. “It explains a lot, doesn’t it? I think, like, right out of the gate, I’m super confident, you know? But I’m also a total idiot, which is just a brutal combination.”

“I have noticed that, actually,” you confess with a gentle sort of smile.

“Yeah?” he winces.

“Yeah. You do this thing sometimes where you get all… suave and cool,” you tell him, squinting and lowering your voice a few octaves for effect. “Like you’re trying to be King Steve all over again. And then you, like, trip over a stack of DVDs or something because the universe is trying to humble you.”

“That is a… really good way of putting it, actually,” Steve confesses with a laugh.

“I think it’s sweet.”

“Well, the good thing is, I get a big enough thump on my head, I can change, you know? I can learn. So, I guess I’m pretty glad somebody bumped my head before we met. ‘Cause things probably would’ve turned out… a whole lot differently.”

Steve watches your face contort from understanding to confusion. Your manicured brows pinch together and your doe eyes squint over at him. He watches you break down his words in real time. 

“Somebody…” you murmur under your breath. “You mean… Are you talking about Nancy?”

“Yeah, uh… She gave me a— a pretty big thump, you know? Worse than the one I got falling down those stupid stairs,” he tells you with a reminiscent smile. 

It makes you feel like a total idiot, standing in front of him like this — a carbon copy of the girl that tore his heart to shreds.

“I deserved it, though. I mean, you knew me back then, I was a… a total asshole. And sometimes, I think I still would be if she didn’t, you know… if she didn’t… totally rip my fucking heart out,” he concludes with a sad sort of laugh. “Now I’m kinda grateful she did. As bad as it hurt — as angry as it made me — I think, in a lotta ways, it made me better.”

“Better?” you echo quietly.

“Yeah… If she didn’t break up with me when she did — if I didn’t get that dumb thump on my head — I wouldn’t have changed. I wouldn’t be… here right now. With you,” he confesses, revealing more of himself than he ever has before, to a girl he wouldn’t have been caught dead with a couple of years ago.

He looks beside him at this costumed girl — at you — and he sees someone he probably would’ve given the time of day back in high school. The lack of dark, baggy clothing makes you look approachable — like you won’t actually bite him for coming near you like the rumors always said.

And Steve’s self-aware enough to know he probably would’ve treated you like shit back then. He would’ve fucked you just to fuck you, then only talk to you when he needed you to do his homework for him. And you wouldn’t have been the first girl he did that to either, and the thought makes him want to puke.

He’s glad he’s found you when he did. He’s even happier you met him where he was at, in that awkward in-between stage of growing up where you’re trying to be someone different while still finding comfort in staying the same. You never complained even once when he reverted back to his old ways.

And even though you’re standing right next to him, your chest nearly brushing his arm with every heavy breath you take, he finds himself missing you. 

You’re not you — not without the fun outfits and the crazy hair and all your rings that clink together every time you move. He misses how the metal felt against his skin and the way they’d get caught in his hair.

You’re still beautiful like this, but it’s a strange type of beauty. One that both of you know doesn’t belong to you. You fit into it like baggy jeans or a too tight shirt. You’ve squeezed yourself into a ball to try to fit into a world far too small for you, because you thought that’s what Steve wanted.

“I’d still be that King Steve douchebag… Partying every night, getting drunk out of my mind, never settling down like I…” The words get trapped in his throat. He clears it to force them out. “Like I always wanted to, you know?”

“Right,” you murmur, voice not strong enough to be any louder than that.

“So, yeah, I don’t know. I guess, in some weird, roundabout way, I’m just to tell you that I’m not that guy anymore. King Steve,” he admits and presses his hip into the counter to face you fully.

When you gather the strength to look up at him, you find his gaze already dripping with honey and staring down at you. He’s all soft and mushy and twinkling with the adoration he’s got for you. And when he smiles, it’s so terribly sincere and coated with a distant sadness that’s been playing on the edge of his voice this whole time.

“And I know you might still see me as that guy. I don’t blame you. Honestly, I don’t really deserve to be looked at any differently, not after how I acted towards you—”

“Steve,” you breathe out in a tender sigh. “It’s okay—”

He shakes his head to himself. His eyes squeeze shut when his chin falls to his chest.

“It’s not. It’s… It’s really not. I just—” he inhales sharply, chest deflating on the exhale when his gaze turns back to you. He looks sterner now, but still so tender. “I just want you to know that I’ve changed, okay? I am changing. And I don’t want you to think I’m the kinda guy you have to change yourself for.”

When the weight of his words finally hits you, it feels a bit like being punched in the stomach.

It knocks all the wind out of you and makes it hard to think about anything other than the sudden loss of breath. Like a kid who’s fallen off the monkey bars and flat onto their back, you can’t do anything but writhe through the ache and hope you’ll be back to normal soon.

You got dressed that evening thinking you were the master of deception. You perfected your subterfuge and awaited Steve’s inevitable swooning because you looked like all the other girls he’d fallen in love with. 

But he sees through every inch of your pretending with his secret x-ray powers, and now you’re just a stupid girl standing in front of him, soaking wet with embarrassment.

It’s a little like when he and Tommy and all his basketball goons would make fun of you. They’d talk about you like you weren’t there while they tossed tiny crumbled up pieces of paper into your hair so they could watch you struggle to get them out. But, at the same time, it’s not like that at all. Because now he’s apologizing, and telling you that he likes you, and that you never had to change a single damn thing for him at all.

You’re equally as self-conscious, though, and feeling like a total idiot for thinking you could even pretend to be halfway normal.

“Oh…” is the only thing that leaves your mouth in that moment. Your mind is still going a million miles a minute. You want to blurt out an apology and an explanation all at once, while simultaneously turning into a puddle at his feet and disappearing entirely.

But rather than break down, you stay standing. Too stuck in your head to feel all there.

Steve seems to notice your trepidation almost immediately. His eyes widen and his brows raise and his pretty mouth falls open to let all of his reassurances spill out. 

“And it’s not that I don’t think you’re pretty! You’re— You’re perfect like this too, but I just…” he inhales and takes the tiniest step closer to you, putting an unsure hand on your waist. “I like you the way you were before. And this isn’t… This isn’t you.”

You blink back stinging tears and turn your gaze to where you toe your Mary Jane’s into the kitchen tile. You go to twist your rings like you always did when you were nervous before realizing you’d left them all at home.

“I just wanted to be like the girls you like,” you confess quietly.

“You are like the girls I like,” Steve corrects with a gentle laugh. “‘Cause I like you.”

Your eyes are all glassy when they flit back up to his. 

Even though you don’t look quite like yourself, the way you look at him hasn’t changed. You still gaze at him like you can see right through the nice hair and the dumb smirks and the stupid persona he puts on when he doesn’t feel good enough the way he is. You look at him like you’re in love with the boy he tries like hell to keep hidden.

The exact same way he looks at you.

“I think I just got a little spooked. Girls like me aren’t supposed to end up with guys like you.”

“I stopped believing in that shit a long time ago,” he admits with the shake of his head. “The whole soulmates-love-at-first-sight thing, it’s all… bullshit. If I’m gonna love someone, I’m gonna do it on purpose.”

Steve watches the lingering sadness in your eyes ebb to something sunnier. Your gaze sparkles and suddenly you’re beaming at him, not bothering to conceal the effect his words have on you. You don’t think you could even if you wanted to.

“I like that,” you murmur in approval, then more loudly proclaim: “Screw soulmates! Let’s start loving people on purpose!”

The two of you laugh about this promise you’ve just made to each other without really saying it to each other. It sort of goes unsaid — if I’m gonna love you, I’m gonna do it on purpose and let’s love each other on purpose. That’s what you mean, and neither of you has to say it out loud because you get it. 

It’s that exact realization that makes Steve’s heart flutter something fierce. Suddenly, the urge to touch you becomes too great to bear. He wants to feel you like he did on the couch of his theater room, when a film he could barely recall crackled in the background because the feel of you was too loud for him to hear anything else.

He needs you like that again, on him and all over him. The ache is a palpable one.

The boy squeezes your waist again, as though to remind you he was still there. Or, perhaps, to remind himself that you were still there —the real thing and not something his brain conjured up.

“It’s not totally insane how bad I want to kiss you right now, is it?” he wonders quietly to you. The low, sultry nature of his voice is not at all forced like it usually is when he’s trying most desperately to flirt with you. His words are just naturally weighed down by his desire for you.

You shake your head in a silent promise, then command through a grin, “Kiss me stupid, Harrington.”

Steve doesn’t waste a second.

He’s been anxiously awaiting his chance to touch you all night. He does so now with a vigor that makes you feel all of that anticipation. With one hand on your waist and the other cupping your jaw, you can feel his buzzing skin as it presses against your own — like the static of a television screen. His fingers settle between the strands of your hair while his thumb absentmindedly rubs along your cheekbone. 

The softness of his touch makes you hum against his mouth.

His lips are familiar like home — more than, because sometimes you think you’ve never really had one. 

There’s never been a cozy, warm, and tender place where you could rest your tired bones. Eddie’s trailer, maybe, but it wasn’t yours. No matter how often you slept within the four walls of his bedroom, no matter how hard you pretended like you’d lived there all your life, it would never belong to you.

But Steve could. 

Steve could be yours.

And you wouldn’t even have to pretend either. It would be for real this time.

His mouth was welcoming and pleasant and gentle, far more than you’ve ever gotten out of four walls and a roof. The plush pink of his lips — the cushion of his bottom one you like to dig your teeth into and the rough pad of his tongue that explores your mouth like undiscovered territory — is perhaps the softest thing you’ve ever known.

Even when he kisses you harder and guides you until your back is pressed against the edge of the countertop, it’s still so, so tender.

Steve’s hands migrate to your hips. His fingers clutch the fabric of your skirt as he cages you against his weight and the counter, as though out of fear you might slip away.

Your touch mirrors his desperate one. You cling to him with a similar intensity, balling the fabric of his navy blue Henley in one hand while you waltz through the pretty strands of his neatly styled hair with the other. You let him kiss you the way he wants to kiss you, keeping your obedient mouth plaint for him while he opens your mouth wider with his tongue.

His touches turn bruising, and yours go soft like summer rain.

Steve holds desperately onto you, like any moment he could wake up and none of this could be real. He kisses you like he won’t ever get to kiss you again, having no idea that you’ve already started to build a home in him. 

Meanwhile, your fingers tips trail like drops of water down his chest and stomach. They settle at his waist, on the top of his belt, and linger along the leather edge of it. You’re not quite sure what to do next — if you should wait for Steve to say something or if you should go ahead and take the lead.

Your sudden hesitation makes him nervous.

Steve’s lips click wetly as they part from yours. He peers down at you through heavy lids, amber eyes swimming with honeyed desire. His lips are pinker now, and swollen from being kissed so ardently. His brows pinch in concern. “We don’t have to do this if you don’t w—”

You barely let him get the words out before you press your mouth to his again. Your hands twist at the collar of his shirt to bring him back down to you. You stand on the tips of your toes to meet him halfway. 

“I want to,” you mumble, practically slurring from being so drunk on his touch.

“I wanna treat you right—” he tries to tell you. Some of his words are muffled against your mouth because you find yourself totally unable to stop kissing him now. “—Take things slow with you.” 

You smack a final kiss to his lips. When his honey eyes flutter open again, he finds you wearing a mischievous sort of smirk. There’s an accompanying teasing glint in your glazed over eyes.

“You can do all that when you’re inside of me,” you promise lowly, bold in a way neither of you are used to. The brazen nature of your dirty words is foreign but no less exciting.

They make Steve’s head get all swimmy and his cock tightens as it stiffens in his slacks. His spine tingles with his borderline overwhelming desire for you.

“Have mercy…” he murmurs within a heavy breath, more to himself than to you.

˗ˋˏ ♡ ˎˊ˗

And love, is only heaven away...

Steve’s curtains match his wallpaper.

It’s a questionable blue and gray plaid that you doubt he picked out himself. The framed pictures of sports cars only add to the boyish flair of his bedroom. It doesn’t look like him, though. None of it does.

The only real trace of Steve The Hair Harrington is the poster of Christie Brinkley hanging beside his window, diligently placed right next to his bed. It’s a blown-up Sports Illustrated cover — a beautiful, soaking wet woman posing less than effortlessly against a palm tree in all her blonde-haired, blue-eyed, perfected-bodied glory. It’s the most King Steve you’ve ever seen.

All the minute details of his bedroom make you giggle.

“You have great taste, Steve Harrington.”

He grumbles in annoyance at your teasing as he clicks his door shut behind you.

“Well, you can thank my mom for my great taste, okay? She decorated the place when we moved in, like, forever ago. I just haven’t, you know, gotten around to changing it yet.”

“I can tell,” you laugh and turn to him with a smirk. “Really cool bedsheets, by the way. I mean, seriously. This is state-of-the-art design here, Stevie.”

It isn’t until he’s being pelted with your relentless teasing that he remembers he’s got dinosaur-patterned linens spread out on his mattress.

Steve typically likes to alternate bedsheets in between washing them. His plain gray ones would’ve perhaps been more appropriate for times like this, but they were in his hamper along with another set of plaid ones. His dino sheets may be immature, but they’re no less comfortable. It’s not his fault they just happened to fall on the week you were coming over.

“Alright, Punchy—” The boy rolls his eyes and splays two wide hands on your sides, pressing himself into you rather shamelessly. You wonder if the clothed stiffness against your lower stomach is just your imagination. Any other teasing remarks dissipate from the tip of your tongue as your eyes widen.

Steve notices your silence and smiles. “—You wanna keep making fun of me, or do you wanna make out some more?”

“I think we can do both,” you answer with a shrug, resting your hands along his waist. “I’m quite the multitasker, Harrington.”

“Yeah?”

You nod.

“Wanna show me?”

You nod again, smiling wider now.

He smashes his lips into yours again. You meet him halfway. It’s all too easy to fall back into the swings of things — the desperate mouths and longing touches. Maybe because you’re always desperate and longing for him. And, with the way he’s clinging to you now, you figure he must always be those things for you, too.

You relish in all of his little touches, in the duality of them. He cups your jaw so tenderly yet clutches your hip like he’s still trying to discern whether you’re real or not. Then his palms slide around your waist and up your back until he’s all but hugging you. It’s too sweet a gesture for how he’s prying your lips open with his mouth to slip his tongue inside. 

His hands settle, finally, at the very bottom of your sweater. They linger at them hem, not pressuring you to do anything, just waiting for you to make a move. 

You part from him to abide by his unspoken want. Your trembling hands work together to free you from your top. You’re more than grateful to pry the itchy thing off of you.

Steve doesn’t get the chance to admire the bra you wear. He catches a glimpse of frilly lace, but there’s little time to praise your topless form before you’re pulling him into another searing kiss. It’s full of tongue and teeth now, far more hungry that just moments ago. Your fingers slither through his hair and curl in the strands. You keep him firmly locked against you as his lips trail down your neck.

He finds your most sensitive spot in record time — the one just under your jaw, right beside your racing pulse. Your legs nearly give out when his tongue runs over it. A breathy moan exhales from your mouth before you can stop it and you feel him smile against your neck. He doesn’t comment on it, just keeps kissing you there in the hopes that you’ll do it for him again.

You do.

Steve sucks and nips at your delicate skin, and you revel in the feeling of his mouth. Head thrown back, you let him paint your neck in varying shades of red. Some will disappear come morning; others will darken into souvenirs for you to admire for the next few days.

The thought of him marking you drives you nearly as crazy as the feeling of his lips against you. 

You stopped trying to hold back your whines somewhere around ten of them ago. It was easier, you found, for him to kiss you and to let yourself enjoy it than be hyperaware of all the sounds you were or weren’t making. Steve seems to like it when you moan for him, anyway. Every time you do, he kisses you harder, holds you tighter, and hums out his own subtle moans against you.

He digs his teeth into your skin. It makes you whimper. The desperate, high-pitched noise fades into a lower moan when the rough pad of his tongue rushes out to soothe the bite. He moves on to kiss you elsewhere. You shiver when your spit-slicked skin meets the cool air.

You don’t notice that you’ve hitched your leg up his hip until you feel his warm hand on your thigh to hold it up for you. His fingers inch up until the tips of them rest beneath the hem of your skirt.

You don’t bother to hide how much you want him.

He doesn’t bother to hide how badly he needs you close.

“Wanna make you feel good,” he mumbles into your neck, smiling when his words make you whine. “Can I make you feel good?”

You nod when the words get stuck in your throat.

He parts from you for the first time in several minutes. His heavy gaze meets your own. “Can you say it for me?” he asks, not teasing you, just wanting to make sure you want this. Him.

“Want you to…” you start, then swallow when your voice is tighter than expected. You manage the rest through bated breaths. “…to make me feel good.”

Steve kisses you again, a long and thorough stamp on your lips, followed by several tinier pecks. Then his mouth starts its journey down, down, down your body, stopping only to admire your exposed chest. He’s more than pleased to find that what you’re wearing is hardly a bra at all.

It’s a sheer thing with dainty lace detailing. He figures it’s more for decoration than to push up your breasts. There’s no padding at all. Just a pretty tulle number that leaves very little to the imagination.

You watch him intently with a smile, enamored by how enamored he seems to be by a pair of boobs. You never thought yours were much to ogle over, but Steve presses tender, wet kisses to them anyway. He takes the plush between his teeth, sucking on the delicate skin to leave a blossoming bruise there. He only trails further down when he’s satisfied with the mark he’s branded you with.

Steve falls to his knees with a soft thud upon the carpeted floor. The faint sound is much more obvious in the quiet of his bedroom. He looks somehow prettier below you — soft and delicate and sweet like chocolate syrup or marshmallow fluff. But he’s still got this air about him, something stern and domineering, that tells you he’s still got all the power.

He presses a kiss to your thigh, just above the top of your sock, then several more further up. His fingers raise the fabric of your skirt the higher his lips travel. And, strangely, you’re not all that nervous about being half-naked in front of him. It’s hard to be when he’s kissing you like you’re a beautiful thing that deserves to be touched so tenderly.

Steve keeps pushing up your skirt and stills when he reaches the apex of your thigh, right where the top of it meets the joint of your hip.

Your underwear doesn’t match the bra you’re wearing, he finds. It’s orange all over and spotted with bats — the color has faded slightly, like you’d bought them some number of Halloweens ago.

It’s endearing. Everything about you is endearing. Even when you aren’t trying.

“Hold it up for me, yeah?” he asks you with your skirt in his hands.

It shouldn’t surprise him when you do the exact opposite. You step back from him to shove the thing down your legs, then leave it in a pool of forgotten fabric on his bedroom floor when you gravitate towards him all over again. 

His hands rise to your outer thigh and rub soothingly along the warmed skin. You wonder if he can feel the goosebumps pebbling there. The smirk he flashes up at you tells you that he does.

He’s got a twinkle in his eye when he teases you. “Really cute underwear, by the way.”

“I was obviously very prepared for this,” you retort with ease, making fun of yourself just as effortlessly as you can make fun of him.

“I like them,” the boy assures. “I really like them. Very on brand, Punchy.”

“Would you like me better out of them?”

Your arched brow and knowing smirk, kept caged between your teeth, is met with a bemused gaze. Steve’s eyes go wide at your forwardness.

“Uh, yeah— I mean… yeah,” he nods with a breathless chuckle. Then, more sincerely says, “Only if you still want to.”

You scoff at his timidity, though it’s more at yourself than him. “Look at me, Steve,” you answer plainly, motioning to your half-naked form and the damp spot forming in your underwear. “If I didn’t want this, you’d know by now.”

Steve huffs out a laugh, just before pressing a chaste kiss to the black bow of your panties. He noses at the softness of your stomach while his fingers curl around the hem. He tugs them slowly downward, giving you ample time to stop him if you wanted. 

A part of him is still convinced that none of this is real — you, namely. Truth be told, he’s waiting for a smack to the face and a rant about how all of this was just bullshit.

It never comes, though.

Instead, he gets a sheepish grin and a sparkling gaze as you hold onto his shoulder to step out of your underwear. The giggle that spills from your mouth when he tosses them over his shoulder makes him smile. 

Your pussy is as pretty as the rest of you. It’s more manicured than he imagined for a girl as wild as you. There’s a tuft of hair on your pubic bone, cut down and shaved around the edges. It leaves your lips bare and glistening with your accumulating slick.

Steve’s all but salivating at the sight of you.

“You wanna put that mouth to work, Harrington, or do you wanna ogle some m— oh,” you try to tease him, all amused at how he looks like he’s never seen a naked girl before, knowing full well he’s seen plenty. But your taunts evaporate from your tongue when he finally puts his mouth on you. They ebb into a breathy, high-pitched moan.

The tip of his chiseled nose smushes against you while he licks at the rest of your pussy with a practiced tongue. 

It’s more than obvious he’s done this before. Enough to have become a borderline professional at it. He finds your sensitive button within seconds and with minimal effort. Your legs are already buckling, practically turning to jelly, and he’s only just started. 

He latches onto your lips with a swollen pink mouth. His warm, wide hands wrap around the backs of your thighs to keep you steady and anchored against him.

Steve kisses your cunt like he’s making out with you. He opens and closes his mouth in slow, rhythmic motions, rutting his tongue along your glistening skin all the while. He’s sloppy with intention. Every touch is meticulous. He’s trying to figure you out, trying to learn what you like the most and what makes you moan the loudest for him.

Steve’s attentive. He’s ambitious and ardent. It’s like he enjoys kissing you down there, and not like he’s doing you a favor so he can get something in return. He moans against you like it’s every bit as pleasurable for him, as it is for you.

He alternates his efforts while he discovers you like unexplored territory.

You giggled like it tickled you when he stuck his tongue into your cunt the first time, then moaned when his nose nudged your clit. “Your mouth is so good,” you’d praised through bated breaths, but your whines had gotten too quiet for his liking. He opted to give his tongue a break and latch his slick lips to your swelling clit.

You liked it most when he sucked you there. At least, he figures you must, with the way your mouth parts in a silent cry and your hands dart to his hair to push him further into you.

“You like that?” Steve asks you, just to be sure. He pulls enough away so the words are intelligible, but still close for you to feel the vibrations of them against your skin.

“Yes,” you answer in a broken sigh.

Steve barely lets you answer before he’s licking a flat stripe up the length of your pussy. He slows methodically when the tip of his tongue catches your puffy clit, just so he can see your legs tremble. They do, rather intensely so, and he revels in the way your thighs quiver at his temples.

He wishes he’d laid you down before putting his mouth on you. He regrets not getting to spread you open, to part your soft folds with his thumbs, and admire you the way you deserve to be admired. 

But to be under you this way is a reward in itself. To get on his knees for you, to let you grind your hips against his face, it’s heaven. He never wants to stop feeling you this way.

“Please, Steve…” you moan breathlessly. “Please, please, please.”

You plea like it’s a mantra. Your voice grows tighter and tighter the closer you get to your peak. 

Steve’s not entirely what you’re begging for. You’re not either, really. You just know that the pleasure is swelling. The wringing knot in your stomach is close to snapping. The thought alone is borderline overwhelming. You want to run away from the crescendoing feeling and keep it locked against your pussy all at once.

“Steve… Steve, please. I’m— fuck.”

“You can take it,” he promises, speaking the words into your cunt. His lips smack when he pulls away from you, just for a moment to catch his breath. His chest heaves and his tongue darts to graze his bottom lip. “It’s yours, baby. Just take it—”

You’re a goner the second he wraps his lips around your clit again. He suckles there like his life depends on it. Your hips twitch and you tug at his hair when you come, perhaps a bit rougher than you realize. Steve delights in the burn at his scalp. He groans shamelessly into you, a hearty grumble that rolls over every inch of your body.

You make the mistake of looking down at him in the midst of your undoing. You bring your chin down to your chest and open your fluttering eyes to peer down at the boy below you. He’s already looking up at you, you find, with his own bleary gaze. His cinnamon eyes glitter up at you and you melt for him.

Something about the sight of Steve on his knees for you, face snug against your cunt, and gaze lidded with desire makes you keen. Your hips flex, then still against his mouth while you gush for him.

“There you go,” he murmurs against your cunt. “There you go, baby.”

A high moan gets hung in your throat at his praise. It escapes in a delicate cry when your orgasm pummels into you full throttle. You’re whining and terribly sensitive when the buzzing feeling starts to ebb.

Steve laps at your weeping cunt while you writhe. 

He knows to leave your throbbing clit alone now, but seeks to prolong your pleasure in other ways. He gathers the honey you leak from your pulsating hole with an eager tongue and doesn’t relent until you’re twitching away from him. Only when you’re tugging him off by his hair is he satisfied.

Then he goes effortlessly soft again.

He presses little kisses to the burning flesh of your thighs and runs his palms along the backs of them to coax you back to the earth again.

When your cries fade to more contented sighs and your eyes find his again, he smiles sweetly up at you. Too sweetly. He shouldn’t be grinning so tenderly, not when his lips and chin and nose glisten with your slick.

Steve wipes his mouth with the back of his hands as he rises to his full height in front of you.

“Was that… Was that good for you?” he wonders, suddenly sheepish like he wasn’t lapping at your pussy a minute or more ago.

“Are you kidding?” you retort, trying to laugh at him. All that comes out is a fatigued scoff. Your hands twist in the fabric of his shirt and you lean heavily against him when his arms wrap around you again. “I don’t think I’ve ever come that hard in my life.”

That nearly does him in right then.

He leans to press a languid kiss to your mouth. There’s a foreign musk to his tongue now that wasn’t there before. You hum a moan against him when you realize it’s you that you’re tasting.

“Can I suck you off?” you blurt.

Steve freezes. 

There’s hardly a thing he wants more than to feel your warm mouth on his cock. He’s been hard and aching since the second he got you into his bedroom. And that’s exactly why he knows he won’t last.

He usually jerks off before dates for that exact reason. At least, King Steve did because King Steve knew wherever he was going, he was getting laid. He wouldn’t have the reputation he did if he only lasted eight seconds.

He would’ve gotten himself off before you came around, made sure he was able to last as long as you needed him to if he’d expected you to need him at all. But he wasn’t expecting any of this to happen — especially not for you to come against his mouth and ask to give him a blowjob minutes later. 

He didn’t invite you to dinner in the hopes you’d put out after. Call him old-fashioned, but he enjoys spending innocent time with you. He would’ve been more than happy to cook you dinner and kiss you on the cheek before you left.

But here you are, wanting more.

You never stop surprising him.

“I mean, it’s only fair, right?” you shrug at his silence. “You deserve to get off too.”

“You don’t have to. Not just because I did it for you—”

“I’ve been hearing about your dick since the tenth grade. I’m pretty sure I’m the only girl in the class of ’85 that hasn’t seen it. The least you can do is let me give you a measly blowjob,” you confess lowly.

Steve, knocked senseless at your words, starts working his belt off without a second thought. His hands fumble with the buckle while he smirks at you. “Yeah? What have you heard?”

“Oh, you know. The usual,” you answer vaguely and saunter the short distance to his bed. You plop down on the edge of it and lean your weight on your palms. “Just that you have a monster-sized dick and that Marianne from Soc nearly broke it when you took her virginity.”

“That was a rumor!” he defends as he steps out of his jeans. His shirt goes next. He pulls the thing up and over his head with an admirable sort of finesse, leaving his toned torso and hairy chest on display for you. 

“The monster-sized dick or the Marianne from Soc thing?”

He doesn’t entertain with an answer, just drops his boxers and lets you figure it out for yourself. 

His cock is already hard and glowing a faint strawberry color at the tip with neglect. It curves to his right hip and hangs there, weighed down by its own size. The hair upon his pubic bone rises to meet the happy trail on his lean stomach, trimmed slightly but still a bit wild. Tanned skin, heavy balls, and a singular vein that trails like a river from the base to the head — Steve Harrington’s got the prettiest dick you’ve ever seen.

You don’t even realize you’re gawking at him because you’re too busy trying to figure out how either could be rumors. You’re looking at beast right now, a wild thing that tiny, little Marianne from Soc certainly couldn’t handle. You’re not even entirely sure if you can.

Steve blanches at your hesitation. He sees you retreat into your head and rushes to bring you back. “Hey, we don’t have to… We don’t have to do this if you do want to. We don’t have to do any of this if—”

“I want to,” you assure quickly, eyes widening when you realize how quiet you’d gone. You can imagine how mortifying it must’ve been, for him to get naked in front of you and be met with total silence. “You just… have the biggest dick I’ve ever seen.”

His concern ebbs to a relieved smile. “Well, thanks for stroking my ego, princess.”

“I would love to stroke something else,” you quip with a playful grin that’s far too proud of such a dumb joke.

Steve rolls his eyes but doesn’t bother to hide his smile. 

He wants it on record, though, that he’s not grinning at your mindless innuendo. It wreaks too much of Eddie. You both seem to possess a similar sort of humor in that way, in how you can make anything into a joke — particularly a dirty one.

“Thanks for stroking my ego,” Steve would say and Munson would joke, “Well, we both know nothing else of yours is getting stroked, Harrington, so it’s the least I can do.” And Eddie would’ve been right. But Steve would never let him know that.

The boy settles in the middle of his bed and watches with a glittering gaze as Eddie’s best friend climbs between his legs. She spits into her palm and starts tugging at his hard cock with it. Steve isn’t sure of what to do — if he should rub it in this boy’s face or keep this piece of heaven to himself. He decides on that latter when your lips wrap around his leaking tip.

You’ll tell Eddie about all this tomorrow. He’s your best friend, after all — Steve will be doing the same with Robin, no doubt. And that alone is a reward in and of itself.

Getting him into your mouth was easy in theory, but you quickly find that it’s a harder feat than you realized. Steve’s not just long, he’s wide, and the combination makes it nearly impossible to take him fully. 

You pay extra attention to his strawberry pink tip to make up for what you can’t reach. He seems to like that more than anything else. Pearly pre-come leaks from there and you happily lap up his dribbling honey. Steve shudders every time your tongue meets his mushroom tip. His cock keeps drooling for you, so you keep doing it.

You work the rest of him with your palm, made slippery with your spit. Your free hand anchors around his thigh.

The combined effort isn’t something Steve’s particularly used to. 

Most girls choose one or the other. They either try to swallow him whole or opt to use their hands when they know that they can’t. That is, if they even want to suck him off at all. The foreign attention you give him drives him to the edge embarrassingly quickly.

“Hey, we should, uh— we should maybe stop,” he cautions tightly.

You detach from the head of his dick with a soft pop, but keep working him slowly with your palm. Your brows pinch together with concern. “You okay? Is it not… Is it not good?”

“What? No! It’s not— It’s not that. It’s great. That’s the… That’s sorta the problem,” Steve assures with an awkward laugh. “I’m not gonna… I probably won’t last much longer. And if you wanna… you know…”

“Fuck?” you finish for him with a teasing grin.

“Yeah. Then we should, you know, maybe stop now.”

Your hand stills at the base of his cock. Steve can finally breathe without the worry of bursting entirely.

“I mean, we can stop if you want to. You know, no pressure or anything, but… I don’t mind. I was sorta looking forward to you coming in my mouth.”

And how the hell was Steve ever going to say no to that — to you? He’s never denied you of anything before, and with that godawful track record, he wasn’t exactly equipped to start now.

Your mouth wraps around him again. You kitten lick at his tip and moan at the musky taste before sucking at his blushing head.

It feels good — it feels great — but he’s plagued with a lingering worry. 

He wants so desperately to fuck you, more than he needs to breathe, it feels like. But your mouth is too perfect a thing to deprive himself of. He’s scared it’ll take him too long to get hard again, or worse, that he won’t be able to at all. 

The thought of embarrassing himself in front of you, of not making you feel as good as he wants to make you feel, is an unbearable one.

There’s no way he’s stopping you, though. How can he when you’re sucking him off like your life depends on it? Your hand tugs and squeezes at the base of his cock while your tongue laps at his drooling tip. And on top of all that, you moan against him like making him feel good is making you feel good, too.

“Holy shit,” Steve forces through a tightening throat when your tongue dips just below his head to lick where the pale blue vein fades. His neck stretches as he digs the crown of his head into the pillow, revealing all of the pretty tendons you want to sink your teeth into.

“Your mouth is— fuck… Your mouth is fucking perfect, babe, shit.”

All of his little reactions spur you forward. 

You want him to keep praising you. You want to keep making his legs shudder and his hips twitch and his cock jerk in your mouth. So you double your efforts, just to hear more of his pretty whines that get stuck in his throat.

When you duck your head to pay the same amount of attention to his balls, Steve’s a total fucking goner.

His hands, both of which were obediently fisting the bedsheets, immediately dart to your hair when you suck his sack into your mouth. One warm palm cradles your jaw while the other clings to the back of your hand. He doesn’t push you or force you to take him further — he just holds you.

“I’m gonna come,” he grunts before a groan climbs out from his throat. His head falls back again, but he forces it upright a moment later so he can keep on watching you.

His hips stutter when you hum a moan against him.

“Yeah? Is that what you want?” he manages through heavy pants. “You want my come?”

You nod with his balls still in your mouth, then pull off of them with a pop to put his cock back in your mouth. 

Steve gives you exactly what you want no more than ten seconds later, spitting several loads of his come onto your tongue. It tastes like what had been leaking from his tip, just a bit saltier and far more potent with so much of it in your mouth at one time.

Steve’s thighs tremble around you and hips buck wildly despite himself until he’s given you everything he can possibly give to you. 

He allows himself only a few moments to relish in the aftermath of his swirling pleasure before reaching for the box of tissues on his bedside table. He rises to his elbows to hand you the napkin when his dick slips from your mouth. 

“Here, you can—” he says, trying to offer you something to spit into. It’s a habit he’d developed after the tenth or so girl refused to swallow.

You’ve already wolfed down his come, though, and wiped the excess at the corners of your mouth with the tips of your fingers. You don’t let a single drop of him go to waste.

All this time, Steve assumed he just tasted bad. He figured that must’ve been why no girl ever swallowed for him — not even Nancy, the only other girl he was ever really serious about. And they were together for two years. On the off chance she ever actually wanted to give him a blowjob, he knew her swallowing his come was totally out of the question.

Steve never minded, though. He was a giver more than he was anything else and he preferred most to finish inside. But now, with you, he sees just how much he’d missed out on. It feels a bit strange and unearthly levels of gratifying.

The boy breathes out a laugh and falls back against the mattress. The tissue falls from his limp hand onto the carpeted floor as he revels in his post-orgasmic haze. With his head still swimming and his legs still tingling, his glassy eyes find the speckled ceiling above him but don’t focus on anything in particular.

“Was that—”

“Don’t even finish that sentence,” he interjects softly. 

There’s no use in asking if you were good or not. Surely, you could answer the question just by looking at him. He’s a puddle of a man in the middle of his bed, pliant and at your mercy.

You giggle and slither in beside him, pressing your mostly bare body into his side. One leg wraps over his own. The warmth of your slick pussy lingers at his hip. You prop your head up with your fist while your other settles along his chest, busying itself with the tufts of hair there.

“That was, like, really good,” you praise with a sheepish beam. You wish you knew bigger words that might be able to describe it better. Really good doesn’t come close to explaining how heavenly it felt to come in his mouth, for him to come in yours. “You certainly lived up to all the rumors, Harrington.”

“You say that like we’re done,” he chuckles at your conclusive tone.

Your eyes flit from his face to his softening cock lying limb on his thigh, then back to his face again. You arch a skeptical brow. “No?”

“Not even close,” he shakes his head defiantly. His honey eyes flit between the both of yours. “I need to fuck you, babe, I just… I need a few minutes. If that, you know— If that’s okay with you…”

“You just give me life-changing head. So, yeah, I think I can give you a couple minutes,” you promise with a playful, but not insincere smile.

Even after having his mouth on you, and your mouth on him, you still like kissing him the most.

No amount of pleasure can sate the feeling of having him so close in this way. There’s nothing equally gratifying as sucking his bottom lip into your mouth or feeling the wet muscle of his tongue running itself over your own. You’d be more than happy to kiss him like this until sunrise.

Steve’s hands stay locked on either side of your head while he pries your mouth open with his own. He’ll occasionally pull back to admire your spit-slick, kiss-bitten lips for a moment or two. Then he’ll flash you a smile, like you’re a piece of finished artwork he’s happy with, before pulling you back down again.

You lean just over him, elbow digging into the pillow beside his head as you rest your weight on your arm. That hand twists itself within the strands of his hair, fingers lazing in the chestnut halo on his head. Your other migrates down his body, touching him with feather-light grazes to coax him hard again. 

His stomach tightens when your nails sweep over the thin trail of hair there. His stiffening cock twitches where it lazes along his inner thigh.

“Top or bottom?” the boy mumbles between languid kisses. His eyes flutter open long enough to catch the brief flash of confusion on your face. You don’t stop pressing your lips to his, even amid your uncertainty.

“Like bunks?”

Steve sputters a laugh against your mouth. He pulls away so he can look at you. “No, like— I meant, do you wanna ride me? Or would you rather lay down?”

“Oh. Shit. Sorry,” you stammer quickly. You figure the question must’ve puzzled you because no guy has ever asked before. This kindness is still a tad bit foreign. “I just— I wasn’t thinking.”

“It’s okay. It was cute,” Steve assures with a smile so soft it has to be sincere.

“Um… I don’t— I mean, I don’t know. Is that, like, something you want me to do?”

His right hand leaves your face to find his cock. He wraps his fist around himself, pumping slowly to keep himself hard for you. “It’s whatever you want, okay? Promise. I just thought it might be easier for you if you were on top. So you can take things at your own pace and everything.”

“Yeah,” you affirm within a heavy exhale. You feel yourself growing wetter at the mere thought of being on top of him like that. You nod until the words catch up with you. “Yeah. Okay.”

It isn’t your first time being in this position, but something about straddling Steve’s hips feels foreign. You’re starting to notice that most things you do with him feels that way — new and strange and alarming. Even the most innocent things, the mundane shit you’ve done a thousand times before, it’s all brand new with him.

You twist your hand behind your back to unclip your bra. Steve watches you with wide eyes like you’re doing some sort of magic trick. When you toss the piece of fabric somewhere on his bedroom floor, he spits into his palm to wet his cock.

His eyes flit from his hand, to your glistening pussy hovering just above his lap, to your face. “You can, uh— You can rub yourself on me, if you want. You know, to get it wetter. I don’t have lube or anything. I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay, I’m…” you trail off. I’m more than wet, you’d almost said. That felt a little too overzealous, though, so you settle on telling him: “I’m okay.”

“You’re still on the, um, the pill, right?” he wonders, feeling a bit lame for remembering something you’d said in passing so long ago.

You complained once that birth control made you feel crazy. You said it affected your mood so drastically sometimes that it didn’t feel worth it to take. That was weeks ago. A brief conversation you’d left in the Family Video parking lot. 

You nod wordlessly in reply.

Steve holds the base of his cock to keep it steady for you as you pierce yourself with it. 

Taking his blushing head was the easiest part. The sensitive tip slips so effortlessly into you, just bulbous enough for you to feel it but not enough to stretch you out. It’s a Goldilocks just right sort of feeling that has low moans crawling from the depths of your throats.

Down, down, down a couple more inches and that’s when the ache starts to set in.

His girth stretches you in an unfamiliar, but no less satisfying way. As good as it feels, the burning sensation is a hard one to ignore. It’s like a fire, a distant one. It’s sort of like reaching your hand toward a flame while your brain screams at you to not get any closer.

It’s a lot like that, actually.

Your brain cautions you about taking him any deeper than you have now lest he might totally split you in half.

“Sorry— Sorry. I’m sorry,” you sputter suddenly, a little embarrassed that he’s only a couple of inches within you and you’re already having so much trouble. With your chin tilted towards your chest and your eyes squeezed shut, you refuse to meet Steve’s concerned gaze. “It’s just… It’s kind of a lot.”

“It’s okay,” he assures quickly. He rubs two soothing hands along your hips and fights back the urge to thrust further into you. You don’t see the gentle smile he looks at you with your eyes closed. “Take your time.”

A little over a minute and a pep talk later, you finally build up the courage to sit on him fully. Come, you can do it, your inner voice spits at you. Stop being a baby. It’s just a penis, don’t be such a bitch. 

Your face scrunches when you slide slowly down upon him. Steve expects you to stop and take a break for anothera moment like you’d done just before. He’s more than surprised when you try to take him completely.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa. You don’t have to— holy shit, babe— don’t hurt yourself— fuuuck.”

You breathe out a heavy sigh of relief when he’s finally sheathed within your pulsating pussy. A lazy, lopsided smile makes its way to your lips, delirious with pleasure and pride. 

Both of you exhale faraway moans at the new feeling, heads falling back on their own accord. You’re already more than gratified and you haven’t even moved yet. He’s reaching parts of you that most guys don’t on their best day, making you feel full without trying. Even without his thrusting, the minuscule twitches of his cock are already driving you toward an orgasm.

“Can I tell you a secret?” you ask him suddenly, smiling lazily at the ceiling. 

Steve’s adams apple bobs as he swallows. Then he nods.

“I’m already really fucking close,” you confess with a breathless laugh, face crumbling under the weight of your pleasure halfway through.

Steve chuckles, then groans quietly. “Can I tell you a secret?”

“Uh-huh.”

“I am, too.”

You laugh together and your coinciding embarrassment fades like an ebbing tide. The intimate confessions affirm what you were already more than aware of — that the both of you are just a couple of lovesick idiots who are head over heels for each other and in so far over your heads that you can barely breathe.

You’re spurred on by the sight below you. Steve’s wild hair and amber eyes and swollen pink mouth make you ravenous. He runs his tongue over his bottom lip, looking like the sight of you makes him hungry too, as you start to grind your hips over his lap.

He guides your rhythm with two wide hands on your hips. Your pace is slow, every roll of your hips is experimental, and he revels in every second of it.

You start by rocking back and forth over his lap, then by moving in small circles to add stimulation. When get more confident, you lift yourself up and down over his cock. He’s able to hit your most sensitive spot that way. Steve seems to like it too, because you feel the subtle jerks of his responsive cock.

He accommodates your every move — thrusting his hips in time with your bouncing, then flexing them to reach as deep as he can within you.

“That’s it…” Steve murmurs, mostly to himself. He’s not exactly trying to praise you, but his words send lightning strikes of pleasure to your pussy anyway. He keeps babbling to himself. “That’s it, baby. Take it. Just like that…”

You support yourself with your palms on his hairy chest when you double your efforts on top of him. Steve groans at the lewd sound of your slick thighs clapping over his lap every time you move down on his cock. Your cunt quickly drenches his lower stomach and the small thatch of pubic hair just below it.

You too easily forget that fucking is a marathon and not a sprint. 

You overexert yourself quickly in your attempt to rush toward an orgasm and the effects of your sudden fatigue make your legs feel numb.

“Sorry,” you apologize breathlessly when you’re bouncing slows to a stop. You collapse to your elbows, nose nearly grazing Steve’s, as you swivel your hips slowly over his lap. You try to laugh at yourself. “My legs are just getting a little tired… I haven’t done this in a while if you couldn’t tell.”

Steve smiles sympathetically up at you. His hands leave the plush of your hips to cradle your jaw. He gazes at you with a stern sort of gentleness. “Stop apologizing. You’re good,” he promises, then pulls you softly down to peck your mouth.

He rolls his hips up into you and grunts when it makes you whine. “So fucking good…”

Steve tells you to tuck your knees further up his torso and you obey without thinking. You tuck your face into his shoulder and let him cradle the back of your head with one hand while the other settles on your ass. 

He grips you there rather shamelessly, fingers digging into your plump skin, while he bends his knees behind you. He plants his feet on the mattress and thrusts up into you without warning. 

His pace is already a relentless one, having no need to work himself up to a rapid pass as you had. Being basketball team captain has done wonders for his stamina, it seems. He drills up into you and keeps drilling into you without tiring. 

He keeps you securely pressed against him all the while and you relax into his embrace, happily letting him fuck you in his own delicious rhythm as he’d done for you.

The new position stimulates you from all angles. Steve’s hard cock pounds into your weeping pussy. Your swollen clit catches the coarse hair on his taut stomach with each of his thrusts. Your pebbled nipples drag along his furry chest.

It leaves you a whining, writhing mess on top of him.

“You like this?” he murmurs in your ear through broken pants. 

He’s partly teasing you. He knows you mustlike what he’s doing to some degree because you’re moaning something fierce into his neck, peppering too sweet kisses in between your pretty whines. But he also wants to know that you like it. He wants to hear you say the words.

He feels you nod against his shoulder. “Yes...” You sigh, then whimper. “Yes, yes yes—”

“I knew you did,” he affirms. You can hear the smile on his face. You’re not sure if he’s mocking you or not. You’re not sure if you particularly care either. 

His stubbly jaw grazes your cheek when he turns his head to press a kiss to the burning skin. “Knew you’d like it… Takin’ my dick like a fuckin’ champ, babe.”

“Wanna be good for you,” you confess against his sweat-slicked skin, your voice high and wet like you’re close to crying.

Steve tugs at your hair, not enough to hurt you, just enough to pull you from the refuge you’d sought in the nook of his neck. He finds that your eyes are glassy with unshed tears, brows pinching and swollen lips softly agape. His amber eyes are just as wild, heavy with hunger.

“You are good for me, baby,” he promises and seals it with a searing kiss to your wet mouth. He means it in more ways than one and prays you understand. “You’re so good for me… Fucking perfect, babe— shit—”

His cock twitches in your snug slick when you clench around him. He tightens the grip he’s got on your ass and spreads you wider to pound harder into you. You hope his scorching touch will leave bruises come morning. You want to remember how it felt to have him touching you this way.

“Steve…” you sigh, helpless.

“Hmm?”

“I’m gonna…” you start, then whimper when you feel the familiar pleasure start to crescendo once more. It takes a moment for the words to return to you. “I’m about to come.”

“Touch yourself,” he blurts.

Your lidded gaze widens. You peer down at him, bemused by his sudden request. “Huh?”

“Touch yourself for me,” he repeats, groaning when the request makes you tighten around him. “Want this to be good for you, too.”

He says this like you’re not already in heaven. You listen to him anyway, though, and squeeze your hand between your slick bodies to find your sensitive button. You rub at your clit until your thighs tremble around his waist. You try your best to ride through every bolt of lightning the pleasure shoots down your spine, despite the distant fear that you won’t be able to weather them.

“Yeah, there you go,” he praises lowly. “Keep rubbing your clit for me…”

Your free hand stays locked in his hair. Your grip tightens within the chocolate strands as you near your peak. Steve revels in the ache, groaning into your shoulder when the burn at his scalp spreads. 

You’re already gut-wrenchingly close. You can feel the coil in your belly tightening, a struck chord crescendoing — and then Steve changes the angle of his hips. He flexes them suddenly and his thick cock probes something much deeper inside of you. Something that’s never been touched before — not by another guy or a toy or you.

It’s tender, and much more sensitive than your clit. Your vision strays for a brief moment as a white-hot flame of pleasure makes you jerk against him. You gasp sharply, then forget how to breathe when a moan gets caught in your throat. Your hand stills between your slick bodies as you freeze on top of him.

The wet cry finally spills from your mouth after several long seconds. It’s as long and delicate and wet as the orgasm you gush around Steve’s cock.

The flame burns red hot just before you come, then turns to simmering embers when your cunt numbs from the intense pleasure. You blink, and suddenly the fire is burning blue. The rest of your body becomes a casualty to the inferno.

“Yeah? Is that the spot, baby?” you hear Steve wonder. He murmurs the words in your ear, but you don’t hear them. They sound muffled and far away. 

You hope he doesn’t expect you to answer. You’re not entirely sure if you can form words anymore, or any actual conceivable thoughts. All you can do is suffer through every overwhelming wave of your orgasm that leaves you a crying and convulsing mess on Steve’s lap.

“Holy fuck—”

The boy slams his hips against you with a final, dense clap that sounds deafening in the quiet of his bedroom. Your gushing and fluttering cunt milks his cock. The feeling of your weeping pussy and the sound of your pretty whines throw him headfirst into his own orgasm. His thrusts still as he twitches within you. A moment later, you feel the subtle tingle at the base of your spine when he spits his come inside of you. 

His come paints your welcoming, rippling walls. It’s warm, like the first sip of coffee in the morning or fuzzy socks on cold feet. It blankets you in a sinful comfort.

Steve noses at your cheek while he rides the high of his climax. He rolls his hips slowly into you, much softer now that his cock has grown so sensitive. He clamps his mouth shut between his teeth to stifle his too loud moans and desperate whines. They’re forced to crawl from his throat as suffocated grunts.

You mourn the loss of not seeing his face while you’re tucked so securely into the nape of his neck. It’s a work of art you can imagine so clearly — his pinched brows and scrunched nose and parted lips. But you relish in the searing hold he has on you now, happy to hold and to be held.

The shuddering is slow to subside, especially from you. The aftershocks of your orgasm keep your hips spasming over his lap. Steve groans into your shoulder every time your pussy quivers around his softening cock.

And then the two of you just lay there. You hold onto each other and try to catch your breaths. With the both of you covered in a fine sheen of sweat, your skin sticks together with every tiny movement. The feeling of it makes you smile. You feel like the two of you really are melting together.

Steve’s fingers part from your wild strands of hair and take to tracing the expanse of your damp back. You hum in contentment at the feeling, nuzzling your nose up and down the right side of his neck. 

The moment is melted ice cream and early morning rain and marshmallow fluff. It’s spring mornings on the porch and warm breezes in the fall. It’s a soft and familiar thing that’s still so, so new.

You think you could spend forever here, if you had to. In Steve’s bed and in Steve’s lap and with all of Steve’s languid touches.

But sex is different when you’re an adult. 

When you’re a teenager, you get to be irresponsible. Carelessness sort of comes with the territory. You have sex in a dirty bathroom of a bar you snuck into and don’t think twice about the implications of any it. But as an adult with bills and a nine-to-five and groceries you’ve got to get once a week, all you can think about is how inconvenient a UTI would be.

“I should probably use the bathroom,” you murmur, already grieving the loss of his touch before you’ve even parted from him. 

You leave the safety of his neck to peer down at him. His heavy lids mirror your own. 

“I have this thing where if I don’t piss after sex, I feel like I’m gonna be, like, cursed or something. Kinda like when you break a mirror and you’re stuck with shit luck for seven year— or however that dumb superstition goes,” you ramble, voice heavy with fatigue and lingering pleasure. “Anyway. Yeah. Plus, I should probably clean up, too.”

Steve breathes out a laugh at your sudden prattling but humors you nonetheless.

Somehow you manage to pry yourselves off of each other — you, feeling significantly emptier without him inside you and Steve, already shivering with the lack of your warmth all over him. 

You separate just long enough for him to wet a washcloth in the sink while you piss just a couple feet away from him. The bathroom connected to his bedroom seems to be a foreign sight for you — a least, that’s what he assumes because you rave so enthusiastically about it the entire time. 

It’s all Steve’s ever known, though, so he finds it difficult to do anything but nod along with your rambling. More than anything, he’s glad you’re not as weighed down by the domesticity  of the moment as he is. Because he, for one, feels a little like he’s been hit by a freight train. 

Perhaps spending so many years all alone has made him sensitive to closeness.

You sit on the marble countertop and rest your forehead on his shoulder while he cleans you up. He runs the warm cloth along your delicate folds and wipes away traces of your slick and his come that glisten on your thighs. He pleats the rag and does the same to his softening cock and surrounding skin. 

It feels so strangely intimate, more than the sex somehow.

Steve tugs on a fresh pair of boxers and gives you a faded Hawkins Phys. Ed tee to change into. The loose fabric and baggy fit feels much more familiar than the costume you’d initially arrived in. He might be happier than you are, though, to finally get to see you in your most natural state — makeup sufficiently smudged away and ill-suited clothes forgotten on his floor. 

You crawl beneath the mussed navy comforter of his bed and smush your face into his pillow. “See? The dino sheets aren’t so bad, are they?” the boy teases when you hum in contentment. 

The mattress dips beneath his weight as he settles in beside you.

You smile but don’t open your eyes. “I’m just sleepy… Sue me.”

“It’s barely nine o’clock, grandma.”

“It’s your fault,” you argue, voice dripping with exhaustion. Your skin purrs as he reaches blindly beneath the covers to rub his palm along your forearm.

He grins softly to himself. “Yeah?”

“Yeah. You wore me out, Harrington.”

“I’ll make it up to you in the morning, ‘kay?” he promises, then laughs when you smirk and raise your brows — eyes still shut. “Not like that, you perv. I was talking about breakfast. I make a mean scrambled egg.”

You tell him you’re looking forward to it, to breakfast in bed and breakfast in bed. He falls further for you somehow, despite his lingering disdain for your silly little innuendos. It’s the price you have to pay when you love someone, he figures, like when your crush gets a bad haircut or has shit music taste. 

It’s a quirk he welcomes along with your many others — your rambling and forgetfulness and social unawareness and inability to sit still. All your little idiosyncrasies weren’t obstacles he had to get over to love you, just more reasons for him to.

And it isn’t this one-sided thing, either. Most people would look at the two of you — at the dowager king and local freak — and they’d think he was doing charity work to love you. But Steve’s got peculiarities of his own. 

His best friends are a fourteen-year-old nerd and a closeted lesbian because they were the first two people in his life that didn’t judge him. He chews on the ends of pens and pencils, and his handwriting is shit because he never cared about school. He buys things without ever looking the price tag, then leaves them to collect dust in his room because he never really needed them anyway. He still feels the need to be the center of attention sometimes because the faintest hint of disregard makes him feel neglected.

These are all things you’re aware of. Most of them came with being the wealthy, popular kid from the right side of the tracks. And you liked him anyway — no, you liked him because of them. You adored him through all the heavy shit, and here he was, doing a shit job at pretending to like metal music and horror movies.

“Are you asleep?” Steve wonders after a few moments of velvet silence. He’s still looking at you, one arm propped beneath his hand and the other toying with your fingers splayed on the mattress between you. He hasn’t been able to stop looking at you.

“Almost,” you mumble in response.

“Can I tell you a secret?”

Your heart stops at the innocent question, tired eyes flying immediately open and knocking you out of your fatigued stupor. 

All of a sudden, it’s 1984 again. You’re the weirdo who bites people and Steve’s royalty who’ll fuck anything that walks — and here you are, in bed with the asshole. For a moment, you expect Tommy Hagan to bust out of the closet with a tape recorder and for Steve to tell you this was all just some stupid bet.

It’s a pang of blue lightning, an ice pick to your abdomen, that lasts no more than a couple of seconds. 

Internally, you curse yourself for getting so worked up. You make a promise to yourself to work on all that — the regressing and the disbelief that comes with the not-feeling-good-enough bullshit.

“Yeah?” you finally answer.

“I don’t actually like Dio. Or Def Leppard,” he confesses, finding it hard to meet your gaze  like a child who’s been caught in a lie. He focuses on running his thumb over the irregular pattern of your chipped nailpolish. “And I don’t collect vinyls either, not really. I just… I kinda just said those things so you’d like me.”

And, compared to the web you were just spinning in your head, that’s nothing.

“Ooh,” you wince playfully. “Def Leppard I could take, but Dio? I don’t know… That might be a dealbreaker, Harrington.”

He only smiles because he can tell you’re making fun. “I could learn to like them, you know? If it means that much to you. That’s what we’re doing now, right? Loving things on purpose?”

You capture your smile with your bottom lip between your teeth. Your eyes sparkle at him when you nod. “Yeah… We are.”

“Which means you could learn to like football and Bruce Springsteen,” Steve jokes and shifts on the mattress so he’s closer to you. 

Your feet bump together, then entwine effortlessly. He plops his head on the same pillow you’re using. The proximity leaves your faces no more than a couple inches apart. 

You scrunch your nose, wondering if you should hide your disgust in his playful request or make a joke out of it. You don’t do either. “I could… If it means I get to keep you.”

“Keep me?” he scoffs. “Good luck, getting rid of me, Punchy.”

“Who said I wanted to, huh?”

“You will. When you get sick of me.”

He’s smiling like he’s kidding, but you can tell there’s an edge of self-loathing to his tone. 

Your hand crawls from beneath his own and settles on his stubbly jaw. You run your thumb over the cheek, effectively sealing your promise into the blushing apple of it. “I’m never gonna get sick of you, Steve Harrington.”

His brows raise. “No?”

You shake your head against the pillow, then shove the side of your face further into it when you get nervous. There’s a timid quirk to the corners of your lips and a more sheepish glint in your eye. “You don’t get sick of people you love,” you tell him.

Steve opens his mouth to retort. He wants to tell you that he gets sick of Dustin all the time, but that it doesn’t mean he doesn’t love the little shit. He gets sick of milkshakes and pizza and Cheers re-runs when he consumes too much of them in a single setting, but he loves all those things too. 

You get sick of things because you love them, he reasons, because you love them too hard and you hate how much you need them.

He doesn’t get the chance to argue any of this, though.

“Not when you love them on purpose,” you clarify with a sunshine-coated grin.

That shuts him up real quick.

[helterskelterhazel]

𝒀𝒐𝒖𝒓 𝒔𝒐 𝑷𝒓𝒆𝒕𝒕𝒚 𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝑰’𝒎 𝒔𝒐 𝑺𝒉𝒚

Summary: fetus!Alex and you hate each other, but not that much.

Warnings: sub!alex, dom!reader, oral(m receiving), p in v, crying?, grinding?

Word count: 4.7k

a/n: the fandom is so dead right now so I took matters into my own hands… enjoy!

︵‿︵‿୨♡୧‿︵‿︵

You and Alex had an interesting living situation. You met through a mutual friend, and the mutual need for cheaper rent. The both of you hated paying ridiculous prices for the smallest flats ever, especially without the help of parents' money. Unfortunately, you both also hated each other. The night you met was at a noisy, packed club, and after a long day of university, you both needed to let loose. Your mutual friend invited the both of you along with a few other friends. He hadn’t been seen by your friend all night, but you saw him. As you had unsqueezed yourself from the mass of bodies dancing to the music to go to the bar, you felt a person knock into you. You turned to the side to tell him off, but your voice was caught in your throat as you looked at the boy in front of you. He was a fairly small boy, with thick hair that stuck up in the back. He wore a polo, with the color popped up, and baggy jeans. But what really stood out was his eyes, big and round and confused looking. The confused look quickly went away as he studied you.

“You y/n?” He asked loudly, attempting to strain over the loud music. His voice was higher pitched than you’d expect.

“Yes, I am, and you must be Alex, you fit the description I was told about. You also just ran into me, if you didn’t notice,” you respond, annoyed at his casual tone.

He smirked slightly, “I noticed.” What a dick.

You and him proceeded to have a strained conversation. He was clearly gone, sloshing his cheap beer around in his hand, accidentally splashing you with it at one point. At least he got you a napkin. You disagreed on almost every level, your personalities clashed in a frustrating way. Eventually, you got to the topic of university. He was an English major, surprising, considering his slurred speech and odd wording. Unsurprisingly, he couldn’t afford university combined with rent. That was the one thing you could agree on. You're not sure how, but In your drunken haze, you ended the conversation disgruntled but with a plan to room together in a new apartment. You managed to follow through with minimal talking, and moved into an apartment in the next few weeks. The circumstances weren’t the greatest, but it was the easiest option for everyone.

He put posters of the strokes, oasis and the libertines up on his side of the bedroom, and had his records stored next to his record player. Your records sat opposite to his. The first days were filled with arguments about things like who can take a shower, what type of coffee to make, and who can control the tv. He called you pretentious, you called him annoying. You’d complain about his habits of staying out late, and how he didn’t even try to be quiet when getting ready for bed. The yelling turned into grumbling, and the grumbling turned into silence as the both of you fell into some sort of routine.

you wake up hours before he does, and take a shower first thing. Typically getting dressed in outfits that consist of tights, sweaters, flats and denim or leather jackets. You pour yourself a cup of black coffee, and head to your first class of the day. By the time you got back from your early morning class, he was usually awake in his bed, sipping on an iced coffee. Iced, vanilla, coffee. You made him keep it in the fridge. There was always the lingering smell of the cigarette he had enjoyed on the balcony. You ate whatever pastry you had purchased from the bakery close by campus while he took an obnoxiously long shower. You would leave as he finished for the rest of your classes, just missing him stepping out of the shower wet and disheveled. Luckily your days didn’t overlap until late at night as Alex liked to go out, and he also liked to play in his band. He would clamber into bed after stripping to his boxers, and you would resist the urge to turn over to his side of the room and look. Then you would wake up and do it all over again.

One Sunday night, as Alex walked in the door earlier than usual, the routine changed. It was 9, and you both were puttering around the small kitchen trying to prepare separate microwaveable meals. Seemingly out of nowhere, Alex cleared his throat and asked,

“Do you wanna watch a movie, together I mean.”

Not knowing what to say, you kept your back facing him and nodded. You couldn’t see it, but his cheeks heated up to a bright pink, and he smiled softly to himself while continuing to prepare his noodles. The two of you settled down onto your beds, and you tossed the remote over to Alex.

“You can pick,” you told him quietly.

“I actually have some dvds that I brought from home, Al Pacino movies and stuff if you're into that,” he replied softly. The cocky boy you thought you knew seemed gone.

“Yeah that sounds good.”

He nodded, and slid off his bed to grab a big leather case from under it. After popping it open, you saw there must have been at least 80 dvds.

“Big into movies?” You asked, genuinely curious. His plush lips parted into a small smile at the question.

“Yeah, big time.”

He selected one and popped it into the dvd player beneath the tv before settling back into his flannel sheets. The two of you sat eating your food and watching “Donnie Brasco” through the rest of the night. The movie was dotted with Alex’s little interjections about the actors or cinematic qualities. You slowly drifted off to sleep with your bowl at your side, on top of your sheets. When you woke up the next morning, you were tucked into your bed, and your dishes had disappeared.

From then on, it seemed like you two had an unstated agreement. On the nights the both of you are in the flat, you would share a film. There was more talking as well. He asked you about your day and you asked about his. Sometimes he’d even prepare your meal, and make you a drink. You found out that you both actually were quite similar. When you had rented a French dvd, Alex responded excitedly, watching intently through the whole thing. Turns out he liked them as much as you did. You also found out little things about him that didn’t really matter, but meant a great deal to you. For example, he ruffles his hair on purpose, (he wants to look like Julian Casablancas.) He also began to get more comfortable engaging in small touches with you, touching your hip as he passed by you, light pats on the shoulder when you told him about a paper you did well on, and once tucking your hair behind your ear before scurrying away nervously. You didn’t mind it.

At the beginning of one normal movie night, Alex proposed that you sit in his bed.

“Y’know I just figured, it-it would be easier to see for you I didn’t mean anything by it,” he stuttered, blushing furiously. You laughed softly at his nervous behavior and moved over to his bed, settling onto the soft comforter. He tensed up as your shoulder touched his, but relaxed quickly after. He turned his head to you and said,

“If you want to get under the covers, I don’t mind, it’s pretty cold anyways,” he trailed off, eyes casting downwards, making the shadow of his lashes more prominent. You nodded in response, slipping your legs under the sheets.

As the movie progressed, you noticed his eyes starting to flutter closed, and his small frame slumped against yours. Slowly, you leaned back further, easing him to lay with his head in the crook of your neck. He didn’t say anything, allowing it to happen. You could tell he was still awake from his hitching breaths and pounding heart beat against you. Testing the waters, you took your hand up to rake through his soft hair. You got in response a shiver from him and a small hum, but no protests. You played with the hair at the nape of his neck, scratching lightly. You could feel him smile against you. This Alex was not the Alex from the bar the night you met. This Alex was soft and vulnerable, and absolutely sweet. You allowed yourself to drift to sleep, him in your arms.

The night after was filled with nerves creeping up on you. You spend the whole day thinking about Alex wrapping himself tightly around you, not able to focus on any work at all. You know Alex wasn’t going to be home early that night, he had a late shift at the bar to cover. You wished he was here with you, watching films, listening to records, or just simply talking, but you know it was best to have a bit of space. The two of you hadn’t exchanged any talk in the morning, both far too timid to share any feelings. So there you sat In the darkness of your shared room, unable to fall asleep or think of anything other than Alex. Your thoughts of Alex were interrupted not a moment later by the sounds of the boy himself. You keep your body turned over so he can’t see your face, just listening to his breathing and sounds of him putting down his keys.

When you hear him settle onto his bed, the last this you expected to hear was him softly crying. It was quiet, but the sound was unmistakable. Without thinking, you sat up and turned around, in which Alex responded by lifting his head quickly. His hair was hanging over his eyes, which are red and puffy. His doe eyes are soft, and his lashes are slick with tears. Responding on instinct, you immediately jumped off your bed and hurried over to his, wrapping one arm around him. He responds by leaning into you, burying his face into the crook of your neck. You pet his hair lightly while he sniffles, trying to distract him from whatever was happening. Eventually he lifts his head up and averts his eyes away from yours. He takes a deep breath and then suddenly all of his words come pouring out at once.

“I’m so sorry for being weird all day y/n, I was worried I made you uncomfortable last night because I really like you and I don’t want to mess up us being friends, because you're like, one of the best people I’ve ever met. And I’m sorry for crying all over you and you can leave I understa-”

You shut up his rambling by leaning into his bitten lips. He made a noise of shock into your mouth, before he began to kiss back enthusiastically. He was one of the most eager kissers you’d ever encountered. His kisses were filled with an urgency you hadn’t felt before. He tasted like cigarettes and cheap beer. Unable to resist yourself, you reach a hand up and rake it through his hair, before tugging softly. In response he whines into the kiss, before pulling back and looking at you in shock. His lips are red and swollen, and his cheeks are flushed pink.

“I didn’t think you liked me like that,” he says quietly. You didn’t respond, just continuing to look at his perfect face.

“I guess I just overthink things too much,” he replies to himself. This you respond to.

“I can make your mind go quiet, if that’s what you want.”

Even you were shocked by your boldness. He couldn’t form words, just nodding furiously, shaking his hair around. You lean back from him, sitting against your pillows and opening your legs. He looks confused at what you were doing. You pat the spot between your legs and say,

“sit.”

His eyes got impossibly wider as they flicked between the space between your legs and your face. “You mean like how girls normally do?” He asks, looking insecure.

“I guess so, but really it’s just so I can take proper care of you,” you respond, smirking at his innocent expression. “We don’t have to do it like that if you don’t want to.” You didn’t want to make him uncomfortable.

“No,” he responds quickly, voice straining a bit. “I want to.”

“Then come here.”

He lifts himself up off the ledge of his bed and settles his back against your chest. You instantly wrap your arms up to cradle his little waist. His body shivers a bit against yours. You push your hands under his shirt and feel his soft skin, while beginning to lean down to kiss his neck. His body is shaking a bit, so you pull back slightly and say softly in his ear,

“Are you okay? You're shaking honey.” He blushes deeply at the nickname, before shaking his head and responding, “Yeah, I’m-I’m just not used to this.”

You nod in response before continuing. As you begin to kiss down his neck, you decide to take a risk.

“Can I leave marks?” He whimpers lightly before hurriedly nodding.

You lick over his pulse point before sucking a small love bite into his pale skin. He tilts his head back further, exposing more of his neck to you. Between bites and kisses you whisper in his ear.

“No ones ever properly taken care of you, sweetie.” He looks embarrassed at the words, letting out little whimpers and deep breaths as well. You continue to run your hands over his stomach under his shirt. Your hands drop lower, caressing his defined hip bones. At this, he lets out a quiet whine and squirms a bit.

“Need more.” he says while looking up at you with wide, pleading eyes. His fists are curled at his side, and his chest is heaving with need.

“if it’s what you need sweetie.”

You take the edge of his shirt and pull it over his head, ruffling his hair even more in the process. You trail your hands down to his jeans, feeling the edge of them before asking, “Can I take these off?”

“Yes, please.” he breathes desperately. You unzip them and let him do the rest, unable to reach from your position. Now here you were, with Alex Turner between your legs in nothing but his boxers, looking delicate as ever. Deciding to be bold, you take your hand and palm over his crotch. The fabric feels wet with precum, and you can almost feel him pulse under your touch. His response is immediate, bucking up into your touch and desperately pawing at your other hand that was resting on his tummy. You trace one finger around his cock, feeling the surprisingly long length of it. He silently hopes you can’t feel his heart beating out of his chest, but of course you can. You decided to surprise him by reaching your hand down to wrap around the base of his cock. The sound he made was something out of a porno. A broken, high pitched moan that seemed like it resembled an “oh god.” The sound went straight to your core and you felt wetness start to pool in your panties. You begin to move your hand along his raging erection, eventually getting to the tip, just lightly swiping your fingers over it to tease. You would think he’d never even jacked off before from his reaction. All he could do is squirm and push himself into your touch desperately.

You remove your grip on him to just lightly take your finger and run it up and down his cock, moving the precum leaking out of him along it. As you teased him, you couldn’t help but lean down to suck a hickey into his collarbone. The need to see him as disheveled and marked up was unbearable. You couldn’t help but trail your other hand further up his stomach to his chest to his nipples, lightly ghosting over one to see if it was okay.

“Please, please I want it.” The boy who was nervous about being submissive was definitely gone.

You take his nipple between your fingers, rolling it before pinching lightly. He looks overwhelmed at the action between his legs and chest. You switch between the two of his nipples, almost overstimulating him. His chest and cheeks are flushed, and you're honestly interested in seeing if anything else is.

You take your hand off his cock, leaving him whining in disagreement.

“Why’d you stop?” He chokes out, pouting like a kid who dropped his ice cream.

“Because I wanna taste you.” you smirk in his ear.

You can hear his voice catch in his throat, and before he knows it you're releasing your hold on him and crawling between his legs. From this angle, he looks downright sinful. His puppy eyes are trained on you, watery from being on edge. His lips are bitten and his hair is messy and covering his face making him look somehow innocent despite the current situation. Trailing your hands up his legs, which were just as delicate and pale as the rest of him, you settle on where his v-line meets his boxers.

“Can I suck you off.” You ask bluntly, trying to get that pretty blush to rise up to his cheeks. It works.

“Yes-yes please do whatever please.” He begs hands fisting the sheets by his side, frustrated by the lack of stimulation on his painfully hard cock.

You take this as an opportunity to pull down his boxers to reveal his dick. You almost gasp at the sight of it, big, flushed a deep red almost purple, leaking a steady stream of precum against his tummy, with a vein going up the side. He looks embarrassed at the sight of you between his legs, staring at his cock.

“Can you please touch me, please?” He whimpers quietly, averting his eyes from yours.

“I don’t know, do you think you deserve it?” You tease, rubbing the milky skin of his bare thighs.

“Yes! Yes I do please, I need you so bad.” He whines in desperation, the pressure getting far too much for him to take.

“I guess you have been good for me. Is that what you wanna be? My good boy?” You didn’t think he would react as strongly as he did, it was really just to tease him even further, but he replies by gasping softly and saying “I’m your good boy I promise, just touch me, ple-”

You interrupt his pleas by taking the head of his cock into your mouth. In response he lets out a high pitch whine. The neighbors probably hate us right now. you take the entirety of what you can in your mouth, trying not to gag as the tip hits the back of your throat. He shudders and starts to let out a continuous stream of “fucks” and “yes’s” and whimpers. you take whatever you can't fit in your mouth and pump the base of him. You hollow out your cheeks to make the sensation even better for him. In response he bucks up his hips uncontrollably and takes one hand and tangles it in your hair. He doesn’t try to pull or control your movements, it’s just an attempt to keep his body under control. It’s clear it isn’t really working, as his back arches off the bed like a cat, and he has to raise the hand that’s not in your hair to his mouth to attempt to quiet his noises. You reach your hand up and swat him away from his mouth. “I wanna hear your pretty noises honey.”

“Oh-okay.” He whispers shyly in response, giving you a little smile.

the smile quickly drops as you attach your mouth back to the swollen head of his cock, licking into the slit at the top. His unrestrained mewls are the prettiest sounds you’ve heard. You continue to massage his thighs, occasionally reaching a hand up to ghost over one of his nipples, leaving him an overwhelmed mess. His trembling legs and increasingly louder whines are a clear sign of him getting closer. He was desperately trying not to cum so quickly, but he couldn’t stop his shaky thrusts of his hips.

“oh god, you feel so-so good.” He whines desperately, sounding on the verge of pleasure induced tears. You look up to admire his sweet face, and you're met with a surprise. He doesn’t just sound like he’s crying, he is crying. Lip quivering slightly, and his eyes are rolling back to his head, as tears run down his cheeks. The sight of him so ruined has your cunt clenching around nothing, suddenly unbearably empty.

“I’m not gonna last, please plea-.” You cut off his begging by promptly pulling him out of your mouth and removing any stimulation he was getting. The cry he lets out sounds almost pained, even more tears stream from his eyes.

“Why’d you stop, I was almost there.” He pouts at you, disheveled hair paired with red cheeks and teary eyes making him look angelic.

“Because I want you inside me,” You reply, leaning your face against his thigh, “do you want that?” You finish.

“Yeah, yes I want it. I want it so bad please.” He gasps out desperate to get some form of stimulation back in his aching cock.

As you slip off the shorts and panties you were wearing to bed, you can practically feel Alex’s eyes staring at your puffy folds. He gulps as you climb over his lap, hovering over his dick. You lower yourself to grind your pussy against his cock, feeling it slip between your wet folds, nudging just right at your clit. As you begin to move up and down along his dick, his hands grasp desperately at your waist, mewling at the feeling of your plush folds sliding along his dick.

“I swear you're gonna kill me.” He chokes out, eyes focused on your soaked pussy spreading your wetness around his cock.

“Do you like this baby, you like feeling me.” You say, leaning down to his ear, before attaching your mouth to the spot under his jaw.

“Love it, love it so much, I need more.” He moans, hands trailing from your waist to squeeze the flesh of your ass.

“More? Don’t you think that’s a little greedy?” You tease, licking and biting along his collar bone. He whimpers and shakes his head, burying it in your shoulder, shuddering softly. His fingers are toying with the edge of your shirt, too nervous to ask to take it off. Luckily you get the hint.

You pull the shirt over your head, allowing him a moment to look at your bra, before promptly pulling that off as well. His big, brown eyes dilate at the sight of your tits.

“Can I touch them, please?” He says, looking up at you hopefully. You nod into his neck. He immediately reaches his hands up and gropes at your tits, squeezing them in his delicate hands. You continue to grind against him to make him more desperate as he suddenly leans forward and captures one of your nipples in his mouth, sucking desperately. You gasp softly and begin petting his hair, scratching lightly at his scalp.

“You like having your mouth full sweetie?” You ask, a rhetorical question of course. All he can do is let out a muffled whine. His tongue swipes along the bud, nipping gently in an attempt to get you as desperate as he is. Suddenly he releases you from his mouth and stops the movement of your hips against him with his hands.

“I can’t anymore, I need to be inside you. I’ll be good for you, I promise I swear love!” He whines finally, breaking under the teasing.

“Okay honey, you’ve been a good boy.” You reply while lifting up to your knees and grabbing hold of his cock. He’s been hard for so long he swears he’s going to bust any second now. You line up the fat head of his cock to your leaking cunt, before slowly pushing him inside. You groan low in your throat as you feel his thick cock stretch you out just right, the tip brushing your g-spot. You almost don’t notice the way he throws his head back in euphoria, sounds caught in his throat from the way your plush walls squeeze him perfectly, and the way he can feel your cunt gush around him. You grab hold of his face, admiring his lust blown eyes for a moment, before leaning in to connect your mouth with his. It’s rough and messy as his tongue slides along yours, his mouth sweet and soft. You begin to slowly move your hips, the first few movements have him shaking again. You let him sink into the bed, so overwhelmed that he was pawing at anything he could get his hands on. Your tits, your ass, your waist, anything to keep him grounded.

But he just couldn’t. He couldn’t keep his eyes off the way your tits bounced with every thrust. He couldn’t stop hearing the wet noises coming from your pussy every time you bottomed out of his dick. He couldn’t stop looking at how your pussy enveloped him, leaving his dick wet and glistening.

“God you're so good!” He cried out, tears trailing down his face again.

you were right there with him, trailing a hand down to your clit to circle the puffy bud, but he was there before you were, desperate not to embarrass himself by coming too early. It only took a few swipes of his calluses fingertips on your clit to have you coming around his length. You gripped your hands on his slender shoulders as your orgasm shook through your body, unknowingly breaking him enough to have his own orgasm suddenly coaxed out. You feel his hot release hit your walls, and watch his hips jerk uncontrollably as the tears shed more than ever before. His fingers don’t let up until you collapse on top of him, sweaty bodies melded together.

It takes a moment for you to realize his crying and shaking hasn’t stopped. You lift off of him, still straddling him, his cum starting to leak out of you.

“Are you ok al?” You ask.

He doesn’t respond, a fuzzed over look on his face, trying his hardest to give you a little nod. You grab his fragile body in your arms and slowly lift him out of bed, walking him to the bathroom slowly. You take a damp cloth and wipe him down softly as possible. You wipe yourself down as well, still cradling him in your arms. Grabbing his hand, you lead him over to your bed, wanting to lay him in clean sheets. You help him into the bed and slide in beside him. He buries his head in your chest, still shaking but not crying anymore. You pet his hair, hoping to calm him down. After a few moments he slowly lifts his head up, making eye contact shyly.

“I’m sorry for all that.” He says softly. “I sometimes get a little unresponsive when I get a little too into it.” He looks nervous, anticipating your reaction.

“That’s okay Al, it’s kinda sweet.” You reply, watching his cheeks flush lightly. You lean down and kiss him lightly on the cheek.

“I had a really good time.” You say, smiling at him.

“Me too.” He gave a long pause before asking, “do you maybe wanna go out sometime.”

You almost giggle at his shy demeanor. Still so nervous.

“Of course I do honey.”

The both of you lay In comfortable silence for a while, arms wrapped around each other. You noticed his eyes fluttering in an attempt to stay awake.

“Go to sleep Alex, I’ve got you.” You whisper, stroking the side of his face. He hums in agreement nuzzling into your neck further. You stroke his hair and face until you feel his breathing stabilize. The both of you fall asleep entangled together, your lips pressed against the crown of his head

[ravnicacardsconverted]

Mass Manipulation

7th-level Enchantment Casting Time: 1 hour Range: 100ft radius Components: V,S,M (Dimond Dust, A clay tablet with a detailed list of commands and triggers, a focus worth at least 1000gp.) Duration: 1 year Classes: Wizard

Description: Dusting the tablet with diamond dust and begining the casting process you lay out a list of at up to ten commands and triggers and write them on the tablet. these commands and triggers may be as simple as "sneeze uncontrollably when you see a dog", or a morbid and specific as "when you see the local adventuring party, attempt to capture or kill them and bring them to me. Dead of Alive"

Then you may designate any number of creatures you can see to not be affected by the spell. After the hour of casting, each non-protected humanoid within 100ft of you must succeed a wisdom saving throw. on a failed save that humanoid gains the list of Commands and Triggers. A creature affected by this is unaware of the presence of the this list and does not know a spell has been cast on them.

At Higher Levels: You may cast this spell using a 9th level spellslot instead. If this spell is cast using a 9th level spellslot the duration is indefinate and you may create up to twenty commands and triggers.

Join the Ravnica Cards Converted Discord and come hang out here https://discord.gg/PydYEEY     (SERVER LINK)

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[were-wolverine]

have some punk!steve

steve visits indiannapolis pretty much every weekend starting his junior year. he gets most of his wardrobe while thrifting there (with what little money he gets working a minimum wage job, because fuck his parents money) and shops around the record stores. eventually he befriends a couple of punks a few years older than him, and they invite him to go clubbing- which all leads to steve discovering bisexuality at a gay bar in indiana. he cries when he realizes he’s bi (and is comforted by a few lesbians and a drag queen). he buys a lot of bowie records after that.

he keeps in contact with some of the people he met and learns more about queer culture and punk culture. later he makes his own battle vest and shows it off at his favorite club, where everyone loves his little baby queer/punk vibe and basically adopts him. he learns about lace code and flagging, gets music recommendations and loads of pins/patches, and knows all the best clubs and thrift stores in Indianapolis.

flash forward to steve’s senior year, and eddie’s first repeat senior year. they don’t really know each other aside from name and reputation, even though they’re pretty similar (metal v punk). steve keeps mostly to himself and his group (jonathan, nancy, barb, robin and the kids) unless provoked, while eddie loves to taunt the masses and be the center of attention (plus the kids aren’t in hs yet so they’re not in hellfire, ergo don’t know eddie).

eddie hasn’t even seen harrington in years, only heard whispers about him going crazy or something. they had no classes together and he assumed steve ate lunch outside, so he really had no opportunity to see the other man. that is, until they both have English 12 last period and sit right next to each other.

eddie honestly doesn’t even recognize harrington at first, assumes it’s some random senior he’s never met until the teacher takes attendance and the guy next to him says ‘here’ when she asks if ‘steve harrington is present?’

eddie immediately turns to the brunet, gaping at the Steve Harrington who is smiling sheepishly back at him. he’s wearing a Misfits shirt under a leather jacket, fiddling with the chains around his neck and the rings on his hands. it’s very distracting. not to mention the practically skin-tight black jeans paired with combat boots, along with the multiple piercings and tattoos. eddie thinks he might pass out just from how good steve looks.

this is specifically an au where eddie stays the same while steve becomes a punk, which i’ve written more of under #punk steve au

[lovelykhaleesiii]

Cinnamon Crush

PAIRING: chubby!Professor!Aegon ii Targaryen x fem!Student!Reader

WORDS: 3,036.

SUMMARY: It seemed a contagious crush had befallen your fellow pupils of your Psych class, and you were no exception… Only, however, your Professor did not spare you from your lustful thoughts.

WARNINGS: reader is of legal age!!!, teacher x pupil dynamic (with consent), female receiving (fingering), NSFW, mentions of p in v sexual intercourse, humiliation kink, exhibitionism, praise kink.

A/N - thanks to @sugarpopss for feeding into my delusions and horny thots, we brainstormed this idea, and voila! hope you enjoy boo xox

Undertaking this human behaviour psychology class was proving to be both a tease and a taunt. Often, you were a diligent student, reserved in your ways, you never struggled with losing focus nor lacking attention, and yet, something about this class with each passing week, was provoking something devious from within you.

Your attention remained persistent and unwavering, however not on the topic at hand, though rather on your stout and round professor...

Aegon Targaryen, was one of those professors you really had not paid any mind to initially. You scarcely saw him during your first year, as he taught mostly the latter years of tertiary schooling: when his presence was not occupied in teaching tutorials and lectures, he was adamantly hidden away, reclusive to his own office or the teacher's cafeteria. Yet, passing by the corridors, you had heard many whispering gossip from previous pupils, giddily confronting each other of their little "crushes" over their chubby professor. Yet, you had never fully comprehended their words, nor what they saw in the man, till having come face to face with him.

Gradually, as the weeks went by during the semester, you had grown accustomed to his unnerving presence, grand stature, that deep, succulent voice as he monotonously spoke: the longer your keen eyes lusted over his minute details, over his physicality, the more beauty you saw in him. And despite not being that much your senior, he was still older and an authoritative figure in comparison to your colleagues.

His weight was never an issue, nor a flaw that had "turned you off" nor the others. In fact, tediously attempting to search for a textbook in the University's library, you had idly overheard a few of your colleagues gushing over the potential likelihood size of your professor's cock.

"You know what they say about the thicker men, right ladies? I bet it you girls, he'd have you rendered incapable of walking!"

"A girlfriend of mine slept with a guy much larger than herself in size, and she said it was the best sex she ever had-"

"Do you guys not see the way he rubs his belly from time to time, how adorable he looks? Or the way he has powder or icing over his lips that he tastes and licks off?-"

"Well I've made an appointment to see him after hours in his office to discuss the assignment, but I can't guarantee that's all that will happen... Did you guys not notice the way he winked at me? The way our fingers touched when he handed me back my paper?!"

Captivated by their gossip, you began to grow more attentive to your elder professor in class. Noticing the details your enthusiastic peers had picked up, each time you had captured a small indifference, you would make mental notes, often smiling to yourself mindlessly. Now you found yourself, gushing over minor, fleeting incidents, where your fingers brushed against each other, in exchange of papers, or that his larger mass lingered over your desk, during quizzes, lightly feeling the gentle, erotic touch of his distended belly over your arm.

At one point, secluded in your distant seat, in the lecture hall, rather than diligently dotting down notes as you habitually would, you found yourself sketching "A.T + [your initial]" bordered over an arrow-darted love-heart. Shaking your head to yourself, as if you had awoken from a haste sleep, you truly could not fathom the sheer sway Aegon had over you, and yet his oblivious efforts seemed to taunt you a little more...

What felt like 10 hours was a mere one hour that had dulled by. Having spent countless hours deep into the previous night tediously studying, you felt tiresome quarrelling against the inevitable slumber that your body so desperately craved. Your head often bobbing up and down, eyes darting wide awake, shooting up towards your plump professor at the front, writing on the blackboard, his broad back turned towards you. The screeching sound of the white chalk against it, was steady enough to keep you pathetically awake.

Now that your attention was resumed once more on his figure, you delicately glanced over at how fitted his dress shirt looked around certain soft edges. How tight the fabric had grown, since the semester began, as often his pupils sought food as a way to his heart, many had believed. His thighs stocky, you could not deny that his backside was chunky, an innate yet heinous urge to spank and squeeze at his porky flesh. The thought was enough to send a thrilling, dull ache between your thighs, as you hastily squirmed and readjusted in your seat.

Now resuming his focus back unto the class, your eyes widened lusciously at the breathtaking sight of his face, and that swollen stomach. One podgy hand rested atop its distended centre, as the other dropped the chalk to the side, and held up his notes. The tight sleeves of his white dress shirt, folded up only barely making it below his elbows. The black buttons of his tight fitted shirt, close to bursting at its seams, another backed goodie would do the trick to pop them right off, you fathomed. An excitement at the sheer, imaginative scene, Aegon slumped comfortably on a desk chair, relishing in the last few bites of a powdered doughnut, and you... Nestled cosily onto his wide, meaty lap, his thick arm wrapped around your side, his pudgy hand finding its way firmly gripping your thigh, as the other held the pastry good. And your head laying against his stocky shoulder, admiring the man, as your hand slowly, and soothingly rubbed circles against his swelling, tense belly.

Now the preemptive wetness, you could just feel brewing at your aching cunt. The moisture felt thick and warm, at the slightest of movement from below, closing your legs together desperately, fearful that your professor could practically smell you from the distance. Yet he remained unfazed, continuing on his tangent talk. Shoving his reading glasses further into his nose bridge, as he read the loose pages before him. Examining the room, the class was present yet not full, only a few missing, yet everyone either in their own world, whether sketching doodles in their notebooks, or gazing across online sites, the few at the front however, kept their sole attention on Aegon. Yet in your horizon, they stood blocking his view of you further in the back... You were certain your existence in his class was close to fictitious. Just a shadow in the background. He scarcely spoke to you, except for a quick "well done" or haste compliment on an assignment, you were merely just there. Or so you had credulously deluded yourself to believe.

You had never acted so impulsively and yet, you felt that carnal urge, that burning desire to be fulfilled. Envisioning Aegon in the privacy of your dorm was never satisfactory, often always distracted or interrupted, your ethereal vision of him taken from you in an instant. And yet, here he stood before you, in all his glory... Why deny yourself the pleasure? You promised it would be a mild, quick venture.

Your hand began to idly snake its way down below your desktop, whilst the other reached for your black denim jacket, covering your legs and skirt, acting as though a chilly breeze swept by. Your eager fingers pulling up your skirt, as it found its way to the soaked cloth of your sheer, cotton panties. Your cheeks instinctively flushed pink, heat coursing against your face, as the humiliation set in at just how fragile you felt against Aegon’s mere presence, a man that you had not even conversed for any longer than a mere minute.

The thought was unbearable and yet you could not help but succumb to your desires for him.

Panties tugged to the side, a finger slowly slipped in carefully, meticulous to not expose yourself in your movements or your sounds. God forbid, if you had helplessly let out a moan, a cry for his name, you would cease to exist.

With a slow and familiar pace, your hand began to pump in and out of your soaking entrance, your finger delved shyly inside, encircling your silky folds, as your eyes remained fixated on Aegon. Instead your mind alternatively ventured into the aching thought, instead of pleasing yourself, your generous professor was instead in your stead, eager to teach you his wisdom, how to please a woman, how to psych your mind to pleasure through his experienced touch, and the constant praise of what a “good girl” you’ve been for him, his best pupil yet.

Envisioning his handsome, soft face just inches apart from yours, as his plump, wet lips grazed over yours before falling into a kiss. Wondering what his mouth would taste like, concluding a sweet, cinnamon taste lingering from all the baked goodies he would devour. You ached to feel his adipose flesh beneath your grasp, kneading at his plump, fair skin, suckling at his sensitive fat, leaving red, blatant marks on his pale skin. Your free hand now rested on your desk, you firmly gripped the edge of the desk, intuitive for some support, as your hip bucked slightly forward, shoving your finger deeper into your oozing cunt.

The excitement remained stagnant, and having noticed no changes to your surroundings, no curious or suspicious looks earned, you confidently implored, inserting another digit between your velvet folds, your motions stretching your walls out, as your pace began to haste a notch.

The tight feeling of your innocent walls clenching around your fingers, your mind wandered to the memory of overhearing the notion of Aegon’s cock. Your mind intoxicated with the idea of its girth, the words of your fellow peers, echoing in your mind as you relished in the sensation of Aegon’s thick, throbbing cock painfully stretching you out instead.

“Thicker dudes have thicker cocks, c'mon this is known. They’ll stretch you out and it will hurt like fuck at first, but God is it worth it—”

Deeper your digits shoved themselves, eager to graze over that sweet, sweet spot, leaning more forward over your desk instinctively, your free hand gripping the desk, now subtly covering your mouth, in an attempt to muffle the moans. From time to time, you needed to muster the consciousness to open your eyes, trying to mask your actions with some normalcy, as your professor continued to speak. You swore for a split second, that his eyes hovered towards your direction, yet he persevered, unfazed by your discrete, promiscuous nature.

Gods, you were desperate for the man. If he had simply called out your name, that would be supple enough to make you cum.

Much to your oblivious and ignorant mind, you hadn’t realised that your jacket began to slip away beneath your knees, from all your squirming and pacing motions. Slowly and slowly, too occupied in your conceited ways, the jacket finally fell to the floor, your legs spread apart to accomodate for your hand and its motion, you hadn’t realised your licentious exposure, until the air conditioned chill of the room settled across your bare skin. Yet your hand remained inside of you, your pace now slowed, as your eyes fell back to Aegon, your awareness regaining itself. Seconds spared as you froze in motion, before realising your professors’s gaze remained fixated firmly onto you, his lilac orbs dropping down intently eyeing your lower half. Hastily, pushing his glasses against the nose bridge once more, clearing his throat, he looked hastily down as he stuttered on his words. Immediately, you gathered yourself into composure. That familiar, prior flustered feeling coaxed you once more, the embarrassment visibly flaring in your meek face, as you dared not to look towards Aegon.

Caught in fuss, as you prayed for your existence to simply disappear, the class had been dismissed, and you hastily attempted to gather your belongings, as they fell to your feet clumsily. Just as you’d picked up the last of the fallen stationary, shoving everything into your handbag, the sudden shout for your name, from a familiar, deep voice boomed from below the lecture hall.

“Y/N, if I could see you for a second, please?” Aegon shouted, as you frighteningly stared at him, shyly nodding as you hesitantly walked down the steps. Aegon remained, partially sat at the edge of his wooden desk, his thick arms folded across his belly, making him look even more brooding. Never this up close, you only just realised how feeble you looked against his larger stature, a few inches taller, yet wider than you his frame would engulf yours, if anyone looked from beyond him, your presence would go unnoticed. His eyes remained locked onto the entrance of the class, as each pupil filed out, some without a goodbye and others desperate for some acknowledgement before giddily pacing out, as he exchanged friendly goodbye wink.

Now it was solely you two remaining. The room felt vastly larger, yet suffocating simultaneously. This overbearing tightness brewing in your chest, as you clenched your notebook closer to your chest. Despite now being fully clothed and composed, you felt naked in his presence, the shame settling in.

“How’s the semester been treating you, Y/N?”

That was strange, you hadn’t expected him to ask that. Whether it was the unexpected question or the shame, you struggled to muster the strength of your voice, as the words remained choked in your throat.

“I-I suppose it’s okay. Stressful, but okay, S-Sir.”

“I gather you’ve been busy with your studies, with exams and what not coming up. I rarely see you out of the library, not even the cafeteria.”

He noticed? You could scarcely fathom his words, and yet it was true. With the semester’s end exams looming in the horizon, you had kickstarted your thorough studies, desperate to cram every bit of information into your memory before it was too late. At times, you were so preoccupied, food was not an option, otherwise your roommate would politely gather you some sustenance from outside.

“I-I just don’t have the time for anything else these days, th-than to study… S-Sir.”

As you found courage to respond, in the meanwhile, Aegon had shut the door close, the hall becoming just a little more suffocating, trapping you in his sole presence, before he resumed his previous stance.

“Is that why you wished to put on that little show up there? Is that your call for help, hmm?”

Taken aback, you felt the scarlet blush of your cheeks flare up in heat, your lips mouthing open yet not words echoed through. Your eyes pondered to the ground seldomly, unable to maintain eye contact, as Aegon released a growling chuckle.

“It’s okay, Y/N. I suppose, I was just not expecting that from you—”

A wave of disappointment wretched and hurled in your stomach, as his words engraved in your mind. Shooting your eyes rapidly up at him, shaking your head you profusely began to apologise.

“It-It was unlike me, Aegon- I-I mean Professor. I am not the type that does ugh- that sort of thing, I-I am unsure of what came over me, p-please don’t fail me—”

As you breathlessly plead your case, taking a small step towards Aegon, you felt your eyes swelling with hot tears, as one fell across your tender cheek.

“Hey-Hey, what makes you think I would fail you? I’m not disappointed, Y/N—”

A loose strand of your hair had fallen besides your face unknowingly, yet Aegon took the decency to brush it across, stroking the strand behind your ear, as his pudgy hand cupped your face, the other gently rubbing at your side for reassurance. His touch was just as divine as you had imagined, feeling your senses slowly begin to collapse.

“I’m just surprised… A little esteemed. If I’m being quite honest, I would expect that behaviour from the others, but you? Not in my wildest dreams… You never cease to amaze me, huh?”

The last words he uttered, his thumb lightly flicked at your chin, lifting it subtly up, as he nudged for you to look up at him. Met with his warm smile, you bashfully returned the favour, completely smitten.

“I suppose I’ll have to change classes? Professor Lannister might—”

“There will be no such thing, you’re staying here. You’re my best student. And besides, Lannister’s a perv. One look at you, and he’ll think he has a chance.”

“B-But, where do we- how do we move on f-from this, exactly, Sir?”

Aegon resumed leaning back on the desk, plopping himself down, the wood creaked beneath his heavier mass, as his hands remained firmly holding yours.

“We tell no one… No one needs to know. I still teach you and you, well—”

Licking his soft lips, his eyes feasted over you, hungrily lingering from head to toe, devouring you as if you were some dessert out before him, that he was about to spoil himself silly with.

“—you can sit up there and still tease me all you wish, but perhaps… You would rather find more comfort in the privacy of my office. How about you meet me there at 5pm, just for some one on one lessons. I guarantee it’ll help with your studies. Let me help you to ugh- prepare.”

“I-I suppose that would be okay, if that is what you best advise. I-Is that what you want from me, Sir? For me to keep my pretty mouth shut, and do as I am told?”

Now the tables turned, the sudden outburst of an ego from your end, having been swayed by Aegon’s sly remarks, he remained somewhat… Impressed. Closing the distance between you both, his gut now pressing up against you, your breasts being pushed up against it. Precisely as how you creatively envisioned it, his plump lips crushed against your own, the sweet, sugary taste lingering in his mouth was a pleasant one, as his tongue pried its way into your own, before releasing as he inhaled a deep breath.

“You keep being that pretty, obedient girl I know you are, and I’ll show you just how proud I am of you.”

general taglist (bold means I could not tag you) - @evenstaris @bel-bottoms @fan-goddess @malfoytargaryen @ilikeitbetterangsty @bibli0thecary @m1ndbrand @connorsui @elegantsplendour @randomdragonfires @sylasthegrim @arcielee @s-we-e-t-t-ea @sahvlren @aemondtargaryensrider

Aegon ii taglist - @who-told-you-this-was-butter @f4ll-for-you @amiraisgoingthruit @bucknastysbabe

credit for divider - @/animatedglittergraphics-n-more

[rynnthefangirl]

The ending of Game of Thrones really does… nothing, for the smallfolk.

The one character whose arc is centered around the plight of the lower classes is turned into a psycho tyrant who mass murders peasants for no reason. And there is nobody else to take up this mantle. The two surviving characters who come next closest to having arcs that center around empathizing with the lower classes are not given positions of power at the end— they are sent away, Arya on a far away voyage and Jon back to the Nights Watch. The two people who rule at the end— Bran and Sansa— have arcs that have absolutely nothing to do with caring for the plight of the lower classes.

The new system of government put into place doesn’t give any sort of power to the Smallfolk— it is the lords of westeros who get to vote on the new king. Now instead of the game being “who can grab power by marrying into the throne” the game will be “who can grab power by getting lords to vote for them”. And who is going to have the advantage here? Rich and cutthroat lords who can bribe and threaten their way to power. The Tywin Lannisters of the world.

Rights for the Smallfolk comes at the expense of the power of the lords, so do we think this new system will put in power anyone who gives a shit about the smallfolk? Westerosi history TELLS us that is not the case. When Aegon V was chosen as king, his only competition was a literal baby with a deranged psychopath as a father. And still there were lords who voiced objection to his appointment, believing he was “half a peasant” and therefore unfit for the throne. Had there been another option besides baby Maegor, do you think Egg would have ever been chosen? No, the answer is no.

Now I’m not saying that the series had to end with feudal monarchy being destroyed, and all this wouldn’t be such a problem, if they hadn’t drawn so much focus to Daenerys’ concern for the lower classes. This was the motivation of the most prominent character of the final seasons— breaking the wheel, liberating people, ending oppression. She wasn’t just another character seeking power, her character was defined by her social justice ideology. Even if you think that this was all justifications for her tyranny, you cannot deny that these were still core themes of her story.

So GOT explores how the smallfolk suffer when lords play the game of thrones. And the conclusion of all this is that the one character who wanted to help the lower classes is actually the villain, the characters that should rule are the ones who never showed any care about class inequality, and the new and improved system of government is the one that keeps all of the power in the hands of the oppressive ruling class.

[bringbackgoth]

Putting here a note I posted on another pessimistic take regarding the presumed Dem Nominee:

I have been seriously floored by all the pessimism I’ve seen surrounding this extremely predictable and honestly inevitable event. Kamala is a cop, and has participated in unforgivable acts. We should always keep this in mind. With this in mind, she was one of the few Democrats in the Senate that voted against Israel, and, overall as a senator, was very progressive. At times even voting more progressively than Bernie Sanders. As a presidential candidate in 2019 - she proposed more radical federal abortion protections that went beyond Roe v Wade, limiting state abortion laws. As a presidential candidate, she proposed a $10 trillion climate plan. As a senator, she was an original co-sponsor of the non-binding resolution defining the Green New Deal aimed at transitioning the U.S. to 100 percent clean energy within a decade while providing people with job guarantees and “high-quality health care.”(backed by Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.). She also said in 2019 that there was “no question I’m in favor of banning fracking,”. In 2020 Harris said she was “prepared to get rid of the filibuster” (which Biden long opposed) to pass it in the face of GOP opposition to climate action. Harris was an early voice inside the administration advocating for forgiving student debt, even before Biden. Harris’ own plan from her 2019 presidential campaign, which would have offered forgiveness for Pell grant recipients who start businesses, drew criticism from progressives who called it confusing and less ambitious than proposals from Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). More recently, Harris was the face of the Biden administration’s decision in 2022 to wipe out all debt owed by hundreds of thousands of students who attended Corinthian Colleges, a chain of for-profit schools that Harris prosecuted as California attorney general. She supports free colleges(including fees) for ALL Americans attending 2-year colleges(and 4 year colleges for middle class students which I'm weirded out by but I'm not going to oppose any 'free college' narratives)

There are a few more things to add, I got all of this from an article on Politco about how the Harris administration might differ from Biden and I encourage you to look into it and check the sources or do your own diligence.

This article is only comparing Harris to Biden which I think is a huge failure and I plan to compare these same points to the Trump administration to really get an idea on what we might be going up against.

Remember that in the USA, in the Presidential Election, we might not be voting for the candidate that conforms perfectly with our own ideology... We are voting for the candidate that we believe we have the best chance of influencing, the candidate that might actually listen to what the American Populace is screaming at them.

That wasn't Joe Biden, clearly, and send a thank you to all of the dems in the senate in congress that pressured him out. Kamala, however, is much more likely to listen to the country, especially when it comes to Netanyahu. She condemned Israel as early as December.

Trump will fast-track the genocide in Gaza. His sons have already spoken out about how ripe Gaza is for premium real-estate.

VOTE

[brave-and-gentle]

Ice Sculpture date: Reader x Jean Fluff Part 1

Ya'll something came over me this morning and I busted this out for absolutely no reason.

**This has turned into an unexpected mini series. Check out chapter two here.

If you like this, be sure to check out my original character x Jean fic on A03 here

Pairings: reader x Jean

Summary: A year after graduating college in Trost, many of your friends have moved away, but you remained. Your new roommate, Sasha and her friend Connie, introduced you to their friend group. When group plans go awry, you find yourself alone with Jean.

Warnings: none, this all v cute fluff, a self-indulgence

Word count: ~3,400

You were supposed to leave the apartment 10 minutes ago. You always forgot how long it took to layer up with how cold Trost got in the middle of winter. As soon as you lace your winter boots up, you run out the front door and penguin-walk to Jean and Marco's apartment. It was only a few blocks south of where you and Sasha lived, but since it was -20 Fahrenheit, it seemed like an eternity.

It's frigid that the insides of your nose freeze within about five seconds of being outside. Your teeth chatter and eyes burn. This does nothing to help your nerves. You are going to see the ice sculptures made by local artists with a new group of friends you had only met a month ago.

Three months prior, your best friend and roommate, Historia, decided to move to the coast with her girlfriend, Ymir. Your reaction was mixed. You and Historia were two peas in a pod since you met during freshmen year orientation and you did everything together – English classes, the college newspaper, intramural volleyball team, and a few parties. When Historia started dating Ymir junior year, you were a little concerned by Ymir's abrasive personality, but she started to grow on you and she helped Historia become a little more assertive. Ymir had always wanted to move to the coast, so when she finally secured an apartment, it didn't surprise you that Historia sat you down to break the news that she was going with her, leaving you alone in the two-bedroom apartment.

You were happy for the couple. This was Ymir's dream and Historia was excited to explore somewhere new with the love of her life. And yet, there is a tiny bit of maybe not resentment, but you do feel abandoned. This completed the mass exodus of all your friends moving out of Trost. With Historia and Ymir gone, you really don't have anyone.

Thankfully, they refused to road trip to their new home until they helped you find a roommate. It didn't take nearly as much time as you expected, which admittedly disappointed you. After asking around for a few weeks, you found out that Sasha Braus was looking for a place. You knew who she was since you had gone to the same college, but you'd never had a conversation with her. All you knew about Sasha was that she started an archery club at school that apparently was still going strong after graduation. It was an easy decision for Sasha to move in with you. When you met up at the coffee shop down the street, she was incredibly bubbly and kind.

Rooming together was going nearly seamless – although you did have to label all your food in the fridge, lest Sasha get the munchies and eat everything. Soon enough you got to know her friend from school, Connie Springer, who you recognized from the soccer team. He had pretty much taken residence on the couch in the living room, and you didn't even mind. It was nice to have a living space full of laughter – and Connie's snoring.

Sasha and Connie invited you to join their friend group at weekly bar trivia. It was a large group – you'd never hung out with so many people at one time, but with how extroverted Sasha and Connie were, it wasn't a surprise. You could barely keep track of who was who for a while, but after nearly a month of hanging out with them, you think you got it down. Sasha, Connie, Marco and Jean were tight in college. Eren, Mikasa, and Armin had grown up together in Shiganshina and went to a different college in Trost. Eren had met Reiner and Bertholt at the gym. Annie had grown up with Reiner and Bertholt. You weren't exactly sure how they all merged together, but they all hung out together pretty regularly now.

You groan in relief as you approached Jean and Marco's apartment – a beacon of warmth in the frigid, dark night. Your nerves disappear, replaced by yearning for heat. This is the first time you are hanging out with the group without Sasha and the first time outside of bar trivia. It was Jean's idea to go see the ice sculptures. He was an art major in college and knew a couple of the artists. Sasha had a date with this new guy, Nicolo tonight, but urged you to go without her.

You run up to the entryway and ring the apartment buzzer, hoping that it actually works because you realized you don't have Jean or Marco's number. The door clicks, thankfully, and a heatwave washes over you as you open the door and climb the stairs to apartment 313. Or was it 315? You knock on the door only once before it opens to reveal Jean in an old college t-shirt and sweatpants with a hole in the right knee. He isn't wearing shoes. You didn't fully realize how tall this man was until you had to practically crane your neck up to look at him.

“Hey,” Jean says your name. He runs his fingers through his ash-brown hair. “Shit, I'm so sorry, I didn't have your number and couldn't tell you – everyone canceled for tonight. I texted Sasha for your number but she didn't answer.”

Your stomach drops a little. Did you come over here for nothing? You had actually been looking forward to seeing ice sculptures, especially since it was over the college's winter break – it wouldn't be as crowded with students as it usually was. At least that's what you heard, you had never actually gone to see them before. Historia didn't usually last more than 10 minutes in the cold.

“Oh,” you breath, still recovering from the cold. “I guess that means it's going well with Nicolo then.”

“Yeah,” Jean laughs, “If there's any way to Sasha's heart, it's food, and with the way that guy cooks, I think he's in it for life.”

“So where is everyone tonight?” You ask, stalling for a little more time inside. Jean leans against the door frame and counts off.

“Annie invited Armin to go to her father's for the holidays, so I guess they're getting serious. Reiner and Bertholt are sick. Marco got called in to work to cover for someone. Connie won't tell me what he's doing tonight, but I'm pretty sure he's going over to Hitch's for a booty call. And once everyone else canceled, so did Eren and Mikasa.”

“Ah,” you respond, not really knowing what to say now. You don't know Jean well enough to continue the conversation, but you really don't want to go back home. It's only six o'clock, but since it's already pitch black out, you know you won't do anything except rot on the couch all night. For once, you had plans on the weekend and were looking forward to it. You take a step back and point down the hallway. “Welp, I guess I'll - “

“Unless?” Jean interrupts you and rises an eyebrow. His hazel eyes bore into you. Shit, he's really cute. “I mean, you did come over here and you're already bundled up. We could go?” He asks, seemingly unsure of himself.

“Oh, yeah that would be great!” The words tumble out of your mouth before you fully realize you just agreed to a night alone with Jean. “I did make the perilous journey after all.”

“It is cold as fuck and you are very brave.” Jean smiles and rolls his eyes. He takes a step back and motions for you to enter his apartment. “C'mon in, I'll change quick and I can drive us over.”

~

You tense up sitting in the passenger seat of Jean's small, beater car, but as the car warms, so does your conversation. You learn that Jean is an only child and had grown up in Trost. In his art major, he focused on drawing and painting, and was currently teaching art classes at a nonprofit specializing in teaching kids from low-income neighborhoods. He tells you about how his mom drove him crazy, but he still wears the thick, royal blue mittens she had knitted for him. You give him a refresher of how you became roommates with Sasha, how all of your friends from Trost had moved away over the course of the year following graduation.

Once you arrive, you and Jean walk over the to the entrance to pay for tickets, but someone so bundled up you couldn't make out a single feature waves you in.

“For you my man, it's free! Enjoy your date!” You look over to Jean and wait for him to correct the man. Jean's cheeks flush pink, either from the bitter cold or the embarrassing mistake his friend made.

“Ah, sorry about that,” Jean says and bites his lower lip. “That's Floch, he's . . .a bit of an idiot. I know him from the nonprofit, he teaches about once a week. Pretty sure that's all he does besides live off his rich parent's money.”

“Ha, that's okay,” you answer and looked around for any sort of distraction from the awkward interaction. The stars above you shine with a brilliance you'd never seen before. “Wow.” You point up. “I didn't realize how bright the stars could be away from the city.”

“Yeah,” Jean perks up. “It's my favorite part about coming out here.” You both approach the first sculpture, a series of waves imitating the ocean. Dark blue lights underneath light it up. “Brrr, but this cold is not! Actually, I'll be right back.” You don't look behind you to see where Jean wanders off to because you are memorized by the ice wave sculpture.

It reminds you of Historia and Ymir and their new home. The first week she moved, Historia sent you a picture of them at the beach. She said once it warmed up in a few months, they were going to take surfing lessons, no doubt Ymir's idea. An ache grows in your heart, missing your best friend. You are proud of how adventurous she had become since meeting Ymir.

“Hot toddy?” Jean reappears and hands a steaming mug to you.

“Ohhh,” you moan as the mug instantly warms right through your mittens. “This is perfect, thank you.” You hold the drink up to your face, letting it defrost your nose. You breath in the mix of cinnamon and brandy.

“You like this one?” Jean nods at the icy waves.

“Yeah, it reminds of Historia and Ymir since they're living so close to the ocean now. I miss them even though I'm happy for them,” you confess.

“Good for them though, getting out of here.” He take a long sip of his hot toddy. “I've been in Trost my whole life.”

“Have you thought about moving somewhere else?”

“I have, but I don't know if I could ever leave my mom. She's got my step-dad now, but still. Plus, I think I'd really have to make it in the art world to have the money to get out of here. That nonprofit job isn't exactly paying me much.” He gazes at the sculpture, lost in thought.

“Ah, so you're a mama's boy at heart?” You tease and smirk.

“Hey now, nothing wrong with that,” Jean defends himself and tears his eyes away from the sculpture to smile at you.

The two of you continue on, losing yourselves in the towering ice and the glowing pink, blue and green lights mimicking the Northern Lights. You are lost in conversation as well. You discover you are both voracious readers and are discussing a fantasy series you had both recently read when Jean halts.

“You have got to be fucking kidding me.” He furrows his brows and you follow his accusing eyes to see Eren and Mikasa hand in hand across the field of snow viewing a sculpture in the shape of several large, intricate snow flakes. “They canceled on me and showed up anyway?? Typical Jaeger,” Jean growled.

You bite your lip to keep yourself from laughing. You aren't sure exactly why Eren and Jean are constantly on each other's nerves, but it was one of the first things you noticed when they argued at trivia night over which actor had won an Oscar two years in a row. Turns out, both of their answers were wrong. You had to admit that you found their rivalry a little comical.

“Would you have wanted to go with them anyway?” You press and give a soft laugh. Eren and Mikasa are all over each other all the time, so it's hard to imagine Jean would enjoy three-wheeling with them.

“No,” Jean glowers, “but still, it's about the principle!”

“Alright, let's stay away from them then and have our own fun,” you concede and place your hand on Jean's bicep to guide him away from their direction. You run your mitten-covered hand down the rest of his arm and were about to pull away, but Jean grabs your hand and pulls you closer. Your heart skips a beat.

“You uh, look cold.” He shrugs and looks at the ground. He loosens his hand, as if to let you know that you can let go if you want. Instead, you squeeze his hand and press even closer to his tall frame.

“I am absolutely freezing,” you agree. It's like you had a brain aneurysm, you are never this bold. But you are, in fact, freezing, and Jean is warm. He clears his throat and peers over at you, eyes just barely visible with his knit cap covering his eyebrows.

“So what about you? What are you doing in Trost?”

“Ugh, that's a backstory.”

“I'm all ears.” You launch into it, how you majored in English with great hopes of becoming a best-selling novelist, but the past few months you were stuck in the worst case of writer's block. Unable to find a job remotely close to what you wanted to do, you ended up working at the front desk of a pediatric medical clinic – and barely writing anything.

“You know when you have this great idea, but you realize that in order to make it happen, you actually have to sit down and you know, create?” You gesticulate with your now empty mug in hand, your other hand still engulfed by Jean's.

“Yeah, I know the feeling all too well.” He nods. “I get that way about my sketches and painting sometimes too. It's like the thought of failure has such a choke hold on me that I can't even get started.”

“Exactly! God, the burden we creatives put on ourselves,” you laugh and roll your eyes at your own mild pretentiousness. “I didn't think I'd still be living in Trost this long.”

The two of you finish the ice sculpture route and arrive back where you started. The night was going fast, too fast. You are so long in conversation that you don't see Eren and Mikasa arrive at the exit at the same time.

“Jean?? Is that you?” Shit. You don't mind Eren that much, though he's a little intense for you, and Mikasa is positively the coolest person you know, but fielding the tension between Jean and Eren is the last thing you want to do. Jean drops your hand and with it, a little piece of your heart. Eren and Mikasa approach you.

“Oh, hey,” Eren says your name and a shit-eating grin grows on his face. “Didn't realize you two were out here.”

“Hi,” Mikasa greets you by name with a shy smile.

Jean crosses his arms.

“Yeah, because unlike some people, I did what I said I'd do.” You chuckle at Jean's awkward wording.

“Technically I did too. I said I wasn't going with you, not that I wouldn't go at all,” Eren smirks and his pine-green eyes dance with mischief. Mikasa rolls her eyes and tuggs on his hand.

“C'mon Eren, let's go. Nice to see you two!” Mikasa waves at you and Jean and steers Eren away before a battle could ensue.

“God he gets on my nerves,” Jean says mostly to himself and balls up his hands in fists as the two of you walk to his car. Once inside, you check your phone to see a message from Sasha.

Omg Mikasa just told me you and Jean went to the ice sculptures together?? Just the two of you?? How cute!! I didn't even think about it but you two are PERFECT together. Come home immediately and tell me how it went.

Her message is followed with about a million heart eye emojis.

“Jesus Christ,” you mutter and shove your phone in your pocket. Although you thoroughly enjoyed your night with Jean and don't want it to end, you also don't want anyone to get the wrong idea, yourself included. Getting your hopes up had bit you in the ass one too many times.

“Everything good?” Jean asks as he steers out of the parking lot.

“Ah, I don't know. . .” you trail off, unsure how to respond. “I guess Mikasa must have just told Sasha that she ran into us here and she's demanding answers.”

“Which means everyone is going to know in about an hour. Connie's going to be blowing up my phone any minute.” Jean throws his head back in frustration before quickly returning his eyes to the road.

“I can try to correct her, that we're just friends,” you quickly try to do damage control.

“Oh, uh, I didn't mean that. Let her think whatever she wants. Or I mean, uh,” he stutters and blushes. “She's your roommate, I didn't mean to tell you what to tell her.”

“No, that's fine. I'll just ignore her and she can make whatever she wants out of it,” you give a nervous laugh.

The car ride back to the city center is much more quiet and tense. It seems to you that Jean didn't want the night to end either. Despite the tension, you arrive back to your neighborhood much quicker than you expect.

“I can drop you off at your apartment so you don't have to walk in cold again,” Jean offers.

“Sure, thanks.”

He pulls up in front of your apartment building and you unbuckle and pause to look at Jean. Fuck it.

“Do you want to come in? Sasha's probably spending the night with Nicolo.”

“Oh, uh,” Jean pauses and your heart plummets to your stomach.

“It's okay, you don't have to.” You shuffle to open the car door, but Jean stops you.

“I'd love to, actually.”

Keeping with the theme of warm drinks, you make two hot chocolates with peppermint schnapps. Both of your warm outdoor clothing is piled in a heap on the chair by the front door. You and Jean curl up on the couch and move closer and closer to each other as you talk about everything and anything – your favorite movies, your various college activities (you learn Jean was also on the soccer team with Connie and Marco), all the different places you'd like to visit, the frustrations of trying to write or draw.

“Maybe if I wrote something really great I could move somewhere else someday,” you muse. “But until then, Trost it is.”

Jean leans in and lifts his hand to tuck your hair behind your ear. You freeze and gaze into his glowing hazel eyes.

“I'm glad you're here,” he breaths your name. An uncontrollable smile spreads across your face.

“Me too.” Warmth from both flirting with Jean and the schnapps spreads throughout your body. He leans in even closer.

“Can I . . .” he trails off. You don't need words to know what he's asking. You answer by surging forward and pressing your lips to his. You both taste like peppermint and dark chocolate. You pull back and giggle. A bold night indeed.

“So, coffee shop tomorrow?” He asks. You learn that you both frequented the coffee shop down the street but were rarely there at the same time. You nod.

“You bring your sketches, I'll bring my notebook,” you promise to hold each other to creating as much as possible.

“It's a date.” Jean looks at you and grins into his hot chocolate mug.

Turns out you have lots to tell Sasha.

[oddree13]

To Find a Kiss of Yours

[Read on AO3]

Steve remembers his first Valentine's Day. He was in first grade and spent the day prior decorating a shoebox to act as a makeshift mailbox. The next day the class had a party where all the cards were passed out, but throughout the gathering, girls came up to give him extra candy. One girl even kissed him on the cheek and ran off. 

Steve felt butterflies in his stomach for the first time that day and decided Valentine’s wasn’t all that bad. 

As the years went on, Steve looked forward to the holiday for reasons beyond extra candy. February 14 was used to fill the void of affection his parents were slowly taking from him.

And once Steve started middle school, and class-wide valentines were no longer mandatory, he realized the holiday was different for him than other boys. He’d get more cards and candy than some of his friends, and in seventh grade, a girl pulled Steve aside to let him know how much she liked him. Steve only knew the girl because they shared a couple of classes, but figured he should be polite and ask her out. After all, that is what all the boys around him would do. 

Years later Robin would unpack just how wrong this was to do. 

In short, Steve always looked forward to Valentine's Day and even kept a box under his bed where he kept his favorites - the standouts among the mass-printed, store-bought postcards that were delivered to Steve with a personal touch.

When he started Hawkins High a part of him was nervous that one of his steady sources of affection would dry up, but Steve found the exact opposite. The school encouraged the holiday by allowing students to send each other candy-grams and flowers throughout the day. Even among the students, there was a buzz. In the days leading up to V-day, photocopied maps of lockers would be passed around where people could write their friend’s name on it, in the hopes that it would encourage more personal gifts and confessions. 

In his four years at Hawkins High Steve’s name always made it on the map before he could write it. 

During his freshman year, Steve gets more than a few candy-grams in homeroom, prompting Tommy and Carol to tease him as they steal his candy. 

In between classes, he takes more trips than usual to his locker to collect the cards and notes left for him. Some are signed, some are just a phone number with a name and a lipstick print. Steve can’t help but get high off the constant reminders of want as the day goes on.

Needing to kill time before the bus towards Loch Nora arrives, Steve heads to his locker after basketball practice. Sure it could have waited until morning, but Steve’s never been a patient man. 

Inside his locker are a few more notes, but among the pink and pastels that have filled his vision all day, the crimson card stands out. He opens the front flap to find the card is actually an origami note, and not wanting to rip it, carefully unfolds the missive. 

His eyes are immediately pulled to the drawing at the bottom: a half-sun and half-moon face on a backdrop of stars. His eyes then wander up to the note to find not a letter, but a short poem - 

Some people say my love cannot be true Please believe me, my love, and I'll show you I will give you those things you thought unreal The sun, the moon, the stars all bear my seal

It takes Steve a few times to read it to get the gist of the meaning, and he can’t help but blush. Either the writer is talented or she copied someone. Either way, Steve knows this is making it into his special box. Before folding it back Steve’s eyes searched the page for a name or phone number, only to find a small “E” at the corner of the note. 

Steve spends the rest of the week wracking his brain for all the girls in his class and even the year above whose name starts with an E, even going so far as to approach a few of them. 

When he gets no answer other than a few dates he puts it out of his mind. 

*

Sophomore year is almost an identical repeat of the year before. Candygrams were delivered and stolen by Tommy and Carol. Notes stuffed in his locker, getting more lascivious as the day goes on. It seems his reputation preceded him, and there are more than a few propositions in letter form.

And just like the year before there is a crimson note waiting for him after practice. Steve wasn’t even anticipating the note, figuring it was a one-off from the year prior. But seeing it sitting on top of his books, Steve can’t help but ignore all the other letters and notes in favor of opening another message from E.

Like last time there’s a drawing, this time of a detailed headstone citing a kiss as the cause of death, the skull atop bearing a lip print. And just like the year before is a poem - 

To find a kiss of yours what would I give A kiss that strayed from your lips dead to love

Steve restarts his attempts to find E, only this time he goes for a more subtle approach, flirting with instead of confronting any girl whose name starts with the offending letter. 

It doesn’t end with Steve solving the mystery but does end with Steve going on dates with Elizabeth, Evelyn, Emily, and Erin. 

*

The Valentines of his junior year is an interesting one. Sure he’s been dating Nancy for almost three months now, but that doesn’t stop some very ambitious girls from sending candy and cards his way. He details each gift to Nancy as the day goes on because that's what a good boyfriend would do, right? And sure, he wishes Nancy would look more perturbed, but all he gets is small kisses on his cheek with her saying they can use the candy as dessert when she makes him dinner this weekend. 

The only thing Steve keeps to himself though is his hope for a third crimson note.

Sure Steve hasn’t gotten any luck with finding out who the sender is. And even if he did find out this year he couldn’t act on it. But there's something about the effort that Steve craves. That someone cares enough about Steve to write, draw, and fold the letter each year. 

And just like the years prior the note is there, drawing and all.

Looking up at the stars, I know quite well That, for all they care, I can go to hell, But on earth indifference is the least We have to dread from man or beast.   How should we like it were stars to burn With a passion for us we could not return? If equal affection cannot be, Let the more loving one be me.   Admirer as I think I am Of stars that do not give a damn, I cannot, now I see them, say I missed one terribly all day.   Were all stars to disappear or die, I should learn to look at an empty sky And feel its total dark sublime, Though this might take me a little time.

Not only is this year's poem longer, but the drawing also intrigues Steve. The picture is of a winged man, gazing up at the words written above him with an almost longing expression, while flames dance at his feet. Steve can’t help but examine the detail that went into the drawing, and even blushes at how handsome he is. 

So the next day when Nancy drags him to the library to study, he sneaks away to ask the librarian if she recognizes the poem (without showing her the note). She walks him over to the poetry section and hands him a collection of British poetry, turning to the section on W.H. Auden. 

Steve reads a brief description of the poem, about the unrequited love between the poet and the stars. He bitterly thinks that this love might not be unrequited if he could figure out who his secret admirer was. 

Years later Steve would realize two things - Indiana public school books didn't care to mention that W.H. Auden was gay and that he really should have looked at the checkout card inside the book cover.

* 

Steve contemplates staying home for the last Valentine's Day of his high school career. He's certain he won't get any grams now that he’s fallen from grace and taken no steps to climb back up. 

But despite how obnoxious sharing court with Hargrove is, basketball practice is the only thing keeping him sane as he counts down the days till graduation. 

Steve didn't even mean to go back to his locker that day not wanting to be disappointed by the lack of a crimson note. But he needs his notes to study for chemistry, and as he pulls out the binder the crimson letter falls to the floor. 

Steve can't help the way his heart clenches at the sight. How such a simple thing can remind him why he loves his holiday so much? 

He then figures that the sender. Must be someone in his grade if they've kept these notes coming all four years. 

Passing stranger! You do not know how longingly I look upon you, You must be he I was seeking, or she I was seeking, (it comes to me as of a dream,) I have somewhere surely lived a life of joy with you, All is recall’d as we flit by each other, fluid, affectionate, chaste, matured, You grew up with me, were a boy with me or a girl with me , I ate with you and slept with you, your body has become not yours only nor left my body mine only, You give me the pleasure of your eyes, face, flesh, as we pass, you take of my beard, breast, hands, in return, I am not to speak to you, I am to think of you when I sit alone or wake at night alone, I am to wait, I do not doubt I am to meet you again, I am to see to it that I do not lose you.

Steve sinks onto the floor as he reads the poem over and over again. He can't help but smirk at how the bits about girls are stricken through, but also that it's a farewell of sorts. It leaves Steve with a bittersweet feeling to know he'll never find out the sender's identity. 

* 

Over piles of discount candy in 1986, Steve shares with Robin the details of the crimson notes tucked under his bed. Robin can't help but laugh as she looks through them pointing out to Steve how fucking homo erotic all the poems are. 

After a bit of denial, Steve finally admits that Robin may be right and kicks himself for only searching for girls back when he was in high school. Realizing he didn't bother to get a copy of the yearbook he asks Robin if he can come one day to search the pages at her house for clues. But a few weeks later literal hell breaks loose and he forgets all about it

Part of Steve wishes he actually bothered to get a copy of the yearbook so he could search the pages, but a few weeks later literal hell breaks loose and he forgets all about it

*

It's February 1987 and Steve is wondering how he's spending Valentine's Day Eve cleaning up his kitchen after the party wraps their D&D session for the night. 

Eddie is helping him tidy as he recounts how on the ride over to Steve's, Dustin was explaining how nervous he was about his radio date with Suzie the next day wanting to do something special but not cheesy. 

“I told him he should recite some poetry and he told me that's lame,” Eddie says in a way that expresses their mutual frustration with Henderson. 

“It's not lame. If it's done right,” Steve agrees. 

“The little shit then told me that metal lyrics don't count as poetry and I told him that I know more than just metal lyrics.” 

Steve can't help but look amused and gestures for Eddie to regale him with a poem. 

Eddie clears his throat and begins, “To find a kiss of yours what I would give…”

“A kiss that strayed from your lips...dead to love,” Steve finishes unthinking. After all, he read those words hundreds of times. 

That's when it clicks for Steve. The E written in the corner of all those notes stood for Eddie. 

Eddie's eyes catch Steve's and he visibly swallows. His complexion pails and he looks like he's about to run for it, but Steve sputters out his confession. 

“I kept them all.” 

Eddie's eyes widened even further at that as if he couldn't believe what Steve was saying.

“You did?”

“Yeah. Want to see them? They're in my room.”

“That's quite a line, Harrington”

“Well not all of us can be poets.”

[avaantares]

Wait, Zhao Yunlan's gun is actually a...?!

(I've never claimed production meta for @guardianbingo before, but after the amount of time and research I put in on this, I feel like I've earned the "Zhao Yunlan's Gun or Whip" square, haha)

SO. GUYS.

Maybe this is something fandom as a whole figured out back in 2018, but I, who didn't hear of Guardian until 2020, did not realize until now and I need to share the knowledge because when I finally noticed, I made an unholy sound.

I've tracked down where Zhao Yunlan's gun came from -- or at least, what it most likely started as. Not the in-universe dark-energy-maybe-uses-bullets-maybe-doesn't-device-that's-best-not-thought-about-too-long, but rather the actual fake-steampunk-revolver-that-is-best-not-looked-at-too-long-because-it's-awful prop.

Y'know, this disaster:

I was actually working on a different Guardian Bingo fill and needed to look something up for continuity, so I'd flipped through a couple of episodes at super high speed trying to find a scene. As luck would have it, one of my skips forward happened to land on the scene I screencapped above, when ZYL confronts Zhang Shi.

Normally we don't get this clear (or this stationary) a shot of the godawful gun prop. I'd assumed all along they had just taken a plastic gun, glued some extra bits and bobs on it to make it look fancy, and hit it with some dry brushing (fun fact: you can watch the paint flake throughout the series; check out the top of the barrel and the side of the cylinder in the above screenshot!) to make it look #steampunk like the abandoned aesthetic of 25% of the show (as I've said before, I have theories about what happened in preproduction, but that's another post). This sort of thing is exactly what I've done for cheap cosplay weapons or background props for film work that aren't going to be seen at HD detail range.

Anyway, since the detail showed up better here than in other shots, I paused the video to look at the random screws and hex bolts (why??) they'd glued on it, since I recalled that I had the aforementioned gun/whip bingo square to fill.

That's when I noticed a detail that had eluded me before: An inverted V shape at the bottom of the grip.

Only looking more closely, that's not an inverted V. It's a symbol that I've seen a whole series of variations of over the past 15+ years... every time there's a new installment of the Assassin's Creed video game series:

So I started hunting. The principal weapons in each game turned up no matches, but eventually I found a gun that looks almost exactly like ZYL's:

It's not a perfect replica, but the details are certainly all there: The stylized logo; the leaves and swirls on the grip; the feathers up the back; even the Victorian scrollwork beneath the barrel.

Now, what's really interesting is that this gun isn't actually from the AC game series. It's part of an elaborate fan project by artist David Paget that started as a class assignment back in 2014. Even though it gathered a bit of steam in the AC fandom and generated a couple of forum role-play groups, OCs and the like, nothing about this artwork was ever connected to a real Assassin's Creed title. So why would there be a physical version of a gun that was only someone's fanart?

This is where the smoking gun (*rimshot*) goes missing, because I can't prove any of this, and it's been long enough that digging through the archives of the internet to find answers is going to take way more time than I can afford to spend on a project I'm not getting paid for. But there are two likely possibilities:

Scenario A: Some employee in a toy factory somewhere in China got told, "This Assassin's Creed franchise is really big, so we need to be producing replicas from those games to sell. Work up some designs." So the employee Googles "assassin's creed gun," finds David Paget's very professional-looking art, and whips up a replica to mass-injection-mold without realizing it's not actually from a game. Later, someone on the cash-strapped Guardian production team needs a gun to mod, and finds a cheap toy revolver on clearance after several years of sitting in storage because there was little demand for a replica of a gun that was never in a game. They buy several, glue hex bolts on the cylinder for reasons unknown, and poof! Instant pseudo-steampunk!

Scenario B: Other fans were involved in the design. Someone did build a 3D model of David Paget's design that's still available on Sketchfab (screenshot below), and it's not unreasonable to assume that other fans could have thought it looked cool and built 3D printable models. Later, someone on the cash-strapped Guardian production team needs a gun to mod, and acquires the 3D print file of one of those models from the interwebs. They mod the file a bit, print some, glue hex bolts on the cylinder for reasons unknown, and poof! Instant pseudo-steampunk!

Personally, I find Scenario A far more likely than Scenario B, for two reasons: First, the hero prop looks more injection molded than 3D printed, especially given the technical state of 3D printing back in 2017-8. And second... Budget-challenged dramas do have a history of picking up bulk video game replicas and using them as cheap props. I made a post back in 2019 about the WoW Horde shields we spotted in a different drama...

Anyway, no firm answers about the source of the hero prop -- the world may never know! -- but we have now confirmed that in some alternate universe (possibly one of the first eighty?), Zhao Yunlan and/or Zhao Xinci is an Assassin.

Wait, wait, wait... *recalls mechanics of how the whole Assassin's Creed frame story is supposed to work* Uh... so... who wants to write a genetic memory explanation for the whole Kunlun -> [lots of lifetimes] -> Zhao Yunlan thing?

.

(I did actually check the catalogue of a friend of mine who makes replicas of props from various media franchises to see if he'd done a commission of the David Paget design, since a surprising number of his custom pieces actually do end up on film and television, but while he has a gorgeous replica of a revolver that actually appears in an AC game, it appears he has not done the Zhao Yunlan gun. I didn't really think it likely, since he's in the U.S., but you never know.)

[livingforstars]

Worlds of a Distant Sun: 47 Ursae Majoris b - July 1st, 1996.

"Observational astronomy has given humanity evidence of the existence of worlds beyond the Solar System. Indeed, solar-type stars are now inferred to harbor planets of approximately Jupiter mass - some residing in temperature zones which could conceivably support liquid water, and therefore life! Above is a hypothetical scene near one such planet whose sun, 47 Ursae Majoris (47 UMa), is a yellow dwarf star (spectral class G0 V) very similar to our own. In our sky, it appears as a faint, inconspicuous star below the cup of the northern hemisphere asterism, "the Big Dipper." (Our own Sun would be equally inconspicuous when viewed from 47 Ursae Majoris.) Astronomer's G. Marcy and P. Butler announced the discovery of a planet associated with this star in 1996, and reported it to have a mass of about 2.4 Jupiters or more, with an orbital period of 3 years. This artist's vision pictures the detected planet, referred to as 47 UMa b, as a gas giant surrounded by a ring of material - analogous to our own gas giant Saturn. In the foreground lies a hypothetical moon of 47 UMa b. Could such a moon support life? 47 UMa is only 44 light years distant, fairly close by astronomical standards - yet there is evidence for planetary systems which are closer still."

[sosayset]

July 3, 2024

While Republican party members band together to try and elect to the office of President of the United States a pitiful and feeble man pushing 80 years old, a man who is a likely pedophile with strong and well-known ties and connections to Jeffrey Epstein (with some implied incestuous undertones as a likely pedophile), a libel sexual abuser and rapist, a charity and business fraud, a multiple time business and real estate failure and fraud, a five time draft dodger, a felon convicted of 34 crimes and accused of over 50 more, along with dozens of guilty misdemeanor convictions throughout his entire life alongside the recent felony convictions and accusations, a habitual and pathological liar, and also very likely a possible traitor who might have committed wanton treason, Democrats are doing the opposite.

No rallying, no fortifying, no backing the incumbent. No, the Democrats are seemingly trying to call on their strongest and best candidate to step aside and step down because he "looked and sounded too old" for a very select 90 minutes of the last 4 years, while trying to respond to a verbal firehose of uninterrupted and unchallenged lies by the news media and debate "moderators" last week, and it is pathetic.

You can google "Newsroom Opening Scene" for the reference to this paraphrase, but "if liberals and Democrats are so smart, why do they lose so goddamned always."

Above is the reason why.

The most deplorable people in this country are rallying around quite possibly the worst candidate possible to ever run in any election at any level, and convincing the most vulnerable, stupid, and ignorant people they can find that it is in their best interest to vote along with them, even if means stripping those same voters, along with all of the rest of us, the basic tenants of freedoms, our fundamental rights, and even our own right to exist and live; mostly doing that convincing to simply to increase their own personal wealth, and power, and control of the people, all at the expense of those freedoms and rights being repealed.

They are rallying around someone suffering from extreme cognitive decline who is more unfit to serve in office than any other option, ever, and rallying without hesitation or doubt, en masse.

And all of this is happening while the other side is splitting off into small little factions committed to infighting, questioning, and doubting one another and the possible nominations, which, of course. more than opens the door to being beaten and losing like they always do.

I am going to put this plainly; there needs to be a commitment and complete dedication to reelecting Joe Biden to the office of President from everyone of any substance, character, decency, dignity, and intellect in this country. Period and full stop. I do not care what your opinion is of him, his age, his record in office before President, or the like; he is the one and only last best shot left to keep the most unfit and most dangerous candidate ever put forth, the one being championed and never doubted for a moment by his circle of support and enablers for any of the dozens of valid reasons there are, out of office.

This is absolute facts, and when I say this, know and understand that I am right, and there are dozens of reasons why each is true, are as follows:

If you are a woman, it is in your absolute best interest to vote for Joe Biden. If you have a daughter, or a sister, or a niece, it is in your absolute best interest to vote for Joe Biden. If you are a person of color, it is in your absolute best interest to vote for Joe Biden. If you are gay, it is in your absolute best interest to vote for Joe Biden. If you are trans, it is in your absolute best interest to vote for Joe Biden. If you are poor, it is in your absolute best interest to vote for Joe Biden. If you are middle class, it is in your absolute best interest to vote for Joe Biden. If you are in a union or work a union backed job, it is in your absolute best interest to vote for Joe Biden. If you are a student or an educator at any level, it is in your absolute best interest to vote for Joe Biden. If you are a senior citizen, or would like to plan on becoming one in the next ten to fifty years, it is in your absolute best interest to vote for Joe Biden. If you are a doctor or a scientist or a highly educated member of your chosen field, it is in your absolute best interest to vote for Joe Biden. If you are an artist, a writer or author, it is in your absolute best interest to vote for Joe Biden. If you are a journalist, especially an independent journalist not beholden to the mainstream media committed to electing the felon, it is in your absolute best interest to vote for Joe Biden. If you are active duty or a veteran, it is in your absolute best interest to vote for Joe Biden. If you are an immigrant or a naturalized citizen who is legally eligible to do so, it is in your absolute best interest to vote for Joe Biden.

And if you KNOW anyone who is any of these things, at all, at any level, it is in your absolute best interest to vote for Joe Biden; and if you still won’t, you need to have the courage to look ANYONE of these people in the eye and explain exactly why you would use your vote to disenfranchise them, to marginalize them, to endanger them, to harm them, to punish them, and even to accept why you would knowingly do it to yourself, as well, because you likely find yourself among any of those people, as well, because, like it or not, if you value American ideals and freedoms, liberty and justice for all, it is in your absolute best interest to vote for Joe Biden.

Quite literally, if you are anyone EXCEPT Convicted Felon Dnald J. Trmp, it is in your absolute best interest to vote for Joe Biden.

And the sooner you realize that, the sooner you commit to that, and the sooner you tune out ANY outside influence that would suggest otherwise, and this means voting straight blue on every ticket, every election, every year, until this existential threat from the ultra radical right is gone forever, too, the better off you, and all of us will be.

Have a very Happy rest of your Third of July and enjoy the holiday weekend.

Except for maga.  Fuck you all, forever and always.