#my fav Steve hc ever is that he’s diabetic

[hargrove-mayfields]

Harringrove April Day 12- Soda

Steve doesn’t ever drink pop.

He had a can of orange crush just once after Tommy found out his mom didn’t let him drink sugary drinks and smuggled him one, and he ended up in the hospital with ketones because he couldn’t control his sugar afterwards so, never again.

Honestly, he doesn’t think he’s missing out on much, carbonation makes his stomach turn and most pop tastes disgusting anyways.

But, diabetes or not, he’s still got a sweet tooth, so every year when the spring festival comes to downtown, the double dose of insulin is worth it for a cherry pop float like you can’t get anywhere else.

He went every year, usually to impress his latest fling, but this time he doesn’t have one, so he brings Dustin and his little brat pack along with him with the promise of buying them each something from the craft show and a ride pass for the Ferris wheel just so he wouldn’t have to be the loser who came to the festival alone for a hint of nostalgia and a potentially lethal dose of sugar. (he hadn’t really stooped that low yet, had he?)

But just because Steve can’t catch a break, Billy decides he wants to come too.

Since he’s not from around here, Steve’s guessing he doesn’t know, but if you weren’t acting as the overwhelmed babysitter, you come to the spring festival to celebrate the season of love.

The very last thing he needs right now is his best friend who he totally doesn’t have a crush on spending the day with him at the damned romance festival.

Especially because once they get to the fair, Billy makes sure to get rid of the kids by opening Steve’s wallet, so there went Steve’s sad sap excuse for being here along with his thirty bucks, and then he was alone with the one person who was going to make this hard.

Everything Billy wants to do is conveniently the things couples were supposed to do together, the games where you were won your girlfriend something nice, the rides you only went on with your sweetie, and it’s driving Steve up the wall.

Between doing everything he’d done with every last one of his girlfriends since he was 12 with his not crush and the fact that he knows that’s not Billy’s true intention, he’s just so done being here.

After the carousel (the carousel!) is when Steve just can’t take it anymore, and he snaps at him, “Can we just get what I came here for already?”

Billy looks surprised by his attitude, his ego knocked down a few pegs and he says simply, “Alright.”

In line, he tells him, “You’re paying. You owe me for that money you gave to the kids.”

“Puh-lease, they were going to get it off of you by the end of the night anyways.” Struggling against the ridiculously tight jeans he’s wearing, Billy fishes his wallet out of his pocket, and forks the money over regardless, “But I’ll buy you your drink anyways, princess.”

“Thank you.” Steve says snootily, pretending like he was better than him when really, just the thought of Billy Hargrove buying him a drink was making his heart do flips.

Steve decides he’s had enough of this stupid festival for one night, so they take the floats back to their cars, sitting out in the parking lot on the hood of the Camaro.

The second Steve takes a sip of that sugary concoction he gets a headache, but it was so worth it. Usually he stuck to all the rules, and if he could only get his sugar high once a year when the fair came to town, then so be it.

Except, because it had been a whole year, there was one unfortunate side effect to drinking pop he always forgot about: hiccups.

As if things couldn’t get any worse, he just had to start with the hiccuping, over and over again until his stomach hurt and he was ready to tear his hair out.

And of course Billy is staring at him too, a smirk playing at his lips, stained red from the soda pop, but then instead of poking fun, he kisses him out of nowhere. Like it’s nothing at all, he just leans over and presses his lips to his all sweetly.

He pulls away all too soon for Steve’s liking, and asks after a few seconds, teasing smile on his face, “So? Are they gone?”

Steve furrows his eyebrows, confused, until he realizes Billy meant his hiccups, and that meant he’d only kissed him to try to shock him. In an instant his heart feels like it’s been ripped from his chest, knowing that it wasn’t genuine when that was all he could want.

“I-I think so.” He agrees, though in his heartbreak he feels the need to clear things up, “But was that real or was it just because of the hiccups?”

“Not unless you want it to be.”

“I do.” Billy raises an eyebrow, his lips pressed into a flat line, and Steve flushes, realizing his mistake, “No wait, I do want you to have meant it, don't want it to be fake.”

Now it’s Billy’s turn to be upset with Steve, as he crosses his arms and says, frustrated, “Well now I’m the one that’s confused. Should I have done that or not?”

But Steve is tired of talking in circles, so instead of saying anything else and burying himself deeper, he’s the one grabbing Billy by the lapels of his shirt and kissing him hard.

This time, he gets a taste of Billy, cherry soda and nicotine and everything he ever wanted on his tongue.

Billy pulls away first for a breath, wide smile on his face as he prompts, “I’ll take that as a yes?”

Steve shoves him, “Oh shut up.” and lets him kiss him again, soft and sugary sweet.

[hargrove-mayfields]

I haven’t been able to write a whole lot recently so to make up for the little drought here’s a few kegboys hcs!

-Tommy has a big thing for 70s country music, it’s like, all he’ll listen to. Steve’s kind of overexposed to country having grown up in IN so he’s pretty neutral on it even though he prefers pop, but Billy, resident metal head and city boy through and through, tries to poke fun at him for it because like, country music is for uncool hicks, right? But, and this is very much to his dismay, Billy cannot get enough of Dolly. Like he really couldn’t care less about Toms other picks but he is beyond hooked on Dolly to the point that he’s the one buying all her new records when they come out.

-Tommy is absolutely the house husband because the other two are honest to god domestically useless. Billy tries really, really hard to help because Steve goes to work and he feels like he’s lazy for not being able to do much while he’s recovering, so Tommy sticks him with the little jobs because he knows he’s never going to get him to agree to actually resting. It’ll just be little tasks, things like cleaning the lint trap when Tom switches the laundry, but it’s enough to make him feel less useless.

-But! As good as he is at keeping up with the bills and doing chores, Tommy CANNOT cook. Steve will never ever forget the time he came over to his house and caught popcorn on fire in his microwave or when Billy had to swoop in and unplug the toaster like seconds before Tee electrocuted himself trying to use a fork to fish out a piece poptart that broke off in there, so he is very much not allowed anywhere near a stove. Billy is the best cook and even then he’s a little iffy because Neil never let him do it, so to compensate for how collectively awful they are in the kitchen they have like a thousand scribbled in cookbooks in every drawer and pantry.

-They all three have very different sleeping habits. Billy’s the early bird, always gets up at the same time as the sun well-rested no matter what time they went to bed. Steve is a deep sleeper through and through, he’ll pass out at like, 11:00 every night and won’t move again until morning. If nobody were to wake him up he could probably sleep all through an entire day. Tommy’s something of a rough sleeper though, can’t usually get to sleep until at least two in the morning, usually later than that even, and once he gets to sleep it’s very light and he tends to wake up every hour, on the hour. One time when Steve’s at the pharmacy picking up Billy's meds he grabs a little thing of melatonin for Tom because like, it says it boosts sleep and anything’s worth a shot if it means Tommy won’t be so exhausted and sick and frustrated all the time, and it does help! He sort of ends up on about the same sleep schedule as Billy once his rhythm gets a little more regulated.

-When they first started dating, Billy thought Steve was bad when it came to clothes stealing, he lost a few jackets and old t-shirts that way, but when they all three move in together he discovers that Tommy is the true culprit. Neither he nor Steve can keep track of literally any single piece of clothing. Everything, from their hoodies to their jeans to their pjs to their socks, all belong in some part to Tom until eventually they just have one community wardrobe they pick and choose from instead of like, individual clothes.

-They all three overuse the heck out of pet names like baby and babe, which results in Steve calling Tommy babe one and Billy babe two because he was tired of saying like “hey babe” and getting two simultaneous answers.

-Tommy does Billy’s hair for him when he still can’t do too much with his hands, and after that too when it’s convenient because it becomes routine, combing out his curls and putting mousse in it when he wants it done nice, because he wants to be a hairdresser anyways! He’d practiced plenty on Steve ever since they were in middle school, given him tons of hair cuts and even his highlights! It’s for that reason that when Tommy starts doing Billy’s hair, Steve gets the teensiest bit jealous because that used to be him. So everytime they go anywhere and they aren’t crunched for time he has to do both Billy and Steve’s hair and he starts not having time to straighten his own! But! That’s okay because his boys are very fond of his natural curls!

-Steve runs very, very cold always. He’s a type one diabetic so he’s pretty much always anemic and he freezes like 24/7. Even in the summer when Billy and Tommy are like melting into the furniture, he can get away with long sleeves and be just fine. When they’re in bed they keep Steve in the middle because they both run super warm like a heat register and it’d get too hot without having Steve as their ice pack between them.

-More about Steve’s diabetes bc it’s like one of my fav hcs and I wish I could write about it more! It’s really hard to find things for him to eat because he’s gotta worry about his sugar, but also because he has so many food allergies and sensitivities on top of that. Before he had anyone around he just kind of didn’t care about watching himself like, if he wanted to eat something, he would just do it, but he ultimately faced the consequences of that a few times too many, aka being hospitalized twice with DKA and three times with anaphylactic shock. he gets banned from grocery shopping on his own, because he will absolutely buy so much stuff he isn’t supposed to have and ‘lose’ the receipt and just hide the stuff because his boys will not let him eat whatever he wants anymore. Billy is also not allowed to go shopping because he never remembers what brands they use or reads any labels, he just grabs the first of everything he sees and calls it a day. Tommy officially gave up on them and started doing it himself after confiscating a half empty bag of gummy bears off of Steve and having to use the wrong toothpaste for months because Billy refused to pay attention.

-Tommy attracts strays! Cats, dogs, an actual escaped budgie from the neighbors house once, it doesn’t matter, somehow they always find him. If he’s out on the porch there’s like, a ninety percent chance there’s a critter that doesn’t belong to them in his lap. He lets Billy name them all even though they can’t keep them. Tommy personally can’t pick a favorite out of the 20 some odd cats that come and go because they’re all his babies, but Billy and Steve have theirs. B’s favorite is a black and white little fella named Mr. Shrimp and Steve’s is a sweet tabby girl named Meowzers! The rule doesn't only apply to domesticated animals either, raccoons and wild bunnies also tend to lurk around their porch. Billy picks up a raccoon once (he named her Poubelle, but calls her Bella) and Steve yelled at him for hours about how dangerous and irresponsible and gross it was. Him and Tommy get boyfriend grounded for like, weeks after that.

-Steve is like everyone’s Midwestern grandma! He keeps pockets full of butterscotch candies and tissues, he’s got a collection of blow molds and Tiffany lamps, he wears sweatshirts and jackets with weird quotes on them and like, he believes the cure to every ailment is tomato soup, vicks, a wash rag, and a kiss or any combination thereof. It drives Billy completely up the wall, because he’ll cough like once and Steve is like do you need soup? do you need a doctor? please let me help you. But Tommy likes it, being fussed over, cause he grew up with younger siblings and two working parents, so he was always the one doing the fussing.