#steve harringon x asd!reader

[demogordon]

Lovecats

PART ONE

Pairing: Steve Harrington/GN Autistic!Reader

Wordcount: 2.4k

Summary: Steve Harrington has hit rock bottom. His girlfriend dumped him, he didn’t get into any universities, and to top it all off, he’s stuck wearing this stupid sailor outfit every day. He just cannot seem to catch a break. Cue “Meet Ugly.”

Category: Fluff, Slow burn 

Warnings: language (duh), very light blink and you’ll miss it mentions of Stancy

Notes: Reader in this story is based very strongly off of my own experiences with neurodivergence. Autism is a broad spectrum, and what is lived experience for me may not be for you and vice versa. 

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Steve chalks it up to his hair’s lack of its usual luster because Farrah Fawcett’s hairspray line has been discontinued. Girls just aren’t into him the way they used to be, and with every poorly hidden laugh or eye roll, he withdraws further into himself, the certainty he’d once had dwindling rapidly. After the astronomical failures of the morning, he needs a win. He’s ready to get back out there, in motion, but he’s got nothing. No future, no confidence, no “King Steve” persona. He’s not Mr. Cool or Mr. Funny. He’s bullshit, bullshit, bullshit, why wouldn't other girls see that too? 

When a girl he recognizes from school, Shirley Something-or-Other comes in, wearing a powder pink shirt and a knee-length skirt, and a fluffy half ponytail, he allows himself to have some hope. His head floats away, envisioning Nancy again, in such a Nancy outfit, with such Nancy hair. The interaction goes disastrously. He tries to pull out the suave guy who used to get dates, adjusting his posture and giving her the classic Steve Harrington smile: boyish and a little lopsided.

“Ahoy,” he says. The girl just stares and blinks at him, rapidly batting eyelashes clumped with thick blue mascara. 

“Ahoy,” she replies, raising her voice at the end as if she’s asking it as a question. 

“What can I get for you today? A scoop of Strawberry Sails? Chocolate? Sprinkles? Maybe some good company? My number?” He wiggles his eyebrows at her, to invite her to laugh. 

Instead, Shirley does that smile, saccharine but taunting, and the way she arches her eyebrows as he talks tells him that she’ll be telling all of her friends about this later.

Steve catches his first glimpse of you as she speedwalks out of the shop, cone in hand. He’s never seen you before. He’d definitely remember it. You’re sitting on the edge of the decorative planter outside of Scoops Ahoy with giant, clunky headphones on, legs and feet curled under you at an odd angle. In your hands, you have a thick book, but he’s much too far away to make out the title. Two children, much younger than you, run around wildly around you. He assumes they belong to you in some way, because of how much the three of you look alike. 

Robin comes up behind him, too close, and leans over him, resting her chin on his shoulder. Breathing against his ear, she mumbles, “Whatcha lookin’ at?” 

Steve wriggles away in annoyance.

“God, haven’t you heard of personal space?”

“Nope,” she says, ignoring his escape attempt, opting instead to follow him and obnoxiously crack her gum right next to his ear.

“What is wrong with you? Like, actually?” he snaps, scalp prickling with sweat as heat floods through his skull. It’s bad enough working here with stupid flimsy uniform shorts, a stupid sailor hat, sticky ice cream all over his hands, and being too hot and too cold at the same time without Robin breathing down his neck, laughing at him at every opportunity. It’s humiliating is what it is. 

Robin hops up onto the counter and kicks her filthy converse sneakers up dangerously close to the open containers of ice cream. She squints, peering down her long nose at him. Her face softens, almost imperceptibly. Pretending like she hasn’t been making fun of him all morning, she says, gentler than usual, “You okay?” 

Steve huffs miserably and drops his head down to stare at the ground. 

“Is that so, big guy?” she says. Steve tries to blow her up with his mind.

“Oh, shit, twelve o'clock,” Robin exclaims suddenly, leaping off the counter. Steve realizes that you’re walking toward the Scoops entrance, guided by two very eager children. As you walk, you’re rummaging through your bag, and when you pull your hand out, you’re clutching a few dollars in your fist. 

Steve leans across the counter as you fold and unfold the bills in your hands. You have giant, clunky headphones on, covered in funky smelly stickers. It’s kind of rude that you don’t take them off, he thinks, but you are cute, and besides, you’re probably listening to a great song. 

He wonders briefly what sort of music someone like you listens to. The Cure, maybe. He can imagine you, flat on your back under the sun, listening to Robert Smith’s airy vocals, eyes closed, half asleep in the summer heat. Daydream you stretches backward like a cat, back arching off of the grass, arms spreading up and reaching above your head. He likes you there, in a park, maybe on a picnic. 

Image in mind, Steve quirks his usual charming smile, the one that used to score him dates in high school but you don’t seem to really be looking at his face, just at the money in your hands. Once again, it’s something he might think was rude, except you seem nervously focused on your hands. You’re shy. It’s cute. 

“What are you listening to?” He asks, only to be met with a furrowed brow. You look

confused like you have no idea what he could possibly be talking about. He points to his own ears, feeling the blood rush to his face and begin pounding in his head over the mall’s synth soundtrack. 

“On your headphones,” he clarifies, feeling less certain and more embarrassed by the second. You’re still not quite looking at him, but your eyes are piercing, making his underarms and the small of his back prickle with sweat.

“Oh, they don’t do music,” you say, offering no further explanation of their purpose. You shift back on your toes, carrying most of your weight there and you frown a little. 

“Could I get two cones? Um, one-scoop ones?” Your gaze drops to your feet. 

“Yeah, sure, what flavor?” You turn to the children accompanying you with raised eyebrows like you’re not prepared for the question, which surprises him. You duck down a little to let the children communicate with you more clearly. Your listening face is intent and serious and you do little nods of your head to the rhythm of your quick blinking. When you stand back up, you shoot to your full height like a projectile before immediately ducking your head so you can avoid eye contact. Steve wonders if he smells bad or something. 

“Two strawberry, please.” 

“I’m sorry, we don’t have ‘strawberry.’” He realizes immediately that this was the wrong joke to try to make when your face falls. You look legitimately distressed. Steve backpedals immediately. 

“We only have Strawberry Sails.” Your face doesn’t relax. Your eyes have stretched wide, and Steve wonders what he possibly did to make the universe hate him so much that it sent him someone who would be this alarmed by his teasing. Annoyed is better than stressed or concerned or whatever emotional journey it is that you’re on. He resigns himself to the third You Suck tally of the day and sighs deeply. 

“I’m joking, that’s just what we call it here. At Scoops Ahoy. It’s regular strawberry.” You let out a series of deep breaths that probably count as laughter. Steve pivots on his toes to go fetch the cones and get you out of the shop as quickly as he can to spare himself even more embarrassment. What happens next is inevitable, a combination of rushing about in a tiny space and attention to detail instantly results in disaster. In his hurry, he bumps his hip against the ladle stuck in the chocolate syrup and sends it clattering to the floor. The trajectory of the launch sends a spray of it across his chest and stomach and the front of his shorts. Shit. He pointedly does not look back your way as he scoops the ice cream. 

“Alright, two single scoops of strawberry, that’s two-fifty,” Steve says, reaching over the counter to hand the cones individually to the children. You make no move to grab them, just hand him three crumpled ones that you’ve been desperately trying to smooth out. He reaches for the money but you interrupt. 

“Oh, you’ve got something,” you say, and he goes to brush it off. “No, on your nose. No, other side.” 

It’s a smudge of chocolate, of course, and since there's no saving his uniform from tonight’s wash, he wipes it off of his thumb onto his shirt. You’re smiling, so broad and big. It squishes up your eyes and crinkles your nose. You have a pretty smile. Steve wishes he didn’t get to see it for the first (and probably last) time after he’d already made a total fool of himself.

“Did I get it?” Steve asks, hoping that maybe he hasn’t and you’ll reach across and rub it off for him. No such luck: you shoot him a thumbs up. He exchanges your three one-dollar bills for fifty cents in change, which you deposit into the tip jar before turning and exiting stage left. 

A sarcastic slow clap starts up behind him and he peeks over his shoulder to watch Robin presenting her whiteboard through the employee breakroom window. She takes her red Expo and adds three additional tallies to the YOU SUCK column. Steve protests vehemently. 

“No. No, no! That wasn’t worth three! It wasn’t that bad!” 

“It was absolutely that bad, but I can do a breakdown of where it all went wrong.”

“Please,” Steve sighs, intending it sarcastically. Robin is more than delighted to comply, either deliberately ignoring his facetiousness or ignoring it entirely. 

“Well, first, you didn’t get a yes or a number. So that’s one YS. YS stands for-”

“You Suck. Yeah, I got it.”

“Two, you spilled chocolate sauce all over yourself. So now we have two YS points. And three, you scared our poor patron to death with that whole ‘we don’t have strawberry thing.’ What was that? So our total is now three.” Robin puts on a fake deep voice as she quotes him and she settles down enough to admire her board. Then Steve opens his mouth and only digs the hole deeper. 

“You forgot that they laughed. After I spilled the chocolate.” As soon as he says it, he wishes he hadn’t. Robin’s eyes sparkle with mischievous (read: malicious) interest. 

“Did they laugh?”

“Smiled, actually, but- You’re adding another tally aren’t you?” Steve whips around and Robin yelps, attempting to hide her board, which is difficult to do because of her position, half-hanging out of the window. 

“No! I am not-” The argument devolves into a wrestling match over the board. Robin is surprisingly quick but Steve is stronger. Later, he insists that the only reason that she got it back from him was that Mike Wheeler decided that right then was the perfect time to start relentlessly dinging the bell on the counter for service. He’d actually let go of the board on purpose but Robin didn’t need to know any of that. 

Mike stands at the counter, lips pursed and fingers drumming impatiently. Lucas, Will, and Max accompany him, which tells Steve that not only do they want a favor, they want it immediately. As he opens up his mouth to speak, Mike cuts him off. 

“What happened to your shirt?”

Robin pokes her head back out of the employee window, feeling confident enough after her retreat to go back to making fun of him. 

“We had a cute customer. Stevie here got distracted,” she crows excitedly. There is no need to fill in any of the gaps even though it’s not an entirely accurate recounting of the story. The boys giggle amongst themselves. 

“Got distracted? What are you, five?” Lucas teases, only to immediately wilt under Max’s disapproving stare. “I mean, nothing.”

“You know,” Steve says, studying his fingernails as though the children are boring him, “I don’t have to let you guys into whatever movie it is this time.”

“Rambo Two,” says Max, easily the most excited by the prospect of an R-rated movie. She shoots stern looks at her companions, silently warning them that if they lose their privileges with Steve, they’ll be in for it with her, a far more serious consequence than Steve being pissy for about thirty minutes before he forgives them. “They’re sorry, aren’t you guys?” 

Their mumbled agreement, one apologetic, the other disingenuous, is good enough. Steve guides them through the Employees Only door with an eye roll. As he holds it open and the group file in, ready for their espionage mission, Max stops. 

“I happen to think it’s romantic to get distracted, just by the way,” she says and then scurries off to catch up with the others, who have already started loudly complaining about her lagging behind in the space of two and a half seconds. She’s a good kid, Steve thinks. She’s his favorite, though he’d never tell Dustin that. 

“Yeah. You’re a regular Don Juan.” Robin’s sudden voice in his ear makes him nearly jump out of his skin. He brushes her off and whips around to finish out the shift so he can sit in his car in silence and wait for the kids to leave the movie so he can drive them home. There’s no way he’d ever let them walk home by themselves in the dark. 

When he’s finally home hours later, he strips his sweaty uniform off, cringing as the damp fabric sticks to his back, and walks down to the laundry room in the basement in his briefs and socks. His parents aren’t home, it’s not like anyone will see him. Steve spends a few minutes scrubbing at the chocolate stains before giving up and just tossing it into the washing machine. You probably won’t come around again, he thinks to console himself. He’s never seen you before today, so hopefully, it’s a one-off because, God, as cute as you are, you are difficult to flirt with.

For the next few days, he’s right. You don’t come by, you don’t sit on the planter, and he doesn’t spill chocolate again. Until his Saturday morning, when you come in again, this time without headphones on. He notices that your gait is a little clumsy and awkward and you hold your hands curled in like a Tyrannosaurus Rex. Okay, so, you are here, to stay, by the look of it. Maybe you won’t remember him. 

“Oh, hi! You got the chocolate off your shirt.” Fuck.