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buckets-and-trees · 26 days ago

Note

This is pure self-serving, but can you share some thots or bites about tattoo artist slash tattoo shop owner Steve from Obsidian Stain & Sin?

I still remember that line that he loves to work the front as much as the back 👀🤭

well

I had someday intentions of sharing Tattoo Artist Steve's story, I just didn't know that day was going to be today. But when I started typing up some thots about him, the muse said, no...

YOU GET STORYTIME

Like Real People Do [Obsidian Stain & Sin]

Characters/Pairings: tattoo artist!Steve Rogers x curvy Millennial Female!Reader Word Count: 3.5k Summary: The owner of Obsidian Stain & Sin has his sights - and his heart - set on someone. And he has had for a very long time.

Content/Warnings: tattooing/needles, friends to lovers, fluff

Author Notes: While this exists within the Obsidian Stain & Sin verse, there is NO NEED WHATSOEVER to have read any of that series to read this - it's 100% a stand-alone.

Three years.

You’ve owned the bakery a block away from Steve’s tattoo parlor for three years. Freshly baked bread and pastries in the morning and offering sandwiches and desserts through the afternoon for lunch service.

Steve has had his place in this neighborhood downtown for almost nine years. He wasn’t the first in the area, but he and the other business owners really showed up to support each other and build a bustling and vibrant area for the local community, the kind of place where you really have a group regulars, people who feel like they belong. Familiar faces even if not everyone knows your name.

So of course he’d been there for your grand opening.

And he’s been there almost every day since.

Everything you made was good, you kept a friendly staff, and it was all fair pricing—fair to you and fair to the customers.

But it wasn’t the crullers or croissants or even the goddamn Italian grinder on focaccia that kept him coming back. It was you. The breeze-in-the-door, flour-on-your-elbow, permanent half-exasperation-half-kindness etched onto your face, you.

He had been so drawn in by how you interacted with everyone. He had almost been skeptical of it at first because you were nice to everyone the same way. Not flirty per se, but buoyant, capable of making anyone—stuffy old lawyers, the construction crews in Carhartts, the hungover art students—feel cared about in the extremely brief window they interacted with you. Steve liked to think he wasn’t a sucker for that kind of thing, but here he was: a sucker, on the hook, and you didn’t have a clue.

You were friendly as hell with your regulars, that was true. But you were flirtatious—almost aggressively so—with every single one of them except Steve, whom you treated with something so close to total neutrality it had become a running joke, and yet he sometimes wanted to tip the pastry case over from sheer frustration.

He’d seen you ask the UPS driver if he’d modeled for their calendar, shoot finger guns at the tow truck lady and tell her she “looks like she can handle any kind of heavy machinery,” compliment the city inspector’s mustache, and wink at a grandma with such easy, unpretentious charm the air sparkled around you. Meanwhile, you’d slide a mug of coffee his way with a smile so mild and familial Steve sometimes checked his arms for the label reading “brother” you must surely see when you looked at him.

Maybe he’d grown soft in his late thirties. He was a long way from sneaking into clubs with fake ID’s and joyriding tattoo machines over his own knuckles. He’d traded in the tough-kid sneer for business owner’s collected-ness, for rolling out the appointment books and chatting roof repairs with his landlord, even for sitting through Sunday markets week after week with you as you went from stall to stall.

Not that that was any kind of chore.

No, the only thing that made your weekly tradition a true torture was that he couldn’t twine his fingers with yours or put his hand on the small of your back while the two of you made the rounds. But he wouldn’t give up those trips for anything. It was the time when the two of you got to talk about real things, where you went from friends to best friends. The place where you’d shared once that you took over the lease on this place because nothing else made sense after your mom died, that the ritual of mixing and stirring and proofing was the thing that helped you feel connected to her since you’d done so much baking with her growing up.

The way you’d said it—casually, like a punchline to a dumb joke—had stuck to him ever since: “I used to think I’d be an engineer, and now I fold dough like it’s a religion. Mom would laugh her ass off.” He’d wanted to reach for you then, but you were already three strides ahead, drifting toward the honey vendor.

He didn’t know if you realized how much you let him in, even as you left him out. Sometimes he caught you watching him when you thought he wasn’t looking, but the minute your eyes met, you’d toss him a snarky remark and breeze away, leaving an invisible cord attached to his chest.

So it made sense, in its own way, that when Steve’s dog died, you were the one who managed to talk him out of being stoic about it.

He’d mentioned it only in passing—“Yeah, lost her last night. She was old”—but you’d read the extra tightness in his jaw and marched yourself around the counter, grabbed his elbow, and told him, “I need a second set of hands in the kitchen. No, I don’t care if you’re good at it.” You deposited him in front of a thirty-pound sack of flour. Twenty minutes later, up to your elbows in wet dough, you handed him a wad and said, “Punch it, real hard,” so he did, and he cried a little, and you punched it too, and said, “She was a good dog.” You talked about his mutt for two hours while prepping for the next day’s bake.

Even after that, the next morning, you handed over his coffee in that same noncommittal, platonic style and told him to “try not to spill it.”

He’d been through enough relationships to know when someone wasn’t interested—god, had he ever—but, like a stubborn weed, hope kept growing sideways through the cracks. He couldn’t shake the feeling that he just needed to cut to the core of you. Maybe nobody tried. Maybe nobody lasted beyond the coffee smell and the hard mornings and the rising up at dawn.

Three years of best-friending it.

Steve had been dating someone when he first met you, but that had run its course and ended a few months later. You had been dating someone pretty seriously until a year ago when it crashed out in a blaze of epic proportions that you had needed time to move on from.

But now…

Well, maybe it was still not time, but Bucky had raked him over the coals, yet again, for continuing to stay on the sidelines.

So today is it.

Today he will ask you to go to dinner with him.

It’s a Tuesday, which means the shop will be slow enough by three that you’ll let your one of your reliable midday employees close.

Steve shows up at quarter to, trying not to hover while you count the till. The place is nearly empty except for one guy scrolling a phone over an untouched scone. You are hunting coins under the register when you say, “Hey. You got a sec?”

It is not at all what he’d planned, because suddenly you are the one doing the asking, voice serious, and he is off-balance enough to just follow you through the kitchen, down the warped-tile hallway lined with racks of cooling cookies, and out the heavy back door to the alley.

Behind the bakery, the city’s hum is muffled by dumpsters and the ancient brick walls, a secret place infused with the warm yeast smell and the drip of the condenser. You turn, arms folded, pinning him with a look that banishes any notion of easy banter.

“I have a weird favor to ask,” and he tries to hide how his heart just leapt, because even if it wasn’t what he hoped, being needed is pretty much all he wants, in any form. “Don’t laugh, but I need a tattoo. Like, right away.”

He blinks. “Yeah, that’s—actually, that’s not weird at all. I am a tattoo artist.”

You give a sharp laugh, then take in a deep breath before slowly exhaling. “It’s kind of for my mom. I know, very basic. I just… every year I think I’ll finally do something about it. Then the anniversary comes and I can’t decide on anything. But this morning I just… I think I know what I want. Can you fit me in this afternoon?”

“Absolutely,” he said, quickly. “You don’t even have to ask. We can go now.”

You tugged the sleeves of your shirt down over your wrists, suddenly embarrassed. “I don’t want it to be a big thing, though. I don’t want everyone in the shop to see me cry like an idiot.”

He almost told you, right there, that he’d never thought you could be an idiot if you tried, but instead he said, “We’ll do it upstairs. Private room. I’ll lock the door, threaten to murder anyone who knocks. You can ugly-cry all you want, I promise.”

You smiled. “If I cry, you’re fired as my friend.”

“I accept those terms,” he said solemnly, but something lighter bloomed in your expression and he wanted to keep it going, to keep you right here with him, right now.

You shifted from one foot to the other. “So, do you want me to come with you now, or… Oh, you came here first! Did you want something? We can take it to go—”

Steve reached out and squeezed your arm, awkward with how casual it felt but very aware of the heat in your skin. "Naw, I’m not hungry now, but maybe later…” he hedged. Dinner after a tattoo would be a natural potential bridge to a next or something more, but this was more important. “Let’s do this for you first.”

Conversation on the walk over to Obsidian is easy between the two of you. A few of the guys say hello as Steve walks you past their stations and to the back to head upstairs, but to their intuition and credit, none of them make a fuss. They might all suspect, but only Bucky knows that you hang the sun and moon for him.

It’s a narrow flight to the second floor, freshly painted but with old bannister rails, and the studio up here is like entering a greenhouse at dusk—half-shaded by big ferns, incense from the main shop drifting up, dust motes floating in lazy parabola, tattered sketchbooks on the shelves. He’s used it only for the clients who can’t abide by the patter or music of the downstairs crowd. Some part of him is always startled by how peaceful it feels after the buzz and bustle of downstairs.

He pulls out his supplies and sets up his station with the ease of a thousand repetitions, and you just sit, perched on the edge of the armchair, collecting your words.

“I want a strawberry,” you blurt, the minute the silence stretches a touch too long. “On my inside arm, like here.” You point to the vulnerable pale spot above your elbow, the skin everyone calls ‘the kiss’ because it smarts the most.

Steve cracks a smile. “Not a rolling pin, or a whisk, or a Mom heart?”

You shake your head, serious. “She used to put half a strawberry on my cereal every morning, even when we were broke, even when I was too old for doting on.”

“You’re never too old to be doted on,” he says immediately, wondering who made you feel that way, wanting to dote on you for the rest of your life.

His nostrils flare at that thought because, sure, it’s probably true, but he hasn’t even taken you to dinner yet. When he looks up, you’re biting your lip.

There’s another beat of silence, and then you blink, and say, “So, I want it small. Maybe here?” You point at the exact spot inside of your left elbow, so close to the vein.

He leans in, careful, and the air between you grows electric. You’ve given him this moment, so he mustn’t fuck it up—he commits your pointing fingertip and the angle of your arm to memory, because the giving of a tattoo is as much about trust as design.

“Strawberry,” he murmurs, “tastefully tiny, right there.” His hand hovers, not quite touching, respectful of boundaries you never invited him past. “Do you want leaves? Seeds? A little flower?” He’s listening, but his pencil is already skittering across thin tracing paper with deft, sure lines.

You consider. “Maybe just the berry. Like it’s about to be eaten, but not yet. The anticipation.”

He nods, continuing to sketch: a pop of red, a sliver of green leaf, the pale seeded dots. “I can do that. Color, or—?”

“Color,” you say, and then, dropping your shoulder, add, “Obnoxiously bright. Cartoonish, even.”

He laughs, “I can do that.” You’re watching his hands, and he wonders if you can see how steady they are despite the tremor that comes with being near you like this.

He sketches in silence for a minute, and then holds the design up.

“That’s it,” you say. “That’s her,” and you crack a laugh.

He laughs, and busies his hands with the ritual: gloves, ink caps, needle packets, a small array of rainbow inks, and some washable ink pens to do a quick freehand of the design on your skin before he makes it permanent.

He’s never been nervous to tattoo anyone, but his hands feel too big now, too clumsy all of a sudden. But when he marks the spot, rounds the perfect oval red and gives it poppy green leaves and a stem, your arm does not flinch away. You prop your chin on the opposite palm and let him work, letting out an occasional warm, shaky breath.

You say, finally, “My mom had one on her ankle. Not a strawberry, but a little flower. She got it in the seventies and it looked like a bruise most of the time. She hated it, but she never covered it up.”

He keeps his head down, the machine a hum in the soft air. “Because it was a memory?”

You nod. “Because it was what made her different from all the other moms in our suburb. Even if she never wore skirts.”

The needle makes a short, sweet whine as he inks the tiny shape to your skin. You watch, not blinking. He wants to joke that you can look away, but something in the set of your jaw makes him respect it, so he lets you watch. At the last line of green, your eyes glass a little but you don’t brush it away, don’t make a sound.

After he blots it and wipes it down, you hold your arm up and flex, then stare at the tiny bandage like it’s a miracle. “It’s perfect,” you say, and your smile—unfiltered, raw—swells some private, breakable thing in Steve’s chest.

You don’t say anything for a minute, then, “I can’t tell if I’m about to cry or laugh.”

He grins, peels off his gloves, and lets himself look at you. “You can do both. It’s allowed.”

And you didn’t need his permission, but it’s like him saying it allows you to release all the feeling—excitement, nostalgia, longing, contentment, being singularly still for so long—and you laugh and cry. “I said crying would get you fired as my friend though.”

Steve considers for half a heartbeat, but it’s too perfect a shot not to take it.

“Maybe it’s about damn time.”

“What?” you blink up at him.

“No more friends. I want more. With you,” Steve says. The words are airless, nothing like he planned or how he’d ever said anything to anyone, but the rawness of your eyes and the trembling in your hands make him think maybe this is the only way to say something like that. The only way to be true.

The light shifting through the upstairs window fractures across your face, and your mouth is rounded in a little surprise. Steve’s stomach somersaults as you wrap your arms around your own ribcage, like you’re trying to keep all the words inside.

He says, gently, “Sorry. Too much. Ignore me if you—”

But you cut him off with a snort that is half delight, half incredulity. “You’re an idiot, you know that?”

He laughs, unoffended, but also uncertain and caught off guard. “What?”

“Of course I want more with you. How could you not know that?”

Steve coughs out a laugh, equal parts stunned and relieved, and rubs his hand over his bearded jaw. “You never flirted with me,” he says, and the words, spoken out loud, sound a little sad, a little foolish. But he has to say them. “Not once. I thought I was, you know, on your ‘good neighbor’ list. Like, honorary grandma status.”

You stare at him, incredulity turning your face to something vivid. “Steve, you absolute moron. I flirt with everyone because I don’t care if I ever see them again. You’re the only one I couldn’t pull that with. You’re my best friend.” There’s a hush in your voice, suddenly vulnerable. “And what if I screwed it up?”

He lets that sink in. The shape of your logic is so backwards it makes perfect sense. “I’m scared of screwing it up too,” he says. “It’s terrifying to want one thing, one person, more than you want to even breathe.”

You both go silent again, this time full of an almost giddy electricity, nervous and new.

You stand up. It looks like maybe you’re about to pace. Instead you circle around his worktable and come to stand in front of him. He plants both of his hands on your waist, bringing you in closer, and your hands go softly to his shoulders. You’re searching his face for a sign, one last double-check that he means it, and he tries to meet you—steady, open, unafraid.

“I think I need you to kiss me now,” you say, and Steve nearly laughs because that’s what he’s wanted to do for at least two solid years.

He does. Careful at first—he may be a tattoo artist, but this is a more delicate first touch than any needle to skin. Your lips are soft and earnest, matching his own hunger.

He doesn’t let go, not for a while. When you finally separate, you’re both smiling so hard your cheeks hurt.

“Wow,” you say. “You’re a pro at that, too?”

He shrugs, mock casual. “I do my best.”

“Is this what you were planning when you came to the shop today?”

He looks at you, all artifice gone. “Honestly? I was going to ask you to have dinner with me. But maybe we can go beyond that, now.”

“No,” you say firmly, and lower yourself to sit on his thigh, his arms still around you, “I definitely want dinner,” you insist. “I’m starving.”

He grins. “Fair enough, but then afterwards, maybe I show you what else I’m a pro at.”

“Oh, are there more sketchbooks at your house?”

He laughs. “No, you little menace. Well, there are, but that’s not,” he stops himself and shakes his head. Then he gives you a scrutinizing look. “Awfully bold, assuming I’m taking you back to my place already tonight. We haven’t even gone on a first date yet.”

You pluck a tattoo pen off his table and poke his chest before he can finish the thought, and he grins wider, snatching it easily from your hands.

“We’ve had basically three years of dates, Steve. I think we can skip a formality or two.” You hold his gaze, and it’s like you’ve both been set loose from something: the orbit of expectation, the inertia of being just friends. “I want you, Steve. All the time. And I want grilled cheese.”

He runs both hands up your arms, careful to miss the fresh wrap, and shakes his head in mock exasperation. “You’re an impossible woman,” he says. “But I am bringing you home tonight. And I’ll even make grilled cheese.”

“With raspberry jam,” you say.

He shakes his head, familiar with your quirky love of that salty and sweet pairing. “Not strawberry?” he asks.

“Nope, raspberry is the top tier choice. And a bit of mustard.”

“Mustard?” he scoffs. “When did you discover this?”

“Take me home and maybe I’ll tell you the glorious tale, Rogers.”

“Deal,” he says, then pulls you in for another kiss, the best and only way he wants to seal it.

I've known the shape of Steve's story for a long time. I don't know why I didn't write it sooner, but when I saw this early this morning, it just sort of captured my day and spilled out here, and I'm so glad it did!

And I think we might see a little more of them... if we'd like that.

smutty part two: Put Your Sweet Lips on My Lips

↠ Main Masterlist | Aspen's Ask Box | Field Guide to the Forest Chris Evans Characters Collection

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#steve rogers #steve rogers x reader #steve rogers x you #steve rogers x yn #steve rogers x y/n #female reader #obsidian stain and sin #friends to lovers #aspen wrote something #askpen #aspen's 3 x 3.6 sleepover #chris-mas in july #tattoo au

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buckets-and-trees · 6 days ago

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Tattoo artist Steve is just 🥰🥰🥰🥰

He really is.

....but we can hardly get the two of you together and not let him rail you now, can we?

Put Your Sweet Lips on My Lips [Obsidian Stain & Sin]

Characters/Pairings: tattoo artist!Steve Rogers x curvy Millennial Female!Reader Word Count: 5.1k Summary: Dinner and...

Content/Warnings: friends to lovers; fluffy smut; explicit smut (cock stroking, unprotected vaginal intercourse)

Author Notes: Direct continuation of Like Real People Do. Part of the Obsidian Stain & Sin verse but you don't need to have read about our original throuple there, only the first part/Like Real People Do for you and Steve.

↠ Masterlist | Aspen's Ask Box | Field Guide to the Forest

There was a kind of euphoria in the way you and Steve walked the fluorescent aisles of the grocery store on the way to your place, matching each other stride for stride, arguing over whether to get the sharp cheddar or the “fancy, stinky” raclette, your hands brushing at every turn. You were both giddy and stupid in the way people are when the last layer of pretense has just been peeled away, laughing at nothing and everything, high on possibility. You didn’t even bother to hide it from the bored after-school cashiers and harried parents in line. It was that obvious.

Steve insisted on carrying the groceries, making a show of flexing his tattooed arms as he loaded the bag with three different cheeses, bread, and a squeeze bottle of yellow mustard. “You know this is insane, right?” he said, eyeing the jam you’d also picked out, like he was being dragged into delicious heresy. But he put it in the bag anyway.

By the time you reached your apartment, every inch of your body hummed with a strange, buoyant warmth. It was new, but it was also three years old—a feeling that had been waiting like dough in a warm place, rising quietly, ready to overflow.

You flicked on the lights, the clink of keys on the entry table a ritual, and Steve followed, a little at sea in your space for the first time even though he’d been here before—movie nights, friend dinners, paint-the-wall days. But not like this. Never like this.

“I don’t even know if you deserve grilled cheese,” you exclaimed, taking the bag Steve had insisted on carrying and setting it on the counter. “You were a total pain about the bread, Steve.”

He scoffed. “You said to get a loaf with ‘sturdy crumb’ and ‘integrity.’ What does that even mean? And how am I supposed to pick the right bread when I know the judge is going to be an actual baker? I would have been fine as long as we picked one that wasn't made from wood pulp!”

“That’s possibly even worse!” you laugh. You have to respect the sandwich,” you told him, plunking a skillet on the stove. “A good sandwich is a structural marvel. It cannot—must not—fall apart, and the bread is the foundation.”

But despite your ribbing, the two of you set to making sandwiches together anyway. You stand together at the counter, shoulder to shoulder sharing knives and ingredients. The air smells like butter and cheese and bread and the sweet scent of summer flowers sneaking in through the cracked window.

You find yourself narrating each step as if Steve is the TV audience and you are hosting the world’s weirdest, smallest cooking show. “Now,” you intone in your best documentary voice, “after shredding the cheddar, which will lend to a more even melt while cooking, we add a scandalous amount of cheese to the bread beds, and—no, more than that—yes, even more,” and Steve, with exaggerated seriousness, piles on.

He tries to kiss your cheek but you poke him in the side instead. “Concentrate! Don’t mess up our sandwiches!”

He laughs, “Alright, alright!”

He butters the pan with both exaggeration and a surgeon’s care, brow furrowed. “You’re just going to stand there and judge, huh?”

“Absolutely,” you said, watching him drop the sandwiches into the pan with geometric precision.

He shakes his head, but once they’re safely in the pan, he raises both hands and says, “Handing it off to you now, chef.”

You step forward, and he steps back, leaning up against the island counter.

You can feel him watching you, the way people do when they can’t quite believe they’re allowed to watch so openly. It flusters you and makes you want to show off even more, which is how you end up flipping both sandwiches one-handed, channeling your inner Julia Child for flipping bravery, and somehow the flip goes off beautifully, and you and Steve both cheer more than is probably necessary. But the jubilance is part of this heady happiness of being so newly together.

You love it.

You love him watching you, being in your kitchen, that you’re going to spend the evening together.

You let the sandwiches toast, the sizzle and brown buttery smell setting both your mouths watering. When you plate them (with a flourish—“presentation counts, Steve!”—which only makes him roll his eyes with a fondness so palpable it slows your hands), you add the other absurdity: a layer of jam across the top, and swirls of mustard over that. You give your sandwich the full treatment but only subject one half of his to your preference. He leans over to inspect and says, “If this ruins grilled cheese for me, I’m suing.”

You sit on the couch, knees touching, legs curled toward each other. He’s skeptical, but you dare him to taste his sandwich, and with a deep, melodramatic sigh, he does—the jam and mustard in one bite, mixing the civilized and the unthinkable. He chews. He goes silent. His eyes widen a little, then close, then he laughs like he can barely stand how happy he is to be surprised by you.

“That’s,” he says, swallowing, “stupidly good. That’s dastardly and shameful and should not work, but it does.”

“I know,” you crow around a mouthful of your own bite.

You both eat in silence for a minute, thick with the awe of culinary transgression and the hush of two people who’ve just realized they can be as loud or as quiet as they want, forever if they’d like. After two bites, you say, “I have to know what happened today. Like, why now? You’re in my shop nearly every day, we spend time together nearly every weekend now, and you pick today to…” You gesture with the sandwich, not sure what verb to use for what happened between you, so you let it dangle.

Steve wipes his mouth and leans his back against the couch. For a second he looks like he’s searching the ceiling for the answer, but then he glances at you with a kind of embarrassment that is so rare for him, it might as well be a parallel version of him from some other universe.

“Bucky’s been on my ass,” he says. “He’s been telling me for, I don’t know, forever, that I was going to wait too long and then some other guy was going to swoop in and steal you.” He laughed, but he seemed to be waiting for your reaction, like maybe you’d flinch at the idea that someone else might even be in the running.

You grinned at him, not even bothering to hide the little spike of self-satisfaction. “And you believed him?”

Steve shrugged, biting into another corner of grilled cheese, almost sheepish. “I mean, it’s not impossible! You’re—look, you’re incredible. He kept saying if I let it go too long, you’d think I only wanted to be your best friend, but then…” He gestured toward the air. “He gave the unnamed potential competition a face. He said Dan was going to get there first.”

You nearly choked on your next bite. “Dan the produce guy?”

Steve nodded, setting his sandwich down with a pointed look. “And on top of that I didn’t want to screw it up. I didn’t want to be one of those guys who can’t handle not getting what he wants.”

You finish your bite, feeling a knot in your chest that is not unpleasant, just strange and tight, like hope and nostalgia at the same time. “You really thought I’d say no to you?”

“Yeah.”

“God, we’re both stupid.”

He laughed, one that felt like he was releasing some of the tension with your admission. “Yeah. But it was Bucky’s dumb theory that Dan was going to make a move that made me realize I’d be stupider if I let you get away.”

You set the plate aside, feigning a long, solemn consideration. “Honestly, Dan does have amazing forearms. And he always knows when the peaches are actually ripe—”

Steve’s glare is instant and volcanic. He narrows his eyes, sets his jaw, and makes a growling noise that is almost comical until he lunges across the couch, pinning you down in a blur of tattooed forearms and muscle. You shriek, half laughing, half helpless, as he pins your hands above your head with one hand and presses you into the cushions with the solid weight of him.

“Take it back,” he whispers, just shy of your ear, breath tickling. “Dan’s not even a contender.”

You can feel the warmth of his body, the press of his hands holding you still, and it’s all you can do not to dissolve into a puddle then and there. “No,” you confess, no hesitation. “No one compares to you.”

He lifts his head, and you’re already moving to meet him. The first press of lips is gentle for maybe a millisecond, then opens into a hungry, unguarded thing that’s all teeth and desperate yes, and you don’t know who’s more startled by the force of it—maybe both of you. His free hand runs up the length of your side, and you arch up to him, the tension in your arms winding everything tighter.

He lets go of your wrists, but you leave them above your head, inviting him to pin you again if he wants, surrender made easy by how safe he’s always felt.

His hands roam from your wrists to your face, cupping your jaw, thumbs stroking the hinge of your cheeks, and then down, one hand bracing at your shoulder, the other smoothing over your side, taking in the dimensionality of you, the physical realness of you, as if he’s been blue-balled by possibility for so long he needs to confirm—yes, you are here, yes, you want this too.

Your hands slide down, fingers threading through his hair, then over his bare arms. Your hands are under his shirt before you realize it, thumbs skating over the hard lines of his ribs, the curve where his stomach dips in. He is so warm, warmer than you expected his body could be. You want to taste the salt and the heat there, to see if his skin matches the way he smells—coffee, ink, a little street dust from the long walk here.

Steve pulls back first, propped on his elbows so he doesn’t crush you. His face is flushed, pupils wide, mouth at a tilt you haven’t seen before, but you like. He looks at you like he wants to devour you, but also as if he’s just opened a perfect, impossible gift and is hesitant to touch it for fear it will vanish.

You’re both still for a second, his breath on your neck, your hands resting on his shoulders, a band of electricity between your bodies. Then you both laugh, first quietly, then helplessly, the intensity breaking like a yoke and running everywhere at once.

It is so easy, you think, as he lowers his head to press small, eager kisses along your jaw. So easy you don’t understand what took three years, or why every other day you’ve spent together feels now like it was leading to this one, the day you both finally agreed to just take what you’d been holding back.

You shift under him, rolling just enough to tangle your legs together on the couch. He hums contentment, arms going around your ribs, holding you so close you can feel the gallop of his heart. When you drag your fingers up the nape of his neck and into his hair, he shudders; it’s the most vulnerable thing you’ve seen in a man who spends his days needling art into the skin of every tough guy in the city. You pull him down for another slow, long kiss. There is no choreography—just hunger and the years of not touching, not knowing, unsaid things now released and flying. It is the opposite of careful.

When you finally come up for air, his face is buried in your neck and he is breathing you in like you’re oxygen. “Holy shit,” he says, muffled against your skin. His voice is lower, heavier, more intimate than you’ve ever heard it.

You laugh, but your voice wobbles. “Yeah, I know.”

He shifts, looking down at you, nose barely an inch from yours. “You want to go slow or…” he starts, then laughs, shaking his head. “I mean, I haven’t even offered you coffee or dessert. Or, I don’t know, marriage?”

You groan, “If you propose to me before we even really date, I might have to punch you.”

His soft chuckle is so easy, so warm.

And you know, absolutely, that you will wake up tomorrow and every day after that wanting exactly this: the shape of him, and this wild, simple happiness.

Even though you’re both too breathless to keep kissing in this moment, you can’t stop touching—fingers brushing earlobe, tracing tattoo lines, linking hands. He nuzzles your jaw. “I’ve waited so long,” he says into your hair, voice a little rough, “I don’t know if I remember how to slow down.”

You answer him without thinking, “Maybe we don’t have to slow down.” You roll him onto his back and straddle him, knees bracketing his hips on the couch, the edge of his thigh pressing everywhere it needs to. He looks up at you, reverent, like you’re sunlight after the longest winter, and your heart is a balloon, too big, floating, dangerous.

It’s not like you haven’t been here before—with someone, with hope, with that fever-dream of possibility. But with Steve it’s different: the intensity, the history, your own knowledge of every scar on his hands and so many of the stories behind his eyes. The way he says your name like it’s an element of the universe. The way you know, with a bone-deep certainty, that he will never leave you reeling or alone.

You put both hands on his chest, feeling his heart slam like a fist against your palms. “You’re not scared?” you ask.

“Oh, I’m scared as hell, but I know I don’t want anything else but you,” he says, and then he’s kissing you again, and this time it’s almost clumsy with how hard you both want it. You let yourself fall into him. You let yourself forget all the ways you’d ever tried to keep from hoping for exactly this.

You stay straddled on his lap, legs twined around him, and let yourself catalog the details: the sandpaper brush of his beard, the snowmelt blue of his eyes, the calluses on his hands where he holds your face so gently it makes something inside you ache. You let him touch you everywhere, your back, your hips, the tops of your thighs, but it isn’t frantic—you’ve both waited so long, you want the waiting to last as long as you can bear.

Steve’s hands grip your hips, hard enough to leave prints, and with a quick, almost startled grunt of laughter, he twists, rolls, and suddenly there’s a thump and the breath leaves your body in a delighted little gasp. You land on the rug, shoulders pressing into the edge of the old hardwood, and he’s half atop you, the heat of him everywhere, mouth already at your collarbone, and then lower. You can feel the thrum of his pulse, the tremor in the way his hands find your wrists and pin them overhead, making a cage for your body that is all muscle, all intent.

There's a question in his eyes—a split second of hesitation, a hesitation you could break with a word. Instead, you arch toward him, and he answers you with a groan that is equal parts relief and hunger. He kisses you, mouth bruising on yours, and the taste of salt and butter and jam blooms between your teeth. You can’t stop smiling, even when your lips can barely open, even as you are so out of breath you think you might faint. He is like gravity, and for once, it is bliss to fall.

He kisses down the column of your throat, skimming your pulse, and you feel like a starved animal under him—three years of restraint dissolving in a single hour. You gasp when he slides your shirt up and the callused drag of his hands meets your skin, and your hands clutch him back, clawing at his shirt, wanting to find some symmetry of nakedness. He lets you, lets you pull his shirt off and throw it, lets you flatten your palm over the huge, hot plane of his chest, the inked geometry and animal lines stark against the pale of his skin.

You pause, because it’s nearly overwhelming, how beautiful he is, how much you want to see him, memorize him. He looks down at you with sun-drunk eyes, and his expression says it’s the same for him, the awe and the appetite.

You are nearly bare from the ribs up now, soft and sprawling on your own rug, and his eyes drink in the whole of you—the curve of your arms, the roundness of your belly, bra covering full and round breasts—and you can see, with crystalline clarity, that he wants every last inch of it.

"God, you're beautiful," he says, voice gone hoarse. He says it like it's a revelation, and you want to laugh, or maybe cry, because you can tell it's the first time he's allowed himself to say the words out loud, and maybe the first time you've ever really believed them.

He puts his forehead to yours, both of you panting, flushed. “I really do want to go slow, but right now I am seconds from losing my fucking mind if I don’t get to be inside you.” He says it with a split grin, half apology, half dare, his teeth bared, eyes wild. Your answering laugh is pure release, and you reach for him, already unfastening the button on your jeans with one hand, dragging his hand down with the other, guiding him exactly where you wanted him.

“We can go slow the rest of the night,” you breathe, “but right now I want you to fuck me.” The words spill out, raw and urgent, and you delight in the way they make his whole body go rigid.

“You sure?” he barely manages, voice scraping low.

“Steve, I swear to God, if you don’t do it I’ll—I’ll literally walk myself over to Dan the produce guy right now and reenact an entire forbidden fruit scenario in aisle three.”

He laughs, head thrown back, and the sound was insane and bright and so full of disbelief it tipped into something almost gentle. “You’re the biggest menace I’ve ever met,” he says, and then he is kissing you again, this time with a kind of single-mindedness that makes you forget every clever thing you’d ever planned to say.

It isn’t careful but it is kind—how he strips your jeans and underwear in a single motion, how he stops to press a kiss to each hipbone, how his hands never leave your skin, how he asks, “You’re good?” as he touches you for the first time between your legs. You want to tell him yes, yes, yes, but you have lost English for a minute and can only answer by clutching his arm, digging nails into the painted sleeve of his bicep.

You are already wet, soaked and ready in a way that makes you want to claw your own face from how long you’ve waited. He freezes long enough to register it, then lets out a low, barely-civilized sound from his throat—a sound you want to bottle and inhale every morning for the rest of your life.

He pauses, one knuckle hooked in the curve of you. “Hang on,” and you think he’s about to make some dorky, considerate joke, but instead, he kisses the inside of your wrist, then your elbow, then the strawberry bandage.

You reach down for his belt and the clasp of his jeans, and he quickly finishes the task, unzipping and shucking them off with his boxers.

His cock is obscenely… not beautiful, but appealing—a bit bigger than you’d anticipated, but not so much it alarms you. Just enough to be a touch intimidating. You bite your lip, ready to savor the blunt stretch of him. He sees the look on your face and grins, nervy and cocky all at once, but then it fades when you reach to stroke him, slow, measuring his weight, his heat in your hand.

“Jesus,” he whispers, kneeling over you, bracing himself on his hands so he doesn’t crush you, and dropping his head to your shoulder.

You give him another slow stroke, so eager, but savoring just one more moment of this.

Then he lifts his head, meeting your heady gaze, and you can read the meaning in it—the wanting, the certainty, the total, electric dare of it. “I want to fuck you bare.” The words should be ugly but they are not, not from him, not in this moment. “I want all of you, no latex, no filter. I want to come in you, feel you take it.”

You can’t believe how much you want that, how right it is. The thought makes you dizzy, not just for the sex but for the simple, reckless intimacy—three years of playful distance and you want the messy, nerve-exposed now. You nod, and your hand finds his jaw, bringing his face to yours. “Me too,” you say, and there is a solemnity in it, but also an eager wildness. “Want you to fill me up.”

He lines himself up, one palm cradling the side of your neck, the other angled low to guide himself to you. He sinks into you in a single, measured push, and you gasp so hard your eyes prick with tears. Not from pain—even though the stretch burns sweetly, the way a new piercing does—but from relief, some ancient tension breaking like a fever. Steve buries his face in your neck, moaning your name low, and you rake your hands up his back, needing to the shape of him.

He sets a punishing rhythm, all that restraint and patience abandoned for the animal need to claim you, to mark you as his, after too many years of closing the shop door on his own hunger. The first few thrusts are almost desperate, hips snapping against you as if he could make up for all the time lost in a single, obliterating fuck. You barely recognize the sound in your own throat, some high sharp keening that doesn’t sound like you but is. He’s so deep it’s almost too much, or maybe exactly enough; you can feel his breath on your face with every push, the sweat starting at his hairline, the tension in his jaw as you take everything he has to give.

You brace your legs around his waist, anchoring yourself, wanting as much of him as you can handle. He pistons into you, hard, and deep, bruising your hips with his and biting your shoulder when the pleasure gets too intense for him to hold in any other way. All you can see is the world going slightly white around the edges, the flicker and blur of heat lightning at the edge of your vision, the animal echo of both your voices overlapping in the tiny room. His hair is in his eyes, sweat dripping down his temples, and you want his mouth, so you grab him by the neck and pull him down to you again, tongues desperate, messy, swallowing moans until it starts to unravel, a cord inside you being twisted tighter and tighter until you’re either going to snap or float away.

He is relentless, holding you by the back of your thighs now, opening you, and you let him, let yourself be taken as thoroughly as you’ve always wanted, as you’ve always imagined when you watched him work in his own shop, sleeves rolled up and forearms tensed, the words yes, yes, please, more repeating in your skull like a prayer. The rhythm turns dizzying, the slap of skin and the grind of bone on bone, and you clutch Steve’s biceps so hard he’ll have bruises tomorrow.

Your voice comes out broken. “Right there—Steve, yes, god—” and he laughs a little in your neck, like he likes hearing you finally fall apart for him. He changes the angle and it’s perfect, so sharp and direct you can barely keep your eyes open. You drag your nails down his back and he hisses, going faster for a dozen wild thrusts until you clamp down, the whole world going prism-bright behind your eyelids as you come, hard, arching up under him.

You feel him slow, trembling, then grind out your name just as he shudders and sinks all the way in, heat pulsing deep as he lets go. His body locks around you, burying his face in your neck and breathing in, huge and ragged, as if he needs to inhale your existence to continue existing.

For a minute neither of you moves—your body pinned beneath his, skin to skin, joined and exhausted and pulsing with something neither of you has ever felt, even in the hundreds of times you’ve stood together in silence or laughter. He’s still inside you, and when he shifts, just a little, it sends an aftershock through your belly, up your chest. It makes you gasp, a tiny noise, and he kisses the sound right out of your mouth.

You’re not sure how long you lie like that, tangled and sticky and barely able to think. The light from the kitchen window had gone golden, then amber. When Steve finally props himself up, he looks dazed—stunned into some new, softer version of himself—and you want to wrap your arms around that feeling and never let it go.

He studies you, expression open, so vulnerable you could reach inside and touch the next beat of his heart if you wanted. He traces a finger down your collarbone, over your chest. For once, you don’t think about how you look, what’s at the surface; you just feel him seeing you, all of the you, and liking it.

“Hey.” His voice is quiet but thrum-rich. “You okay?”

You laugh, a small, shattered thing. “I am way better than okay. Are you going to stay over?” like it’s nothing, like you’re asking him to crash on your couch after a party, not like you’re already planning to spend every night together from now on if you can.

One of his hands is still braced on your ribcage, thumb stroking thoughtlessly over your skin as if he’d mapped you in a former life. He cocks an eyebrow, then lets his mouth curve into a smirk, cocky and bashful at once. “Didn’t know that was in doubt. Unless you want me to go.”

You snort—something not quite dignified, but honest. “No. I want you to stay. And also, I think I’m going to need help getting off the floor, because I literally have no bones left in my body.”

He laughs, a real laugh that’s all belly and teeth, and you know you’re never going to get tired of that sound. He leverages you both upright, then deposits his face in the crook of your neck, muttering, “We should probably at least move to the bed.”

You manage to stagger up and herd him into your bedroom, not bothering to turn on the lamp because the city light coming through the window is honeyed and soft, the same color as the safety you feel around him.

He steers you backwards until the bedclothes hit the backs of your thighs, and you break apart only to collapse together onto the mess of pillows and wrinkled linens.

He’s gentler now, kissing you like he can’t stop, like the world might end if he doesn’t keep his mouth on your skin, but you don’t mind. You want his hands everywhere, and he gives them to you: slow sweeps down your arms, lazy mapping of your curves, a thumb tracing the afterglow into the softest places on your stomach, your thighs, your chest. He even finds the strawberry bandage and presses his mouth to it again, once, reverent.

You say, “I’m never letting you go, you know.”

Steve smiles, lazy and bright. “You better not.” For a while, you just lie there, entangled, feeling the beat of his heart slow and sync with your own. Your body aches gently, everything saturated and alive.

If there are words for the quiet after, you don’t have them, so you hold his hand instead. It’s ridiculous how big it is, how certain. He rubs circles on the inside of your wrist, over the veins, over the pulse, and you want him to keep count of every single beat.

He’s the first to speak. “You know I’m never going to be normal about you, right?”

The admission is stark. It is also everything you’d ever wanted. “Good,” you say, and kiss the side of his mouth, the place where he smiles truest. “Normal’s boring. Boring is for people who never eat grilled cheese with jam and mustard.”

He huffs a laugh, a huff that says he’s ready for anything and everything.

The fatigue catching up to you both, you slip under the covers, letting the city’s late blue hush filter through the open window. You curl yourself around his body, limbs knotted, the last of your tension draining away into the mattress. His skin is hot, slick with the pleasant aftermath, and you press your face into the crook of his neck, breathing the newness and the always of it.

Steve runs a thumb over your arm, tracing circles around the little strawberry, and then, when he thinks you are asleep, he whispers, “I really fucking love you.” It is so quiet, you could pretend you hadn’t heard it—but you did. It goes through you like light in a dark room, a split-second of clarity that leaves your whole self humming.

“Love you, too,” you murmur back, lips just over his heart. “Just slightly more than Dan,” you add with a smirk.

Steve laughs, chest vibrating against your cheek. “Gonna be bringing produce-related jealousy up forever, aren’t you?”

“Guaranteed.”

Because after three years of both of you being idiots, forever sounds just about right.

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