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suncatcherss · 1 year
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I did the being edgy and self-deprecating thing, it gets old. I wanna be soft and lovely and easily impressed. I wanna appreciate all the little things that make me happy the same way I’ve dwelled on every single thing that upsets me.
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suncatcherss · 1 year
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The Right Person - Aaron Hotchner x Reader
Summary: You're good friends with Jack Hotchner, and his dad finds you crying at a house party.
Contents/Warnings: best friend's dad!hotch, legal age gap (reader is over 18), mutual pining, soft!hotch, mention of alcohol/drugs, cheating (reader's unnamed, faceless boyfriend), hurt/comfort, fem!reader
WC: 3.6K / navi
feedback is greatly appreciated! comment, reblog, talk in the tags, send me a message, tell me what you think!
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Very few things are more embarrassing than crying at a party. You're wading through a sea of high, hammered young adults, and even if they're too out of their minds to notice the tears on your cheeks, you feel like a fool for letting them fall.
You probably shouldn't have been as naive as you were going into your relationship. You'd been blinded by the prospect of someone being interested in you, and you hadn't stopped to consider the odd behavior he'd presented. You didn't want to be the overbearing girlfriend and check his phone, but walking in on him sucking face with someone else was just about all the evidence you'll ever need.
So now you're crying, stumbling down the hall and into the front yard for a breath of fresh air. Inside it's stuffy, booze and weed clouding the air and burning at your lungs. The front steps feel like a new beginning, away from your asshole (now) ex-boyfriend and the shitty music blaring from the house.
You're not offered much solace, though, because sirens blare through the streets. You squint through your teary eyes at a squad of cop cars that screech into the driveway, black SUVs trailing behind them. Fear drags your stomach down to your feet, because despite knowing that you're sober, you still probably hold some accountability for whatever drugs they're doing in there.
You're the only one outside, save for a couple moonbathing around the side yard, but the cops start for the front door. It means you're scrambling out of the way, tempted to put your hands up just in case.
"Miss," One of the officers glances at you, "Go home. We're shutting this down."
"Oh- okay," You stammer, nodding and wiping a tear from your eye, "I-um... I have to call an uber."
The officers don't pay you any regard after that, streaming into the house. It's only when you're fumbling clumsily with your phone that anyone engages with you, and the booming voice that travels over the lawn brings immense comfort to you.
"Y/N?" It's Aaron Hotchner, Jack's dad. You'd become fast friends with Jack through a couple of shared community college courses, and you'd come to know his dad from study sessions and movie nights.
"Mr. Hotchner," You breathe, reaching up to smear a tear off of your cheek, "I- Are you- what's going on?"
"The neighbors complained about the noise" He explains, jogging across the grass to reach out for your shoulder, "What happened? Are you alright? Why are you crying?"
"I'm okay," You sniffle, now infinitely more embarrassed to be caught blubbering by your best friend's very attractive dad, "We all have to leave?"
"Don't worry about that," He murmurs, shrugging his windbreaker off of his shoulders and wrapping it around your own. Your top is sheer and too-short, and the cold air had been nipping at your skin. His jacket is warm, soft, and you realize with an aggressive heat to your cheeks, it smells like him.
"Now," He tries again, keeping his jacket securely over your shoulders, "What happened? Are you hurt?"
"No, I'm alright," You shake your head, chin to your chest, "It's dumb, it's nothing. I- I need to call an uber, I'll-"
"I will drive you home," Aaron promises, voice soothing as his hand brushes over your back, "But I need to know what's wrong."
"I don't-" You stammer, eyes rolling at how silly you sound while another wave of tears streams down your cheeks, "It's just- my boyfriend, I saw him kissing someone else. Really, it's dumb, it's nothing."
Aaron doesn't respond, not right away, but you know he's heard you. You know by the momentary tightening of his grip on your shoulder, the way that his fingers dig into your skin like he's trying to make a fist but you're getting in the way. Then he eases up, touches all soft and gentle.
"I'm sorry, honey." He coos, stepping against your chest to wrap you in a hug. He rubs your back, up and down, up and down, up and down, until you're sniffling and sobbing into his chest. He keeps his arms around you, strong and firm, his cheek flush with the crown of your head as partygoers stream out of the house around you.
He's the epitome of comfort, all sweet, low reassurances and grounding touches. He murmurs only loud enough for you to hear as you curl your fingers into his shirt, 'He didn't deserve you, honey.' and, 'You're better off without him.'
"I just didn't see it coming," You admit lamely, your voice muffled against his chest. He doesn't ease up on the hug, and you're grateful for that. The last thing you'd want to do is make him uncomfortable, but he seems to realize you need comfort right now.
"Jack... always had his thoughts about him." Aaron admits, "But I think he kept them to himself, he didn't want to ruin things for you."
"I could tell," You sigh, nestled snugly into Aaron's chest, "I... I thought they just needed time to get used to each other, you know? Like, get to know each other. But I guess not, I guess Jack was right."
"Don't tell him that," Aaron teases, "It'll go straight to his head."
You laugh, albeit weakly, against Aaron's chest, and he takes it as a win.
"Okay," He hums, giving one last broad sweep of his hand over your back, "Let's get you into the car. It's late, you should get home and get to sleep."
"Thank you for taking me home," You sniffle letting him lead you with an arm around your shoulders to one of the SUVs, "Are you sure it's okay to just take one? Weren't there other people riding with you?"
"They'll figure it out." Aaron assures you, knowing Derek will have to bite the bullet and sit in the middle seat of the back row, something he always takes an extra SUV to avoid doing, "It's okay."
Aaron helps you into the passenger's seat, even tugging at your seatbelt when you struggle to wrestle it over his jacket.
"Here," He reaches for the strap, easing it up and over a fold of the jacket that it was stuck in, "Let me."
He clicks it into place for you, and you smile tearily up at him.
He leaves you with a pat to your knee, then shuts the door.
You hear him call something to, presumably, another agent, trying not to think too hard about whatever team member of his you're depriving of a seat. Aaron doesn't let you think much about it, though, because as soon as you're pulling away from the curb, tears no longer pouring down your cheeks, the interrogation starts.
"What were you doing at a party, anyways?" Aaron glances over at you, a frown creasing his brows, "You're not the drinking type."
"I didn't go to get drunk," You shrug, "I went 'cause my boyfriend invited me."
"He invited you," Aaron repeats, "And then... wow."
"Yeah."
"I'm sorry," Aaron looks at you, stopped at a signal just outside of the neighborhood, "Really. That's awful. You deserve so much better than that."
"Thank you, Mr. Hotchner," You sniffle, "I really appreciate how kind you're being. The ride, and- and the jacket, and-"
"It's no problem," He assures you, looking you in the eyes through the mirror, "That's what you deserve, sweetheart. You don't need to thank me for it."
You have the ironic urge to thank him again.
"And you can call me Aaron." He reminds you, smiling knowingly at your reflection, "You know that."
He's made a point to tell you time and time again that you're allowed to call him by his first name. During impromptu, mid-study-session dinners, at pick-ups in the college parking lot, but you've never felt acquainted with him before, not like this. Wearing his jacket while he drives you home after a ten minute hug seems a lot better of a reason to use his first name than seeing him in passing while you're laughing with Jack.
"Aaron," You mumble, and he chuckles warmly.
You don't have much time to enjoy the sound, even if it flips your stomach into cartwheels. You wish you could savor it, but you watch Aaron take a wrong turn to your house, and a frown tugs your brows down.
"Uh, I live that way," You point behind you, "It's okay, you can just turn up there, I think."
"We're stopping somewhere first," He explains, car bouncing as he pulls into the parking lot of a convenience store, "Come with me?"
You nod, wordlessly, climbing out of the car. He's already around to your side when you step out, looking only a little upset that he hadn't gotten to open the door for you. He shuts it, though, and catches his jacket when it slips from around your shoulders.
"Oh-! Here," He holds the material open, urging you to fit your arms through the slots, "Put it on, honey."
You blame his honey-sweet tone of voice for how clumsy you are in slipping into the jacket. It's unfair, really, how he's treating you like a precious thing, wrapping you in his jacket and driving you home. Then he zips it for you, all the way up to your chin, and you think you're in love.
The cool night air feels even more now like a fresh start. Thoughts of your awful ex-boyfriend have been looming over you the entire time, but they ebb away with each caring gesture Aaron shows you. It takes every ounce of self control in your body not to tackle him into a kiss when he takes your hand, leading you into the convenience store.
He beelines for the frozen section, grabbing a handheld basket on the way. He stops you right in front of the ice creams, only dropping your hand to gesture at the display case.
"Go ahead," He urges you, "Pick some. That's proper breakup ritual, I hear."
"Aaron, no-!"
"It's a rite of passage," He cuts you off, something stern in his eyes even if they're primarily kind, "Just- here. You like cookies and cream, right?" He eyes a container of the flavor behind the glass, and you nod tentatively, wondering how he'd remembered. You'd only eaten it once at his house, and he'd only known because he'd caught you washing your bowl out, and insisted on doing it himself because you were a guest.
He pushes the basket into your hands, and you watch begrudgingly as he takes two quarts of ice cream from the shelf. You protest weakly as he ushers you to the counter, but he shushes you gently, stepping in front of you to pay.
"Aaron," You mumble, cheeks hot and voice whiny as he waits for the cashier to ring him up. You knock your face against his back, burying it there for safekeeping, and he reaches back to pat your side.
The total isn't egregious, but it's more than you're happy with him spending on you. Of course, you don't have cash, so you're unable to pay him back, either. You'll have to slip Jack money the next time you see him, but you have a sneaking suspicion he'd use it at the school's vending machine instead.
"Thank you," You gush, voice still thick with embarrassment and cheeks still burning as Aaron leads you back to the SUV. He's slipped his hand back into yours, and he tucks the ice cream at your feet when you're settled into your seat.
"Again," He urges, resting his hand over your own where they lay in your lap, "Don't thank me. I'm only treating you like you deserve."
If he notices the monumental smile you try to bite back, he doesn't tease you about it.
He pulls into your driveway shortly after, with no further detours. You're renting a little ground-floor condo, and he walks you to your door with your ice cream in hand.
"Alright," He sighs, passing the bag over to you, "I think you have to watch a romance movie with this," He glances at the bag, "It's the law, I'm pretty sure."
"Oh, yeah?" You grin, the expression brighter than it would have been a half-hour ago, "What if I don't? Are the police gonna show up?"
"I will," He threatens, a warm smile on his face, "And I'm a bit of an ice cream fiend, so don't tempt me."
"Well there's two quarts..." You raise your brows, a silent invitation.
"I don't want to intrude," He starts, but you cut him off before he can even try.
"Mr.- Aaron," You hesitate, voice coming out meager where you want it confident, "I really don't want to be alone right now."
You almost expect him to leave. Sure, he'd been sweet to you tonight. But you're nervous that his sympathy was temporary, and that it's waning. So you stare at his shirt instead of his eyes, and you miss the way his gaze softens.
"Okay." He nods, one foot stepping forwards towards the threshold of your condo, "Okay honey. I'll stay."
Your condo isn't much. You're a college student, not a CEO, and your shoddy furniture tells that story. Aaron doesn't seem to mind, though, setting the bag on the counter and rummaging for spoons.
"You sure you want to share?" He eyes you where you've sat yourself on the couch, quarts and spoons in hand as he joins you.
"I'm sure," You nod, reaching for the tv remote, "I think I'd get sick if I ate two cartons."
A romance movie isn't hard to find, but you feel yourself developing a pounding headache from the exhaustion of crying. The ice cream is sweet on your tongue, cookies crunching between your teeth and staining them dark. You munch through the first half of the movie, digging into the carton with a greedy spoon each time. You don't even breach the halfway point before you have to stop, eyes closing and head pounding.
Aaron's similarly engaged with his ice cream, spoon upside-down in his mouth as he sucks it clean. You try not to stare at his mouth, but you're bashful as you place the lid back on your ice cream tub.
"I'm gonna beat you," Aaron boasts, digging his spoon back in for more ice cream, "Quitter."
"Go ahead," You sigh, head lolling back against the cushions. Your voice is colored with defeat, sad and dull. Aaron suspects it's not just about your unspoken ice cream eating contest.
"C'mere," He sighs, jamming his spoon into his ice cream and wrapping his now free arm around your shoulders. He urges you against his shoulder, something that you'd wanted to do since the moment you'd sat down, but didn't have the guts to.
"I'm sorry, honey." He reminds you as you lay your head against his shoulder, his constant slew of sympathy warming your chest, "He's an idiot."
"I feel like the idiot," You admit, voice in a low grumble, "I should have known it was too good to be true."
He pauses, stiffens, shifts. He's turned to face you, now, nudging your head off of his shoulder so he can look you in the eye. He's frowning, "What do you mean?"
"I mean, like... I dunno." You sigh in defeat, "I wasn't exactly everyone's dream girl in high school. And when I started college and everyone seemed older and more mature, it was comforting, like a fresh start. And then he took an interest in me, and I felt like things were finally starting to work for me, like I was finally a girl that guys liked. And then... well, you know the story. It just feels like I should have known better."
All the while, through your confession, Aaron's face has twisted itself into the deepest frown you've ever seen on the man. It looks like it's embedded permanently into his features, like he's stuck there from now on. It's almost cartoonish, and you'd laugh if you weren't so sad.
"Don't say that." He orders, voice stern.
"What?"
"Don't say that." He repeats, "This is not your fault. You were not supposed to see it coming, nor does it mean that people don't like you. College boys are..." He deliberates carefully on his word choice, seeing as he has one himself, "Impulsive. And impulsivity can sometimes be channeled into some pretty stupid shit. Like cheating on your girlfriend. Okay? It's not your fault that college boys are stupid."
"But-" You start with a choked voice, and his disapproving glare intensifies, "He wouldn't have cheated on me if I wasn't doing something wrong, would he? Or- or maybe I just am wrong, maybe I'm just not the type of person that's good enough to make someone stay."
"That is," He rushes to reply, reaching up to thumb a tear away from the apple of your cheek, "The dumbest thing I've ever heard." His hand rests there now, flush to your face, and there's a cold stripe down the middle where he'd been holding his spoon. His fingers are chilly too, but they warm against your skin.
"You are not wrong, there is nothing about you that makes you 'not good enough'. I can think of a thousand things that make you wonderful, but not one dealbreaker. Listen to me, please." He's leaning in, getting closer and closer with every word that tumbles from his lips, "There are people who fall in love with serial killers. No one is unlovable, certainly not you."
"But- but those people fall in love with serial killers because they're serial killers. That's- that's a thing about them, that's a lifestyle that people glorify. No one glorifies mediocrity, Aaron," Your heart sinks, "And that's what I am. I'm mediocre, maybe I'm good enough to take home for a night but I'm not good enough to live with."
In all of your frantic blubbering, you'd avoided eye contact with Aaron. Snapping back to focus, though, you see that it's impossible now, that he's close enough that your noses are brushing, and his breath is fanning over your mouth. Your own breath hitches in your throat, and your heart pounds.
His eyes, once stern and disapproving, are soft around the edges. They're chocolatey, and they speak to his sweet soul that's compelling him to stroke his thumb over the pudge of your cheek. You think for all the world that he's going to kiss you, you almost beg for it, but at the last minute, he tilts his head down, not forwards.
His forehead presses to your own, and his eyes shut.
"You are," He murmurs, holding you close, keeping your face flush to his, "The perfect girl. You're sweet, you're kind, you're funny, you're caring, you're so pretty, you're hardworking, you're resilient, you are... I could name a thousand other things. And, one day," His eyes flutter open, staring into your own as best he can at such a close proximity, "The right person will tell you that."
Aaron is the right person. He has to be, you can't imagine anyone else in the world being as kind or sweet with you as he is. And after all, that's what he says you deserve, right? The way his hand fits around your face seems like a piece of your puzzle you'd never known was missing until it snapped into place, and if you could steal his voice sea-witch style just to hear it all day long, you would.
It's a staring contest, and you blink first.
"I'm glad you told me," You admit, voice thick with emotion. You're not sure whether he picks up on the fact that you're designating him as the right person or not, but you choose not to think about it as he pulls you impossibly closer.
"Don't thank me," He reminds you, "it's what you deserve. Are you tired?"
"Yeah." You admit, slumping your forehead against him even as he tries moving away. It means that your skin slips against his lips, and he presses them into a pucker against your head. You'll savor the feeling forever.
"Go to sleep," He urges you, hand still on your cheek to guide it back to his shoulder. You curl into him much easier now, feeling lovey enough even to wrap your arms around one of his own. The movie plays forgotten on the tv, and your eyes shut to the vision of Aaron's lap, ice cream abandoned between his thighs. It's a nice image, but one you can't think too hard about while sleepy.
His hand comes up from where it had been draped over the cushions behind you to rub your back. He applies soft, gentle pressure, stroking up and down over the fabric of your- his jacket, one that you hope he doesn't take off of you before he leaves. It's grounding, and it only makes you burrow into him more.
The way you know he's the right person for sure is by fighting sleep. You want to conserve your time with Aaron, and you don't want to forget the feeling of his tender touches. You're in that floaty space between sleep and consciousness, somewhere with bodliy sensation but little cognitive ability. Your brain is pleasantly cloudy, and Aaron's hand on your back never stops.
When your breathing evens out, Aaron thinks you're asleep. You feel him shift ever-so-slightly, and you're worried he'll leave you. But he doesn't, he gets even closer, and you feel his lips land on the crown of your head.
"Perfect," He murmurs into your scalp, vibrations thrumming through your skull and wriggling their way into your brain, cementing the thought there, "G'night, sweetheart."
You drift to sleep knowing, without a doubt, that Aaron is the right person for you.
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feedback is greatly appreciated! comment, reblog, talk in the tags, send me a message, tell me what you think!
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suncatcherss · 1 year
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JUST FELL TO MY KNEES
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suncatcherss · 1 year
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this is so beautiful and real!!!! so so so so good
sick weather | steve harrington
premise you’ve had the biggest crush on steve since high school. you were sure you were over it, but now, long after graduation, a walk in the rain and a sick day can resurface some inadvertent feelings. [7.2k] content/warnings fem!reader, all fluff, pining, just being sick in general (no nausea or throwing up for people w/ emetophobia), unresolved feelings, a date that's not a date, and robin being the best wingwoman ever a/n hi
Gravel and pebbles crunch under Steve’s tires as he pulls into the parking lot of Family Video, the sun visor doing little to aid in preventing the blinding rays from hindering his vision near-useless.
It’s still too much like peak summer in September, the sun beating down in unrelenting waves like it was the middle of July. And, naturally, with his luck, the air conditioning at his house had been sputtering for an entire week before finally giving out. He had felt the air in his bedroom growing stickier by the moment, even with his windows wide open. He’d rather be at his horribly boring job than cooped up in his home that was more like a sauna than an actual sauna.
He steps out into the sweltering afternoon, heat seeping into the soles of his Nikes as he kicks a stray rock into the curb. It skips over the cracks in the worn pavement before flying straight into the polished glass of the new record shop that had recently opened up next to Family Video — nowhere close to breaking it, but enough to leave a faint scratch on the outside.
The storefront is decorated with blue banners and a matching striped awning announcing its grand opening. Rainbow balloons stand stark against the blue sky, a spattering of reds and yellows and purples that, in truth, he can’t see very well with how much he has to squint against the blazing sun.
“Hello? Earth to dingus?” echoes Robin’s voice from a store down, “What are you doing looking at the sky? Don’t tell me you think you’ve seen a UFO again.”
He scoffs and turns to where Robin leans halfway out of the Family Video front door, wavy hair turning to gold in the sunshine and tied back messily. The bell jingles again as she shuts the door and slips back into the store, concealed by the reflection of his car in the parking lot in the windows darkened by the sun.
He catches up quickly and in long strides, the metal of the door handle hot against his palm before he finally catches a break from the unbearable heat inside Family Vide. There isn’t a time he was more thankful for Keith’s sensitivity to overly hot or cold temperatures.
“Aren’t you hot?” he asks Robin suspiciously as his back makes contact with the wall underneath the air conditioning unit, eyeing her black long-sleeved top and thick jeans. “It’s… ridiculous how hot it is out there.”
“It wasn’t hot in the morning,” she responds defensively through a mouthful of licorice, “It was kind of cold. Actually, you would know if you had picked up the phone when I called you.”
“What? You didn’t call me.”
“Yes, I did! I remember distinctly that I did. You were sleeping,” Robin says, eyeing Steve like she’s genuinely disappointed with him. Then, only adding insult to injury, “At twelve in the afternoon.”
Steve bats a dismissive hand to where she sits behind the counter with her legs kicked up, shrugging his work vest over his polo as he rounds the divider to sit in his designated spot opposing her.
It doesn’t come as a surprise that Family Video is completely empty, seeing as it was a Monday during the worst heat wave Hawkins had seen since the early fifties. And, not to mention the brownout across half of the town — Dustin had called and asked if he could crash at Steve’s because his air conditioning was out, and Steve regretfully had to inform him that his situation was no better.
He turns around so his back is to her, listening halfheartedly as she starts off about something he couldn’t explain back to her as he starts organizing the returned tapes by genre on top of the counter. He doesn’t look up when the bell jingles again and a customer enters, striking up conversation with her about something he’s too tired to pay attention to.
The stack he’d made topples and the tapes clatter to the floor when Robin’s hand clasps his shoulder and he whirls around, his own hand nearly slapping her arm away on instinct.
“What?”
His eyes dart from her face twisted with annoyance then to you, leaning against the countertop with your knuckles braced against the wood.
Steve hadn’t seen you since his graduation. You hadn’t been friends, only friendly, only acquaintances.
But, now, you’re different than he remembered you. You look different, carry yourself different, and there’s something so captivating about you that he feels like he can’t breathe. He hopes you can’t hear the pounding of his heart.
“What?” he asks again, quieter now.
“The phone,” you say after a moment of silence, beckoning towards the phone that sits trapped between Steve’s elbow and the display stand on the corner of the counter. “Can I use it?”
Steve shifts on his stool so he faces the front of the store. “Why?”
“Have you been listening to anything I’ve been saying, Steve?” Robin asks with pursed lips.
You look over your shoulder, then at Robin, then back at him. You’re sporting a gray t-shirt and frayed denim shorts that reach mid-thigh, and he watches as you subconsciously pick at the white threads descending and intertwining from the hem. A nametag, the same shade of midnight blue as the awning above the record shop, is clipped opposite your heart with your name scrawled in loopy white letters.
“I was listening,” he argues, obstinate, “The phone… why do you need it again?”
Your hand grasps your elbow across your abdomen. “Uh, I need to call my boss. I work next door and he got the locks changed or something and I can’t get in.”
“Um, I don’t-“
As soon as the words start to pass by his lips, Steve feels the toe of Robin’s boot jam him hard in the shin before she cuts in, her lips curling into a smug smile as she looks at you. “You know, all the locks in this strip mall are the same,” she says, spinning on her stool to face Steve. “Steve, why don’t you go unlock the door for her?”
Your eyebrows form a crease in the center. Robin grins even wider. Steve feels like there’s an unspoken conversation happening between the two of you.
Steve blinks and checks his watch. “Oh, uh, sure, then. I don’t mind.”
You nod your thanks lightly, pausing for a moment to allow him to catch up before pressing into the door and exiting Family Video to the pavement just outside.
Steve’s momentarily blinded as he gets hit by a blast of heat when stepping back out into the sun, shielding his eyes with his hand even with the shade of the coverings above him. You wait in front of the window of your workplace, rubbing a finger over the scratch in the glass where he’d kicked the pebble at.
“This must be a safety hazard,” you say. Then, when he only looks at you with what he’s sure must come across as confusion, a reiteration, “To have all the locks here be the same. Anyone with keys could just get into any store, right?”
Steve nods, preoccupied with fishing in his pocket for the keys he’d shoved in haphazardly after arriving in the parking lot. “It definitely is. Robin once broke in to Palace Arcade after it closed ‘cause she said she needed to play… something. I’m not even sure she locked the door behind her.”
You scoff lightly in response, shaking your head and shuffling to the side as he unlocks the door and holds it open for you to enter. He follows hot on your heels, slowing down to observe the store when you disappear into the back room.
He hadn’t yet been inside, though he’d been meaning to visit. The neon signs above the front counter flicker to life, a soft hum filling the room and hues of pink washing over his face. Not even a moment after, some song he recognizes but doesn’t know the name of starts playing over a hidden speaker and you appear in the threshold of the door, holding onto the frame as you skirt around and stop across from him.
Your fingers drum on the countertop as you lean against it, hip bones biting into the metal trim. You look like you want to say something, but your mouth clamps shut as if you decided against it last-second.
Steve sucks in a breath, opting to break the weird silence. “Well, if that’s all, I’d better go,” he says, running a hand through his hair. “I know you’ve gotta work.”
“Yeah,” you say, blinking slowly. Your fingertips smudge the glass divider you stand behind. “But, you know, you could stay for a bit if you want to. It gets… boring, working alone. And it didn’t look too crowded at FV.”
He pretends to take a second to mull it over. It’s evidently a lot nicer in here than in Family Video — the air is less odd-smelling and certainly has a lower dust concentration, and you must have better music taste than Robin. He’d sworn to her that she could play whatever music she wanted for two months as long as he didn’t have to chauffeur her everywhere.
“I guess it couldn’t hurt. Robin’ll never let me hear the end of it, but it doesn’t really matter.” He shoves his hands into his pockets, then, when he notices the crease forming between your brows and you opening your mouth to protest, “I feel like I’ve kinda developed the talent of tuning her out and just, like, not hearing her when I don’t wanna. She’ll be okay on her own for a bit — or, I hope so, at least.”
“Who knows with her? She once let herself into my house at midnight because… I guess she wanted to,” you reply, busying yourself with wiping some gathering dust from the corners of the counter. After a moment, a frown twinges the corner of your lips. “I probably should talk to her about that.”
“I didn’t know the two of you were friends,” Steve comments, nonchalant.
“Yeah. Since high school.” A spray of lemon-smelling glass polish mists the countertop. “She’s said a lot about you.”
He feels a lump grow in his throat. His knuckles crack under the pressure of his thumb. “Oh. Well, only good things, I trust?”
He can see, beneath the thin curtain of hair falling over your face and obscuring it from his view, your lips quirk up into a smile.
It was known to just about everyone except for him that you had a massive, embarrassing crush on Steve for an entire year until he graduated. You’d thought you’d gotten over it, only hearing about him in fleeting conversation when Robin had something to complain about — and no longer did butterflies erupt in your stomach when you heard his name in passing; no longer did you spend extra time getting ready in the mornings to make sure you looked your best in the off chance he’d spare a glance your way.
But Steve Harrington was the type of boy that you never really, truly got over, no matter whether you’d buried your feelings or not. And when you saw him sitting behind the counter at Family Video, brows furrowed in concentration as he organized tapes into a neat stack, you felt your breath catch in your throat like it had countless times before.
It was too familiar.
You flounder idly in front of your toaster, clothing wrinkled and hair disheveled from sleep. A soft chime resounds through your empty kitchen and your toast jumps, sending a spray of blackened crumbs across the tiled countertop. It’s charred beyond recognition and hard as stone when you drop it onto your plate.
Your toaster is broken. The burnt toast goes to the raccoons that rummage through your trash bins at night.
The rain-speckled newspaper laying on the kitchen island catches your eye, printed with a dull photo announcing the rebranding of a café situated on the corner of Main. Below is a short excerpt naming it as the “up-and-coming dining spot in Hawkins.” You figure it’s worth a try.
Your shoddy Converse slip on with ease as you tug on the heel, stepping out the front door to your porch. The air is sticky and warm and smells of strongly of petrichor and fresh-cut grass, the bright skies of last week retired in favor of heady grays and rumbling thunder.
You put your hand out, expecting to feel a raindrop or two, but your palm comes back dry.
The street is quiet, the world still drowsing in a haze of speckled sunlight and the scent of roses dotting red in front gardens. Your heels flatten cigarette butts laying discarded on the concrete, swept to the line between grass and sidewalk with a swift kick from the side of your shoe. A car or two roll by, the lazy drawl of pop music floating out of open windows. They disappear around a bend, tail lights winking a goodbye.
And it’s not until you’re just halfway, give or take some, to the café do you feel the first fat raindrop land on your cheek and slide down your neck. It would take a fool to not notice the wet splatters on the blacktop as the rain begins coming down harder, leaving water drops shining on your eyelashes like crystals. You blink them away.
The rain comes down harder and harder yet until droplets sting upon splashing on your skin and storm gutters swallow tidal waves next to you. Your clothes, drenched now, cling to your figure uncomfortably and the canvas of your shoes soaks through.
Before long, your vision is so obscured by the downpour that you can’t see more than a few feet in front of you, wiping your eyes with the heels of your hands. You can hardly see the car backing out of the driveway in front of you, too preoccupied with keeping water out of your eyes, until you almost run into the driver’s side door.
Barely audible over the pattering of the rain against asphalt, the window hums quietly as it rolls down, and Steve’s bent forward and looking at you with concern lacing his handsome features.
“Steve,” you say, almost hesitant, “Hey.”
And, as if on instinct, you almost immediately feel a surge of heat rush to your cheeks, horrified that he’s seeing you like this — dressed in soggy pajamas and untamed hair unflatteringly slicked to your forehead.
He doesn’t even give you a once-over.
“Why are you walking in the rain?” he asks good-naturedly. “You’re going to get sick.”
“Oh, I’m alright,” you say, gesturing down the street. “I was just walking to that rebranded café and it started raining.”
Steve’s hand dangles out of his car’s window, arm resting on top of the frame. His mouth opens, then closes with his lips shut tight. You can see his blunt nails scratching over the denim covering his thigh.
He turns his head, looking through the gathering of water on his windshield before it’s wiped away. Then, he looks back at you.
“Do you want to come inside?” he asks, glancing pointedly at the lamplight glowing through his bedroom window. “I can lend you a change of clothes. And, if you want, we can get breakfast at your café.”
“Really?”
He nods.
Steve’s house, more-so his room, is but isn’t what you’d expected. It’s comfortable and warm, with homely dark wood tones and plush carpets and glass coffee tables, but there’s such a personality to his room that you never would’ve anticipated.
A windbreaker hangs limply over the back of his desk chair and the aluminum crushed beer cans hidden under crumpled paper shine in the orange glow of his bedside table lamp. A basketball sits under his bed, half-heartedly hidden by the ivory blanket slipping off his mattress, but he doesn’t have a basketball hoop in his driveway.
He also has the largest yet least varied wardrobe of anyone you know — crewnecks and tees and polos all in muted blues, greens, grays, black, hang suspended from a bar stretching from end to end of the closet. Underneath is an absurd amount of shoes, more than any one person would ever need at once, in your opinion — mainly white sneakers with toes scuffed by dirt, assorted basketball shoes, a pair or two of sandals, and one pair of shiny black oxnards for special occasions.
You’d settled easily on a cable-knit navy blue sweater and a baggier pair of jeans with hems that get caught under your heels — you suspect they were meant to be cuffed, but you couldn’t get them to look right. And you’re staring at yourself in the full-length mirror, right side of your face illuminated and the other cast in darkness when there’s a soft knock at the door of his bedroom.
“The rain’s easing up,” comes Steve’s muffled voice through the wood paneling. “Do you want to go?”
You hurry across the room, your damp socks leaving a wet trail across the hardwoods. Your hand is on the doorknob before you even come to a full stop and it swings wide open, revealing Steve with his hands jammed into his jacket pockets and his cheeks flushed pink.
“Nice sweater,” he says, eyes sweeping up and down your choice of his clothes. His Adam’s apple bobs as he swallows. “I was just thinking we should go now when it’s not raining as hard in case it starts up again.”
You nod, stepping forwards. He doesn’t back up until your shoulder nearly collides with his, blinking like he’s surprised when you brush past him and leave him in a cloud of your sweet, floral perfume still lingering on your neck despite your walk in the rain.
He trails behind you down the stairs, snatching his keys up from the ceramic dish he’d dumped them in unceremoniously upon entering his house.
The rain’s been reduced to a light trickle now, but fatter drops run off of the trim of the roofing above his porch and splash onto the potted flowers neatly decorating the front of his house. Nonetheless, you hurry to the passenger’s side of his car with your shoelaces undone and dragging through a large puddle, ducking in as soon as the doors click unlocked and a cadenced chirp fills the air.
Steve clambers into the other seat hastily and sets off down the road. Warm air from the AC dries your dampened hair, no longer dripping but still cool against your skin.
The drive there couldn’t have been longer than five minutes until you pull into the parking lot, windshield wipers screeching against the sparse spattering of rain. His front tires splash as he parks in the middle of a puddle, unbuckling and stepping out. You follow suit.
You’re evidently impressed by the interior — marveling at the fireplace crackling and roaring on the far wall, leather armchairs littering the open floor, a bookcase standing tall, full of broken spines and golden lettering, red booths surrounding tables of sleek magnolia wood.
“How’d you know about this place?” asks Steve, rubbing his frozen hands together. The scent of coffee and chocolate is rich in the air in a warm contrast to the dampness of outside.
“I saw it in the paper this morning.”
He gives you an odd look. “You read the newspaper?”
“What, do you not?” You return the glance, eyebrows furrowing as you approach the front counter.
“That’s totally an old person thing,” he says pointedly, turning to face you with all his weight on one elbow braced atop the counter. “Only old people read the newspaper.”
“What are you implying?”
“Nothing. Nothing… bad.”
The woman working there, sporting a maroon apron and a bright smile, approaches. You’re succinct with your order, opting for a coffee and a blueberry scone. She scribbles something onto a small sheet of paper.
Then, you turn to him to ask what he wants, and the twinkling lights above reflect in your eyes and you at him expectantly with fluttering eyelashes and Steve feels something inside him weaken. It’s inexplicable.
He’s quick to regain his composure, though, and offers a tight-lipped smile before offering only a coffee for himself. It must be subconscious, the way his hand’s immediately searching for his sleek leather wallet in his pocket, but before he can, you’re passing the woman a crumpled up bill.
“You don’t need to pay for me, Steve,” you say, sincere. “It’s to pay you back for driving me here. And saving me from walking in the rain.”
He blinks. His hand retracts out of his pocket. “No, it wasn’t a problem. You didn’t have to.”
He can sense your frown before it even appears on your face. You’re worried you’ve somehow offended him.
“Next time, though,” he adds before you can get a word of protest out, “I’ll pay for you instead.”
“Next time,” you echo to yourself. Then, louder, “Alright, sure. If that makes us even.”
You take the drinks and scone from the countertop, the warmth of the cups bleeding through the paper and into your frozen fingers. You follow as Steve beelines towards the station with creamer and sugar packets and napkins, carefully taking his cup from your precarious hold.
You pop the plastic lid off, warm steam trapped beneath wafting upwards towards your face. Steve hands you a sugar packet, already with the corner torn open for you, and fans away the steam with his other hand before it can reach you. There shouldn’t be that familiar bloom of warmth in your chest, but there is.
You’re less than coordinated, though, and half of the sugar from the pack he’d given you spills over the edge of your cup and lands on the counter, white granules stark against black marble. And, worse, your hand knocks against the coffee as you reach for a napkin to clean up the sugar.
But, by the smallest, thinnest, margin, Steve’s hand darts between your abdomen and the cup and stops the scalding coffee from spilling all over you — though his valiant efforts do cause a spray of the liquid to slosh over the lip of the paper cup and land on the rubber toe of your shoe.
You inhale sharply, stepping further to the right with a wad of napkins bunched up in your hand. “I’m sorry.”
“What are you saying sorry for?” he asks sagely, snapping the lid back on his cup and that of your own while you wipe the sugar and coffee droplets away. “It was an accident.”
“No, I know,” you say sheepishly, nodding your thanks as you grab the paper bag with your scone. It crinkles under your fingers. “I just… it could’ve spilled on your sweater.”
“Well, it wouldn’t matter. I’d just throw it in the wash.” Steve leads you to the armchairs situated on top of the green rug by the fireplace. A chessboard sits in between them, pieces glinting in the reddish orange reflection of the fire burning bright.
A pause.
“Do you know how to play chess?” he asks.
“Not a lot.” The coffee is hot on your tongue as you take a tentative sip. “Do you?”
“No.”
He picks up a piece.
The next day, you wake up with a stuffy nose and a sore throat and a stabbing pain in your head. You groan, though there’s no one to hear you, and your leg falls limply over the side of your mattress.
The peace of the easy morning rain tapping at your windowpane is cut through by the shrill ringing of your phone in the other room. Your hands wrap around your head and you bury your face in your pillow as if you can will the sound to go away. It stops ringing.
It resumes.
With no other choice, you get up and drag yourself out to the living room where the phone is mounted, grabbing it with a sluggish hand and sliding down the wall to sit on the floor.
“Hello?”
“You sound awful,” comes Steve’s crackly voice from the other line. “Are you sick?”
“Thank you. You were right about walking in the rain.” You huff out a thick laugh into the phone, bracing your forehead with the heel of your hand. “What’s up?”
“Did I wake you up?” he asks, disregarding your question. His tone is sincere. “I know it’s pretty early.”
“Yeah, but it’s alright. Otherwise I wouldn’t have gotten out of bed.” The aching in your head grows sharper. You’re hesitant. “Is there something you need?”
You can hear him click his tongue, then the scuffling sound of him readjusting the phone on his shoulder. “Oh, yeah. It’s not anything important.”
“Okay.”
“Okay, then.”
There’s a loud exhale. He doesn’t speak. Nor do you.
“Do you-”
“I was-”
It’s instinctual, the way you clap your hand over your mouth.
“I was wondering… do you want me to swing by before work? I can bring you some soup. It’s good for colds, I think.”
“You really don’t need to do that.” It’s hard to ignore the way your heart leaps into your throat, pulsing with hope. Giddy like a schoolgirl. “You’ll catch whatever I have, then we’ll both be sick.”
“Don’t be silly. I have an immune system of steel, y’know. So I’ll see you in ten.”
The line clicks.
The next ten minutes are filled with slapdash cleaning. You haphazardly scramble to shove all your assorted belongings strewn about your kitchen and living room into hallway closets, tucking some into your bedroom, and hurriedly wipe down your countertops with lavender-scented cleaning spray, shove old takeout boxes deep into your trash can — and, suddenly, the ten minutes have dissipated into thin air and your doorbell rings.
You’re breathless and visibly frazzled when you open the door.
Steve holds a tupperware full of what appears to be chicken noodle soup, eyes widening when he takes in your current state. Sweat shines on your skin and you’re out of breath and your pajama shirt is slipping off of your shoulder. You quickly pull it up.
“You look even worse than you sound,” he says meekly. His eyes widen further. “I don’t mean that you look bad, you just look sick. That’s what I meant. Not that you… I didn’t… Well. Anyway.”
He shifts so the tupperware sits in the crook of his elbow so he can bring the back of his hand to your forehead. His face twists in distress. “You’re burning up. Are you sure this is just from walking in the rain?”
You step backwards into the living room, allowing him to squeeze by as he kicks off his sneakers and and paces towards the kitchen, blatantly ignoring your objections.
“Steve-”
He holds out a hand to stop you before you can ridicule him for coming to visit. “Come on. This is the least I can do,” he mutters, rummaging in your cabinets for a pot. “It’s really not a big deal.”
You decide not to protest, wooden chair screeching against the tiled floor of your kitchen as you pull it out and sit down across from where he’s bent over. “I was just saying that you don’t have to do this kind of thing. I’m going to get you sick.”
Steve rights himself quickly, back popping as he straightens up with a blue stock pot in hand. He gives you another look. “You worry too much. Don’t stress yourself out. Either way, I’ll just heat this up for you, then I’ve gotta go to work.”
Selfishly, you’re happy that he’s here — happy that he’s insistent on taking care of you despite your outcry, and you hadn’t even asked him to. He’d shown up more than happy to make you soup just because you were under the weather when he had no obligation to. The thought sends a small spark of joy through you, and, further, a jolt of electricity when you see the flex of his bicep, the sliver of tantalizing skin when he reaches up to your cabinetry and his shirt becomes untucked from his belt.
You feel too hot, still.
The burner clicks and Steve gets to work warming up your soup — though, he could have just as easily shoved a bowl in the microwave. The wooden spoon clinks dully against metal and he clears his throat, glancing at you over his shoulder.
“What?” you ask. Your throat is scratchy. It’s very warm in your kitchen.
“Nothing.”
“What were you calling me about?”
You can hear him suck on the inside of his teeth, then inhale. “Don’t worry ‘bout it. There’s more important things.”
With that, he brings the ceramic soup bowl he’d found in your cabinet closer and tilts the pot over it, filling it generously with steaming chicken noodle soup. He’s careful, holding the bowl with both hands, taking steady, long strides so he doesn’t spill any over the edge.
He sits down in the chair next to you, sliding the piping-hot soup across the table so it’s in front of you.
“Thank you,” you say earnestly. “This is really nice of you to do.”
You could swear that Steve flushes pink. Maybe it’s a trick of the light. He swallows.
“You don’t need to thank me. Just eat. Have you had anything else today?”
You shake your head solemnly, dipping your spoon to get a generous amount before blowing on it to rid of the steam drifting upwards.
“Oh. You should just keep the rest of it, then. I’m not going to have it.” He cups his chin in his palm, elbow resting on your table.
He’s looking at you, no, staring at you, like you’re the prettiest thing he’s ever seen. Even with mussed hair and your old pajamas from high school that still somehow fit, barefaced and sick and drowsy. You’re uncharacteristically shy under his unwavering gaze, pretending not to notice that he hasn’t yet looked away.
You can feel the heat rising to your cheeks as he watches you swallow, one hand cupped under the soup spoon to catch the dripping broth. You’re reaching towards the napkins in the rattan box at the same time as him and his hand covers yours, cool palm resting on top of your own.
He’s quick to retract his hand. “Sorry. I just was…” A long pause. “I should get going.”
You’re still opening your mouth to speak when he stands, the chair almost toppling over as he shoots up. He strides to the door, one hand on the knob before turning over his shoulder to face you.
“I hope you feel better soon.”
It’s not even been a full twenty-four hours until you find your hands itching to dial Steve and talk to him again. The red phone taunts you from across the room, plastic glinting in the light — and you don’t have much self restraint, so in a choice you might regret, you dial his number and listen to it ring once, twice, before there’s a soft click and shuffling through the speaker.
“Hello?” comes his bleary voice.
He sounds terrible.
“Are you sick?” you demand, fighting the grin threatening to topple your resolve.
Not that you were happy that he was under the weather, only that you were right.
A brief silence.
“No.”
“Liar.”
“Fine,” he says, sniffly, “You were right. About you getting me sick.”
You’re feeling marginally better, though, maybe at his expense. The plastic of the phone presses further into your cheek, bare back leaning against the paneled wall of your living room.
“You wouldn’t mind if I dropped by, then?”
You can hear his back pop and his mattress creak as he shifts in bed. The line is silent as he clearly deliberates what to say, and you feel the hot rush of panic and regret racing through your blood.
His voice is soft. “’Course I wouldn’t mind.”
You scramble to pull on your shoes, and in no time, you’re on the familiar route to his house again.
On the walk over, you deliberate what exactly he meant by that. It was more than likely he was just being friendly, maybe a bit over-the-top with his wording, but it wasn’t like he protested you coming over like you had for him. You shake your head, willing the thoughts away because Steve didn’t see you like that. You were just repaying the favor in a totally friendly way.
A pebble skips and jumps over the uphill of his driveway as you nudge it with the toe of your shoe, coming to stop underneath his car parked in the driveway. The lights in his house are almost all off but the windows are open, sheer, white drapes billowing outside in the wind. It feels like it’ll rain again.
You rap on the door twice, and when comes no answer, you test the doorknob to find it’s unlocked. The prospect of entering Steve’s house on your own feels extensively weird, but it would also be weird to say that you’d show up then flake. And he’d said that he wouldn’t mind if you came over.
The heels of your sneakers crush under your weight as you step out of them on his doormat, idling in the foyer when there’s still no voice, no greeting after the door clicks loudly. It’s almost like his house is empty, so still and so silent it seems that he’s not even home.
You remember the way to his bedroom, at least, socked feet sliding against hardwood up his stairs. At the end of the hallway, there’s the familiar glow of his lamp seeping through the crack under his door and, on the other side, a soft creak of the floorboards under his weight.
“Steve?” you call, feeling overly, inadvertently intrusive.
His bedroom door swings open but you only catch a glimpse of him before he retreats under his duvet. You follow quickly, pushing the door further open and creeping up to the Steve-sized lump on his bed.
A rush of air is sent at your face as he sits up, blankets dropping into a pile in his lap.
He looks worse than you’d anticipated. Worse than you did yesterday.
His skin is almost white as a sheet and his hair is tousled and nowhere close to the messy, windswept look he often sported. It slicks to his forehead and he’s covered in a thin sheen of sweat despite the fan blowing at the highest setting on his bedside table. The skin under his nose is raw and red and his trash can is overflowing with tissues.
Worse, he’s not wearing a shirt. Which isn’t weird in itself, but you feel even more intrusive than before. You avert your eyes.
“You’re a jerk,” he says, breaking the silence.
“Huh?”
“You got me sick.”
You gape. “You’re the one who insisted on coming over!”
He drops his head into his hands, groan muffled by his palms. “Next time, lock me out.”
You opt to not respond, edging closer to his bed before sitting down next to him on the mattress. You lift your hand forwards to his forehead tentatively, and when he doesn’t flinch nor back away, you place it beneath the strands of hair cascading messily to his eyes.
“You’re burning up,” you say, frowning. “Have you eaten anything yet?”
He shakes his head, shoulders clicking loudly as he reaches his arms above his head to stretch. He sounds awfully congested. “I had just woken up when you called.”
“Pancakes?” you suggest, and without waiting for an answer, skirt out of his room and to the kitchen.
Steve’s kitchen is nice, nicer than yours by a large margin — with pale blue tile and a stainless steel fridge full of organic food and a colorful fruit bowl on the central island. You get to work searching through his fridge and cabinets for all the ingredients, setting them in a haphazard pile next to his stove.
He appears no less than a moment later with his old basketball shirt on to preserve his modesty — though it was too late for that, but it wasn’t like you cared much — and sits on the stool on the opposite side of the island from where you work.
The pancakes form a stack on a large dish you’d prepared for him one by one, a perfect golden brown that you thanked your extensive practice with pancake flipping for.
Steve sits with his face dipped towards the countertop, one arm wrapping around his head and the other flat in front of him. He doesn’t even look up when the plate clinks against the counter in front of him, a generous amount of pancakes stacked precariously on top.
It takes a nudge for him to even look up, and even so, it’s sluggish like it exerted large amounts of efforts for him to even move.
“Thank you,” he says, but doesn’t move to reach for the utensils you’d brought. “My head. It’s killing me.”
Your brows pinch with concern as his hand flops back down, landing on top of the fork you’d set next to the plate for him. “Do you want me to get you some Advil?”
He mumbles an incoherent, affirmative sound, the skin of his cheek tugged up as he slouches with his hand on his face. “My bathroom.”
As you round the corner into the hallway, you can hear the unappealing scrape of knife against plate, and a soft thud as what you presume to be the maple syrup get set down on the counter.
And you really don’t mean to snoop in his bedroom, but he has all sorts of trinkets you hadn’t taken the time to look at before. On his desk there’s a polaroid of him and Robin and a curly-haired kid with a hat on, the latter two in the backseat of his car and him in the front. A glimmering band sits on his windowsill, the inside engraved with a date unfamiliar to you.
His Scoops hat peeking out from the top of his wardrobe — a flash of blue, otherwise hidden — that you remember fondly laughing at Robin for during the summer. Crew socks with assorted designs, some argyle, some striped, and some with little animals or other imagery you’d keep in mind to tease him about when he was feeling better.
You figure you’ve been in there for too long and step into his adjoining bathroom, quickly sifting through the drawers under the sink until you find the bottle hiding beneath a fresh stick of Old Spice, an unopened tube of toothpaste.
When you reenter the kitchen with the Advil in hand, Steve’s slouched down in his chair and the plate is empty, the only remnants being a shallow pool of maple syrup and a crinkled napkin.
“They were good,” he says as he catches sight of you, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.
“Good.” You approach quickly with a small grin, sliding the bottle across the island as you slide into the seat next to him. “I do make good pancakes. My pride and joy.”
Steve barks out a strained laugh, opening the Advil with a click of the lid before dry-swallowing two of the pink tablets. Your smile drops.
“You don’t swallow water with your pills?”
“No,” he responds. It sounds more like a question than an answer.
“You’re a freak.”
“You’re being rude to the sickly persons of this house,” he argues, though his tone holds little heat and he’s grinning like a fool.
“I’m sick too! Just… less sick.”
“’Kay. I’m going back to bed.” The color has somewhat returned to his cheeks but his voice is still raspy as he stands, admittedly a bit wobbly on his feet but not so that he can’t walk on his own.
You trail behind by a step or two, debating sticking around in the kitchen to clean before heading back home. Steve doesn’t notice your footsteps have stopped until he’s halfway up the stairs, staring at you where you lean against the doorframe.
“Are you coming?” he asks, paused with one foot up on the next step.
“Well, I thought I’d wash the dishes before going home.”
“That’s alright. I’ll do it later.” Steve waves a dismissive hand in the air. “It’s my house, after all. Don’t worry about the cleaning.”
You must be obviously hesitating, foot sweeping in a half-moon as you falter between following him and staying back.
Still, you’ve never been known for self restraint and follow him up the stairs, rounding the corner into his bedroom to find him already laying under his blankets with his leg sticking out and dangling off the mattress. He’s dozing by the time you reach the bedside, eyes already closed with fluttering lashes.
“Are you asleep?” you ask quietly, your shadow blocking the hazy light of his lamp.
“No,” he mutters, though his voice is thick with sleep already and his words come out more as an inarticulate mumble.
“Is there anything else you need before I go home?”
He shakes his head.
“Alright. Well… bye, then.”
You don’t wait before turning off the lamp and navigating back to the hallway, careful to avoid the piles of clothes and assorted piles of his stuff littering his floor before you’re stopped by his fatigued voice.
“Hey, thanks. For the breakfast and the company. Don’t wash the dishes… I’ll do it.”
You pause.
“Yeah, it’s my pleasure.”
You take your leave, stepping into the kitchen to do the dishes.
thank you for reading ♡ masterlist
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suncatcherss · 1 year
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as if nature isn't the most prolific storyteller out there!! with her layers of sediment and mountain-top fossils. with her trodden down paths and carved out river beds. with her fresh springs and billowing waterfalls. rotting branches and hollowed tree trunks... creeping coastlines and collapsing cliff faces... a living record of time immemorial; both an archiver and witness!!
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90s (xf au) wardrobe references for the twins
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Endless Gifs of Steve Harrington (42/?)
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JOSEPH QUINN as EDDIE MUNSON · Stranger Things S04E07
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EDDIE MUNSON Stranger Things S04E07
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#me hunting for a midnight snack
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steve & robin in "chapter three: the monster and the superhero"
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Decisions, decisions.
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don't mind me
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STEVE + ROBIN Stranger Things, 4.07 - The Massacre at Hawkins Lab
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suncatcherss · 1 year
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jade jade JADE I actually can’t believe you
I’ve never related to a piece of writing quite so much this is wonderful and beautiful and you are so talented
radio cure | steve harrington
an unhappy you meets steve harrington and his merry band of dorks. he shows you that some things are worth sticking around for.
5k words, fem!reader she/her used, tw mentioned/implied suicidal ideation (no graphic imagery, but reader is passively suicidal and dealing with the other factors of that), robin steve + eddie chaotic trio for now, friends to lovers, multipart, swearing and friendly teasing and sarcasm, artist!steve, 90s au
.•° ✿ °•.
You're twenty two when you decide to kill yourself. 
It's a warm day. The sun shines like a flower bud unfurling, a faint hint of golden yellow masked by cloud cover. You're savouring the brief moment of blessed cool as you walk around Lover's Lake, your ipod in one hand, headphones around your neck. 
The flowing pants you're wearing help mitigate the heat around your legs, an itching, slick thing. Warmth feels like oil on your skin. You tip your head back and smell the grass, the lake water, the dry mud under your feet. You're thinking it's as nice a day as you're going to get this week, and you're forlorn, because it doesn't make one drop of difference. 
You look up at the blue sky, squinting against the light, and you think it to yourself resolutely. This is going to be my last year. When your savings run out you're giving up. 
It doesn't feel conclusive. It doesn't feel scary. It's just a decision.
You walk over dry grass until you reach the short pier on the leftmost side of the lake and sit down. You pull your headphones over your ears and bite your lip when the music isn't loud enough. The dock is rough. You're uncomfortable immediately. You want to go home, but you pull out your little craft sketchbook made of yellow paper and a pencil you've sharpened with a pen knife, staring out across the lake for something to strike you. A duck. A goose. Anything at all. 
The thing is, you don't want to draw. You aren't some master, though you try, and you aren't a natural talent… You try sometimes. Nothing seems right. Most people have a style, charm, but you could draw a picture perfect copy of the day in front of you and still feel the lack; you have no idea what it is that makes other people's art beautiful, and that's the problem. 
It doesn't matter. You put the sketchbook away. You have nobody to impress but yourself, and besides — you're not the first person in the world to feel uninspired. Thousands of people must feel it everyday, and they aren't throwing any pity parties. You peel off your cardigan, ball it up, and lay down with the fabric behind your head. You can hear the soft pant of a dog across the way, the happy chattering of a Frisbee game. Under the dock, little bodies thwack the planks, tiny green frogs that occasionally hop in the grass nearby. 
You press your arm against your stomach and you fall asleep not long after that, your ipod playing music a few feet away. 
Steve Harrington doesn't know why he stops to look at you. You're just a girl enjoying the summer sun, and he doesn't mean to be a creep. But you've left your stuff laying in small hills around you and your body's lax. You're asleep. 
He kneels down next to you. Enough room to swing away if you try to stab him for perving. He isn't perving, he reasons. He wants to check if you're okay.
He tilts his ear toward you and holds his breath. 
You're snoring. 
Good, he thinks, crawling back to the far side of the dock, at least two feet between you. You're sleeping. 
He sits down, knees up, hands between his thighs, and looks out across the lake. The sun shines high as the clouds shift to reveal it in full force, a burning yolk. It kisses every bit of green foliage it can find, dappled sunlight everywhere he looks. Steve is out today to draw whatever beauty he can find, and the light across the water riding the rippled waves of ducklings and brave human swimmers seems nice enough. He peers out of the corner of his eye at you, deems you still sleeping, and takes the pocket sized sketchbook out of his denim jeans. 
His pencil is a stub folded between the pages. He lays down graphite in big sweeping lines, more focused on the impressions of shape than the specifics. It's hard to see a coloured world in black and white values. Steve isn't great — he's been drawing for two years now, and that feels like both a lifetime and a flicker. Every day he learns something new about making art, and every day he looks back and feels embarrassed at what he made before. The start of his sketchbooks make him cringe. This one is a mixture of pride and tepid reluctance. 
Being bad at something is a stepping stone at getting better. Not every drawing he makes is good, but hopefully it's teaching his brain to be better. He doesn't know what he believes about art but he likes to draw, and he has gotten better. 
The point isn't in being good, he'd told Robin. I just need something to do. Before I go crazy doing nothing. 
He draws the lake. He loves the way it comes into being. Ten minutes can turn grey splotches into trees, and bluegrass, and the heat rising off of the water. He draws a duck when it swims really close, though he has to abandon it when it swims away, leaving a half formed lovecraftian creature to haunt the page. He draws the dock, and his shoes, and your shoes, and your hand curled weakly next to your ipod. He draws your wrist, though he stops quickly. 
He looks at your sleeping face. 
Steve thinks you don't look like anyone he's ever seen before. He notes your lashes, your brows, and your nose. The sun emphasises the fine hairs across your cheek, and the texture beneath them. 
He wants to draw your face, but he thinks drawing your hand and your shoes might have been too much without permission. He lets you sleep for a while, and then when he realises the heat is making him dizzy, he can't leave you there to bake. 
He rips a sheet of paper out of his sketchbook and shoves the small book back into his pocket. The dock groans as he stands, and he casts a shadow over your face and upper torso. 
"Hey," he says. 
You flinch awake. 
"Don't panic," he says, which is something a pervert might say, so he amends, "don't freak out, I'm just worried you're gonna cook your brains. I didn't want you to get sick."
You sit up. You look kinda cooked already, blinking and disoriented. 
"You okay?" 
You don't look up. "Yeah, I'm okay. Thank you for waking me up." 
"Yeah, sure. Here." 
He holds out the drawing of your hand. He doesn't think it's good, doesn't want you to see it, but he already did it. Giving it to you will ease his guilty conscience.��
It's unlike Steve to bail, but he bails. Your fingers are barely brushing the paper when he's wiping his palms on his thighs and stepping away. 
"Bye," he says, uncertain. "Try not to fall asleep again!" 
— 
It's not so weird. Sure, he'd made your fingers skinnier than they really are, and he made your shoelaces look like spaghetti, but they're good drawings. 
You're trying to read a book in the corner of Benny's when he finds you a second time. He hovers, and you're not cool, you aren't, you're working with what you've got. Not many people skills. 
“Hi,” he says.
"They were good drawings," you say, in lieu of your own hello, thumbing at the pages of your book all full of jumpy nerves. 
"Thank you, I'm… new to it. My best friend, she's– she's actually nicer than she should be about them, I can't lie. I was going to say she thinks I should be banned from picking up a pencil, because I wanted to make you laugh, but. She's nice when it matters." 
You can't keep looking down, it wouldn't be polite. You dog ear your paperback and let it lie against the tabletop, greasy to touch but you doubt it'll make a difference. The book is old and had cost you 50 cents at Mr. and Mrs. Wheeler's yard sale.
He's tall. Hair falls around his face and curls gently against his cheeks, a sandy brown. He's wearing a hat. He hadn't been wearing one the day he'd given you his drawings, but you can understand why he needs it. The sun is an inescapable force: sun stroke has half the town down for the count. The whole reason that you're in Benny's is because it's air-conditioned and shady. 
"Do you want to come and eat with me and my friends?"
You say no automatically. "No, that's okay. I don't wanna," —you don't know what to say, so your voice hikes up awkwardly— "impose." 
"You don't have to, but if you want to, you're not imposing." He twists at the waist and nods to a booth across the room, where a boy and girl sit. When they see you seeing them they look away. "Sorry, they're dorks. There's usually more of us, but Jon's in work and Nancy's in Emerson, so…" He seizes up. 
You wonder why people are so afraid of being awkward. It terrifies you, to think one day you'll fuck up and be awkward and the other person will remember it and laugh, but looking at him now, you can't see why it matters. It actually makes you feel better, knowing he's worried too. 
"I only brought enough for the milkshake," you say.
"I'll get you something." 
"That's– no, that's okay." 
He hesitates. "You'd be doing me a favour. I love them, really, but I can't stand it when they're together, they bully me." 
It would probably be worse to reject his offer and sit here lonely while they laugh and talk. You'll worry they're talking about you. 
"Okay," you mumble, picking up your book and your milkshake. 
He grins at you and you follow him through the diner. It's not busy today, but there's still feet to fall over and backpack straps to tread on, so you watch the floor. 
"My name is Steve, by the way." 
You tell him your own name, which brings another quick smile to his face. He slows as he approaches the booth of his friends and beckons for you to slide into the empty side before following you in. 
"Guys, this is– Eddie, what the fuck is that? We said no gross shit at the table." 
"This, my friend," Eddie says, words rolling around his mouth grandly, "is a monster." 
It's a little man made of coffee stirrers, sporks, and chewing gum seams. It's kind of gross, but it's cute. Grossly cute and cutely gross. 
"We're about to eat." 
"You're stepping on his artistic licence," says the girl, her voice distinctly pretty and a tiny bit hoarse. 
"Disgusting," Steve says. 
You shift on the leather chair underneath you and anxiety pulses in the bottom of your stomach. They're ignoring you, but not really. Both have lifted their eyes to look at you, and, in sync, they smile. The girl's smile is startling, lip gloss lips and white teeth. Eddie's is softer, less happy and more reassuring. 
"I'm Eddie," Eddie says, though you'd figured it out. "That's Robin. Do you think my monster is gross in the gross way or gross in the sick way?" 
"He's cute," you admit to thinking. "But the gum…" 
"I didn't have any glue." 
"Steve told us about his drawings. If he's holding you hostage right now, blink three times, okay?" Robin jokes.
Eddie and Robin lean their shoulders together and start a bit where they count your blinks. There's murmurings about shelters and how they can definitely throat punch Steve hard enough to make him mute. You're stunned at being the object of a joke and don't know how to react, feeling like you've been whacked and now there's cartoon birds flying around your head and they can all see them. 
Steve grabs the menus out of the rack and slaps one down in front of everybody. "Alright, team. You know the drill. Last person to choose what they want has to buy drinks." He spares you a glance. "Except you. She's on me because hostages don't pay for themselves." 
"I would make such a pretty hostage," Eddie says. 
He is pretty, in fairness. Dark curls thick with baby hairs frizzed up in the summer heat frame a pale face. He has big brown eyes. 
“And talented,” Robin adds, poking the gum man until he falls flat on his face. The head pops off and Eddie shrieks, not loudly but with a passionate upset about him that makes you laugh. 
Steve leans over. “Please choose quickly so I don’t have to pay for Robin's lemonade addiction. No pressure.”
“I’ll just have what you have.”
“With a coke?”
“Sure.”
“Robin?” he asks. 
“I want a cheeseburger with a lemonade and then, if you will, another lemonade.” 
She dumps her menu in Eddie’s lap, who looks up from his decapitated figure with a look of defeat. 
“Wh- hey, she cheated. She hurt my dude.”
“Rules are rules.”
Eddie sulks and accepts everybody’s money. He slinks up to the window like an annoyed cat. After he’s placed the order, he looks back to the table and flips the bird covertly. 
“So, how old are you?” Robin asks. 
“Twenty two.”
“How’s that?” she asks sympathetically. 
“Robin.” Steve chides. “She’s twenty so she thinks she’s a baby.”
“I am a baby. This is my first year not being a teen, which means it’s my first year as an adult. I’m one.”
“We have this argument a lot,” Steve says, though not with any bravado. Simple explanation, his voice soft and warm. “When being an adult actually begins. It’s not the adult part that even matters, it’s the not having rules that fucks people up. Look at Eddie. He’s been out of school for a year and he’s been arrested three times.”
You frown, not because his getting arrested would bother you (depending on the charge), but because you’re surprised, and surprise is quick to appear as anger on your face. His shirt and rockstar rings, his nice smile, his gum man — you’d assumed he was a huge nerd. His arrests are a surprise. 
“What for?” you ask, before you can remind yourself that invasive questions are rude. 
“Once for indecent exposure– completely accidental. Once for trespassing, and the last time was because he chained himself to a tree outside of Tawny’s bar. They weren’t cutting the tree down,” Steve says. “He, and I quote, wanted to see what all the fuss was about.”
“Don’t give away my RAP sheet when I’m not here,” Eddie says, placing a tray of drinks on the table carefully. Three cokes and two lemonades. 
“It’s not a RAP sheet if you don’t actually get in trouble. They let him off ‘cause they know his uncle. And also ‘cause it’s Hawkins.” Robin slides her slice of lemon between her teeth, shepherding her two lemonades as far away from everybody as she can, looking extremely hedgy. “I’s a bitch sheet.”
Eddie feigns for her second lemon slice and snickers when Robin defends it, elbowing him hard in the ribs. 
“I paid for it!” he says through laughs.
Your hands start to shake. You hide them under the lip of the table but it’s no use. Soon your legs are shaking, your arms, all of you. They’re minute tremors, both invisible and impossible to ignore. You glue a smile to your face and try to calm down. You’re overwhelmed and you don’t know why — this isn’t a new feeling. You are not the first person to feel this feeling. 
Then why does it feel like it?
Sometimes, everything gets so scary so quickly, and you sit there wondering why it isn’t scary for everybody else, and you wonder why they can’t see it on your face how scared you are, and they must see it? They must know you’re fucked.
You’re shot with thoughts. These people, you could be friends. All you have to do is make a good impression. But how should you go about that? How do you talk? What do you say? 
“I draw too,” you say, hands clamped between your knees.
Steve’s eyebrows do this little dance. It’s adorable, and it makes you want to be his friend most of all.
“You do?”
“I do. I’m not good, I mean. I used to be better. I’m out of practice.”
“I draw,” Eddie says. 
“Yeah?”
He nods. “Jonathan, too. God, you should see his shit. And he’s an even better photographer. But I draw shitty zine comics. And Robin does the typesetting for me.”
“Oh, wow,” you say genuinely. 
“Nancy writes,” Robin says. “So we’re, like, a jerk circle of artists. She’s good, too.”
“She’s good,” Eddie imitates fondly. “I bet she is. Robin’s gonna be a great writer as well, once she gets all these private Nancy lessons.”
Steve puts a hand up and Eddie promptly shuts up. He takes a big, sheepish slurp of coke and you feel like you’ve said something wrong though you barely said anything at all, sipping at your own coke. 
“What are you reading?” Robin asks. 
You slide the book toward her so she can see for herself. “The Sea, The Sea,” you tell her. “It’s about, uh,” —you’ve only managed to read the first thirty pages, and that’s after reading the first ten five times straight— “this guy named Charles, he’s unique. He’s uh, annoying.”
“You know, Nancy used to have a book that looked just like that,” Steve says. 
You laugh weakly. “It must be popular. I got it at a yard sale.”
“Can I open it?” Robin asks. 
“Of course. It’s already pretty beat up, I don’t think there’s anything you could do—“
Robin opens the book with one hand, thumb and pinky fingertip pressed to either side, and tries to take a sip of her drink without looking, tipping her glass of lemonade straight into the pages of The Sea, The Sea. What doesn’t get soaked up by your book rushes down the length of the table and into her lap.
Steve reaches across the table to grab up the glass, but the damage is already done. Your lips part. Eddie gawps, throwing a hand over his slack-jawed face. 
“I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry,” she says, looking at you with wide eyes. “I have the worst case of butterfingers ever, I’m sorry.”
It’s as if she can’t believe she did it. You fluster when you realise they’re all waiting for your reaction.
“It’s okay!” you say, as loud as you’ve ever spoken in public.
“You can be mad,” Steve assures you. 
“No, it was an accident. I’m not mad, it cost fifty cents, and it was totally garbage anyway. I’m really not mad.” 
Eddie stuffs napkins under the table and Robin shivers uncontrollably, dishing ice cubes from her lap and the seat. Steve, laughing now, says, “God dammit, Robs,” sounding like she might be the most golden person on the planet. 
Steve works his hat over your hair the best that he can. “There. Now you won’t die from heat stroke.”
You bring both hands to the hat to encourage it down onto your head. “Steve,” you say, sounding unsure on how to continue.
“It’s on loan.”
You nod and look out over the lake, where Eddie stands at the edge of the dock. "It's getting way too fucking cold for this," he complains, in swim shorts and a shirt, gazing in distrust at the lake’s shimmering surface. 
Lake is kind. It is technically a lake, but also technically a really, very pathetic lake that feeds from a pathetic tributary. If you stationed Steve on one side and you the other, he would strain to hear you talking. Likely infected with brain eating amoeba or tadpoles or leeches. Slimy things. It’s less disgusting than Lover’s Lake, a condom cesspit, so that’s a plus. 
You aren’t looking any more eager about jumping in than you had been, thighs naked and kissed by the hem of an oversized, black t-shirt. It’s wrinkled. Steve kind of loves it.
"Just jump in, you big babies," Robin says. 
She'd already jumped in, screamed at the cold, and now languishes in the chest height water in front of the small fishing dock with a smug smile on her face. "Not you," she says to you. Steve rolls his eyes. 
You shake your head, hair slipping out of the hat. You sigh as you pull it off and readjust the sizing band.
"I guess I am being a baby,” you say to him quietly. “The sun’s been out all day, how cold can it be?” You’re not feeling confident. It seeps into your voice, to which Steve lends a placating smile. 
"Really fucking cold." 
"Eddie, shut up. Y/N, it's fine. You'll like it." 
“I really don’t think she’ll like it.” 
Steve doesn’t either, but he wants you to feel included, and less tense. Distract you from whatever it is that’s giving you such a big case of the frownies, and prove he and his friends aren’t just book-ruining hooligans.
Eddie finally jumps in over Robin’s head, disappearing into the not quite blue water with a cut-off curse. He appears again a few seconds later, black hair slicked to his face, neck and shoulders, wiping the water from his eyes as he splutters and giggles boyishly. 
“Shit, Stevie,” he says. “Not that cold after all.”
“You don’t have to jump in, you can just ease off the dock, if that’s better,” Steve says. 
“Frogspawn,” you murmur.
Steve does a bunch of flexing, throws in a jumping jack for good measure. “Alright,” he says, holding out his hand. “Let’s go.”
You shake your head gently. 
Steve doesn’t wanna embarrass you further, or insist when you really don’t want to, so he nods and smiles and takes a running jump into the lake. Robin and Eddie both swear and dart away as his body collides with the surface of the water, and he sinks like a well-practised stone to near enough the lake bed, feet gracing slippery pond weed and things he’d rather not think about. The air shatters out of his lungs and the water, despite the summer sun, is cold. It feels amazing — he hadn’t realised how warm he was until the temperature abruptly shifted. 
He rushes back up to the surface and shakes his hair out like a dog, water running down his face and shoulders in fast thick rivulets. He peels his eyes open and turns to find you still hesitating on the dock. Robin splashes at Steve in retaliation for his hair splatters and Eddie laughs evilly as he joins in. 
“Come on!” he begs you. “I told you, they bully me! I need back up!”
You toss his hat on the dock. The jump you take into the lake is timid but enough to miss the frogspawn and not break your legs, a cold splash of water and you’re there. Luckily, your presence has Robin and Eddie both stopping in their cruel tracks, and you don’t have to save Steve after all. 
Your happy laughter is stunning. 
"It's so cold!" you squeal, water in your eyelashes.
Eddie takes one of your hands and together the four of your tread into deeper water. 
"Now that all who can be present are present," he says, falling into his dungeon master drawl, "it's time we commence the The Tournament. Swimmers, take your stations." 
Everyone falls into line. You don't know what you're falling into line for, raising your timid voice to ask, "What's the game?" 
"The game is me and you dunk the ever-loving out of dumb and dumber," he says. 
"Hey, what?" Robin asks. "How come you get her? She's a total wild card, she might win the game all by herself."
"Or she might really suck. We don't know, and so in the interest of fairness, I propose she swims with me." Eddie's wet sleeve sticks to your skin as he nudges you. "But you don't suck, do you?" 
"Um…" 
"Attagirl. On your marks, get set, go!" 
You spend an hour like that. Steve and Co, they're stupid, but they aren't stupid stupid. The Tournament is a series of chasing and dunking (stupid but fun) wherein you get to throw yourself on the shoulders of the person you're chasing and submerge them (stupid again). You can't hold them down, though, they aren't trying to drown one another. Much. 
The sun regretfully starts to set. If it's anything like the last few days, that means it's likely near 10PM, and they're all working tomorrow. 
"Do you have work tomorrow?" Steve asks in concern, after he's heaved himself up onto one of the huge stones on the opposite side of the lake. 
Cattails obscure you from view on your own stone. Across the lake, your possessions lay thankfully unscathed on the dock. Robin sits as close as she can to Steve on his rock, kicking water at Eddie every time he tries to approach. 
"You fucking rat," he fumes, mouth full of lake water. 
"I'm not really working right now,” you say.
"Do you need a job?" Eddie asks. "They're hiring— Harrington, restrain your creature! They're hiring at the Palace Arcade, aren't they?" 
Steve nods voraciously. "Yeah! Hey, we can get you an interview no problem, they probably won't even ask you that many questions. I mean, Keith worked there." 
"Don't be mean about Keith," Robin says, though she doesn't really like him. He thinks it's akin to defending your deadbeat older brother. 
"I don't know, I think even a couple of questions might be too many," you worry. 
"How come?" 
You pull the fluff off of a cat tail, and it explodes in your hands. Steve yanks one down to do the same, watching the fibres float across the lake's disturbed surface with a cool breeze. Robin shivers beside him, sensitive to the cold in her wet clothes, the adrenaline of swimming and almost but not really dying wearing off. 
"I'm bad at stuff like that." 
"I don't think anyone's good at interviews at our age," Eddie says, nose wrinkled as cat tail floats toward him. "We're, like, babies." 
"I always feel like I'm really old," you confess. You look down at your naked knees. "Like I wasted all the good years already." 
"What, school?" 
"And the four years since," you say.
Steve gets it, in a way. His high school years sucked, and he'd maybe thought he'd get out of Hawkins on a track or swim scholarship, basketball — anything. But he's here still, and at first that hadn't been what he wanted. Sure, he'd expected it, but in different ways. 
Steve pushes back the cattails to see you clearly. "I didn't even get any real good years until just now," he says, as kindly as he can. 
"I failed senior year twice," Eddie speaks up, "I kinda thought I was wasting my life too, but if I didn't, I wouldn't even know Robin, and she's, like, my best friend." 
He throws his hands over his face before Steve can kick a huge wave of lake water into his eyes. "Get your own," Steve fumes. He's not really mad. 
"Yeah, these are the good years," Robin says, "probably. I never had guys fighting over me in high school." She laughs and tucks her wet hair behind her ears, her freckled cheeks pale in the oranging light of the sunset. 
You hold your hands out for Eddie and he finally climbs onto one of the rocks. From this side of the lake, you can watch the sun set behind the silhouettes of Hawkins town a half mile away. It dips slowly down, meandering almost, a pearl sinking through layers of raspberry pink and orange and, as Steve holds his breath, that sudden flash of electric green. 
"I'm blind," Eddie mumbles, falling back into the rocks and grass. 
"Shit, that was cool." Robin stands up and stretches. "I'm so cold I'm gonna die right here. Steve, do you still have a blanket in your car?"
Steve looks over at you again. You look shell-shocked, not quite awed. He doesn't know what emotion you're feeling, only that you're feeling it, eyes wide and set across the lake at the darkened sky, lights from the buildings like stars shimmering in your pupils. 
He stands up and offers his hand to you. When you take it, he pulls you up without hesitation, not a flicker of doubt or an ounce of struggle. 
"I'll get you that interview," he says, questioning, soft. If you want it. 
Your fingers linger in his palm. 
"Yeah, okay. Thank you." 
"Come on!" Robin says, taking your other hand and tugging without apology, barefoot over the asphalt path surrounding the lake. "Before the gnats come out." 
"We might see fireflies if we stick around," Eddie says. 
They bicker. Steve lets go of your hand and you and Robin walk just ahead, your head bobbing between his two arguing friends like you're watching a quickfire tennis match. 
You turn to the side and hide a smile. Steve sees it, and he figures it's a start. 
"Munson," he hollers, "how about you stay and watch the fireflies and you tell us all about it? Me and the girls aren't gonna freeze out here so you can get back in touch with nature." 
It's a bad joke, but it works. "Fuck you, Harrington. The ladies wanna see the lightning bugs, don't you?" 
"I can't remember the last time I saw them," you say.
"Then we have to stay," Eddie says smugly. 
You all crowd the back of Steve's car, the heaters on but not doing a lot, the blanket stretched over Robin's shoulders. She tucks it behind your back, and you all look out to the night and scout for bugs. 
"There," you whisper, pointing. 
Green dots of light rise from the dry grass like tiny lanterns, a handful at a time. 
"Jonathan's gonna be sad he missed this," Robin murmurs. 
You try to count them all. Four voices whispering bets into the night air, though the real number isn't possible to calculate. "Winner gets a new paperback on Robin," Eddie jokes, swiftly quietened by a barrage of elbows to his side. 
They let you win. 
°•. ✿ .•°
Thank you so much for reading! This is going to be multi-part but I don’t know when that next part will come out, I hope you enjoyed this short chapter, I hope this can be a good foundation for some sweet platonic and romantic moments <3
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