Birbs and the Beebs.

he knew you loved him, that wasn't the problem. you loved him in a hundred quiet ways. you always remembered how he took his coffee. you kept extra band-aids in your purse because he somehow managed to cut himself doing the simplest things. you left notes in his jacket pockets. you called robin when you knew steve was struggling but wouldn't admit it.

you loved loudly through actions, just never through words.

and steve was exhausted trying to guess what was happening inside your head.

"just tell me what's wrong."

you looked away immediately. "nothing."

"there is always something."

"steve—"

"don't." his voice wasn't loud, which somehow made it worse.

you stared at him as he rubbed a hand over his face.

"i'm not asking for every thought you've ever had."

"then what are you asking for?"

"anything." the word came out broken. "i'm asking for anything."

guilt twisted in your stomach because there were things—so many things. the unpaid bills hidden in drawers. the holes punched into walls. the screaming matches. your dad. always your dad.

but if you started talking about it, it became real, and if it became real, you weren't sure you'd survive it.

"i just don't like talking about stuff."

steve laughed. once. humorless. "see, that's exactly what i'm talking about."

your chest tightened.

"i'm trying."

"no," his jaw clenched, and the words hit harder than they should have because part of you feared they were true.

steve looked frustrated and hurt. "you tell me enough to shut the conversation down."

you swallowed. "that's not fair."

"isn't it?"

silence.

the worst part was that you couldn't defend yourself because he wasn't entirely wrong.

steve looked away. when he spoke again, his voice was quieter, which somehow hurt more.

"i don't think you trust me."

your head snapped up. "that's not true."

"then why am i always the last person to know when something's wrong?"

"you're not."

"really?" he laughed again. "because that's what it feels like."

you opened your mouth, closed it, and opened it again. nothing came out, and steve saw it, saw you choosing silence again. something in his expression cracked.

"okay." your stomach dropped. the "okay" wasn't okay, and you knew it immediately.

"steve—"

"no." he stood up. "i'm done dragging information out of you."

"that's not what you're doing."

"isn't it?" his eyes were glassy now, hurt—so hurt.

"i love you." the words nearly broke you. "but i'm tired."

you stared at him.

"i'm tired of guessing," he swallowed, "when you're ready to actually let me in, come find me."

your heart started pounding.

"what does that mean?"

steve looked away, and that terrified you more than yelling ever would.

"it means i'm not doing this anymore."

"steve—"

"i'm serious," his voice cracked. "i can't keep being the only one trying. it's your turn."

and he left, leaving you standing there, wondering if you still had a boyfriend or if you had just watched your relationship end.

the next few days were hell. and not because of steve.

your sister leaving wasn’t supposed to happen like that.

you found out because her bedroom was empty. that was it—no conversation, no warning, no goodbye.

you came home from work and stood in her doorway, staring at the bare walls. the closet was empty, the dresser was gone, and the bed frame had been taken apart.

for a moment, you genuinely thought you had walked into the wrong room. then you noticed the note. just three words: "i'm sorry."

your knees nearly gave out.

you called her immediately, but it went straight to voicemail. again. voicemail. again. voicemail. on the fourth attempt, she finally answered. you didn’t even say hello.

“you left?” silence.

then, “i couldn't do it anymore.” your throat tightened. “you left.” guilt flooded her voice.

“i know.”

“you didn't tell me.”

“because if i told you, i would have stayed.” that somehow hurt worse.

you sank onto the floor, surrounded by the ghost of her room.

“you just left me here,” the words slipped out before you could stop them.

silence.

heavy silence.

then a shaky breath.

“i’m sorry.”

you closed your eyes because you knew she was. you understood exactly why she left. you just hated that she could and you couldn’t—at least not yet.

suddenly, it was just you and him now.

that night, your dad barely spoke. the next day was worse, and the day after that was even worse.

by friday, you felt like you were drowning.

you thought about calling steve a hundred times, but his words kept replaying in your mind: "it's your turn."

every time you picked up the phone, fear stopped you. what if it was too late? what if he didn't want to hear it anymore? what if he was done? so, you said nothing. again.

this turned out to be the worst possible choice.

the fight happened in the car.

rain hammered against the windshield as your dad gripped the steering wheel, already angry before either of you spoke.

you tried anyway. “why are you acting like this?” you asked.

nothing.

“dad.”

his jaw tightened, “drop it.”

“i’m just asking—”

“i said drop it.”

you looked out the window, then back at him.

“ever since she left—”

“get out.”

you blinked. “what?”

“get out.”

you stared, certain you had heard wrong. the rain pounded harder. “dad—”

“get. out.”

your stomach dropped. “we’re three miles from home.”

“then walk.”

“are you serious?” he slammed the brakes, and the car lurched.

“out.”

your eyes burned with anger and confusion as you climbed out. the door slammed behind you, and he drove away just like that, leaving you standing in the rain.

across town, dustin henderson happened to be looking out his bedroom window, partly out of boredom and partly because he liked spying on the neighborhood.

his eyes narrowed as he spotted a familiar car and a familiar argument. a familiar girl.

“what the hell?” he watched your dad speed away, watched you stand there alone, and watched you start walking, completely soaked.

dustin didn’t hesitate. he grabbed the phone and dialed immediately.

steve answered on the third ring. “what?”

“uh,” dustin looked back outside. “don’t freak out.”

“that’s literally the worst way to start a sentence.”

“i think something’s wrong with y/n.”

silence. immediate silence.

“what happened?”

dustin explained everything. with every second, steve became quieter until he finally asked, “where is she now?”

“walking.” another pause, then steve instructed, “stay inside.”

by the time you finally made it back, you were soaked to the bone. your shoes squelched with every step, your hair stuck to your face, and your hands were shaking from the cold and exhaustion. all you wanted was to get inside.

instead, you found your dad standing in the driveway, throwing a duffel bag into the back of his truck.

your stomach dropped. not again. not another fight. not today.

he spotted you immediately, and his expression darkened.

"finally."

you stopped walking, too tired to even defend yourself.

"dad—"

"where the hell have you been?"

you stared at him. seriously?

"you told me to get out."

"don't start."

you laughed, actually laughed, because the alternative was crying. "don't start?"

he slammed the truck door. "i've got enough problems without dealing with your attitude."

your chest tightened. "my attitude?"

"everything's always about you."

you physically recoiled, as if he had hit you, because nothing in your life had ever been about you. not once. not ever.

"she left because of you." the words slipped out, and the second they did, you wished they hadn’t. his face changed instantly, dangerously.

"what did you say?"

you swallowed. too late. way too late. "you heard me."

silence enveloped you, making your stomach knot. his voice dropped—quiet, which was always worse.

"after everything i've done for this family…"

you almost laughed again because what family? there wasn't one anymore. just him, and you, and a house that felt like a minefield.

"you're unbelievable." he shook his head. "just like your sister."

the words landed exactly where he wanted them to, and you felt them. he saw that and kept going. "both of you are selfish."

your eyes burned. "stop."

"both of you are ungrateful."

"stop."

"both of you—"

"i said stop!" the scream tore out of you, and suddenly, the entire street felt silent.

your dad stared. you stared.

neither of you noticed the bmw that had pulled up at the curb—not at first. your dad laughed, cold and mean.

"there she is."

your stomach dropped because you knew that laugh.

"all that crying and carrying on."

you looked away, humiliation crawling up your throat. "just leave me alone."

"that's your problem." he pointed at you. "always the victim."

you physically flinched, and that’s when you saw him—steve—standing beside his car, frozen, watching.

oh god.

your blood ran cold because he’d heard it, heard enough, seen enough.

your dad followed your gaze, noticed steve, scoffed, then grabbed his keys.

"whatever." he climbed into the truck, slammed the door, and drove away, leaving silence behind.

you couldn't breathe.

steve was still standing there, staring, not judging, not angry, which somehow made it worse.

you wanted him angry. anger was easier. anger you understood.

pity would kill you.

without a word, you turned and hurried toward the house.

"hey." you ignored him, your hand shaking as you unlocked the door.

"y/n."

the door opened, and you practically ran inside.

the last thing you wanted was for him to see—too late.

steve stepped in behind you and stopped, completely frozen. now he could see it—really see it.

the dent beside the hallway, the hole in the living room wall, the cracked picture frame, the patched drywall. the damage that suddenly explained everything. the things you’d spent years strategically hiding now all sitting out in the open.

steve looked around slowly. once, twice, three times.

his face got paler with every second.

"oh." the word barely came out.

you closed your eyes, humiliation flooding every inch of you.

"now you know. congratulations."

steve didn’t answer.

you laughed bitterly. "this is why i don't talk about it. this is why i don't invite people over. this is why—"

"hey."

the softness in his voice stopped you immediately.

you looked up and saw tears in his eyes—actual tears. steve shook his head slowly, as if he couldn’t process what he was seeing.

"did you think i was going to leave?"

your throat tightened because, yes, of course you did. why wouldn’t you?

steve stepped closer, carefully, like he was approaching something wounded.

"you seriously thought i was going to see this and leave?"

you couldn’t answer. his face broke completely, and suddenly he looked far more upset than you were. now he understood. not everything, but enough.

enough to realize that while he’d been angry about being shut out, you’d been surviving something alone.

the realization wrecked him.

"oh, sweetheart," the nickname shattered whatever composure you had left. you started crying immediately, and steve crossed the room before you could look away, pulling you into his arms. he held you so tightly it almost hurt. and for the first time since he walked away after that fight, neither of you let go.

AO3 LINK

Steve clamps his jaw shut, looking over at you from the corner of his eyes.

“I agree.” Nancy nods. “I’ll go check with Mrs. Byers.”

“I’ll go,” Jonathan says. “I know where they are—she’s busy with Will.” He pauses, then sighs out the word, “Probably.”

He turns on his heel and leaves the four of you standing in a square, Robin’s shoulder pressed against Steve’s, while you look from them to Nancy, concern etched over your face. 

“This just feels,” you say, “I dunno. Bad.”

“Yeah, because it is,” Robin says. “This is like, the worst bad it could possibly be. Like, Defcon level 5 bad.”

“That’s the least bad one,” Steve says.

“What?” Robin asks, absently, almost like she forgot what she’d just said.

“Defcon 5,” Steve repeats. “That’s the lowest one. Defcon 1 is the really bad one.”

“Ok, then it’s Defcon 1,” Robin echoes him. “Whatever. Any Defcon sucks!”

The group lulls into an introspective silence until the front door to Jonathan’s house opens and he returns, clutching a handful of straws. He returns to the circle, fidgeting with the straws until he’s back between Nancy and Robin, and then just holds out his fist so you can all pull a straw from his hand.

“Three long,” he specifies, “two short.”

He offers them to Nancy first, who takes a breath, chooses a straw, and—admittedly—looks a little bit miffed that it’s not a short one.

Robin reaches out next, plucking a straw from Jonathan’s hand before you can. She tugs it free. 

Long.

Jonathan moves his hand over to you and Steve, and Steve gestures to you to pick first—there’s only one safe straw left, and he’ll suffer Jonathan if he has to, to make sure that none of the women in the little quintet you’ve cobbled together are in danger.

Taking a breath, you pinch the straw on your right between your thumb and index finger, before changing to the one on your left. You ease it out of Jonathan’s hand, and just swallow thickly when you see you’ve pulled a short straw. 

A slight tension settles over the group as you huff a short laugh through your nose, because of course that’s your luck. 

“Great,” you say, wanting to flick the plastic away but instead you hang onto it, watching as Steve and Jonathan stare each other down.

“You’ll be fine,” Nancy says. “Steve or Jonathan will be with you.” She steps closer. “Do you want to trade?” she adds surreptitiously. She’s more capable than you, she’d be the obvious choice—but you were screwed over by your own idea, so your integrity feels like it’s forcing your hand.

“No, it’s—you need to stay here with Mike. And…Will. If Jonathan ends up going with me. I’ll be ok,” you reply, glancing over at her. “Thanks, though.”

“Just pick one,” Jonathan is saying to Steve, and you watch as Steve reaches for the straw you almost chose first, taking it with no hesitation from Jonathan’s closed fist.

It almost pains you to see that it’s also short, so you’d have been going no matter which you chose. Typical.

Jonathan opens his hand to show his straw is long, just for the fairness of the game, and you turn to Steve, ignoring the way Robin is bouncing a little in place, hands curled into the hem of her sweater before she releases it and just crosses to you, putting her hands on your shoulders.

“You’ll be so fine,” she says. “Steve won a fight against a, like, Russian soldier.”

“He what?” you ask, but before you can get an answer, Steve just steps between you and Robin and meets your eyes.

“Let’s go,” he says. “We’re gonna need to gear up before we head down there again.”

&&

You end up with an old canvas jacket over a tank top, one that Mrs. Byers found for you in the back of the hall closet, the sleeves a little too long. Nancy approached you, shoving her own boots into your hands, and said you’d be better in those, as opposed to the tennis shoes you had on. Steve is still in his jeans too, now wearing an old t-shirt that Jonathan provided. It looks a little too small for Steve, his shoulders a little broader, but it’s hidden beneath his bomber jacket. He only shrugs his shoulders, stretching the fabric out over them before he leads you outside, Jonathan trailing behind, the designated driver to get you to the crossover point.

“You’ll be fine,” he says, mostly to you, because Steve looks a hell of a lot more composed than you do, your breath a little thin, your eyes unblinking as you fixate on nighttime scenery as it passes by. “It一shouldn’t be like, you know, before.”

“No bats?” you ask, almost laughing, because even though you saw the evidence of their story firsthand, even though you’ve been around long enough to know every detail they provided is true, it still sounds crazy to speak it aloud.

“No bats,” Jonathan promises, even though there’s no way he could realistically know.

“Ok,” you say, looking at Steve in the backseat. His jaw is set, and when he feels your eyes on him, he looks over at you.

“You can still sit this one out,” Steve says, and to his credit, Jonathan doesn’t speak for you.

“What do you mean?” you ask, frowning. “I一got a short straw.”

“Yeah, I know,” Steve says, “but you shouldn’t一have to. You’ve never gone down there, and you should keep it that way.”

Out of the corner of your eye, you see Jonathan glance up to look at Steve in the rearview, undoubtedly wondering if the fucking Hair is gonna try to pull him along and leave you with the car.

“It was my idea,” you say. “I pulled a short straw fair and square.”

“Having to go down there isn’t fair,” Steve says.

“Well, you went last time, so having to go again is what’s not fair, isn’t it?” you counter.

“That’s not what I said一” Steve tries to protest, but again, you speak over him.

“I’m going,” you say. “End of story. The quicker you accept that, the easier this will be. Stop一thinking about me and focus.”

Steve huffs a little noise of disbelief, but quietens down and the rest of the drive passes with just the sound of the engine and the tires speeding over the asphalt, potholes and cracks in the road making him slow the car to a stop.

“This is as far as we can drive,” Jonathan says, holding his foot on the brakes as you and Steve both hesitate, looking at the red glow of the rift a bit further up the street, the entire area abandoned and desolate, destroyed by the X-shaped fissure quadrisecting Hawkins’ downtown.

What look like ashes or fiery motes dance above the broken earth, and you force yourself to move so Steve has no choice but to follow.

You feel for the door handle, not taking your eyes off of the red glow ahead of you, and push open the squeaky door, stepping out of the car. The gravel crunches underfoot as you stand and move back a step, slamming the door. Behind you, you hear the rear driver side door creak and slam too, and you look back to meet Steve’s eyes over the roof of the car. Neither of you speaks, but neither of you has to.

“I’ll be here waiting,” Jonathan says, to Steve一he’s rolled down the window on his side. “As long as it takes. But don’t take too long.”

“No sweat,” Steve says, clapping his hand onto the roof, displacing some of the dust that’s already settled onto the car, just by virtue of idling in one place. “We got this.”

You wait for Steve to start walking forward, joining him as you traverse the rocky, destroyed street, the headlights from the Byers’ car illuminating you from behind as you go.

“What’s it like down there?” you ask, carefully stepping over a large chunk of blacktop.

“It’s…” Steve says, his voice trailing off. “Not great.”

“That helps,” you snip, because you’d like maybe a little preparation before you dive in.

“I’ll go first,” Steve says. “it’s一a little trippy. Just… give me a sec after I go through, and then I’ll catch you.”

“Catch me?” you ask, but Steve’s already adjusting his jacket, fiddling with the flashlight he’s holding, running a hand back through his hair, dusted with whatever the fine granules are that have been falling over Hawkins constantly for the last day.

“It’s一I mean, it’s called the Upside Down for a reas一you’ll see. Just. The dizziness will pass quick, promise.”

You open your mouth to say something else, but even as you do, you realize you have no idea what to say or to ask. So instead, you just watch as he crouches down beside the rift, fingers curling over the edge, and as he leans forward, you look back to Jonathan, who’s standing outside the car now, leaning against the hood, watching you both.

When you turn back to look at Steve, he’s gone.

You startle, because yes, you expected it, and yes, you knew this was all real, but for some reason his there-one-second-gone-the-next disappearing act throws you.

“You can go,” Jonathan says, encouraging. “He’ll一be ready by now.”

“Have you gone down there?” you ask.

He pauses, then shakes his head. “Not yet.”

You swallow the lump in your throat, then snicker. “I’ll send you a postcard.”

He hesitates, then smirks. “Bon voyage.”

You hold his gaze for another moment, like he’ll stop you一of course he won’t, you wouldn’t if you were him一and then replicate Steve’s movements as closely as you can remember. Crouching down. Gripping the edge. That was all you’d seen, but you close your eyes and tip yourself forward, expecting一actually, you have no fucking idea what to expect, and as your own body weight propels you forward through the rift, you feel strong hands grip your upper arms, pulling you through the rest of the way until you’re in an environment that feels colder, inherently. Like there’s no warmth here, no sun, nothing living, only death and decay and rot.

You stumble, because like Steve told you, there is a moment when your equilibrium is so completely off it’s almost like you have vertigo. He does catch you, as promised and your hands grip his arms back for a moment until your body reorients itself and you can stand without holding onto him.

“Thanks,” you say, looking around. It’s uncanny一you’re in Hawkins, downtown. It looks the same but still so drastically different that you feel as though you’ve just stepped into a nightmare.

“Come on,” Steve says, gently, and you can tell he doesn’t want to linger in one place too long. His hand is still on your arm, even though you’ve turned enough that you can walk beside him.

All of the air is stale down here, and as you walk through the inverse version of your hometown, you start to become attuned to the strange sounds of this place, the一odd clicks off to the side, a rushing roar occasionally from behind or above you, but you never see anything, never feel anything other than Steve’s fingers pressing into your arm through the jacket.

You don’t know how long you walk for, and you lose your bearings in the dimness of the Upside Down, but Steve is confidently striding forward like he knows exactly where you are and where you’re going. Between you, it’s silent, which you don’t mind一just the sound of your breathing and a few short exclamations when your foot twists on a rock, or Steve drops the flashlight, his quiet little “Oops” actually making you smile a little as he ducks down to pick it up, wiping the dirt from the lens.

You walk further, Nancy’s boots clomping alongside Steve’s quieter hiking shoes, and when you reach the base of a hill, you both stop.

“Up?” you ask, and Steve finally releases your arm. You feel the absence like a presence, because you hadn’t realized how much it was comforting you until it was gone, but he glances over at you, nods, and then gestures for you to head up first.

“I’ll follow you,” he says, “make sure you don’t slip.”

Making sure you don’t fall一It’s thoughtful in the way you expect from Steve, even though you don’t know him that well. You’re only wrapped up in this insanity because you know一no. Knew…Eddie. You knew Eddie. He was your neighbor, a couple doors over, and you were friends in that way where you waved to each other when you were grabbing the mail, or said hi if you happened to pass at the store, or noticed when a girl died in his trailer while he was screaming bloody murder and had to go on the lam. It was hard not to get involved when you’d rushed outside to see what the fuck was going on with all the noise only to watch him split seconds later, peeling out of the lot. 

Your first mistake had been even stepping out your front door that evening. Your second mistake had been peeking inside his trailer, your third had been finding that Henderson kid he had mentioned to you a few times in passing…and probably your fiftieth fucking mistake had been suggesting drawing fucking straws to see who got to pay a fucking visit to this scenic fucking shithole.

“Over there,” Steve says, as you crest the hill, pointing vaguely in the direction of a thick copse of trees. “Pretty, uh, dusty.”

He’s right: The trees are surrounded by what looks like a hazy cloud of dust, dense enough to look like fog from afar. It’s practically shimmering even in the darkness, and as Steve shines the flashlight toward it, even though you’re a good distance away, it looks like you’ve agitated it, almost like being illuminated caused the fine particles to move faster. Like observing them made them, somehow, aware of your presence.

You dig the toe of your boot into the ground below you. “So that’s where it’s coming from then,” you say, eager to leave. “Let’s go tell Hopper and Dustin and everyone.”

You start to turn, ready to head back the way you came, but Steve’s arm hooks around your elbow again. You try to suppress how having him back in contact with you does make you feel a little bit better once again.

“No, come on. We need to see if something’s…doing that.”

“It’s just us, Steve,” you argue. “We don’t know enough about anything down here to just go walking into…whatever that is. It looks like…someone cast cloudkill or something.”

Steve quirks an eyebrow at you. “Please tell me you didn’t just bring D&D into this.”

“That’s what it looks like!”

“Dustin would be so proud.” He smirks a little to himself. “Ok,” he says. “I’m gonna go take a closer look. They’ll want to know more and I’d like to be able to answer whatever questions we can when we’re back topside. Just wait here.” He takes off down the hill, minding his steps as he goes. 

“Wait,” you try to call after him, not wanting to be too loud. You watch as his flashlight beam moves over the dust again, the swirling almost appearing to move faster as he approaches it, like it wants him to reach it. “Steve!”

You hiss the word as loud as you dare, and he pauses, stopping at the bottom of the slanted ground. 

“It’s ok,” he calls back up to you. “I’ll be right back.”

“Let’s just go back!” you say, glancing around behind you as something一somewhere back the way you came from一makes a noise that disrupts the otherwise quiet landscape. That clicking sound again.

“I promise it’s fine,” he says. “I won’t be long.”

“No, Steve—” you say, and he pauses, watching with pursed lips as you start forward.

“Come on, then,” he says, resigned, waiting for you as you also make your way down, the ground uneven and the dirt sliding beneath your feet as you descend.

He’s still in the same spot when you reach him, and he holds out a hand for you to take if you need it. Your gut wants you to reach for it, for him, but you ignore the impulse; you’re back on (mostly) flat ground now, you can walk without assistance. Besides… you both might need both hands readily available if shit goes sideways. Or, uh. Upside down.

You flinch at yourself for even thinking it, because that was stupid. So stupid.

“Hold on,” Steve says, holding his arm out horizontally so you stop walking, because while you were in your own little world lamenting your dumb joke, you’d gotten even closer to the treeline and the dust is very, very much thicker here.

“Oh,” you say, because the way it’s clouded there, it reminds you of when freshwater and saltwater meet but can’t mix, different viscosities preventing them from commingling. “That’s…”

“Weird,” Steve says, and before you can suggest that this is definitely enough information to bring back to the group, he steps forward, approaching the trees.

“Steve!” you hiss. “What the hell, why are you like this?”

He looks back at you, a faint smile quirking up one side of his mouth. “I wish I knew.”

You stand outside of the range of the… dust, or whatever the hell it is, until he reaches the trees. Even from where you’re standing, you can see when he shines the flashlight over them, they look diseased, dead, the bark crumbling, the trunks covered in thick vines. They shine a little in the light, covered in sap or… something far more vile.

“Come back,” you implore him, but he doesn’t listen, and you’re not sure if he can’t hear you or if he just ignored your request. “Steve!”

“It’s fine,” he says. “Come here, it looks like… just come here.”

You don’t want to, but you do, because the entire reason you’re even here is so Steve didn’t come down into this place alone. The air doesn’t smell or taste different when you take a step forward, but it feels softer almost, brushing against your skin like baby powder, and by the time you reach Steve, you feel like you’ve been wrapped in silk, or velvet maybe, like the very air itself is cradling you.

“Look at this,” he says, moving the flashlight closer to the vines. “Do you see that?”

You look closer, not sure what he means at first, until you do see it. It looks like a stem broken off of the vine, like a flower had been there and was now gone. You can see a scattering of them all up and down the vine, and the vines beside it; the entire tree is covered in the same stems. Like it had sprouted blooms once, but they’d shriveled, losing their petals but the central disc where the pollen collected remained.

“Flowers?” you asked.

“I don’t know…” Steve said, reaching out toward one of the stems.

“Hey!” you said, grabbing his wrist with both hands, stopping him before he can touch it. “We’re not touching them. No way.”

“It’s fine,” Steve said. “Just… back up a little.”

“Please don’t,” you say, not moving. Steve extends his arm again, using it to guide you back, and then presses one of the un-petaled flower stems down. You hold your breath, but nothing happens, and when Steve moves his hand back, the stem just rises back to its previous position, unremarkably.

“See?” Steve says, looking back at you. “It’s fine.”

You exhale heavily, nervous still, even though you now have the empirical evidence that yes一it was fine.

“I guess,” you admit, and before you can react, Steve is walking past the treeline, between the old, creaking trunks, twigs snapping beneath his feet. “I swear to god, Harrington…” You mumble it mostly to yourself, and then follow him, because you don’t want to have to explain to anyone that you lost Steve because you were too scared to follow him into some trees.

Even though you’re fairly certain, like, anyone would understand.

He’s stopping at random trees, shining the flashlight on them, but every flowered vine you find looks the same as the first one一flowers, no petals, the center bare of any pollen or residue.

“Maybe we can just一take one of the stems and bring it back. And leave. Now.”

“We don’t know that’s what’s causing the dust,” Steve says, and you actually grab him, spin him around, and stare him down with your hands on your hips.

“I think,” you say, lifting your hands exasperatedly into the air, “we can extrapolate that they are what’s causing it.”

But he’s not listening. You can tell because he’s looking behind you, the flashlight just a little bit off to your left. You turn to see what’s caught his interest, and find it immediately. It’s one of the flowers, but not barren. The petals are a sickly green-blue, the same as the rest of the vines, and the disc is very clearly covered in a thin layer of pollen. Steve shuts the flashlight off and you see how he noticed it一it’s bioluminescent.

“Oh,” you say again, looking back at him. “That’s…even weirder.”

“We should bring that one back,” he says.

“I still don’t think we should touch it,” you say.

“Yeah,” he agrees, surprising you. “Probably not, but一I mean…if we can learn anything about anything it’ll be from that one, right?”

“I…” you start to say, then sigh. “I guess.”

“All right, just,” he says, handing you the flashlight. “Hold this.”

“Do you need the light?” you ask, running your thumb over the button to turn it back on.

“No,” he says, stepping past you and reaching up toward the flower. “I got it一”

As soon as his fingers touch the stem, the flower reacts一actually reacts. It appears to contract, the way you’d expect a Venus fly trap to close when its prey triggers it, and then the petals fall away, down over Steve’s hands, his face, and the pollen follows, the glimmering particles landing on him, on you, wisping away through the trees to settle, no longer glowing, wherever they fell through the stagnant air.

“Steve!” you scold him, but even as you do, you start to feel… off.

“You ok?” Steve asks, turning to you. His eyes meet yours and you feel a pull, you feel the same vertigo you felt when you first arrived here.

“Yeah,” you say, before the world slides sideways. “Wait. No.” You move to brace yourself against the tree, pressing the side of your forearm against it, letting your forehead rest there for a moment as you try to compose yourself.

“No,” Steve echoes you. “Yeah, me… me neither.”

“What the hell was that?” you ask, turning the flashlight on. With the beam lit up again, you can see how shaky your hands are, because you angle it up and despite your best effort, you simply cannot keep the stem of the flower that exploded centered in the light. “Jesus Christ,” you mumble to yourself, dropping the lit flashlight because seeing yourself so obviously affected by whatever you just inhaled is making you feel even more scared than you already are.

You register Steve moving away from you, walking around in the tight space, shaking his hands out like he’s trying to rid them of something.

You suck in a breath.

“Are you like. Hot?” you ask, pulling off the heavy jacket and draping it over your shoulder, just to have something to do with your shaking hands.

“What?” Steve asks in return, but you can hear the tightness in his voice.

You swallow, stepping away from the tree, and because whatever the fuck is happening to the two of you is happening, you bump into him just as he nears you with his pacing, neither paying any mind to the other. Where his hand brushes your arm, your skin tingles, tightens—feels like it’s going to blister. And then it happens to the rest of your body.

But just as quickly as it does, it dissolves away, leaving you feeling cold, wanting.

“Are you ok?” Steve asks again, in a way that you can tell he felt whatever that was too. But also in the way that you can tell he’s, maybe, handling it a little better.

“Still no,” you say. 

“Right,” Steve says. “Yeah. ‘Cause you just…” he trails off, and as soon as he mentions it you realize, belatedly, that the searing feeling of his bare skin against yours—your arms mind you—made you loose a moan from deep in your chest, low and unbidden, soft but heavy.

The moment hangs between you for a second, your heart hammering in your chest, an uncomfortable pressure starting to build between your legs.

“Hey,” Steve says, and you look up at him, and when you do you realize he’s much closer than he was moments ago, and he was already right beside you. “Hey, do you, um…” he trails off, and in the ambient light emanating from the flashlight on the ground beside you, you can see his gaze drop down to your lips.

Instinctually一because all of a sudden you feel like every single impulse and sense you have has been reduced to its basest level一you let your eyes lower to his mouth too, and when you see them, when you watch as his teeth worry his lower lip between them, when you see his cheeks hollow for a moment, when you catch a brief glimpse of his tongue, the same question that you’re certain he was about to ask you pops into your mind, and you answer what he didn’t even ask.

“Yes,” you say, and without further hesitation, without any thought at all, you take his face in your hands and press your lips to his.

Simultaneously you feel both immense relief and immeasurable desire, your stomach churning, your lips parting as Steve groans into your mouth. You can’t help but press your hips to his, parting your lips to let his tongue lick against yours, and your hands curl into his hair as you kiss him wildly, tongues and teeth and absolutely no reticence, the desperation clear on your part and his.

“Fuck,” you mutter as his hands tug your tank top up, pushing it over your tits, not bothering to unclasp your bra but just shoving that up and over your chest too, and you don’t even care that he’s undressing you in the middle of the weird ass woods in some alternate dimension. You don’t care that you’ve been stricken with the urge to fuck some guy you barely know, and only know because of some of the direst circumstances in history. You don’t care that he’s caging you in against the tree, the vines and bark scraping against your back as he leans down to bypass your neck completely and latch onto one of your tits, his mouth working at you in a way that you could tell on an ordinary night in an ordinary bed in ordinary Hawkins would feel wonderful, but now is only making the ache between your legs worsen, because you need part of him in contact with part of you and it’s not his mouth on your nipple.

“Steve,” you gasp, tone high, thready. “I need一oh my god, I can’t一” you stop yourself, because you know what it is that you want but you can’t very well tell him that you need his cock. You do not know each other like that, but as soon as the thought crosses your mind, he pulls back from you, shrugging off his jacket as well, letting it fall to the ground behind him as he undoes his jeans and shoves them down.

You’re on him before he even pulls his hands away from the waistband一both hands wrapping around his shaft, coaxing him to hardness even though he’s already most of the way there. Your entire being shudders with relief as soon as you feel his hot, girthy cock in your hands, and he rushes you back against the tree, mouth taking yours again as you stroke him with both hands, smearing the copious amount of precome he’s leaking all down his length. He’s so wet it coats your hands, your wrists even, as you accidentally let them brush against him as you jerk him off.

“This is”一you gasp out as he breaks away to move his lips down to your neck一“weird, right?”

“Yes,” Steve answers, but even as he says it, he’s moving his hands from your waist to your front, fingers curling into the waistband of your jeans and slipping the button. He undoes the zipper and doesn’t even bother trying to lower your pants down to your thighs like his are一he just shoves his hand into your underwear, palm skimming below your belly button until he reaches your mound, his middle finger sliding between your lips to touch your clit, the pad of his finger rubbing over it, not gently, but hard, harsh, immediate pressure that should feel good, but does absolutely nothing for you.

Strangely, you realize一you’re getting more enjoyment out of touching him, than you are from him touching you.

“God, that’s good,” Steve breathes against your mouth, and you realize he must be feeling the same一only getting any relief when he got his hands on you.

“What’s happening?” you ask, lips on the corner of his, breath warm on his cheek.

“I don’t know, I一” Steve says, licking into your mouth before pressing his forehead against yours, looking into your eyes as he thrusts his hand down further into your jeans, the force of it moving them down your hips without any help, and then his fingers are sliding through your folds. “You’re一so wet一I, I never felt anyone like, like this一”

“This is fucking,” you stammer, but the thought of exactly what it is leaves you as he curls two fingers inside of you, and he shudders in relief. You pull him closer by his cock, letting one hand move over it as you reach lower, cupping his heavy balls in your hand, massaging them and tipping your head back, eyes fluttering closed as you do.

“We should一stop,” Steve says, but you shake your head, then nod, then shake your head again.

“No, we can’t… Don’t want to,” you admit.

Steve’s voice is thick like honey, dripping with arousal as he speaks to you, tucking his cheek against yours so he can whisper directly into your ear. “Take一take everything off. Turn around.” It’s dark and deep and you reluctantly release his cock, let him slide his fingers out of you, and then the two of you strip the rest of your clothes off, denim landing on the dirt and leaves, his shirt landing in a heap as he helps you with your bra, and then you’re both naked in the cursed forest, and he’s pressing himself against your back, hands roaming your front. It feels nice but does nothing to assuage the arousal still coiling in your belly, and you push yourself into him, the heated skin of his cock smearing precome over your ass as his hips slide against you. 

“Steve,” you whine, and your tone spurs him into action, his hands landing on your hips, pushing you down, down to your knees and then all fours, and then one of his hands is sliding down your spine to stop between your shoulder blades, and then the next thing you know, your shoulders and tits are being pressed into the dirt, your ass up in the air, presenting yourself to him. You turn your head as much as you can to look back at him, straining as he holds you down.

He’s kneeling behind you, and you watch as his eyes meet yours, hazy with lust, with desperation, and he only nods once at you before you see him reach for his cock with his free hand and press the head against your weeping slit.

Your whole body quivers, and you would have pushed back if he wasn’t keeping you firmly in place, your arms trapped beneath you, hands scrabbling for purchase on your own thighs, holding onto yourself as you feel the pressure on your pussy increase when Steve leans into you with purpose.

He enters you in one deep, thick stroke, and as soon as you engulf him, as soon as you feel him splitting your walls open on his cock, you shudder and come instantly with a loud cry, sobbing from momentary relief, pleasure raining down over you as the sheen of sweat on your skin worsens. Your entire body is aflame like you’ve got a fever, and you clench around Steve's cock when you feel his hips grinding against your ass as you realize that he came too, suddenly, with a harsh gasp. 

But then he’s moving again, back out of you and then pushing in, pushing desperately, chasing the feeling again. Because your first orgasm wasn’t satisfying, barely any of the edge siphoning off despite how much it affected you, and the way he’s digging his fingertips into your hips as he pounds at you tells you his wasn’t either. He’s fucking his come back into your pussy, easing the slide, your thighs dripping with it already as flecks of his release land on your skin. 

“Steve,” you say, voice watery, because you haven’t even come down from your first orgasm and you can already feel another one cresting on the horizon.

“Do you一does this一feel good for you, t-too?” he asks, and you know he’s asking because he must feel the same as you一unsatisfied, wanting more, chasing another and another and another.

“Yeah, it一” you say, gasping as he leans over you, drilling his cock into you even deeper, reaching places inside of you you’ve never felt on your own. “You feel so一so good, Steve, please just一” You falter again, but unless you say it how will he know? How will he know how badly you want this, want him, unless you tell him? “Just keep一going, keep, keep coming in一in me, oh, god, I…” 

You’d feel embarrassed to sound so wanton and lewd if not for the way he answers you, pressing his hand more firmly against your back, sliding it up to your neck, and then finally, relenting for a brief moment so he can tangle his fist into your hair and use it to press your face down into the dirt.

“You have no一idea,” he replies, his hips snapping against your ass, his cock coated with his own spunk, your fluids, dripping down onto his balls, onto the forest floor. “How good you一you feel, around一fuck, you’re so一so一” He fucks into you again, and you feel his cock twitch deep within you, coming again, his release flooding you, his rigid cock not softening and not leaving your cunt, not fully anyway.

His voice sounds slightly more even when he speaks, but still frenzied.

“You feel that?” he asks, and you nod, sliding one of your hands up your stained thigh, sticky with your arousal. “Feel me inside you, right? Feel how一what you’re doing to me?”

“Steve,” you whimper, as he starts moving again, the wet sounds coming from between your bodies obscene, the sound of him fucking his own come loud, filthy, and it ensnares you, your lips parting of their own accord as you feel the saliva dribbling out of your mouth, but you can’t do much to stop it, not with him holding you down, with your arms tucked beneath you, with the way you’re now rubbing at your own clit because you feel so full with two loads in you that you need to come, need to feel it leak out of your hole around his cock, need the force of your orgasm to empty you so he can do it all over again on a clean slate.

“I can feel you,” Steve says, voice choked as he slams into you and stops, straightening up, releasing your head and your hair and clamping his hands down on your hips, rolling his front shallowly against yours, letting his cock just barely move out before it dips right back in, and the stretch of your slit around him, the feeling of your own hand working at your clit, finally sends you over the edge and you turn your face into the ground, hiding your shame as you realize he just came a third time, your pussy milking the orgasm from him as it spasmed and clenched down, begging it from him. The dirt sticks to your face, your lips and chin and you squeeze your eyes closed as you feel him pull out一again, not fully, only partly because you chase him, leaning back into him, wanting him to stay rooted deep within you一but even as you do, you still feel the thick drops of his come ooze out of you around him, rolling down your thighs, collecting in the crease of your knees.

“Do you feel any一better?” Steve asks, and in spite of the question, he pushes back into you, displacing more of his semen, forcing more of it out around him, staining your front along with his this time.

“Yes,” you answer, “no一can you fuck me a-again?”

Steve’s hands smooth over your back一you feel a little less heady, a little less one-track minded, but the burn is still there, the one that needs him moving into you again, pounding his front against your back, giving it to you over and over.

“I still need it too,” he says, and that makes you feel marginally better until he leans over you, letting his back rest against your front, letting your legs support his weight on top of you as he circles both arms beneath you, one hand pressing against up against your stomach, the other moving between your come-covered thighs to nudge your hand away and let his fingers work at your clit this time.

“Fuck一Steve,” you sob, because he’s not moving this time, just letting his cock sit inside you, heavy, slick with his own spunk, and his breath is heavy in your ear as he just rubs your clit, letting you squeeze down on him, unmoving inside you. Your walls flutter around him, gripping him tight, and Steve’s hand on your clit feels worlds different than your own did一your orgasm takes you over by surprise, hitting you out of nowhere so strongly that you buck back against him, wanting to feel him deeper even though he’s fully seated in you, riding out your orgasm with you until you sigh, eyes closed, cheek pressing to the dirty ground, smearing your own drool against the detritus below you.

His fingers slip away from your clit and he starts moving again, and even though you want it, you whine, the noise in your throat crackly and petulant, and without pulling out of you, needing to stay joined the exact same way you do, he holds you tight against him and rolls the both of you onto your side. He’s still inside you, and with the same arm that he’d just had looped around your stomach, he hooks your leg on his wrist, pulling your leg up to the side and holds it there, out of his way, exposing your cunt as he fucks you from behind this time, the new position just as intense but so, so much better, your back resting against his front, his skin slick with sweat as he clings to you, almost as desperate as you feel. 

“Almost一almost there,” he says, and you’re not sure what he means, because you’re still bleary with arousal, still want to come on his cock countless more times, still want to feel him lingering inside you for days.

“Please touch me,” you beg, “need you一need it to be you, it doesn’t一work when it’s me, Steve, please一”

“Sh,” he hushes you, his voice soft as he leans a little further into you, rising to prop himself up on his elbow. He doesn’t release your leg一to the contrary, he leans forward, pushing your leg further up to the crook of his elbow, holding your legs open at an even wider angle, and lets his now free hand slip between your folds to find your clit.

You sob when he does, because you come again the moment he touches it, the swollen bead throbbing beneath the pads of his fingers, kicking under his ministrations as he doesn’t stop, doesn’t slow, and you rise to your peak again, barely even coming down from the first一or maybe you just didn’t stop coming. You don’t know, you don’t care, because after this many, you’re starting to feel like yourself again, but the feeling is still there, you still need more.

“It’s一so much,” you mumble, and Steve presses a short kiss to the sensitive spot behind your ear.

“You feel so good, though,” he says, his hips still curling into yours, his cock not as deep now, both of you contorted around each other, back to front, limbs entangled, his fingers on your clit, the head of his cock in the perfect position to rub repeatedly against your g-spot, and you shudder a sigh as you feel yourself come again, weaker this time, your cunt sopping and sore.

“Come in me again,” you ask weakly, because each time he did, each time he filled you to the brim and it spilled out of you, a little bit of the haze lifted, the feverish impulse lessening.

“Almost,” he replies, thrusting into you, the head of his cock nudging your g-spot and you feel another orgasm beginning to rise, but not strong enough to overtake you yet.

“Please,” you beg, desperate now that you can feel the end might be in sight. You taste dirt in your mouth and feel itchy, skin irritated from twigs and leaves on the ground below you, but they’re the first sensations you’ve felt other than all-consuming arousal since the flower disintegrated onto you both, and you welcome them.

“Just一hold on another一another一” Steve says, and you feel him circle your clit quicker as he fucks into you, his cock dragging against your walls as you tighten up around him, and when he snaps them forward, up into you, shot after shot of his come spurting from the tip of his dick, your whole body tightens, loosens, releases after another orgasm一weak, feeble, and final, you hope一and then you still. Both of you, still, filthy, sweaty messes on the ground, dirty and sticky, skin slick between your thighs, his chest sticking to your back as you pull away from him. You stay on your side, wiping your face with the cleaner of your two hands, scraping away the dirt and spit stuck to your chin. You hear Steve behind you shuffle to his feet, and then his bomber jacket is draped over your shoulders, just to give you some modicum of modesty until you can stand and dress yourself.

“What the fuck happened?” you ask, wiping at the rest of your face now, adjusting the jacket to cover yourself as you feel his spend slowly trickle out of you. You twist, looking up at Steve where he’s standing, pulling his jeans back on. He uses his shirt to wipe his dick clean, his thighs, and then looks over to you.

“Shit, I’m sorry,” he says, and zips his fly before kneeling beside you, making to lift the jacket to wipe you clean with his shirt too, but you bat his hand away. You wanted him so desperately, had him, even, the two of you unable to control yourselves, and now you don’t even want him to look at you.

“Can you get me my一shirt,” you ask, pointing to where your tank top landed.

Wordlessly, Steve gets you your clothes, handing them to you and looking away as you shift yourself to your knees. You suppress the whimper as you feel yourself gaping, the sticky mess of his come falling from your pussy lips, and you try to clean yourself up as best you can, dressing yourself in your jeans and snapping the jacket closed to hide the fact that you’re now shirtless. You both leave the other soiled garments in the woods.

The first half of the walk back is silent, your stoic expression unchanging even as Steve continues acting exactly as he had before: Letting you walk ahead of him, keeping an eye on you to make sure you don’t trip, illuminating your path with the flashlight rather than his own.

“Um,” he says, once you start to see the reddish glow indicating that you’re nearing the rift. “Can we talk?”

You sigh. Heavily. “About what.”

“About一what just happened.”

“What happened?” you ask.

His eyes widen, like he’s not sure whether you’re really asking. “We…had一”

“I know what happened, Steve,” you snap. “I mean, why? What was that stuff?”

He closes his mouth, then his eyes, lifting his hand to cover his face for a moment before letting it fall to his side again.

“I don’t know. But I just一I wanted to check whether you’re ok now.”

“I’m fine,” you say, a little sarcastic, but biting it back because he got the same faceful of fuck pollen as you did. “Don’t worry, you won’t catch me begging for your dick again any time soon.”

He blanches, then takes a step toward you. “Hey, that’s not what I meant.”

“Can we not一talk about it?” you ask.

Steve hesitates, frowns. Then nods. “Yeah. Whatever you want.”

&&

The drive back to the Byers house is awkward. You let Steve sit in front next to Jonathan, let Steve answer the questions, let Steve tell Jonathan no一don’t drop you at home. You end up in the driveway of Jonathan’s house, waiting inside Steve’s BMW as he goes in and gives all the details to Nancy this time. He returns the jacket to Mrs. Byers.

He’d been careful with what he said to Jonathan. Some trees, weird flowers, some kind of pollen. It knocked you out for a little while, he explains, some kind of fever or something, that’s why you’re both filthy and sweaty. But you both feel fine now.

Sure.

Steve emerges from the house in another shirt, a polo he’d changed out of before this whole mess, and rounds the hood of the Bimmer. You watch him, wondering why you didn’t interrupt when Jonathan offered to drop you at your place. It would have been easier. You could have shut yourself up inside and never looked twice at Steve again. You only just got involved in this bullshit. You could extricate yourself just as easily.

But you didn’t.

You’d stayed with Steve even when you had the chance for an out.

You’d allowed him to insist that he drive you home, because he wanted more time to talk to you. Which you didn’t want to do but, admittedly, was probably a good idea.

The driver’s side door slams shut as Steve climbs in. You don’t move, legs pressed together, arms crossed over your chest, and Steve fiddles with the keys, not putting them in the ignition.

“So一” he starts, but you cut him off.

“I don’t want to talk outside Jonathan’s house,” you say.

“Right,” he says, starting the car and shifting into gear, heading out back onto the road. He clears his throat. “So.”

“Yeah?” you ask, and he just clears his throat again.

“Are you ok?”

It’s the question you expected but weren’t sure if he would actually ask. Because you’re not, and he’s probably not either.

“I mean, physically,” you say. “Sure.”

“I’m sorry. Obviously I didn’t一know,” he says, drumming his thumb on the steering wheel.

“I’m not blaming you, Steve.”

“It’s my fault.”

“Oh, I’m aware,” you say. “But I said I’m not blaming you. How could you have known, really.”

He glances over at you to find you already looking at him. You shrug as if to impart the age-old adage, c’est la vie. Even though it’s really, really not.

There’s another few minutes of silence, the car humming quietly in the night, and it’s almost peaceful except for the mess still between your legs, your body reminding you of it every time he hits a bump in the road and you feel sore all over again.

“That place… I shouldn’t have let you go down there. It changes you.”

“I’ll say,” you snarked, and Steve looked over at you, a little shocked at how blasé you were in that moment, then huffed an unamused laugh.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“Yeah, I know. It’s一”

“No, for一bringing you. Jonathan should have一”

“I’d love to hear what would have happened if it had been you and Jonathan down there,” you say, keeping your face turned toward the window.

“Ok, well一that’s一” Steve stammers, and you can’t help but laugh a little.

It feels nice, actually, laughing after needing to use Steve’s body in the most perverse, insane way ever, and letting him do the same to yours.

“You didn’t have to drive me,” you say, as Steve turns into the lot where you still live, both of you averting your eyes from Eddie’s residence. Or… what used to be.

“I wanted to,” he says, simply, and when he pulls up outside of your door, he puts the car into park and turns it off, pulling the key from the ignition.

“What are you doing?” you ask, eyeing him as he reaches for the door handle and pockets his keys.

“Walking you to your door,” he says, like it’s obvious.

You want to question him, but you don’t. You just get out of the car, slam the door behind you, and wait for him to move next to you. You lead him, and when he follows you up the steps, holds the door for you when you open it, and enters behind you, you don’t question that either.

Nor does he wait for you to. “I don’t… sleep that great anymore, after… you know, going down there. Figured you might want. I dunno. A friendly face nearby. Just in case.”

You undo the jacket’s fastenings, but hold it closed, your bra shoved into the pocket, your upper half bare beneath the canvas.

“Ok,” you say, not fighting him on it, and just point at the couch behind him. “You can stay there. My mom works an overnight shift so if you can be out by 7:00, I’d appreciate it.”

Steve looks behind himself, then nods. “Sounds good.”

You wait for him to turn and settle down onto it before padding down the hall to the bathroom. The door sticks when you close it, so you never do, just leaving it barely ajar as you strip off the jacket and your jeans, the crotch still wet with Steve’s come. You leave the clothes in a pile on the floor and start the shower, waiting for the water to warm before stepping in; in the meantime, you examine yourself in the mirror. There’s still some dirt scuffed on your cheek; you try to wipe it away with the heel of your hand but it isn’t budging, so you just check yourself out otherwise instead. Your lips are still swollen from where you’d bitten them. You’ve got some bruises and scrapes on your shoulders and chest, your arms and elbows, but there’s no pallor to your skin so you figure you’re fucking fine. Just peachy.

You pull the shower curtain and step in, scrubbing your body hard, your arms and legs, focusing on the marred areas of skin, the places you know need some extra care. You wash thoroughly, your face, your thighs, everything in between them, and when you emerge wrapped in a towel, you see Steve dozing off on your couch. 

You pull the towel tighter around you, watch him for a moment longer, then call out to him.

“Hey.”

His eyes flutter open, taking in the sight of you in the hall, squinting a little like he might have missed something in the interim of sitting down and waking up.

“You ok?” he asks.

You don’t answer一at least, not what he asked you. “My bed’s more comfortable than the couch.”

He studies you一you can feel the force of his look even with how far away he is. He hesitates.

“I’m only offering once,” you say, and that, at least, gets him to move, shifting his weight to the edge of the sofa cushion.

“You sure?”

“I’m sure,” you say, unwavering, and he makes his way from the couch to the hall, looking down at you as he steps past you into your room. You follow him inside and close the door behind you with a low click.

Your job, as it has been for a few months, continues to be the physical blockade between the warring friends. To be Switzerland, the Demilitarization Zone of conflict, the human embodiment of a white flag. Your role is to never spill your own personal opinions on the arguments that you’re caught between, because if you did, the scale would absolutely tip in Steve’s favor — you’ve heard quite enough of Dustin’s barbed insults in the past year, thank you very much — but as the it was, you haven’t been around the rest of the monster hunting crew long enough for your thoughts to be valued by the wider circle.

(You do like to give Steve a reassuring shoulder squeeze from time to time though, especially whenever Dustin starts insulting him outright. You’re not sure it helps, but the soft smile you get in return is enough to settle some of the lingering guilt over not being able to do more.)

But still, you fall in step next to Steve just as Dustin surges forward, catching Nancy’s attention as he asks a question you can’t quite hear. You take the moment to cast a sidelong glance towards Steve, quietly asking, “Everything alright? You hit your head pretty hard back there when the car crashed.”

He sighs, passing the flashlight back and forth between his hands. “Yeah, I’m fine. More worried about…”

His face tilts up, and you follow his gaze forward. 

Dustin.

“I think if there were any lasting damage, he would’ve complained by now,” you offer. 

“Fair enough,” he says. A beat passes before he asks, “And you? I know you were in the backseat with Nance and Jonathan, but…”

You blink in surprise. “Oh, yeah, I’m fine. Just got a face full of your headrest. No biggie.”

A hushed laugh escapes him, and for the first time since the crawl that got you all in this mess in the first place, the tension in his shoulders loosens incrementally, and he turns to look at you fully. “Well, if it starts to hurt, let me know, okay? I can try and scrounge around for—”

“Steve!”

Dustin’s voice cuts across your conversation, and you both turn to where he’s waiting impatiently by the entrance to the lab, hands planted on his hips as though he’s a beleaguered mother and not a sixteen year old boy.

Steve lets out another sigh, and with a nod towards the kid, settles a hand on your back as he guides you forward. Dustin disappears inside, clearly not wanting to wait for the two of you to catch up. You get to the door first, but Steve’s quick to dart forward, yanking the door open and gesturing you through with a flourish.

You smile despite yourself.

Nancy and Jonathan are already in deep conversation by the time you catch up, and you bite back a laugh when Steve gestures to the space around you, saying, “Wow, this looks promising.”

Dustin shoots back a comment you don’t quite hear as you take in your surroundings, eyeing the vines wrapping around every surface that you can see. Hesitantly, you reach over, fingers outstretched towards a thick tendril on the wall, but before you can make contact, Steve’s at your side, intercepting your hand.

You blink up at him owlishly.

“I wouldn’t touch that if I were you,” he offers in way of explanation.

“Is it dangerous?” you ask.

He shrugs and gestures towards the faded scar around his neck. “Remind me to tell you about ’86 later.”

You nod and follow him back to the rest of the group, confused to find them in an intense discussion about a movie plot of all things (Is this really the right time? you wonder) and Steve calls across the lobby, “Why are you explaining the plot of a movie that we all know, Henderson?”

“Because, Steven, Return of the Jedi is an oddly relevant movie!” Dustin snaps.

“Yeah, and we’ve all seen it,” Steve retorts.

You frown. “I’ve never seen a Star Wars film.”

Steve winces. “Oh. Sorry.”

“It’s fine,” you say.

“Anyway,” Dustin interjects. “As I was saying…”

You listen attentively as Dustin explains his theory — even if you’re only half following it, because you’re not quite sure what a shield generator even is — and brush your hand against Steve’s wrist after Dustin once again shoots the guy a snarky comment, sticking close by as you follow the group into a staircase.

Which, in turn, causes another debate when Steve points out, “Henderson and I need some space. New groups?”

“Are you serious right now?” Jonathan demands. “Who exactly are you planning on going with, Steve?”

Steve opens his mouth, incensed and ready to retort, but you quickly draw everyone’s attention towards you when you say, “Steve and I’ll go down, and Dustin can go up with you and Nancy, alright?”

Nancy shrugs, Jonathan nods, but Dustin only shoots you a scornful look.“Really? Send the two idiots downstairs? You don’t even know what you’re looking for, much less Steve.”

“Henderson!” comes Steve’s sharp admonishment. “Seriously, man?”

You breathe in and out of your nose slowly, tamping down your annoyance. “Steve and I know enough to not touch anything suspicious and radio if we see something. That’s the point, right? Radio if we see something odd?”

Nancy, thankfully, nods, and draws Dustin’s attention away. “Come on, Dust. There’ll probably be more interesting stuff upstairs anyway.” With one more sweeping look towards Steve, she adds, “Make sure to call the second you see something.”

“We will,” he promises, lifting up his walkie as if to make his point, and without another word, he steps off the landing and onto the staircase leading down.

You offer the rest of the group a silent wave and quickly follow after.

The two of walk in silence for a few minutes, and it’s not until everyone else’s footsteps have fully receded into the distance that Steve speaks up.

“Hey, about what I said back there, in the lobby,” he begins, clearly uncomfortable. You pause on the steps, taking in the shape of his shoulders tensing up beneath his suede coat. “About, uh, the movie. I’m sorry. If I’d known you hadn’t seen it, I wouldn’t have—”

“Steve,” you cut him off gently, closing the gap between you to grab his arm. “I’m not offended by it.”

But he refuses to meet your eye. “It’s not that, it’s just — that was totally rude and I shouldn’t have—”

“How could you have known that I haven’t seen a movie literally everyone else has seen?” you ask. “Trust me, I know I’m the outlier. I didn’t think anything of it.”

And finally, finally, he turns to look at you. “Are you sure?”

“Positive,” you say. “Maybe being stuck down here will give me the motivation to catch up on pop culture.”

His lips quirk up, and for a moment, he looks like the twenty-one year old man he is and not the more worn version of himself you’ve become acquainted with through months of working alongside him at the station. “Maybe.”

“Anyway, I feel like I should’ve brought a flashlight with me,” you say, ducking around him. “Feels kinda stupid that I didn’t in retrospect.”

He shines the light on the next set of stairs. “Well, in your defense, it’s not like you could’ve known we would’ve gotten stuck down here when you got into my backseat. Hard to prepare for that kind of thing.”

Your laugh rings around the otherwise empty halls, and the two of you settle into an easy conversation as you go round and round, losing count of how many steps you’ve descended. 

It’s always been easy being around Steve, ever since the day that he and Robin showed up at the Squawk and announced that they were there to work at the station. You hadn’t argued — honestly, it was kind of nice to have someone else helping you out — and Steve is the kind of person who can make hours melt by in seconds. Whether he was cracking a joke to try and make you laugh, sliding a sandwich across across your desk when you forget your lunch, or seeking you out by the coffee machine for a chat between sets, time always passed a little too quickly when you were with him.

It’s, like, the one normal part of my day, he’d admitted to you once, his fingers brushing against your own as he passed over a mug. I love Rob, but her head’s in the clouds most of the time.

By the time you touch down on the bottom floor, your sweater is sticking uncomfortably to your chest and Steve, panting, says, “Jesus, that was way too many stairs.”

“What the hell even is this place?” you ask, because despite getting inadvertently roped into the group’s tenuously illegal activities, no one ever really bothered to fill you in on the finer details.

You turn in time to find Steve grimacing, face shining from sweat, and he says, “To be honest, no one’s ever really told memuch, but they were doing a bunch of experiments on kids here. It’s where El was raised, actually.”

“Oh.”

You think back to the quiet girl you’d only met a handful of times — always under the watchful eye of the former police chief, always hand in hand with Mike Wheeler — and take in your environment just a bit more closely.

It’s dreary, honestly. No windows, no way of getting natural light in at any point, and the electronic locks affixed to every door leaves no room for doubt as to how little freedom El and the other kids were given when moving about.

You take a few steps forward, pushing open a set of double doors to your left and immediately freeze at the sight in front of you. 

Steve crashes into your back, his hands immediately finding your waist to steady you, muttering, “What the hell is this place?”

Because surrounding the two of you is the starkest playroom you’ve ever seen: All white, with a rather unnerving rainbow painted across the wall. Toys are organized and put away neatly, and you can imagine that the real life version of this place smelled of harsh antiseptics.

In short, no place a kid should be raised in.

“This is creepy,” you whisper. “Like…”

“I get what you mean,” Steve says. “It’s like the set of a horror movie in here.”

You nod in agreement, reaching back until your hand makes contact with the hem of his coat. For all of your bravado and confidence walking into this situation, it’s definitely reassuring to have someone else with you as you explore this place.

Carefully, he leads the two of you around the room, shining his flashlight in every which direction as you search for… 

Something.

(A shield generator? Whatever the hell that is?)

Steve’s starting to glance towards the entrance, clearly ready to search other rooms in the basement, when your eyes catch on the open window along the back wall. More specifically, an odd bump in the wall, one that has you moving to climb through the window before you can think twice about it, ignoring Steve’s protests.

“There’s something back here,” you call out, feeling your way along the wall as he grunts behind you, the sound of his feet slipping along the floor as he catches up echoing through the room. “It’s like—”

A hidden latch pops, and the wall beneath your hands opening up enough to reveal an office tucked neatly behind it. You frown at the grime left on your hand and quickly wipe it against your jeans.

“That’s creepy as hell,” Steve comments, turning the light inside and gently stepping around you to go inside first.

“I bet that hole in the wall was, like, one-way glass or something,” you say, creeping inside. “So whoever could observe the kids.”

“Like I said,” he replies. “Creepy.”

He sets the flashlight down on the desk, dropping the walkie down next to it, and letting the glow illuminate the room as you separate. Steve goes to inspect the wall as you leaf through the sprawl of papers and notebooks on the desk, carefully setting aside anything that looks vaguely important to carry back upstairs. 

“This map looks exactly like Henderson’s,” Steve announces. “That’s weird, right? And this — this diagram thing. It’s, like…”

But before he can finish his thought, you lean down to open a drawer, seeing if you can find anything else of import, when it happens.

Something explodes in your face — some sort of dust, maybe? — and you stagger away, wheezing and coughing and choking as it settles across your skin, infiltrates your lungs, and within seconds Steve makes his way through the cloud, his hands hovering over your body as he asks, “Holy shit, are you okay?”

You hunch over, bracing your hands against your knees as you force out, “Fuck — just — breathed all that in—”

He thumps your back, which does little to help the aching in your chest, but the heat emanating from his hand feels nice even through the thick sweater draped across your torso. 

“Just get it out,” he murmurs gently. “There you go, get it all out.”

“Fuck,” you say again, tears welling in the corners of your eyes. “Fuck, that was awful. What was that stuff anyway?”

“Not sure,” he says, helping you stand back up. His fingers linger on your arms just a little longer than they ever have, and he looks almost… pained when he finally pulls away, turning back to inspect the open drawer. “I’ve seen a lot of floating dust and shit down here, but never anything like that. Whatever, it’s gone now and there’s nothing inside here.”

“Great,” you say, leaning against the wall, rubbing your chest as an odd warmth settles in your lungs. “I probably just got lung cancer or something.”

“It didn’t look like asbestos,” he says. “Though it did kind of just… disappear. So who knows.”

You draw in a shaky lungful of hair. “How do you know what asbestos looks like?”

“My dad’s work — he owns some construction company,” Steve explains. “So when all those studies about asbestos came out in the seventies, I saw a bunch of pamphlets at home about what it looks like and what to avoid. Dad had to distribute them to the guys building houses.”

You blink in surprise. Steve’s never talked much about his parents, not in the year you’ve known him. You don’t think there’s really any tragic backstory hiding around the corner or anything; You’ve heard him on the phone with his mother, soft and affectionate in a way that an only child can be with the person who raised him, but he’s always seemed like the kind of person who grew out of the need for his parents’ involvement in his life far younger than other people. Independent in a way you’re not quite sure you’ve ever managed. 

And clearly not, because your lungs are still burning from whatever it was you inhaled (and you’re not quite sure that you believe it wasn’t asbestos, even with Steve’s expert opinion) and the burning is quickly morphing into something else. Something more, something you can’t quite put your finger on as you watch Steve hop up on the desk, legs swinging.

“So—” you begin, grasping at anything to fill the silence, to distract you from the heaviness tugging at your bones. “Your dad owns a company?”

“Oh, yeah.” There’s an odd note to Steve’s tone, one you can’t quite parse out. “My grandpa owned this, like, pet grooming business after the war. Successful as hell, and Dad went to Kelley down in Bloomington, got an MBA, started a construction business. I think originally he owned some realty thing, but there was more money in building or whatever.”

“That’s nice,” you say. “And your mom?”

“She stayed at home. Did a bunch of volunteer work around Hawkins, and, uh…”

He trails off, and you jump onto the next question. “Where are they now?”

“North Carolina,” he says. “They own a beach house there. Told them to evacuate Hawkins before lock down, and they’ve been there ever since.”

Sweat beads at your temples, slipping down your face, and you can feel moisture gathering on the back of your neck as well. “Oh, wow, uh… and—”

“No offense, but,” he interrupts, strained. “Not sure I want to talk about my parents right now.”

You nod and continue to rub the space just above your breasts, feeling rather lightheaded over the lack of oxygen from your coughing fit. You press your eyelids shut, willing the dizziness to pass, but it only molds, intensifying.

It crawls down your spine, a heaviness you’ve never felt before, a heat creeping slowly through your body, from the top of your head to the tip of your toes. Honestly, you must’ve spent longer coughing than you’d thought, because you’ve never felt like this before, never felt anything like this grip all your senses to firmly, swirling around your tummy as the warmth turns up, up, up—

An uncomfortable noise echoes through the room, and it takes a moment for you to parse out that it came from Steve.

You force your eyes open, noting in an almost detached manner just how sweaty he looks. Which is odd, because it was really, really cold when the two of you descended into the basement, but now that you think about it, you’re also feeling rather flushed, aren’t you? 

His gaze meets yours, and the heat inside of you feels like it explodes, and you realize, startled, that it’s not warmth, per se, but—

“Steve.” Your voice is hoarser than you intended. “Do you feel weird?”

“Weird how?”

You swallow once, heavily, suddenly woozy from just how overpowering the feeling burning through your veins is. A feeling that you’re now able to identify with an uncomfortable clarity. “Did that dust make you unrelentingly horny too?”

There’s a sound that escapes his chest — something between a whimper and a groan, the noise of a man who prides himself on self-restraint beginning to fracture — and you blink blearily at him to find him still sitting on the desk, fingers digging into his thighs, looking just as wrecked as you feel. You glance down, unbidden, to see a rather obvious bulge in his jeans.

“Don’t ask me that,” he croaks pathetically.

“Steve,” you say. “I think we might’ve — I think we might have to—”

“No.” It comes out firm despite everything, despite the fact that the cotton bra against your breasts feels so restricting that you think you might suffocate. “I don’t care that what that shit did, I’m not — I won’t—”

“But you feel it too, right?” you ask, suddenly desperate to know. “It’s not just me, right?”

“I — yes, but—”

“Then shouldn’t we do something—?”

“No!” Sweat glistens across his forehead, and you watch with fascination as a droplet slides down his cheek, dripping onto his sweater. “I’m not going to — to take advantage of you, not like this, not when—”

“Steve.” It comes out pathetic, a whimper you can’t help as the feeling swells inside you, becoming too much for you to not do something. “Please.”

“Absolutely not,” he says, though it comes out less certain than you’re sure he intends it to. 

“Fine then,” you say, fumbling with the button of your jeans. “You won’t mind if I take care of myself, will you?”

He chokes. “What?”

You don’t bother responding though, and there’s no time for embarrassment as you shove your jeans down just far enough that you can slip a hand into your panties, finding yourself already drenched. Your heart is pounding erratically against your rib cage at the first swipe against your clit, and your knees buckle from how overwhelmingly good it feels, and you know for a fact that if you were in a more solid state of mind — if every conscious thought in your brain wasn’t slowly being eroded by the heady pressure of arousal — you’d be more concerned by how quickly the pleasure is building up in your core with only the lightest touch.

But you’re not in that state of mind. You’re here, burning up from the inside out, the fire of desperation and debauchery consuming you until it’s almost painful, as you circle your fingers faster, faster, faster until—

And as abruptly as your orgasm built, it stops dead in its tracks.

“No, no, no, no, no.” Your breath catches as your fingers slip against your clit to no avail. The pleasure refuses to grow, refuses to tip over into what you want most, refuses to let you into the sweet embrace of your orgasm. It dances teasingly just far enough out of reach to keep you on the precipice, to drive you mad with want. To drive you mad with need.

You tilt your head up, finding Steve’s gaze searing into your body, his hands still gripping his thighs tightly, and another heaving cry billows from your lips as you utter, “Please.”

He goes very, very still.

“Please, Steve,” you beg, uncaring of how you sound — not when he looks just as wrecked as you feel, not when he still hasn’t moved a single muscle. “Please, please, please help me, please — it hurts so much, I can’t — I can’t—”

Slowly, he slips from the desk and makes his way to you with controlled, even steps, and you watch as he sinks to his knees before you, his voice completely torn with need as he murmurs, “Let’s get your shoes off, yeah?”

“Steve,” you plead again. “I need you to touch me.”

“I’m not—” He cuts himself off, hands shaking as they find their way to the laces of your tennis shoes. “I’m not going to take advantage of you.”

The sentiment rings hollow in your ears.

“You’re not taking advantage of me,” you insist, tears spilling from your eyes. “I want this, I want you—”

“Whatever we breathed in, that’s making you feel this way,” he insists, and you don’t understand. You don’t understand how he’s still so in control when you’re ready to burst at the seams, ready to fall apart into a million pieces at the feeling of his breath on your thighs. “But I can — I’ll help.”

He slips one of your shoes off, then the next, stacking them neatly somewhere you don’t bother to look, and with a firm grasp, he slides the denim down your legs, helping you step out. Your panties are tugged down next, and you watch somewhat deliriously as he tucks them into his back pocket. Your brain struggles to catch up as he draws your leg up and over his shoulder, tilting his head up to meet your eyes, his fingers tracing through the thatch of hair on your mound,

“I need to hear it,” he says.

You whimper. “Please, Steve. I need you.”

That’s all he needs before he pulls you down onto his face.

His nose barely nudges your clit before you’re clenching around nothing, waves of pleasure crashing into you as you come harder than you ever have in your life, chest heaving as you grip onto Steve, shaking and trembling and crying until your knees buckle.

He’s quick to catch you before you fall to the ground, grabbing your hips as he slowly lowers you down onto his lap. “Did that help?” he asks, his fingers skimming under the hem of your sweater.

“Yes — no,” you whimper, your head so full of everything that you can’t think straight. “It hurts so bad, Steve, I need — need more — not enough, it’s not enough—”

“Okay, okay,” he soothes, even if he sounds a little broken as he says it. “Let me put my jacket down for you, yeah?”

You shake your head because you need it now, but Steve ignores it — ignores you — and groans loudly when you grind down into his erection, desperate and chasing any form of relief you can get as he slides his jacket off. You don’t care though, burying your face into his shoulder and breathing in the intoxicating scent of some woodsy cologne and human musk underneath, the smell of a man who has worked hard to be where he’s at right in this moment, and you roll your clit against the zipper on his jeans even harder, not paying attention when Steve lowers you to the ground, your back hitting his coat that he laid out without your notice.

It feels like it takes ages for him to settle between your legs, spreading your pussy open carefully, as if it were made of something precious, and you twitch up pathetically as his breath ghosting against where you ache the most.

“Steve,” you whine, your own hands sliding up under your sweater and beneath your bra, rolling your nipples between your fingers.

“Don’t worry, honey,” he murmurs. You meet his eyes, and your arousal grows at just how blown up his pupils are, wide with desire as a flush spreads across his cheeks. “I’ll take care of you.”

That’s all the warning you get before he dives in once more, lapping up your wetness like a starving man. You squirm, and his grip against your thighs is bruising as he holds you in place. It’s an exhilarating dichotomy: Commanding yet so at odds with how soft he speaks to you, gentle in every word. 

And when he presses his fingers into your skin just a bit deeper, you know for a fact that his composure is cracking the tiniest bit more.

Just like with your first orgasm, it doesn’t take long for the second one to build, cresting until it washes over you with an urgency. But instead of relief, the only thing you feel is a hungry need for more — more of his tongue against your clit, more of his fingers plunging into your pussy, curling up until they hit the spongy spot that makes you feel stars, more of him — and you cry out, not bothering to wipe the tears spilling down your face as you twist your nipples, trying to extend your orgasm a little longer. 

And yet, somehow, the need that has taken over every one of your sense, the fire of arousal caused by whatever it was you stumbled into, it only grows hotter, burns brighter, and within seconds after your orgasm abates you’re reaching down, winding your fingers into his hair and begging, “More.”

Steve glances up at you, his nose still firmly pressed into the seam of your pussy, and the only response you get is one long, languid lick from your entrance up to your clit. 

He looks completely and utterly ravished in spite of the fact he’s focused entirely on your own pleasure.

A ragged moan rips itself from your throat, louder than any sound you’re sure you’ve ever made before, and within seconds his head lifts from your core. You cry out from the absence, but he doesn’t leave you wanting long, instead tugging your sweater up and shoving the fabric into your mouth, hoarsely saying, “They’re going to hear you upstairs if you don’t quiet down.”

Privately, you think that you don’t actually care who hears you, but clearly Steve is still managing a level of sense that completely abandoned you however long ago because he only tucks the sweater more firmly against your tongue. Your teeth scrape against his fingers and he groans, wanton but quiet.

“Bite down,” he tells you as his hand retreats, commanding but in a way that doesn’t feel like a demand. 

You do as told, and you watch through your lashes as his throat bobs. His gaze lingers on your mouth, his body shaking with barely restrained desire, and the next thing you know, your bra is being tugged town, your breasts spilling into the cold air. Your nipples peak, and Steve’s mouth is on them before you can even blink, sucking one into his mouth while his hand dips back down to your pussy, gathering wetness on his fingers before dipping inside where you ache the most.

The effect is instantaneous. Fireworks explode under your skin, growing bigger and brighter when he slips a third finger inside. He moves at a slow and methodical rhythm, and entirely at odds with how he ravishes your chest, and you can’t help the pathetic mewl that escapes your throat, tears slipping down the side of your face.

He releases your nipple with a wet pop, and immediately delves into the valley of your breasts, sucking spots into your skin that should be painful, but the only thing you can think is that you want the marks to be tattooed into your skin forever, a permanent mark of the pleasure he’s giving you.

Spit trails from his mouth as he makes his way to your other breast, giving it the same ministrations. Sucking, teasing, biting until you yelp through the cloth in your mouth, and you can feel rather than hear the vibration of his laughter, even as he grinds the heel of his palm into your clit.

The third orgasm doesn’t sneak up on you as much as it consumes you, forcing more tears from your eyes as you shake and shake and shake, clenching down on Steve’s fingers as he works you through it, low, soothing noises murmured into your skin as he makes his way down.

If you were in a more coherent state, you’d recognize his actions for what they were: The further fraying of carefully kept control, because he doesn’t skip a beat as his mouth makes contact with your pussy once more, not bothering to stop and check in, to make sure you still want this.

At this point, you’re both completely aware of what you want, even if he’s still refusing to fully give into the lewdness of the situation.

You, on the other hand, let the fever consume you entirely as he sucks your clit into his mouth, cheeks hollowing, fingers pumping in and out at a steady pace, driving you completely and utterly insane.

You wonder, in a vague, abstract way, if he’s this good even without the added effects of whatever it was that infected the two of you, and you know instinctively that you’d give anything to find out. Especially when his teeth graze across your clit in a way that should be painful but just has your hips jerking against the arm wrapped around your leg. 

“So good for me, honey,” he murmurs into your pussy, twisting his hand to find that sweet spot inside you once more. “Come on, come for me, honey — come for—”

Your fourth orgasm leaves you thrashing against his hold.

Stars burst behind your eyelids as waves of pleasure crash over you, ebbing and flowing but never quite stopping, and somehow — somehow — the heat only builds, consuming the very essence of your being until you’re sobbing in earnest. You scrabble to pull Steve up, up until he’s hovering over you, his face flushed and eyes wide, his chin glistening with your arousal, and your chest heaves as you weep, “Don’t you want me?”

His face cracks at your words, and all at once, you’re able to see everything that he’s been holding back: Fear, confusion, and without a doubt, complete and unadulterated desire.

“It doesn’t matter what I want, honey, I don’t—”

He cuts himself off by burying his face into your neck, the scratchy feeling of his wool sweater against your pebbled nipples doing nothing to tame the arousal burning inside you. And you realize, suddenly, that you asking for it isn’t enough, because it’s Steve — sweet, understanding Steve — who never fails to make you laugh, who always makes sure you’re safely inside after a crawl before going in himself, who has shown up time and time again in such small ways for the duration of your friendship that you know, without a doubt, that asking for it will never convince him of what you want, of your feelings.

“Steve,” you whisper, capturing his face beneath your palms and forcing him to look you in the eye. “I’m glad this was you.”

His brows furrow and his eyes tighten — once, small, pain seeping through his expression — and he throatily says, “What?”

“I’m glad it’s you here and not anyone else,” you say. “If I had to be in this situation with anyone, I’d want it to be you.”

He licks his lips, and his expression blooms into something more hopeful. “Do you — do you really mean that?”

“Steve,” you say softly, full of affection. “I would’ve done this without the crazy dust. Just, you know, maybe not in a random office.”

He searches your face for a moment before finally breathing out, “Okay.”

“Okay?”

He nods, and you watch the feeling swell in him, his composure finally disintegrating in the sureness of your fingers skimming down your side, sliding under your knee to press you open just a bit more. “If you’re — are you sure that you want this? You’re completely—?”

“I want this,” you say again, firm in your conviction. “I want this with you, and I’ll want this with you even once we’re out of here, Steve.”

You watch as your confession hits him: First quietly, then all at once. He looks at you with so much affection that for the first time since you opened that drawer, your chest aches with something other than arousal. Through the haze of pleasure, he looks down at you tenderly, brushing your hair plastered to your face away and, with more regret than you expected, “This wasn’t supposed to happen this way.”

But he doesn’t give you any time to question what he means before he’s surging forward, self-restraint in tatters around the two of you as his mouth crashes into yours. You taste yourself on his tongue, and as his forearms bracket your head, you reach down, scrambling to unbutton his jeans and shove them as far down as you can reach. They barely make it to the top of his thighs before you’re taking him in hand, gasping with pleasure at how big and heavy and warm he feels in your fingers and give a few, lazy pumps. He shudders against your hold but doesn’t fight when you line him up against your entrance and look up at him through hooded eyes, asking one more time, “Please, Steve? I need you.”

This is all he needs to finally snap.

You can feel the last remnants of sense leave his body as his hips thrust forward, his cock pressing entirely inside you in one swift, fluid motion, punching the air from your lungs. He doesn’t give you any time to recover before he’s dragging himself out slowly before pushing back in, and he sets a brutal pace that has any last coherent thought driven from your head as he tends to the fire that’s been coursing throughout your veins. 

And that fire — it changes. Whereas every orgasm he’d drawn out of you with his mouth and fingers had only left you aching, left you wanting for more, with his cock bullying its way in and out of your cunt, you can only feel the fuzzy pleasure of contentment, like there’s been a piece of you missing your entire life that’s finally found its way home.

You think he feels the same when he gazes at you with such adoration, such fondness as he presses your leg even higher, hitting a new, deeper spot within you that has you gasping for more, more, more.

If there’s one thing you’ve learned about Steve throughout this whole thing, is that he is nothing if not a giving lover.

He snakes a hand back down to your core, fingers slipping over your sensitive core as he breathes, “One more for me, honey?”

(Could you ever deny a request made so lovingly?)

Despite how he pounds into your pussy with reckless abandon, he’s effervescently gentle in how he circles your clit, like he’s aware of just how sore you’re absolutely going to be when all of this is said and done. 

His teeth scrape down your neck as he continues his ministrations, fingers flexing over your most sensitive spot, and it’s as he sucks a hickey into your skin that he coaxes one final orgasm from your worn body.

Your cries come out quieter this time, more exhausted as you clench down on his cock, and within seconds his hips stutter as he spills warmth inside you, and finally, finally, the fever inside you dissipates.

Steve practically collapses on top of you, only just cognizant enough to keep the worst of his weight off of your body as the remnants of whatever infected you both tapers off until the flame is extinguished entirely, leaving you sweaty and spent yet somehow feeling better than you’ve ever felt in your entire life.

The two of you stay like that for a few minutes, chests heaving as you catch your breath. You stroke a hand down his back, watching his face carefully as his eyes flutter open, exhausted but happy as he meets your gaze.

“Hey,” he murmurs. “You okay? That was…”

Intense.

It doesn’t need to be said though. You nod, dragging your hand up to his face to push his bangs from his eyes. “I’m fine. How about you? You held out super long.”

He huffs out a laugh and presses his cheek a little firmer unto your palm. “Yeah, yeah, I’m good. Promise. Better than I’ve felt in a long while.”

You open your mouth to say something — to confess something — though what, you aren’t quite sure, then the walkie across the room crackles to life, and Dustin Henderson’s panicked voice comes through. “Steve? Steve, are you there? We found something and it’s—”

Steve pushes off of your prone body in seconds, and you’re left achingly empty as he stumbles over to the walkie, snatching it off the table it’s rested on next to the flashlight, calling into it, “Henderson, what’s going on?”

Sticky come slips from your core, wetting your thighs.

“Don’t touch anything!” Dustin demands through the walkie. “It isn’t a shield generator, and Nancy wanted to shoot it—”

“Hey!”

“Have you found anything?” Dustin asks, ignoring Nancy’s protest.

Steve sighs, runs a hand through his hair, and spares you a sidelong glance as you sit up, righting your bra and sweater. “Yeah, I think we found Brenner’s office. Don’t come down here, though. We’ll meet you in the lobby.”

Dustin calls his confirmation, and Steve’s quick to drop the walkie back on top of the table. He makes his way back to you in two, long strides, and kneels down.

“Let me do it,” he says, batting you away and replacing them with your own as he tucks your breasts back into the cups of your bra, gently pulling your sweater down. 

You don’t quite manage to choke down a laugh when he helps you stand up and frowns at the cum dripping down your thighs, looking around to find something to clean it up and coming up short.

“It’s okay,” you say, and Steve nods as he’s forced to accept the situation.

He doesn’t bother giving you your panties back as he draws your jeans back up your legs, holding you steady as you step into each of your shoes that he insists on tying.

He’s quiet, and it takes you a few minutes too long to realize that he’s embarrassed, like you caught him doing something that he wasn’t meant to do. It doesn’t sit well with you.

But he pushes forward with methodical ease, gathering his coat and all of the notebooks that you picked out before the two of you got into this mess, and leads you from the office with the stride of a man used to performing confidence.

Except—

You know it’s an act. You’ve seen him soft, you’ve seen him pushed to the edge, and you now know the way it feels to be the center of his universe, even if only for a singular moment, and you know that you want more.

You jog forward to catch up to him just as he hits the staircase, grasping his arm and force him to look at you.

“Steve,” you gently say. “When all of this is done — when we’re back in Hawkins and — whatever — would you go on a date with me?”

He freezes, but hope still blooms on his face. “I — what?”

“Would you go on a date with me?” you ask again, firmer this time. “Maybe you can show me Star Wars and I can finally see what I’ve been missing this whole time.”

“Really?” You can tell that the question slips out without him meaning to by how quickly his face flushes, but he barrels forward. “You’d really want to go on a date with me?”

“Of course I would,” you say with a smile. “I wasn’t lying when I said that I wanted this when we were out of here. And I didn’t just mean sex, I — I want everything, if you’ll have me.”

“Oh, honey.” It comes out breathless, and in the next second he’s leaning down, pressing the softest kiss against your swollen lips. “Of course I’ll have you. I just didn’t want to assume…”

“You can assume,” you reassure. “With me, you can assume.”