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By the time the bathroom light flickers on above him, buzzing faintly in the silence, everyone else is already gone or close enough to it. Hopper has driven Dustin home with a hoodie shoved under the kid's nose to stop the bleeding. Nancy has taken Robin to get her wrist looked at properly, despite Robin insisting with increasingly thin patience that it was fine, no, seriously, Wheeler, she was pretty sure bones were supposed to look like that. Max had stood in the hallway for twenty minutes refusing to leave until she knew everybody else had, arms crossed hard over her chest, mouth set in that stubborn line she wore whenever she was scared and furious about it.

And Steve had let all of it happen around him.

He had nodded when people spoke. Had answered questions when someone needed him to. Had said, yeah, yeah, I'm good, with enough convincing exhaustion that nobody argued with him for long. He had watched the house slowly empty, listened to car doors slam out on the street, heard voices fade into the thick summer night until the only thing left was the hum of the bathroom light and the sound of you turning on the tap.

Now he sits on the closed toilet lid in your bathroom with his jacket still on, one elbow braced against his knee, one hand hanging uselessly between his legs. His shoulders are hunched like he's waiting to be hit again. His hair is a mess, sweat-damp at the roots and pushed back from his forehead in a way that would normally make you tease him, except nothing about him looks funny right now. He looks too still. That is the thing that unsettles you most. Steve is never still like this, not really. Even when he's quiet, there is usually some restless little sign of life in him, fingers tapping against a counter, knee bouncing under the table, mouth pulling into a half-smile before he has even decided whether he means it.

Tonight, he looks as though the smallest movement might make something in him come loose.

You stand in front of him with a clean flannel dampened under warm water, trying to decide where to start.

His knuckles, probably. They are the easiest thing to fix.

"Give me your hand," you say softly.

For a second, you think he hasn't heard you. Then his eyes lift, unfocused, and he looks at you like he's returned from somewhere much further away than the bathroom floor.

"What?"

"Your hand." You repeat gently, holding yours out between you. "Let me clean it."

Steve looks down at his own fingers as if he's only just noticed them. There is dried blood caught in the creases, rust-coloured under his nails, smeared across the back of his hand where he'd wiped it thoughtlessly against his jeans and made everything worse. His mouth tightens.

"It's not mine."

"I know."

Something fast and ugly flickers across his face before he lets you take his hand.

You kneel in front of him because there is nowhere else to sit, settling carefully on the tiled floor between his feet. He doesn't make the joke he might have made on any other night. Doesn't say something stupid about you being on your knees for him, doesn't raise an eyebrow, doesn't reach out to tug fondly at your sleeve. He just watches as you cradle his hand in both of yours and begin wiping the blood away.

The first pass of the flannel turns pink. Steve stares at it.

You work slowly, partly because his skin is split and swollen in places, but mostly because you don't know what else to do with all the silence. It sits heavily around you, filling the bathroom until the room feels too small for the two of you and whatever Steve has brought back with him. You clean between his fingers, then across the bruised rise of his knuckles, then underneath each nail as carefully as you can manage. Every so often his hand twitches, not quite a flinch, but near enough that you pause and glance up at him.

"Sorry," he says automatically.

"You don't have to be sorry."

His eyes drop back to your hands. "Yeah."

The word means nothing. It is just sound. A shape his mouth knows how to make.

You rinse the flannel in the sink and return to him, taking his other hand. This one is cleaner, though his palm is scraped badly near the heel, skin roughened and angry where he'd caught himself against the pavement. You remember seeing him stumble. Remember the horrible jerk in your chest when he went down and the immediate relief, almost painful in its sharpness, when he got back up.

You had thought, then, that the fear would leave once everyone was safe.

It hasn't. It has only changed form.

Steve inhales, slow and uneven. "I should've seen him."

Your fingers still around his wrist. "What?"

His gaze remains fixed somewhere past your shoulder, on the towel rail or the wall behind you or maybe nothing at all. "The guy. The one who grabbed Robin."

"Steve."

"I should've seen him." His voice is quiet. Worse than if he were angry. Worse than if he were shouting. "He came from my left. I knew there was someone there."

"You were trying to get Dustin behind you."

"I know."

"You were trying to keep three different people from getting hit."

"I know."

"Then you couldn't have-"

"I should've."

The interruption is not loud, but it lands hard enough to close your mouth. Steve still doesn't look at you. His jaw works once, a muscle jumping near the hinge, and for the first time all night you realise he is not calm. He is holding himself so tightly that calm is simply the shape it has taken from the outside.

You set the flannel aside. "Robin's going to be okay."

"I know."

"Dustin's okay."

"I know."

"I'm okay."

His eyes move to yours then, and there's something in them that makes your throat tighten before he even speaks.

"You almost weren't."

The bathroom feels suddenly colder despite the heat still trapped in the walls from the day. Outside, a car passes slowly down the street, headlights sliding briefly through the frosted window before disappearing again.

You shift closer on your knees, ignoring the ache beginning to bloom in them against the tile. "But I am."

Steve looks at you for a long moment, and you can see him trying to accept the sentence. You can actually see the effort of it. His eyes move across your face with the same frantic attention he had carried all evening, checking you in pieces: forehead, cheekbone, mouth, throat, shoulders. Looking for damage. Looking for proof. Looking, maybe, for some version of events he can survive remembering.

"Steve," you say softly.

His lashes lower. "I just stood there."

"No, you didn't."

"I froze."

"You turned around."

"Too late."

"You got to us."

"After."

The word comes out scraped raw.

You reach for his face before thinking better of it, your fingers brushing the line of his jaw. He is warm under your touch, too warm, flushed from adrenaline and exhaustion and whatever else is still burning through him. For one brief second he leans into it. Then he seems to realise he has done it and pulls back half an inch, not away from you exactly, but away from comfort, as though he doesn't think he has earned it.

That hurts more than you expect.

"Hey," you whisper.

He shakes his head.

"I keep seeing it." His voice breaks slightly on the last word, and he clears his throat like he can force it back into place. "I keep seeing him reach for you. And I keep thinking, if Robin hadn't-"

"Don't."

"She got hurt because I didn't move fast enough."

"Robin got hurt because some asshole hurt her."

Steve lets out a humourless little laugh. "Yeah, well."

"No." Your hand tightens gently against his cheek, not enough to force him, just enough to ask him to stay with you. "No, listen to me. That is not yours to carry."

He finally looks at you properly, and the expression on his face is so young for a moment that it steals the breath straight from your chest.

Steve Harrington, who has spent years placing himself between other people and whatever wants to hurt them. Steve Harrington, who has turned his body into a shield so often that everyone has almost stopped recognising it as a choice. Steve Harrington, who can take a punch, swing a bat, crack a joke with blood in his mouth, and then sit in your bathroom afterwards looking shattered because somebody else got hurt in the same room as him.

"Feels like it is," he says.

You don't know what to say to that. Not because he's right, but because the feeling in his voice is too old to be argued out of him in one conversation. You understand, suddenly and terribly, that this is not just about tonight. It is about the Demogorgon in the Byers' living room. The tunnels. The junkyard. Starcourt. Every locked door, every scream, every time a child had looked at him like he was supposed to know what to do next. It is about all the years Steve has been terrified and useful at the same time, and how nobody ever told him those were not the same thing as being responsible.

So instead of arguing, you rise onto your knees and wrap your arms around his neck.

For a second, he doesn't move.

Then he folds.

Not in some great collapse. He simply leans forward until his face is pressed against your shoulder and both of his arms have gone around your waist, tight enough that you feel the desperation in it. His breath leaves him in a long, unsteady exhale. One hand fists in the back of your shirt.

You hold him.

The bathroom tile digs into your shins, the tap drips once into the sink, and Steve clings to you like something still might reach through the wall and take you if he loosens his grip.

"I'm right here," you murmur into his hair.

"I know."

"You got me home."

"I know."

"You always do."

His arms tighten.

For a while, neither of you says anything else.

By the time Steve finally lets you pull him up from the bathroom and into bed, the house has settled into the strange quiet that only comes after something frightening has passed and left everything else untouched. The lamp on your bedside table paints the room in low yellow light. His jacket ends up on the floor, his jeans folded badly over the chair because he insists he's fine, he can do it himself, then stands there for nearly thirty seconds holding them without moving until you take them gently from his hands.

He doesn't argue when you give him one of the clean T-shirts he keeps in your drawer. He doesn't make the soft, pleased noise he usually makes about the fact that you have a drawer for him now. He just changes, mechanically, and sits on the edge of the bed with his head bowed while you turn off the overhead light.

When you crawl under the covers, he comes with you, though even then he seems uncertain what to do with himself. Usually, Steve reaches for you first. Usually, he tugs you back against his chest or lets his head fall heavily into your lap until you laugh and tell him he is crushing you. Tonight, he lies on his back with one arm bent over his stomach, eyes open, staring at the ceiling.

You turn onto your side to face him. "Steve."

"Hm?"

"Come here."

He exhales softly through his nose. "I don't want to hurt you."

"You won't."

"You sure?"

It is such a ridiculous question, asked with such quiet sincerity, that your heart almost breaks cleanly in two.

"I'm sure."

Only then does he move. Slowly, carefully, as though your body might be bruised somewhere he has missed, he turns onto his side and lets you fit yourself against him. His arm comes around you, tentative at first, then firmer when you tuck your face beneath his chin and press your hand against his chest.

His heart is still beating too fast. You listen to it for a while.

"Can you sleep?" you ask.

"Yeah."

It's an obvious lie. You let it pass.

His fingers move once against your back, a small restless flex. Then again. Then his hand smooths over your shoulder, down your arm, across your ribs, not sensual, not even especially deliberate. Checking. Making sure. Reassuring himself with the shape and warmth of you.

You close your eyes.

For a little while, you let him.

When his hand travels up again and pauses lightly at the base of your skull, you open them.

"Steve."

He goes still. "Sorry."

"Don't apologise."

"Okay." There's a pause. Then, barely audible, he asks, "Is this annoying?"

You could just say no. It would be easier. Kinder, maybe. But there's something fragile in his voice that makes you careful.

"It's not annoying," you say. "But you don't have to keep checking."

His throat moves against your forehead as he swallows. "I know."

There it is again. The empty answer. The one he gives when knowing something has not made him believe it.

You lift your head just enough to look at him.

In the low light, he looks exhausted. Not just tired, not just shaken, but worn down in some deeper place he has probably been ignoring for too long. There is a bruise beginning near his cheekbone, shadowed purple beneath the skin. A small cut sits at the corner of his mouth. His hair, for once, has given up entirely.

"You're allowed to be scared," you tell him.

His eyes flick over your face. "I'm not scared."

"Steve."

His mouth opens, then closes. You watch the lie die before he can make himself say it.

After a moment, he looks away.

"I hate it," he says quietly.

"What?"

"How fast it happens." His eyes stay on the window, on the thin gap in the curtains where the streetlamp outside bleeds gold into the room. "One second everything's fine, and then it's not. And there's no warning, there's no time to think, you just have to-" He stops, jaw tightening. "You just have to be fast enough."

You slide your hand across his chest until your palm rests over his heart. "And nobody is fast enough every time."

Steve closes his eyes. He doesn't answer. The silence that follows feels less like agreement than defeat.

You wish, with a sudden fierceness that almost frightens you, that you could reach inside him and take the thought out by the root. That you could remove every awful equation he keeps making between love and responsibility, between fear and failure, between being there and being enough.

Instead, you kiss the edge of his jaw.

Steve's eyes open.

"You're here," you whisper. "That's what matters."

His gaze searches yours, desperate and disbelieving.

Then he nods once, because he wants it to be true.

And for that night, wanting will have to be enough.

The first time it happens, you almost don't notice.

A few days later, you leave the house together to pick up milk and coffee and the kind of sugary cereal Steve pretends he's buying for Dustin even though Dustin is not there and has never once asked for it. The afternoon is bright and hot, cicadas buzzing somewhere in the trees, the pavement shimmering faintly where sunlight has spent all day collecting in the concrete.

Steve locks your front door behind you. Then checks it. Then checks it again.

You glance back from the bottom step, amused despite yourself. "You expecting it to unlock itself?"

He looks over his shoulder, keys still in hand. "What?"

"The door."

"Oh." He jiggles the handle once more, then steps away. "No. Just making sure."

You smile faintly. "Okay."

It's nothing. People check locks.

Steve has always been a little fussy after bad nights anyway, prone to checking the back seat of his car before letting you get in, prone to insisting you wait inside until he has pulled into the driveway properly, prone to acting like chivalry is a normal personality trait rather than an ongoing attempt to disguise anxiety as manners.

So you don't think much of it when he walks on the roadside of the pavement either.

He's done that before.

You do notice, maybe, that he switches sides when you turn the corner, his hand settling briefly at the small of your back as he guides you inward, away from the traffic. But the gesture is so smooth, so familiar, so easy to mistake for affection, that you let it become that.

In the shop, he stays close.

Close enough that his shoulder brushes yours near the fridges. Close enough that when somebody reaches across you for a carton of juice, Steve's hand appears at your waist before you have time to register the movement.

The man murmurs an apology. Steve smiles politely. Everything is normal - almost.

You look up at him - he is still watching the man walk away.

"Steve."

His attention snaps back to you immediately. "Yeah?"

"You okay?"

"Yeah." Too quick. Then softer, with an attempt at a smile. "Yeah, I'm fine."

You believe him because you want to. Or maybe because it's easier, in that moment, to believe that fear leaves people simply because danger has.

At the till, Steve pays before you can argue, making some throwaway comment about how you paid last time, which is not true but is also not worth disputing while the bored cashier scans cereal and milk and a packet of plasters he slipped into the basket without asking.

On the walk home, his hand finds yours before you reach the first crossing. Again, nothing. Steve holds your hand all the time.

Only this time, his grip tightens when the light changes. Only this time, he looks left and right twice even after the cars have stopped. Only this time, when you reach the opposite pavement safely, he doesn't let go.

You glance down at your joined hands, then up at his face. Steve is looking ahead, expression carefully neutral, thumb moving over the back of your hand in a slow, repetitive stroke.

You say nothing, and his hand stays around yours all the way home.

The thing about habits is that they never arrive announcing themselves.

If Steve had started insisting you never left the house alone again, you would have argued. If he'd refused to let you out of his sight, if he'd demanded you text him every ten minutes or tried to convince you the world had suddenly become too dangerous for ordinary errands, you would have recognised it for what it was.

Instead, it happens quietly. So quietly, in fact, that for the better part of two weeks you mistake it for affection.

It begins with the car.

Steve has always opened your door before walking round to his own side. It isn't performative - not really. Half the time he does it while complaining about how old-fashioned it makes him look, rolling his eyes whenever you tease him about being born in the wrong decade.

Now, though, he doesn't just open the door. He waits until you've climbed in before closing it. Checks your seatbelt is actually clipped. Waits until you've clicked the lock. Only then does he walk around to the driver's side.

The first time, you smile. The fifth, you start noticing.

Then there are the phone calls.

Not clingy or excessive, per se.

Just, "So you got there okay?"

"...Steve, I texted you ten minutes ago."

"I know."

"So why are you calling?"

"...Just wanted to hear your voice."

It's sweet. It really is.

Until one afternoon, you tell him you're popping to the corner shop while he's at work, and by the time you've picked up milk and bread, there's already a missed call waiting for you.

Then another. Then a voicemail.

"Hey... just checking you're alright. Call me when you get this."

Nothing urgent. But when you ring him back, he answers before the first ring has even finished.

"Hey."

"You okay?"

"...Yeah."

"You sounded worried."

"No." A pause. "Just... hadn't heard from you."

"I've been gone twenty minutes."

"I know."

Three weeks after the fight, you're standing in Family Video trying to decide whether the horror section deserves another chance when Robin finally says it.

Steve disappears into the stockroom to hunt down a copy of The Princess Bride for an elderly customer who insists somebody returned it without the case.

Robin waits until the stockroom door swings shut.

Then she looks at you. "...You've noticed it too."

You glance up. "Noticed what?"

"The hovering."

"What hovering?"

She blinks. "The Steve-shaped cloud permanently hanging about three feet behind you?"

You laugh. "He doesn't hover."

Robin simply stares. You look back. Steve is still in the stockroom.

"...Does he?"

"Oh my God." She pinches the bridge of her nose. "I thought you were pretending not to notice."

"Robin."

"He watches every entrance."

You say nothing.

"He always stands closest to the doors now."

You frown. "He didn't used to."

You think back.

Friday. The diner. Steve had insisted on sitting facing the entrance.

Saturday. The cinema. He'd quietly swapped seats with you halfway through the trailers because he'd wanted the aisle.

Yesterday. Bradley's Big Buy. He'd waited outside the changing rooms instead of browsing.

Not strolling or wandering. Waiting, like he'd been expecting something. Something you'd never questioned.

Robin folds another videotape into its sleeve. "I don't think he even realises he's doing it."

"What?"

"He keeps checking where you are."

You laugh again, only this one doesn't come as easily. "I think you're exaggerating."

Robin's expression softens. "I wish I was."

You try not to think about it.

For approximately six hours.

Then Steve offers to walk you to the post office.

It's raining. The post office is literally visible from your front window.

"...Steve."

"What?"

"It's literally there."

"I know."

"I can see it."

"I know."

"It's a two-minute walk."

"I know."

"So..."

"I'll come."

You stare at him. "...Why?"

He shrugs. "I need stamps."

"You hate buying stamps."

"I've... grown."

You burst out laughing. He smiles too, but it doesn't quite reach his eyes.

It gets harder not to notice after that.

Because once Robin has pointed it out, the pattern is everywhere.

Steve always lets you walk in front of him when you're climbing stairs. Not because he's admiring you, but because he wants to see where you're putting your feet.

Whenever somebody walks past too quickly, his hand appears automatically against the small of your back.

When you stop to tie your shoelace in the supermarket, he turns around completely, placing himself between you and everyone else pushing trolleys down the aisle.

You don't even think he knows he's doing it.

The moment that finally unsettles you happens on a Thursday.

It's busy. School's just finished. Half of Hawkins seems to have decided they desperately need cereal and toilet paper at exactly the same time.

You and Steve are arguing over pasta.

"You absolutely cannot tell me every shape tastes the same."

"It literally does."

"It doesn't."

"It does."

"Steve."

"It's wheat."

"It's architecture."

He laughs. "Architecture?"

"You heard me."

You reach up towards the top shelf.

At that moment, someone brushes past you. Nothing unusual, just another shopper.

Before you've even registered the movement, Steve moves.

Not aggressively. Just instantly.

One second he's beside you.

The next he's standing between you and the stranger, one hand finding your elbow as though he'd done it without asking permission from the rest of his body.

The man mutters an absent-minded "Sorry." Keeps walking.

Steve doesn't answer. His eyes follow him. Not suspiciously. Automatically.

Then, slowly, he looks back at you. Realises where he's standing. Realises his hand is still around your arm.

The colour drains from his face. "...Sorry."

You blink. "What?"

"I..." His hand falls away. "I don't know why I..." The sentence dies halfway through.

For the first time since the fight, Steve looks genuinely frightened. Not of the man. Of himself.

The drive home is unusually quiet. Steve keeps both hands fixed at ten and two on the steering wheel. The radio plays quietly between you, but neither of you is listening.

Eventually, you reach over and rest your hand lightly on his arm.

He startles, only slightly, but just enough for you to notice.

"You alright?"

"Yeah."

"You've said 'yeah' or to every question I've asked for the last month."

"I have?"

"Mhm."

"...Sorry."

"Don't apologise, baby."

That earns the smallest smile. Tiny. Gone almost immediately.

That night, after Steve's fallen asleep beside you for the first time in what feels like weeks without jolting awake every hour to check you're still there, you lie awake staring at the ceiling.

Robin's words won't leave you alone.

He keeps checking where you are.

You think about the supermarket. The post office. The seatbelt. The phone calls. The way he always reaches for your hand before crossing roads now. The way he waits outside every public toilet. The way his eyes flick instinctively towards every doorway whenever you enter somewhere new.

None of it had felt controlling. Not once.

It had all felt careful. Painfully, desperately careful.

As though Steve believed the world only needed one tiny opening, and if he looked away at exactly the wrong second, it might happen again.

You turn your head. Steve is asleep on his side, one hand still loosely curled around your wrist above the duvet. Even unconscious, he's holding on.

Your chest aches. Because suddenly you realise something Robin had understood before you did.

Steve isn't trying to stop anything from happening to you.

He's trying to convince himself that if he pays enough attention, nothing ever will.

It happens on a Tuesday.

Not because anything goes wrong.

Because, for the first time in nearly a month, nothing does.

The afternoon settles over Hawkins in that slow, lazy way late August afternoons always seem to, the worst of the heat finally beginning to bleed from the pavements as the sun drifts lower behind the trees. Steve has the day off. You're both halfway through reorganising the shelves in your spare room, though "reorganising" has quickly become an excuse to sit cross-legged on the floor surrounded by old photo albums and cassette tapes you haven't touched in years.

Steve is reading the back of an ancient Ghostbusters VHS with an expression of complete seriousness.

"This says 'high-octane family fun.'"

"It is."

"They're hunting ghosts."

"Very fun ghosts."

"They kill people."

"They don't, actually."

"They try."

"They're bad at it."

He looks up from the back of the VHS, finally abandoning whatever argument he'd been having with the blurb. "You'll defend any film if I give you long enough."

"I absolutely will."

"I know."

The corner of his mouth lifts, small and unguarded, and you find yourself clinging to it more than you'd like to admit. It's the first smile you've seen from him in days that doesn't look like he had to remember how.

"You know," you say, nudging his knee lightly with yours, "I was thinking..."

Steve hums, still turning the tape over in his hands.

"My mum asked if I'd pop over this evening."

"Okay."

"I thought I'd walk."

The smile disappears so quickly you almost wonder if you'd imagined it.

"So I'll probably head off around six?"

His eyes lift to yours. "I'll drive you."

"You don't have to."

"I know."

"It's literally twenty minutes."

"I know."

"It's still light."

"I know."

You watch him for a moment. He simply watches you back.

"...Steve."

"I'll drive you."

You let out a quiet sigh, setting the VHS carefully beside you. "I wasn't asking."

"I know."

"You've got work tomorrow."

"So?"

"You've got to get back afterwards."

"So?"

"It's completely out of your way."

"So?"

Something twists uncomfortably beneath your ribs.

It's the exact same conversation you've had three times already. Different destinations. Different excuses. Exactly the same ending.

"No."

His eyebrows lift. "No?"

"I'm walking."

"I'll come with you."

"I want to walk on my own."

His jaw tightens almost imperceptibly. "...Why?"

The question catches you off guard, because he doesn't sound offended. He sounds frightened.

"I just do."

"I don't understand."

"You don't have to."

"I do."

The words leave him too quickly this time, sharper than either of you expected. The room falls quiet almost immediately afterwards, and Steve seems to hear it a fraction of a second after you do. He exhales slowly, rubbing a hand across his face.

"I'm sorry."

"It's okay."

"No," he says quietly. "No, it's not."

The silence stretches between you. Somewhere down the street, somebody starts mowing their lawn, the steady drone drifting lazily through the open window as Steve stares at the floor without really seeing it. You don't rush to fill the quiet. Eventually, he does it himself.

"I know what you're going to say."

"Do you?"

"You think I'm hovering."

You don't answer immediately. "I think you're tired."

A tiny, humourless laugh escapes him.

"I've been hovering."

"...A little."

"A little?" He finally looks at you. "I'm suffocating you."

"No."

"I am."

"No, you're not."

"I can see it." His hands are clasped so tightly together his knuckles have turned white. "I keep following you around."

"You've been worried."

"I keep checking where you are."

"I know."

"I don't even realise I'm doing it anymore." He lets out another hollow laugh. "I followed you to the bathroom at Family Video."

"I know."

"I waited outside."

"I know."

"I stood outside the fitting rooms at the mall."

"I know."

"I called you twice because you went to buy milk."

"I know."

Every confession seems to take something out of him. By the end of it he looks smaller somehow, shoulders rounded beneath the weight of words he's clearly been carrying around for weeks.

"I'm sorry."

You shift a little closer across the floor until your knees touch.

"I know."

"No." His voice cracks. "I don't think you do."

He gets to his feet before you can answer, not angrily but restlessly, pacing once across the room before stopping at the window. His hands settle on his hips, leave them again, fold across his chest, then drop uselessly by his sides. He can't seem to find a position that feels comfortable.

"I keep thinking..."

He stops.

Starts again.

"I keep thinking..."

Nothing.

He presses the heels of his palms into his eyes.

"When we were kids..." His voice is quieter now. "My dad used to leave me places."

You blink. "What?"

"He'd forget." One shoulder lifts in a shrug that doesn't quite disguise how much it still hurts. "Country clubs. Golf courses. Hardware stores."

A hollow laugh escapes him.

"I got really good at waiting."

You don't interrupt.

"I used to think..." He stares out through the window. "I used to think if I was... quieter..."

His throat bobs.

"...better..."

Another pause.

"...less annoying..."

Your heart aches.

"...he'd remember."

The room feels impossibly still. Steve has never told you this before. Not like this.

"I know that's stupid."

"It isn't."

"It is." He shakes his head. "Because now every time something bad happens..." His eyes drop to his own hands. "...my brain immediately goes..." He clicks his fingers once. "'You missed something.'" Another click. "'You should've noticed.'" Another. "'You weren't paying attention.'"

His hand falls back to his side.

"So now..." His voice is barely above a whisper. "...I'm trying to notice everything."

You rise quietly to your feet and cross the room until you're standing beside him. Neither of you says anything for a while. Outside, the lawnmower finally falls silent, and somehow the sudden absence of noise feels even louder.

"I know it isn't rational."

"I know."

"I know you can cross roads by yourself."

"I know."

"I know you don't need me to walk you everywhere."

"I know."

"I know."

Each repetition grows quieter, less convincing than the last.

"I know."

He closes his eyes.

"I just..." His shoulders finally cave beneath the weight of it. "...I can't survive watching someone I love get hurt because I wasn't paying attention."

The words leave him in one long breath, as though he's been holding them inside for weeks.

"I can't do it again."

Again.

Not for the first time.

Again.

That's when you finally understand.

This was never just about Robin. Or you. Or the fight.

It's Barb. Bob. Billy. Eddie. Every person Steve has ever watched disappear while wondering if there had been one tiny moment - one tiny thing - he could have done differently.

You step in front of him. He still won't meet your eyes, so you lift your hands and gently cup his face, asking for nothing except somewhere for his gaze to settle. When he finally looks at you, his eyes are already wet.

"I've been trying so hard," he whispers.

"I know."

"I thought if I just..." A broken laugh catches in his throat. "...paid enough attention..." His voice finally gives way. "...maybe nothing bad would happen."

You feel your own eyes sting. "Oh, Steve."

"I know it doesn't make sense."

"It makes perfect sense."

"It does?"

"To me."

He searches your face desperately. "Really?"

You nod. "Because you love people. And loving people means you've convinced yourself it's your job to stop every bad thing that could ever happen to them."

A tear slips free before he can stop it. Steve closes his eyes, resting his forehead against yours, and you feel the faint tremor running through him.

"So when something slips through..." Your thumb brushes gently across his cheek. "...you don't blame the person who hurt them."

Another tear follows.

"You blame yourself."

His breathing catches.

"I was supposed to-"

"No."

"I was supposed to get there."

"You did."

"Too late."

"No."

His eyes open again.

"I don't think the story starts where you think it does."

He frowns. "What?"

"You keep replaying the moment Robin got hurt."

He says nothing.

"But that's not the moment I remember."

His breathing begins to steady.

"I remember looking up..." You smile sadly. "...and seeing you."

He doesn't move.

"I remember you getting to us. Not the shouting. Not the blood. Not the fear. I remember thinking..." Your fingers slip gently into the hair at the nape of his neck. "...Steve's here."

His eyes fill completely.

"And then I knew we'd be okay."

For a long moment neither of you speaks. Steve simply looks at you as though he's trying to reconcile your memory of that night with his own.

Eventually, almost too quietly to hear, he asks, "...You weren't angry?"

You almost laugh. "No."

"You didn't think..." He swallows hard. "...I failed?"

Your heart breaks.

"No, baby." You lean forward and kiss his forehead. "I've never once looked at you and thought you failed me."

Steve finally cries, one quiet, exhausted tear after another, as weeks of vigilance finally begin to loosen their grip.

And for the first time since the fight, when you wrap your arms around him, he doesn't hold you because he's afraid you'll disappear.

He holds you because he needs somewhere safe to fall.

Things don't change overnight.

You know that before Steve does, because healing has never looked particularly spectacular. It rarely arrives in great sweeping gestures or tearful promises that everything will be different from now on. More often, it's embarrassingly ordinary. It lives in the tiny decisions people make over and over again, until eventually those decisions become easier than the fear that first inspired them. Steve still reaches for your hand when you leave the house. He still checks the lock twice before bed. He still glances towards every doorway when you walk into a restaurant. The habits don't disappear. They simply stop deciding everything else.

Three days later, the two of you are wandering through Hawkins' Saturday market. It isn't anything special: a handful of stalls selling vegetables, second-hand books, homemade candles and knitted jumpers despite the fact it's still far too warm for anyone sensible to be thinking about wool. Families drift lazily between them, children chase each other around folding tables, and somewhere nearby somebody plays an acoustic guitar badly enough that nobody quite knows whether to clap when he finishes each song.

Steve buys you strawberries because you stop for half a second too long looking at them.

"They're expensive."

"I know."

"We literally have strawberries at home."

"I know."

"So why are you buying more?"

"They looked at you."

You laugh. "They looked at me?"

"Mhm."

"Steve Harrington."

"They wanted to come home with us."

"That's the stupidest thing you've ever said."

He grins. "I know."

It is the easiest you've seen him smile in weeks.

A few minutes later you stop outside a little stall selling old records. The owner, an elderly man with silver hair tied back into a ponytail, is enthusiastically explaining to a teenage boy why Fleetwood Mac always sounds better on vinyl while Steve wanders a few feet away to look at a display of old film posters hanging from a washing line. Not far - just far enough that, for the first time in weeks, he isn't instinctively keeping pace with you.

You lose yourself amongst the records for a minute. Then two. Then three. They smell faintly of old paper and dust, your fingers trailing across worn cardboard sleeves until you find Rumours tucked neatly between Bowie and Joni Mitchell.

"You found it."

The voice makes you turn.

Steve isn't standing beside you.

He's still over by the posters, crouched slightly to speak to a little girl who's trying very seriously to convince him that The Goonies is actually a horror film because, as she explains with complete certainty, "there's a dead body."

He catches your eye across the market.

Smiles.

Then turns back to the conversation.

Something inside your chest loosens.

Because three weeks ago he would've noticed you'd drifted away before you'd even realised you'd done it yourself. He would've crossed the distance without thinking, apologised afterwards without understanding why, and spent the rest of the afternoon quietly angry with himself for letting you wander three feet out of reach. Instead, he's letting himself stay where he is. He's letting you exist somewhere he isn't. You know it can't be easy for him, and somehow that makes it all the sweeter.

On the walk back to the car, you deliberately slow your pace. Steve is halfway through explaining why Dustin is objectively wrong about Back to the Future Part II when you stop altogether. He takes another three steps before realising, turning almost immediately.

There it is. That tiny flash of panic. Quick. Instinctive. Gone almost as soon as it arrives.

"You okay?"

"I'm fine."

"You stopped."

"I know."

"...Why?"

You smile. "Come here."

His eyebrows knit together, but he walks back without questioning it. "What?"

Instead of answering, you simply slip your hand into his. His fingers close around yours automatically, warm and familiar, and the two of you start walking again.

"I like this," you say quietly.

He glances sideways at you. "What?"

"Holding your hand."

His shoulders relax by almost nothing. "You do?"

"Mhm."

"I thought maybe..."

"I know." You squeeze his hand gently.

"I just don't want you holding it because you're scared."

He doesn't answer straight away.

"I want you holding it because you want to."

Steve looks down at your joined hands, his thumb brushing slowly across your knuckles.

"I think..." A faint smile tugs at the corner of his mouth. "...I'm still figuring out which one it is."

You laugh softly. "I know."

A week later, you tell him you're walking over to Robin's.

He looks up from the sofa. "What time?"

"Now."

"I'll-" The word catches before it ever leaves his mouth.

You watch it happen. You actually watch the thought arrive.

I'll come.

His mouth opens. Then closes again.

He breathes in. Breathes out.

"...Okay."

You blink. "Okay?"

"Yeah."

"You sure?"

He nods once. "I'll... see you later."

There's something painfully vulnerable about it, as though he's handing you something fragile and trusting you not to break it. You cross the room, cup his face, kiss him once, and smile.

"I'll see you later."

His own smile wobbles. "Call me when you get there?"

You grin. "That one I can do."

Robin opens the front door to find you trying not to smile. "...What?"

"He let me leave."

"...Jesus."

"I know."

Robin looks genuinely impressed. "Did he cry afterwards?"

"Not in front of me."

"Hm."

She nods thoughtfully. "Growth."

It's only later that evening, curled together on Steve's sofa with the television humming quietly in the background, that you realise how difficult it had actually been for him. Neither of you is paying attention to whatever's on screen. Steve's head rests comfortably in your lap while your fingers wander absent-mindedly through his hair, and after several long minutes of comfortable silence he says, almost to himself,

"I almost followed you."

Your hand stills. "What?"

"When you left." His eyes remain fixed on the ceiling. "I got as far as putting my shoes on."

Your chest tightens.

"I stood in the hallway for..." He laughs quietly. "Honestly? Maybe five minutes."

"...Steve."

"I kept thinking..." His voice softens. "...if I just happened to be walking the same way..."

You smile sadly. "I know."

"I almost did it."

"But you didn't."

"No." He closes his eyes. "I sat back down."

You run your fingers gently through his hair again. "What changed your mind?"

He's quiet for so long you almost think he's fallen asleep.

Then, finally, "I realised..." He swallows. "...if something happened..." Even now, the words hurt him. You can hear it. "...I'd blame myself anyway."

Your hand stills again. "So..."

He lets out a slow breath before finally looking up at you.

"...Following you wasn't actually protecting you. It was trying to make myself feel less scared."

You smile. "There he is."

"What?"

"The guy I fell in love with."

His forehead creases.

"You've always wanted to protect people," you say, brushing his fringe away from his eyes. "But that's different."

"How?"

"Because protecting someone means being there when they need you." Your thumb traces lightly along his temple. "Not carrying responsibility for every bad thing that could ever happen to them."

Steve simply stares at you, as though he's trying to commit every word to memory. "I don't know if I'll ever stop worrying."

"You won't."

He lets out a small laugh. "You sound very certain."

"I am." You smile. "Because I know you."

His expression softens.

"I don't need you to stop worrying."

"No?"

"I just need you to remember..." You lean down until your forehead rests gently against his. "...that loving me doesn't make you responsible for fate."

The room falls quiet again. Outside, the cicadas have begun singing somewhere beyond the open window, a warm evening breeze carrying with it the smell of cut grass and somebody's barbecue several gardens away. Steve reaches up slowly until his hand finds yours - not urgently, not desperately, but simply because it's there.

"I think..." he says quietly, intertwining your fingers, "...I'm gonna need reminding of that sometimes."

"I know."

"You'll tell me?"

"As many times as it takes."

He smiles then. A real smile this time, the kind that reaches his eyes before it reaches his mouth. After a moment he turns your hand over in his, presses a kiss against your knuckles, and asks, almost sheepishly,

"...Can I still walk on the roadside?"

You laugh so hard you nearly knock him off the sofa. "Steve."

"What?"

"It's not statistically safer."

"It is."

"You have absolutely no evidence for that."

"I don't need evidence."

"You literally do."

"I have vibes."

"Vibes aren't peer-reviewed."

"They should be."

Shaking your head, you can't help smiling. "Fine."

"Really?"

"You can walk on the roadside."

His grin immediately widens.

"But."

He waits.

"If I want to walk on that side sometimes..." You squeeze his hand. "...you have to let me."

He holds your gaze for a long moment before finally nodding.

"...Deal."

It isn't a promise that he'll never worry again. It isn't a promise that he'll never wake in the middle of the night just to check you're still breathing, or instinctively reach for your hand crossing a road, or feel his heart lurch when you disappear into another room for longer than expected.

It's something much smaller, and much harder: a promise to recognise the difference between loving you and believing he has to outrun the entire world to deserve it.

dividers: saradika-graphics

The young adult life was fun, with your friends always pulling you out of the dorm in the dead of night and taking you from one bar to another. From the local student's club to the cabin by the lake, owned by one of the jocks you happened to sleep with.

But the joys of a student's life – be it an evening spent studying or fucking in the car after a stressful exam – were, after a few months, taken away by your stalker.

Suguru Geto has been following you since day one. The moment his eyes fell on your body sprawled on the campus lawn, skin shimmering in the late summer sun, and a sweet giggle tickling his pierced ears.

His brain turned fuzzy whenever he saw the angelic aura wrapping around your cheeky face. Heart melted when your eyes fell on him, even for a single second. An uncontrollable feeling bubbled in his chest at the sheer sight of a little crease appearing between your brows when you bestowed him with a grimace.

It was clear that, for some reason, you treated him rather as a foe than a man who could pique your interest. 

At first, he did nothing but look. Observe, with this devilish smile tugging at his lips and lavender irises taking pleasure in the loveliest scowl slipping onto your face. He tried to keep himself at bay, but not because shyness coiled in his heart.

No, simply because he wished to know everything about you, before making an official approach. Your favourite flowers, the desserts you most cherished, the tight course schedule that always seemed to keep you up all night, favourite shapes and colours of the clacking jewellery that hung from your skin. Of the big hoops that always brushed your neck, and bracelets stacked one on another, chirping like sweet birds whenever you passed by.

He wished to know the colour of your lingerie and how your panties smelled after a long day. To feel the warmth of the bra that had just left the embrace of your breasts. Smell the sweetness of your slightly sweated skin after days when you joined the cheerleading sessions.

Suguru… Suguru wanted to be the one having you all to himself, even if you hated the sheer sight of him.

Whenever you took a shower during late, late nights – someone always seemed to be there. In the shared bathroom on your floor, the one meant to be used solely by the female students. A listener, whose ears pricked up to hear a soft hum of a random melody that bubbled in your throat and sweet sighs when the first hot droplets hit your skin. 

The first time you noticed it was when the bathroom doors closed louder than they should. Another girl coming back from a late session, you thought, giving it no mind. 

But the silence that lingered in the air stretched for too long. As no other shower seemed to be in use, nor did any other sounds of movement filled the lonely bathroom. 

You waited, and waited, to hear something that would not make you believe that a fucking creep slipped inside the room just to await your naked body leaving the shower.

But nothing else ever came, and so your voice echoed off the walls with a, "Hello?"

Silence stood still, and the hot droplets soon turned into the cold sweat tickling the shivering skin along your spine. Nothing, but the thick fog filled the tiled bathroom and a heavy breath of yours, trying to listen for the eerie footsteps that clacked against the wet floor a few seconds ago. 

Coming closer, and closer, till you could already see the heavy, black boots peeking from the lower door crack. A gentle tingling of the oh-so-familiar silver chain slashed through the air, and if you lifted your head up, surely you could see a peek of silky black hair. The shower doors were, after all, not two meters tall. 

"You fucking freak," a low snort escaped your throat. "You don’t think I know who you are?"

Silence. 

He simply stood there, as if waiting. For you to come outside? Or maybe simply enjoying the tension that rose within a blinding fog. The faster beating of your heart, shuddered breath you tried to conceal with a harsh tone, and trembling fingers covering your breasts, as if he could see your naked body through the door.

"Cat got your tongue, huh? Don’t be a coward, at least say something," you continued, making sure the miserably weak latch was keeping the door closed. "You’ve been stalking me for months. Don’t you know who my boyfriend is?"

Suguru knew. 

But he also knew that the captain of the basketball team wasn’t your boyfriend. Because you didn’t do that stuff – relationships, love, cheesy romance. 

So a low chuckle slipped past his lips as he pressed his forehead to the door. Trying to smell the sweet body wash that lingered in the air, imagining the foam that coated your soft body and curled around those plush breasts he loved so dearly.

"I can’t believe you’re getting off to this," another snort escaped your throat, as you banged with a fist on the door. "You don’t think I’ll report you? I’ll end you, do you hear me?!"

But Suguru could simply laugh – deeply, with a vibration hitting the plastic surface. His large palm pressed to the door, as if he tried to imagine where exactly your hand lay. So the image of your skins almost touching could slip an eerie, excited thought that tickled his mind in such a pleasant manner. 

A wrath coiled beneath your heart, hearing how much he enjoyed this little torture. Because, if only he wanted, he surely could rip the door off the hinges with little to no sweat. Instead, he simply let out a hum, curling the fingers into a fist.

"Sure, baby. I hear you loud and clear," a low purr bounced off the tile, foggy walls.

The heat made your head spin, body leaned against the plastic door in need of fresh air. But going out now would mean slipping right into his needy clutches. 

And before you could snap once again, he added, "I hope you won’t mind me taking those pretty panties of yours, hm? I’ll give them back one day, pinky promise," and with that, the leather shoes disappeared from your sight.

With your pitched you fucking psycho, kissing his cheeks goodbye, as he left the stuffy bathroom.

And so during the first semester, you started seeing the consequences of having a stalker like him.

Your panties were disappearing one by one, and you knew that it was not a fault of the old washing machines in the dorm. Always suddenly appearing back on your bed, clean and fragrant, although only god knew what he did with them.

Other times, it was the white knee-socks from the cheerleader costume. The woollen, soft material that wrapped your sweaty thighs after hours of training. Always disappearing whenever you planned to do the laundry, always back on your bed a bit stiff, with a heavy cologne still clinging to the cloth.

The report to the headmaster did truly nothing, as you had no proof whatsoever that Suguru Geto was your stalker, nor that he slipped into the women’s bathroom. After all, no one else saw him, and for that matter, no one could accuse him of anything. 

The jock you were sleeping with back then refused to deal with him another way, for he simply didn’t see a reason to it.

You snorted, the first time Toji said it and slipped off his bed. The winter’s biting cold was sneaking past the old dorm windows as you started dressing yourself up. 

"Doll, what are you doing?" The mountain of a man asked with a sigh, stretching his massive body on a bed. "I won’t kill some random guy, just because you think he’s stalking you."

You scoffed at the quizzical tone of his voice, pulling on the warm, woolly sweater. "So you think I made this up, huh?"

Toji groaned, lazily wiping his face with a hand. "Come on, I’m just saying that he may have a crush and that’s it."

"He’s been stealing my underwear and listening to me taking showers for months!"

The emerald eyes followed you with a raised eyebrow, as you pulled tight jeans onto your ass. The scowl between your brows made him chuckle lowly and sit up on a bed, patting the still-warm place next to him.

"Come on, let me make you feel better. It’s not as if he’ll do anything else." His long hand reached for the loops of your jeans, but you quickly smacked it. "Doll, I’m serious. If you were in danger, I would definitely deal with him."

Fully dressed, with shoes on, you turned to him with a low tsk and, "I think you’re too much of a fucking coward to do it," before going out of his room and closing the door with a thud.

Months passed; winter turned into early spring, the second semester began, and Suguru Geto was slowly getting closer. 

In slow, baby steps and yet you felt the line between the two of you thinning. With him appearing on your horizon much more often, following you around the campus, barely trying to hide it.

In early spring, he started leaving little gifts on your bed, under the door, in the locker. A pretty set of lingerie, favourite flowers, a tape with music he thought you could like, the… death threats.

Not to you, oh, but of course, as he would rather cut his limbs off than make a single, precious strand of your hair fall for the greediness filling his heart.

All the death threats were always aimed at your lovers, of course. 

As Suguru had a little patience left for seeing you change men like gloves, with none worthy to be bestowed with the softness of your skin. To nuzzle into your neck, trace kisses down the chin, and hear the sweet laughter every single day. 

Suguru was simply jealous. And he addressed it quite openly in short, paper notes that you somehow always found in your bag.

The mix of, baby he’s not good for you, and, break it off, or he’ll regret ever setting his eyes on my girl.

When you brought them all to the headmaster, he simply offered to monitor the situation. As you still had no proof to offer that Suguru Geto was the one who wrote them all. No one saw him slipping the notes into your bag, nor his ghastly figure stealing all your lingerie. 

On a campus, he was simply a weird guy.

In classes, the best student.

For you, a hellish nightmare that tried to crawl under your skin and wrap around your body like a deathly viper.

And so you ignored the threats. Broke most of your relationships, but didn’t quite reveal the reason. If he had a problem with you sleeping with one guy for a month or two, then… you simply had to stick to one-night stands and not show yourself on campus with any other men.

As long as you weren’t hanging onto anyone’s shoulder, it should be okay. Somehow, you would last the next year and leave this town behind. With the stalker hot on your heels and the presents stacked in your bedroom, one on top of another. 

The middle of the second semester began quickly, with spring in full bloom and the sizzling sun once again letting you slip away for the pool parties at the jocks’ houses. You allowed yourself to get lost in the pleasures and madness of student life, with summer just around the corner. Only a few months left, and you would get a break from your stalker for the whole holidays.

But then… Suguru Geto confessed.

He came to your dorm with a bouquet of your favourite flowers, a small bun sitting high on his head, and pierced lips curling in a gentle smile, as he knocked on your dorm’s door. After months of following you obediently like a puppy, he knew every little thing about you.

Every mood swing of yours, each emotion, always oh so visible on your lovely face. He learned how to watch you, please you, and say the right things to become the perfect boyfriend.

He knew how your pussy smelled during the ovulation days. How you usually tasted, checking it each day with a pretty lingerie of yours pressed to his lips, and fingers pumping his leaking cock. 

He learned the melody you always hummed under the shower and the brand of shampoo that made your hair smell like the sweetest garden.

He found out what you liked and hated in bed, all the kinks you wished to try. The way your fingers pressed to your swollen clit, whenever you stayed in your dorm room alone. How your breath hitched when you were close, and thighs squeezed around nothing, although he truly wished it was his head being squished between the heavenly softness that haunted his dreams.

And when you opened the door, he knew that it was now or never. He, finally, was worthy to ask for your love.

"Hi, baby," he said, glancing at your figure dressed in nothing but a skimpy gown. 

Wrapping you a bit too tight, ending just above the mid-thighs and with perked nipples poking through the flimsy material. 

A scowl bubbled in your throat, and you quickly, with full force, tried to close the door. But he was quicker, slipping his heavy shoe right into the small crack. 

"Leave, or I’ll start screaming," you warned him, getting as an answer a low giggle.

He pushed the door easily, coming into your room. The dim light slipping from the night table bathed the small space with a soft glow. A few scented candles flickered on your desk and the bed of your roommate, as usual, was empty.

You took a few steps back, trying not to show any signs of panic. 

The sudden fear that rose in your chest. Breath becoming slightly more hitched, fingers trembling around the gown you tried to pull down. Eyes fixed on him, as if he could attack any minute now. 

But he, as always, was looking at you. Closely, carefully, with lavender warmth slipping up and down your body and a handsome smirk tugging on his lips. Long hair tickled his shoulder, swimming down along the muscular back dressed in leather jacket. Metal bars on his lips and eyebrows twinkled like coins under the spilling candle-flame, adding a sort of wickedness to his demeanour. 

Suguru Geto was… handsome.

Dear lord, he was beautiful. 

And as difficult as it was to swallow, you could not change the fact that your stalker was one of the prettiest men you had ever seen. With a horrendous and sinful character, yet the face of an angel.

So you allowed yourself to trace the broad back bulging under the jacket. The height looming over your shivering figure. Long fingers that gripped the bouquet and beefy thighs dressed in black jeans.  The woodsy scent of his cologne wrapped around your senses in an utterly pleasurable way, melting you in its warmth.

You hated the way he made you feel. Confused, scared, and most of the time simply furious. But somehow, on some days, a bit too balmy. With a heat spreading all over your body, slipping under the chest, down the belly, between the thighs, as if the wickedness of his actions, the sheer idea of how obsessed he was with you, made you excited. 

So then, while he stood in your dorm with a straightened back, you decided to wait. To see what other foolish plan would bloom in his devilish mind, only for you to bring it back to the headmaster. 

"What the fuck do you want?" you snapped, crossing arms over your chest.

He took a step closer, lavender eyes mingling with an excitement of a source that made your spine tingle in an unpleasant way. Long hand extended towards you, pushing a lush bouquet right into your arms. 

"Go out with me," he stated, not even curving his tone into a question. 

A statement, rather, it was as if he was utterly sure that you would agree.

And you stood there with the same scowl that didn’t leave your forehead even for a second. Fingers wrapped around the heavy bouquet, nostrils tingling with the strong, flowery smell you loved so much.

But the wrath coiling beneath your chest was dangerously close to spilling. Eyes bulged, hearing the question he dared to push after months of acting like a psycho stalker and turning your life into madness. Everyone looked at you like a crazy, delusional woman who tried to frame a poor outcast as a maniac who, Suguru Geto, definitely wasn’t.

And now he had the audacity to stand in your bedroom, checking your body dressed in nothing but a flimsy robe, as a sly smile tugged at his lips. 

"What did you just say?" Rolled in tremble, as you could barely stop the rage bubbling in your chest. 

His head tilted. Long legs took another step closer. Until the big hand lifted to nuzzle your soft cheek, strong thumb brushing the skin aflame with fury.

"Go out with me, baby. Let me love you as you deserve it." The silkiness of his tone made your head spin, in both an unsettling pleasure and madness. "And if you don’t want to date me, use me. It’s been a while since you slept with someone, hm? Why won’t you just use me for your pleasure?"

Thumb slipped to your slightly parted lips. The urge to bite it and suck on it fought in your mind, bringing an irrational feeling that made your lower lip tremble right under his digit.

His words clearly stated that he, in fact, did not know that you hadn’t given up on sleeping with other men. Because if he did…

"Why so sure that I’m not fucking with anyone?" You muttered, tilting head in a cheeky manner.

As if you wanted to indulge yourself in the psychotic game of his, fully aware that you would always end up as a loser. Because for the past few months, Suguru Geto was never, ever, letting you win any of the tricks you tried to play on him. The reports, gathering the evidence, paying people to give him the lesson, although the next day he was always appearing back on the university’s lawn. Fully aware of all your miserable attempts.

Something in his eyes twinkled, but the smile didn’t come off his lips even for a second. "Do you?"

You smacked away his hand, and with a swing, shot the flowers through the room. Gentle petals smashed against the wall, falling pitifully on your roommate’s empty bed.

Before he could even look their way, your arms wrapped around his neck, perked nipples pressed against his torso as you lifted yourself up on tiptoes. The sweetness of your skin immediately enveloped his senses, and it seemed this sudden, intimate gesture left him speechless.

"Every. Single. Night." You whispered, tugging harshly on the long, silky hair curling behind his neck. His breath slipped out shuddered, and, for the first time, you noticed a true rage bubbling in his gaze. "Think you’re so smart? That I’m scared of your stupid threats?" He didn’t answer, allowing himself to cherish the softness of your body pressed to his. "I’m fucking every day with a different guy. Guys, maybe? Who knows, maybe I’m already knocked up stupid after all the cum they–"

His patience finally snapped. 

One hand curled around your waist, the other lifted to squeeze your jaw before the last, nasty words would fully set his mind ablaze. The fingers dug painfully into your cheeks, the arm kept you in place, forbidding you from slipping away from the deathly clutches.

"Aren’t you a smartass, hm?" He chuckled, but his low voice was edged with the wrath that made the lavender irises narrow into a cat-eye glance. "I’m giving you an easy way out, baby. If you’re a fucking nymphomaniac, why won’t you make me your boy toy? Think I was joking?" He tugged you, drawing a soft groan from your throat. And as fear filled your body from head to toe, something exciting, maddeningly confusing, tingled in your fingertips.

"You are a fucking joke," a muffled mutter bounced off the walls, only making him squeeze your cheeks even harder. 

"I don’t think you’re in a position to make me angry, baby," he leaned closer, his lips mere millimetres from yours. 

Another move, and he could taste the sweetness of your lip gloss.

"Or what?" You snorted, enraging him even more. "You’ll kill me? Come on, psycho. At least I’ll get myself free from you."

Suguru never wanted to hurt you. He never wanted to do anything that would cause you even a moment's pain. But the way you spoke to him, the way your eyes twinkled with the truth of choosing death rather than spending another second in his presence, made his blood boil in a disgustingly dangerous way. 

Your doe eyes fixed on his, lovely face twisted in a wicked smile as he finally loosened his grip on your cheeks.

"Is that your final answer, then?" He asked, low bass filling the small room. Candle flames licked a side of his face, with warm tongues and peppered kisses. A devil truly looking like an angel. "I promise you’ll regret it, baby."

And with a final scowl, you pushed him away. This time, he allowed you to do it without a fight.

To kick his massive body out of your room and smash the door till the tremor bounced off the corridors. 

Back then, while gathering the beautiful flowers of the bed and pushing them all to the trash can, you didn’t know what consequences your decision would bring upon the lives of not just you, but all the other people you associated yourself with. The rage filled you from head to toe, making your mind go foggy from the dizziness and adrenaline that still pulsed in your veins. 

Back then, you thought that the official rejection would finally stop all his attempts to coax you into this weird relationship he had made up in his head and give you a little breather.

So when you didn’t notice his presence around yourself for the next few days, a grain of hope bloomed beneath your heart. That maybe, he finally decided to leave you alone. 

Your lingerie stopped disappearing, death threats were no longer found in your bag, and all the little presents stopped appearing on your bed. Life was getting back on track, and you could enjoy the last few months of university, hanging on jocks’ shoulders and slipping into parties every single weekend.

But as it would soon turn out, those few days of peace were nothing but a bad omen. The storm that would soon haunt not only your life but the whole campus itself. 

As on the night one of the male students had left your dorm, he disappeared. Simply, just like that, only to be found two days later in the local forest. With body dismembered into pieces, head a few meters away from the torso.

When the news spread across the campus, not a single student or professor was left unshocked, their hearts shattered. 

Did he have any enemies? People wondered. Did he find himself in the wrong place at the wrong time?

The police went to you first, of course, since you seemed to be the last person who saw him that night. But the two officers didn’t get anything from the stuttering, and weeping body of yours, with dark circles swollen under your eyes. As, in fact, you didn’t even know his name, after meeting at some party and taking back for a quick fuck to your room. 

Weeks passed before you could somehow move on and find calmness within a company of another guy. Not a one-night stand, but simply someone whose kindness and gentlemanly manner made your mind flutter with peace. He talked to you gently and made a sweet, genuine laugh slip past your lips. A friend, companion, but of no love interest from your side.

And yet, after a while, he disappeared too. Only to be found in the lake, with a purple body bulging from the water and a head wrapped in a dirty sack. 

This case… made you spiral into madness. 

Because, as you would soon discover, men who got close to you in any way were always, always, going missing just a few days after exchanging a few simple words with you. Be it a random student working in a library or a waiter at your favourite dinner. It didn’t matter who they were to you, but a single glance at your face was enough to sentence them to death.

And whenever another person was disappearing, you always saw him.

Suguru Geto, looking at you from across the campus, with a diabolical smirk tugging at his lips. Of unmatched beauty, with cheeks, straight eyebrows, and almond-shaped eyes. Lavender gaze lingering, with an uncanny sense of a secret only the two of you knew. The love and obsession so heavy that he was ready to cut you off from any men if that would force you to crawl back to him.

So you simply stopped hanging around campus. You just gritted your teeth, hid face beneath the heavy hoodie, and left the room only for classes. Room – classes, room – classes, the route that, during the last month before the summer break, became your routine. 

You made minimal contact with other men, be it people in your class or a cashier at the local supermarket. Avoided the parties, gatherings, hangouts, just to not risk anyone’s life any further. 

Just one month, you thought, desperately wanting to move back to your parents’ house for the summer holidays. 

To leave Suguru, the university, this whole mess behind, and lock yourself far away from all the problems you already caused.

And then, a few days before leaving, Shoko knocked on your door. And when you opened with a puffy face and a shirt dirty from a chocolate ice cream you just stuffed yourself with, she sighed heavily, quickly coming inside.

"Do you even have a roommate?" She asked, noticing that the other half of the room was always empty.

With a brief nod, you fell back on your bed and closed the book you had just been reading. Ice cream in a big paper cup was melting on your bedside table, and heavy curtains cut off the summer light in the stuffy room. 

"She’s always hanging out with her boyfriend," you muttered, patting the place next to you. 

Shoko took a seat, watching the misery furrow your face. "You can’t cut yourself off. It’s not healthy, you know?" she said, tugging a lock of your hair back behind an ear. 

Your fingers fiddled with the old, pink tracksuit, picking on the little, plastic diamonds glued to the soft material. 

"I don’t want anyone else to die," a low, almost crying voice filled the space as you desperately tried to hold back the tears already swirling behind your eyelids. "What if he’s going to hurt you?"

She wondered for a second, taking in your state, a pain ripping at her heart. "Don’t worry, I won’t let that bastard get anywhere near me. Besides, it seems that he only aims for your…" She bit down on the lower lip, as if not wishing to confirm what was already obvious. "Anyways, I thought that maybe we could have some fun tonight. Nothing crazy, just a simple funfair with me, Utahime and Yuki."

You looked up from behind the wet eyelashes, seeing the comforting smile on your friend’s face.

"I don’t think I’m in the mood for fun," another sigh escaped your tightened throat. "Besides, he can follow me there."

She hummed, nodding her chestnut head. Short hair curled around the lean cheeks, and a single cigarette was pushed behind an ear. 

"Well, how about you slip away through the window? He won’t notice you leaving the dorm. His room is on the other side of the building; he won’t even see you cross the lawn."

A low giggle slipped past your lips, seeing a cheeky grin lift her lips. "And how do you know that?"

"I think you truly underestimate your friends. Yuki’s boyfriend is friends with his roommate, the nerd guy, Satoru. We’ll make sure he keeps him entertained for a few seconds," Shoko laughed, squinting her eyes like a sly kitty. "Besides, there’s some weird metal band in town. I’m sure he and the rest of Addam’s Family will hang out there. He already knows you’re too scared to even leave your room, so… he won’t suspect anything."

The plan indeed sounded good. And as your room was on the first floor, slipping away would be easy. The worst that could happen was a small scratch, but it seemed worth it to experience even the simplest moment of joy before leaving your friends for two months. 

At the same time… the fear was eating you alive. The thought that he might somehow be able to track your location sent a shiver down your spine. Made your mind freeze, heart trying to leap from the tightened chest. You didn’t want to hear about any more murders. Didn’t want to befriend kind, innocent people who would meet a tragic end only because of the psychotic stalker who cared for you in his sick, twisted manner.

And yet, without a second thought, you nodded, drawing a squeak from Shoko’s beaming face. She pulled you into a tight, warm hug, a sweet fragrance of perfume and cigarette smoke wrapping around your senses. 

"So get your ass up now and go take a shower," She said, pushing you towards the door. "I’ll prepare a little special outfit for our night out."

The bathroom was empty when you entered, but no one interrupted your long, warm shower. No heavy footsteps bounced off the tiled walls, and no one’s silky hair peeked down at your naked body. It felt almost unusual, yet you tried to enjoy this intimate moment of peace just as you used to, with the same melody hummed softly beneath the dripping rain and a sweet body wash lathering your skin. 

Colours seemed to slowly spread across your cheeks, the purple smooched disappeared from under your eyes, and a heavy, relaxed breath escaped your throat. 

The life, even for a slippery second, felt as if it was back under your control. 

When you turned to the room, a small, shocked gasp rolled off your tongue.

"I am not wearing that!" You scowled, looking at the set Shoko prepared for you. 

You had long forgotten about the tight, extremely short pink skirt and the sparkling white top that were hidden in your wardrobe. A set of white lingerie lay right next to them, and your heart almost stopped at the bra, thin enough to make your perked nipples visible through the flimsy top.

"What do you mean? You wore it so many times before!" she exclaimed, adding a pair of big hoops and milky-white heels. "Come on, don’t be a prude!"

"I’m not, but…" but what if some guy tries to talk to me, and he will be there, and…

"Nuh-uh, stop. I can read your thoughts," Shoko said, quickly wiping a towel over your naked body. Her chestnut eyes slid up and down your figure, a cheeky smile tugging at her lips. "Mhm, perfect. Dress up and let me do your make-up."

So after an hour and a long fight over the crimson lipstick that smudged your lips in an utterly whorish way, you and Shoko, under the sky blanketed in darkness, finally slipped away through the window. Bags fell onto the lawn first, heels following right after, only for your stupidly giggling lips to shush each other as you ran across campus. 

Yuki and Shoko were already waiting outside, and when you saw them crouched behind the bushes, a loud, alive laugh filled the warm summer night.

"Why didn’t you wait in the car?" You asked, slipping into the passenger seat.

Yuki started the car, slowly reversing from the university’s car park. "For your entertainment, dear." She chuckled before pulling onto the main road.

After ten minutes of laughing and chit-chatting in the car, with music blasting from the speakers and Yuki’s cabriolet swooshing along the forest roads, you finally noticed the lights.

Red, orange, and purple, with a Ferris wheel looming over the dark, haunted house, rollercoasters, and multiple colourful booths filling the place with a mixture of burnt popcorn and sweet cotton candy. The tacky music beamed from the stickers, bouncing off the nearby lake, hidden just behind the deep forest. 

Children, teenagers and students filled the park to the brim, with plastic red cups or paper boxes of food in their hands. Men tried to show off their muscles, hitting the high striker again and again until the golden bell buzzed with a red alarm, tickling your earlobes. A few squeaks escaped from the haunted house after a group of girls left it, laughing and giggling, while another group just entered, fear twisting their faces.

It seemed perfect, joyful and carefree, lifting a heavy burden from your shoulders and allowing you to experience a moment of happiness.

Shoko wrapped her arm around your shoulders and pulled you towards the entrance.

After an hour, you completely forgot about the terror that had haunted you for the past year. You couldn’t count the cans of beer you drank, the amount of caramel popcorn that filled your belly with sweetness, all the times you almost barfed on the rollercoaster, and your miserable attempts to win a plush toy in darts.

Some men looked behind their shoulders to sense a direction from which sugary laughter was coming. Some tried to talk to you, but all three girls were immediately taking you away from their clutches, knowing that the presence of another guy was the last thing you needed.

But then all of them left for the haunted house, which you refused to enter, and suddenly became easy prey. Easy enough for someone to come into your line of sight and let out a chuckle when another soft ball didn’t hit the moving object. 

"I’m sorry, but you really suck at it," a low voice whispered in your ear, and you quickly looked over your shoulder. 

A young man, surely your age, with coffee-coloured eyes that mingled like little stars and sandy hair brushed slightly back. He stood tall, with broad shoulders bulging beneath the blueish shirt. Muscular arms peeked from beneath the short sleeves, with a few creamy buttons revealing his warm chest.

Your lips pouted. "I’m not that bad."

"It’s the fourth time you lost it."

Sixth, almost slipped away, but instead, you let out a giggle.

His eyes scanned your face, taking in the loveliness warming your skin, before drifting towards a booth filled with plushies.

"So which one do you want?" He asked, giving the cashier a few dollars for another try. 

You bit the plush inside of the cheek, pointing with a finger at the big, black cat with yellow eyes and a pinkish nose.

"He looks mischievous," a man murmured, nevertheless sending you a smile.

His legs spread a bit wider, and his body leaned over to get a better view of the moving cans.

"I like them a bit mischievous," you said, moving yourself to stand right next to him. 

With a corner of the eye, you noticed his gaze on your warm cheeks, before he looked back towards the game. "I’m sorry to tell you this, but I’m a nice guy."

The first ball flew, hitting right in the middle of the small can. You gasped, shooting your head towards him. To look at the cheeky smile and sandy brows curving up. 

"You did not!"

He shrugged, rolling a chuckle. "Not bad, hm?"

Another three balls in his hand disappeared just as quickly. One by one, each hitting the can with force, until the metal cups fell to the ground. The cashier seemed just as surprised and charmed as you, watching the blue veins bulge on his forearms and squinting at the aim. 

When the last can fell, you suddenly, without a further thought, grabbed his shoulders and started jumping with loud squeaks.

"Oh my god! Amazing!" The pure happiness lighting your face swelled his heart with pride as he pointed a finger at the big, black cat.

"Here you go, pretty," He said, a gentle rosiness kissing his lips as he pushed the plush into your arms.

A bit too small to hug it fully, slightly bigger than your chest.

"Pretty?" Fell rather cheeky, as you walked towards one of the benches. 

The warm summer air coated your body, hair stuck to the glossed lips, and you noticed the way his finger curled into a fist, as if wishing to push those few strands away. 

"Well, aren’t you?" He scratched the back of his neck at the poor attempt to crack a flirty joke. 

And as heartwarming as it was, maybe a little cheesy, you smiled, nuzzling cheek into the soft fur of your new gift.

"Mhm, whatever you say, handsome."

This time, his lean cheeks blazed with colour. Eyes slipped over your shoulder, as if the loveliness of your eyes was simply too much to bear. Cute.

"I’m Nanami," he said, coffee eyes finally meeting yours once again. "I was watching you for a while and thought you were pretty…"

The shyness creeping up his neck melted your heart. He was handsome, of course he was, with a sharp jaw and sandy hair, a few golden strands as if licked by the sun's rays. Eyes deep and warm, like sweet cocoa, held the damnedest purity that men your age usually did not possess. Pale skin, coated with a sheen of sweat, fingers curling and straightening under the weight of your gaze.

You sat down on the nearby bench, nothing but a black cat keeping your thighs from touching each other.

"Are you trying to flirt with me, Nanami?" You asked, turning head his way.

"Is it working?"

You hummed, leaning closer with a devilish smile dancing on your lips. "I think you’re pretty cute."

Nanami turned out to be the utmost gentleman. Always paying attention to everything you said, listening with pricked ears and quick nods. Sometimes the conversation turned to him, but more often to you. And although you thought of yourself as a rather boring person, Nanami enjoyed every word that slipped past your lips.

He seemed rather boring, but kind, shy, and utterly curious about your persona. Making a pleasurable warmth bubble in your belly and a wicked need to coax him into your arms. To use him for your own satisfaction, as back in the days when you enjoyed spending your nights with men too good to hang out with girls of your sort.

And soon you started leaning closer. And closer, placing the cat on the other side of the bench, pressing your thighs together. He was sweetly, utterly aware of your presence. Of the sweetness that filled his nostrils, the warmth of your body and giggles kissing his earlobes.

"I was thinking…" fell sweetly, with your breasts stuck to his arm.

Nanami’s breath hitched, lips felt slightly open. "Y-Yes?"

"Maybe we could move somewhere quieter?" A lovely pout formed on your lips, doe eyes lurking up from beneath the curtain of lashes. "There’s a lake nearby. And I could reaaally use a cold swim right now."

You felt a tremor slip down his spine. The goosebumps rising on the skin of his bicep, you curled fingers around. A bulge in his trousers that made your eyes twinkle and lips lift in a wicked smile.

"But you don’t h-have a swimsuit," he said, perfectly knowing how stupid his reasoning was.

Because the lack of a swimsuit was, indeed, the whole point of this secret meeting. 

So when a low, "Do you mind?" Slipped past your lips, he quickly shook his head.

"Let’s meet in ten, then." You said, before walking away towards the hidden beach with a gentle sway of your hips and a big cat wrapped within your arms.

It was safer to meet there separately. The reasons were obvious, but Nanami didn’t need to know them. There was no need, as for the past few hours you had been carefully scanning the park for the dark, heavy shoes and their owner, a face that still haunted your dreams.

It seemed he truly had no idea of your whereabouts, so the invitation seemed quite safe. Nanami appeared too good to get himself tangled up in your whole mess, yet the egoistic, carnal need for pleasure was far stronger than the need to keep a clear mind.

 The short path through the dark forest led you towards a small beach, with trees looming over the crystal water and the moon peeking through the thick branches. Crickets hummed a summer melody, gentle waves crashed over the soft sand and without a second thought, you started undressing yourself. 

The top, skirt, heels, followed by the flimsy white lingerie. A shiver ran down your spine when you dipped your feet in the water. Lukewarm, but still cooling your body in such a pleasing way. You slowly went further, and further, till the lake wrapped around your hips and moonlight bounced off the crystal droplets gathering on your skin.

Soft sigh slipped past your lips as you immersed yourself fully, with only your head peeking over the calm surface.

After a while, you finally heard footsteps slowly coming towards the beach. Nanami was close, and so you went back to the shore, slowly, slowly, walking out of the lake, with beads coating your naked body. Hanging off the perked nipples, nuzzling into the collarbones, dripping down your pussy, and a sheer sight of you could make one recall legends of water nymphs. With a beauty that unlatched heaven itself, carrying a wicked spell that spiralled men into madness.

When the shadow lurked from between the bending trees, your lips curled. Head tilted, mind already imagined the fever that would hit his lovely, virgin cheeks. 

"Nan–"

And yet, before the name could fully roll off your lips, your breath hitched instead. 

Because the man who appeared in front of you wasn’t him. The kind boy you met just minutes ago.

No, but instead Satan himself. Demon, nightmare, a fiend plaguing your life since the year before.

With a tall, muscular body dressed in black, heavy shoes wrapped around his ankles, creamy skin drenched… in blood. Long fingers wrapped around the long knife, and this damned smile bubbled behind the lavender irises.

"You–" a shuddered breath escaped your tightened throat, body suddenly a lot more naked than it should.

Everything you showed, exposed, and wanted to offer wasn’t meant to be seen by him.

And Suguru Geto knew it. Oh, he knew too well, and that’s why the lavender gaze travelled up and down your body with a satisfaction.

"Hi, baby," he said, slightly tilting his head. "Why the surprised face? Have you waited for someone else?"

You didn’t say anything. Didn’t need to confirm the obvious. Instead, your hands lifted to cover the soaked breasts, eyes quickly fell on the clothes left messily on the sand. Four big steps and you could at least grab the lingerie.

But Suguru noticed the way your gaze wandered, and a small gasp escaped his lips. He was faster, with long legs carrying him to your panties before you could take a step, body still frozen in fear. With one hand gripping the knife, he bent over and grabbed the dirty panties with the other.

"Such a pretty set. All for me?" He giggled, lifting the material to his nose. You could hear a low moan as he took a deep, heavy sniff with utter pleasure. Pervert. "Fuck, baby. You always smell so fucking good." Before you could snap back, his tongue peeked out past the pierced lip, taking a long, moany lick of your juices, lavender eyes not leaving your face for a second. "And taste like heaven."

Something bubbled in your belly. A mix of emotions too strange to identify, making your mind spin into a fury and spine tingle with a craving too queer to admit. The sole fact that standing naked in front of your stalker felt…

"Where’s Nanami?" you added quickly, trying to ignore the way your thighs clenched the moment Suguru moaned around your panties.

He took a step closer, coming your way at an unhurried pace. Panties hidden in the back pocket of his jeans, a thumb brushing away your juice, mixed with a crimson liquid on his cheek.

Suguru shrugged, eyes still fixed on your face. "Who?"

Your fingers turned into fists, as "What did you do to him, psycho?" fell through the gritted teeth.

But the gentle crease appearing between your brows melted Suguru’s heart. Low chuckle bounced off the calm water, as he was only a few steps away. If he wanted to, he could simply extend his hand and grab you by the neck. 

"Baby, I really thought you learned your lesson," an angelic pout twisted his lips, as he pressed the drenched knife to his cheek. "Let me think… are you talking about the guy who was coming to see you? Blond, slightly shorter than me?"

When a terror flickered behind your gaze, his eyes lightened. "Ah, so that was him? Well, I didn’t like the fact that he was coming to meet my girl," Lavender irises dropped down to your breasts covered by your hands, before slipping towards the soft belly, hips, mound of your pussy, with a low growl tickling your ears. "Fuck, baby. I’m so happy this fucker’s dead. I can’t believe–"

Before Suguru could finish, you took a step.

And the next one, and another, before your palm met with his cheek. You didn’t expect the hit to be that hard, and yet he stumbled and fell on the soft sand. With a shock crossing his face and hand lifting to grab his burning skin. 

"Bab–"

You launched towards him, your hips straddling his, palms pressing his shoulders down until his head hit the ground. Everything felt too weird, unnatural, as burning rage took over your mind and adrenaline pulsed beneath your skin. 

Another slap echoed from the looming trees, and when his head flew to the left, you quickly turned it right with the next hit. And the next, next, counting each man who died because of you. The jock, the kind guy, the diner waiter, the student from the library… Nanami. 

One hit more ruthless than another, but the adrenaline cooed over the sizzling pain that ripped your palms. No tears ran down your face, no trembling washed over your spine. 

It was a wrath that had been simmering beneath your heart for months and finally found a way to spill in a deeply dishonourable way, leaving you filled with disgust for the violence he forced upon you. 

When you finally finished, with deep breaths slipping one by one through your parted lips and eyes looking down at his face, a sort of peace dripped into your mind. Upon seeing a thin thread of blood trickling down his lips and a nasty, lavender bruise slowly forming high on cheeks.

He lay still with a mix of shock and absolute, loving madness that slipped in a shudder past the bloody traces on his face. 

If Suguru Geto had thought he already loved you those few minutes before, now, with your naked body straddling his and cheeks pulsing from a beating he had himself awakened in you – he wasn’t sure whether love was enough to describe the devotion his heart swelled with.

Your breasts rose with deep breaths, lips slightly parted, while your hands still pressed his shoulder into the sand. And before he could speak, your finger hooked around his lip piercing, pulling him forward as pain shot through every nerve the metal had struck.

"Stop fucking testing me," you growled, with squinted eyes looking straight into his. "Think you’re so smart? I know your psychotic ass is too miserable to lay a finger on me. Pull another stunt like that and I’ll fucking kill you," you launched him forward, without a care whether the lip ring would rip through the skin. "Do you understand?"

He quickly nodded, but the heart-shaped irises were enough to raise another wave of fury beneath your chest.

And when he thought you would stand up and simply walk away, leaving him on a sand with a blood trickling down his chin and a hard cock trying to rip through his pants, you…

Kissed him. Smashed your lips against his, licking clean the crimson liquid pooling on his skin. 

Suguru was already taken by surprise, but now, feeling your warmth so close to his body, he could swear that heaven was nowhere but in the taste of your sweet breath.

He moaned, drinking the saliva dripping from your lips and feeling the wet pussy rolling against his bulging jeans. Your hands lifted to his cheeks, squeezing them tight till another pitiful groan slipped right into your mouth.

And when his big palms landed on your hips, you pulled back, giving him yet another slap. "Don’t fucking touch me, you psycho."

Your words fell harshly, but the desire bubbling in your lower belly and sticky juices coating his jeans were enough evidence to make you feel utterly, madly turned on by the miserable state he allowed you to put him in.

"Baby, fuck, sit on my face, I’m begging you," he moaned, looking down at the long, silky thread that dripped down from your cunt right onto his bulge. 

The sheer sight made his mind spin, and when you moved over his face, Suguru was sure that blood started dripping from his nose. 

"I don’t care if you’ll suffocate, but you better make me cum," you stated, looking down into his dazed eyes.

Knowing fully well that the death between your thighs would bring him the peace he did not deserve.

With one move, you sat yourself on his face, tongue already peeking out and plastered to meet the heavenly sweetness of your cunt. A low, loud groan filled your drenched walls as he could finally savour the flavour he had craved for so long. 

Lavender eyes rolled back, muscular body trembled as you sat with your full weight, till his teeth grazed your swollen clit and tongue sealed the leaking entrance. He drank the honeyed saps like a man starved, lapping through your folds with low moans and shallow breaths. Getting himself intoxicated by the creaminess trickling down his throat and coating the inside of plush cheeks with a sheen of sugar.

His hand immediately slipped down to his cock, fiddling with a belt, only to pull out a massive, leaking shaft that hit his abdomen. You looked over your shoulder, mouth watering at the sheer sight of the monstrosity he dared to keep hidden all this time.

He did offer to be your boy toy, and maybe, maybe, you would think it over, knowing the fatness that could poke each and every nerve deep inside your pussy. 

When his lips curled around your clit, sucking on the swollen button, your hips rolled in pleasure. 

"Fuck," you moaned, feeling a smirk already tugging on his bloody lips. 

The metal rings felt slightly cold, bringing a weird pleasure to the heat that ripped you from the inside.

His long fingers curled around the thick shaft, pumping it in slow, lazy strokes. The reddened head pulsed as if ready to burst, balls contracted whenever your hips rolled over and over again, smearing his chin, cheeks, nose in a creamy cum.

His tongue fluttered around your clit, folds, poking inside the tightening cunt. When his other hand slipped up to grab your tit, you allowed it with a soft groan. Long fingers rolled the hardened nipple, squeezing the fat that fit into his palm just right. 

"My sweetest," he pulled slightly away, forcing a frown upon your lovely forehead. "That desperate to get fucked, huh? I’m sorry my baby needed to wait that long."

It could look as if he was talking to you, but, in fact, his squinted eyes were nowhere but on your glistening pussy. With another wave of cum already sticking to his lips and lonely hole clenching desperately around nothing.

"My–"

"Stop talking," you muttered, grabbing a fistful of his silky hair, only to push him towards your cunt. "I’m far from cumming."

And he did as you ordered, plastering himself again to the heaven between your legs. 

This time, he lapped more hungrily. With lips, tongue, nose poking all your sweetest buds, sucking on the trembling clit and pushing, pushing, pushing inside the weeping cunt. Each roll of your hips tugged painfully on his piercing, but he didn’t mind. 

No, but rather took a carnal pleasure from the heaviness of your body, feeling that dangerous warmth bubbling in his loins. 

And you were no better, with head falling behind and eyes closing from the ecstasy that was ready to spill any second. Looking back on his cock, you moaned, already imagining the fat, leaking shaft nuzzled deep inside your pussy. With a slightly curved head hitting your womb and a warm cum filling you to the brim.

"Oh fuck, I’m close," an almost inaudible whisper rolled off your tongue, but Suguru caught it in time.

With a sly smirk and lips sucking on your clit harsher, till the plumped bud trembled on his tongue, leaking a few droplets of sap.

His face turned red, for you really cut the air off and made him suffer in pleasure, strangled beneath your oozing cunt. Eyes rolled back again, a low groan spread through your pussy, sending another wave of climax down your spine.

And within the next few rolls and his tongue digging deep inside your soft walls – you finally cummed. Gushed, all over his face, drenching it in splatters of crystal droplets, landing in his mouth, on cheeks, dripping down the forehead. Your thighs squeezed around his head, a pitched moan left parted lips, and fingers grabbed his hair tighter. 

You trembled, and trembled, feeling the ambrosial orgasm tickle your spine. Probably the first and best given to you through oral sex alone. 

And as embarrassing as it was to admit, Suguru was, by far, the only man who made you moan that loud. 

You didn’t have a moment to catch your breath. No strength to lift yourself up from his body. And to him it was of no problem, as the second later, the world spanned only for you to find yourself under him.

With thighs glued to your chest and ass slightly lifted up. 

"I told you–"

His lips fell onto yours before you could finish, drawing a sweet moan from your throat. 

"My poor baby is in heat," he muttered, licking a long stripe of your sweating cheek. "Let me take care of you. You waited so fucking long, didn't you?"

"And whose fault is that?" You snapped, feeling his smirk back onto your lips. 

He kissed you messily, yet with a sweetness and care you would never associate with a psycho of his sort. 

"I told you," he started, pulling away to take his shirt off. Muscles upon muscles glistened under the moonlight spilling through the trees, dark locks cascading down to his hips. "You will regret rejecting my love."

His trousers quickly joined the shirt on the sand, and soon he was hanging over you naked. With a heavy cock lying on your belly and droplets of precum leaking onto your belly button. It burned down through your skin – the hefty girth that made your mind spin from the sight alone. 

He didn’t cum, as if waiting to release himself deep within the warmth of your pussy, and his next "Last time you mentioned something about getting knocked up, hm?", only confirmed the nasty thoughts already bubbling in your skull.

"Don’t know how to use a condom?" You bit down on lower lip, deep inside knowing that you yourself would throw that condom away. 

There was simply no way you would pass up a chance to feel such a monstrous shaft deep inside you. His big palms hook under your thighs, folding you even further, till the breath alone slipped in trembled gasps and chest squeezed under the heaviness of his body.

And yet, you still tried to expose yourself even further, moving your hips in desperate need to meet the long-craved fraction and the maddening stretch. It felt so embarrassing, humiliating, to get yourself drunk on the pleasure that tickled your fingertips and made your lips fall open.

Dizziness already coiled behind your eyes, and Suguru could see it clearly. In the way you looked at his leaking cock, with this slutty, needy gaze.

"Do you want me to use it, baby?" He chuckled, leaning himself down. Only lick a long stripe down your neck, feeling the sweat tickle his taste buds. "Tell me you don’t dream about getting fucked raw and stupid."

A moan slipped past your lips when the head of his cock smooched your entrance, and lips sucked on sensitive skin right beneath your jaw. "Just do it already, fuck."

"Tell me you love me," He murmured, teeth grazing one of your pulsing veins. "Tell me you’ll stay, and I promise to give you everything."

Hips already rolling, as you tried to get yourself closer to his fatness. To the tip that oozed with sticky precum and the heat radiating from his cock. 

A pathetic mewl escaped your throat as he sank himself a bit deeper. But only the plump head, that already marked the painful stretch you would surely get after the rest of the shaft followed.

"Stop dreaming, you psycho," you gritted through your teeth, pushing out even more of the cum that wrapped in a creamy ring around his cock. You stretched your hand, taking a fistful of his hair, only to pull him closer. Till your lips crashed in another kiss, the dried blood sticking to your maws. "Fuck me stupid, and I’ll think about it."

And Suguru, as desperate as he was, needed only those few, mean words to shove his massive shaft deep inside your pussy. 

A loud scream bounced off the trees, soon muffled by his lips, drinking in every cry, every moan that started spilling out. 

The stretch was as painfully ecstatic as you expected, spinning your mind with drowsiness and rolling eyes into the skull. He filled every corner, every fold of your plush hole, till the reddened head smooched your womb. You trembled from head to toe upon a sudden intrusion, and the way he immediately started moving. 

Pushing, thrusting, shoving his cock till the balls squelched against your lifted ass, and nasty splashing filled the little beach. He kept you in place, with muscular arms folding you in half and lips licking, sucking, and biting on the sensitive skin of your neck. Chest plastered to your nipples, brushing the perked buds each time he rammed his cock inside your weeping cunt.

The air felt sticky and steamy, with the sweetness of your breaths mixing whenever another moan slipped past your lips, and Suguru watched carefully as pleasure twisted your face.

The ethereal beauty that warmed your cheeks, eyes lidded in delight, a stream of spit dripping down your chin, before he licked it with a low, nasty groan.

"Fuck, baby, I waited so long," He muttered, mind spinning into madness whenever your plush cunt clamped on his cock. "So hungry, weren't you?"

When his fingers slipped between your bodies, only to press against your clit, a pitched, "Mmm y-yeah, fuck, I hate you so much," rolled right into his smirking lips.

He chuckled, shoving his shaft faster, deeper, till a small bulge appeared right under your belly button. "Do you? Because I thought you, ugh, liked them a bit mischievous, huh?"

You heard those words somewhere before. Maybe because they were the same words said to Nanami.  

But then, with his cock stuffing you, nasty, full and plush lips caressing yours, you couldn’t give a single fuck about how he knew about them. The only thing that mattered was his heavy, beefy body pressed to yours, leaving barely any space for the warm air that desperately tried to slip between your sweating skins.

"Suguru," a lovely mewl escaped your throat when his curved tip hit your sweet spot inside. Ramming into it relentlessly, with a force that drove your body into the sand. "So, oh god, you fill me so good."

His lips met your jaw, chin, lavender eyes tracing each scowl of your face. "You love it, don’t you, baby?" Big thumb rolled the swollen clit, pulling another pinched moan from your throat. "I know, baby, you love it so fucking much. And if I’ll do this," He rammed his tip against your spot again, before nuzzling it right against the plumped womb. "You will cum very, very soon."

And he was right. Pushing all your buttons, kneading your body in all the right places as if he knew exactly how to make a warmth bubble in your belly. 

Fingers of one hand dug painfully into the backs of your thighs as you opened them even further, letting him slip into you even deeper.

"Talk to me, baby." He ordered, feeling the erratic clenching of your walls. "Tell me how much you love me."

"I love it–ahhh," rolled instead, and you could feel a dissatisfied tsk bouncing off your chin.

"No, baby," his teeth sank into your neck, his thumb pressing on your clit even harder. "Come on, baby, tell me how much you fucking love me. I’ll kill every man you’ll ever try to talk to. Hell, I’ll slash your pretty friends’ throats if they try to keep me away from you." Each nasty word was marked by a more brutal roll of his lips. Till the sweet pleasure of smooching your womb soon turned into your painful cries. "Say it, say that you love me."

The warmth in your lower belly was ready to spill, head lulled to the side only to be brought back by his lips, tugging harshly on yours. He bit into them, then licked the swell with a coo, as if trying to coax you into the madness-confession he had waited so long for. 

And you, wrapped around the heavy weight of his cock inside your cunt and the way he made your feet curl in pleasure, finally, unfortunately, had given up. 

"Suguru, I love you–nghh–s-so fucking much," a sweet mewl slipped past your lips. "So good, fuck, you feel so fucking good. I love you, love you, love you, love you–"

Your desperate cries were muffled by his low groan, dripping into your throat, as he finally stilled. 

With cock kissing your womb, lips lick the tears rolling in the corners of your eyes and a thumb pinching the trembling clit. 

You came with a loud cry, squirting all over his beefy thighs, abdomen, soaking the trembling shaft that started filling your clamping walls with waves and waves of cum. Its stickiness glueing to your soft insides, creamy droplets plugging you so full, till the milky threads spilled from the rim of your cunt. 

And in the brief moment when Suguru Geto let his guard down, your fingers seized the long knife left messily on the sand and, with a single furious thrust, drove it deep into his left thigh. 

A low groan slashed through the air when the shimmering iron struck his thick muscles, sending a painful wave over his spine. 

You rolled his heavy body off, milky cum still dripping down your thighs and eyes… 

Eyes looking no better than his. With heart-shaped irises glancing down at his body wrinkling in pain, with a sweet giggle, as you finally felt the winning pleasure spreading all over your chest. 

His naked, muscular figure sprawled on the sand, cock already getting hard once again, upon seeing the bloody, sticky mess you left on him. Lavender gaze gazed up to you with a swelling devotion, and you needed to grit your teeth not to give him one last slap. 

Instead, you started dressing yourself, slowly, with eyes squinted and lips tugged by a sly smile. 

"I should fucking kill you," tickled his ears, and he could only give you a short nod. "But it would be a waste of resources," your eyes slipped onto his already leaking cock.

"I’ll come over tonight, baby," he mumbled, wrapping his hand around your ankle. If he could, he would crawl behind you, but the pain slashing through his thigh was already spiralling him into dizziness. "Fucking, wait for me, I’ll come over."

"I’ll be taking a shower in two hours, and I expect to see you there," you said with a final low hum and a tilt of your head, before walking away. 

And Suguru… he had to jerk himself twice before he could finally stand up, swaying and pain swirling droplets of sweat on his neck. Yet, neither death nor such a minor injury could ever keep him away from his sweet, precious girl.

©liahcharms all rights reserved. Do not copy, plagiarise, feed AI, translate or modify my works.

You know what, I kind feel sorry for Nanami... anyways, pyramidhead Toji next! I haven't written Toji for such a long time! I hope you enjoyed the first story <3

art by @/sayaartss on ig dividers by @uzmacchiato

You had been curled up in Dan Heng's side, enjoying the quiet conversation going on around you while March 7th went back and forth with your boyfriend. You had been speaking to Sunday at that point, asking the questions that you often did— if he was having a good time, if he was settling in, if he believes that Mr Yang is handsome for an older man.

He hadn't answered the latter question but you feel like the answer is obvious. 

"Where are you sleeping tonight then?" Had come out of your mouth without you even realising it, and Sunday seemed almost embarrassed to answer. It was really quite cute. 

"I'm sure I will be able to find space around the Express somewhere. I tend to favour places that allow me to admire the cosmos at any given moment, and there is quite a particularly comfortable arm chair in the Parlor Car."

"So… not in a bed then?"

Sunday's ears had turned pink. 

"Well, I do not expect you all to offer me considerable luxuries when I have hardly proven myself worthy of such just yet." Sunday explains, "Nevertheless, I am grateful for the opportunity to travel with you as is." 

You think for a second, then shrug. 

"Well, there's space in me and Dan Heng's room, why don't you bunk with us?" Dan Heng turns around at the sound of his name and you continue. "Sleeping on the arm chairs must be terrible for your neck, surely you're cramping by now?" 

"Ah… there is no need to go out of your way for me." Sunday shakes his head, then appears to hiss at something. "Though, I admit the arm chairs around the Express have been… unforgiving as of late." 

That was enough for you, you clap your hands together and try not to look too happy about helping Sunday out. "It's decided then!" You turn to Dan Heng. "It's fine with you, right?" 

Your boyfriend shrugs, "Its no trouble with me either, I do not mind it." 

Then back to Sunday, who's staring at you both— looking wide eyed and albeit a little flustered, but he appears to take in the excited expression you're wearing before seeming to revert his own to something much more polite. 

"Very well then, it would be impolite for me to turn down your generous invitation, I'm sure…" 

"Yey!" 

But now, circumstances have unfortunately… changed. And by that you mean that Dan Heng has been looking particularly handsome ever since all three of you returned back to your bedroom for the night and now you feel like you just cannot keep your hands to yourself. 

You had atleast waited until the conversation between you three had died down, leaving Sunday in a little makeshift bed thrown together with extra blankets and pillows before retreating to your own with Dan Heng. You waited until his breathing had settled and lights were out, and then you had all but pounced on your boyfriend after that. 

You're trying your best to hold it together, but when you're straddling Dan Heng as you are now and having him kiss you deep and slow— you're hardly to blame for not being able to hold back. Your hands reach for any and every part of him you can feel, from his hair to across his shoulders to down his abdomen, brushing intimate touches over his skin until you're pulling at his shirt and only then does he say something. 

"We should not do this." Dan Heng murmurs against your lips, "We might wake him."

But neither of you stop, your bodies all but grinding against one another. His hand is tight around your wrist and the other wraps around your hips, pressing them close to his. 

"We can be quiet, I promise I will." 

Dan Heng stops for a moment, but then he shifts beneath you, deliberately— until he's able to press his thigh up between your spread legs and without even thinking about it, a soft whine slips from between your lips. It's louder than you wished it was and he swallows it eagerly, but still pulls back to give you a straight look after the fact. 

"That was not entirely convincing." 

"That was hardly fair, you caught me off guard." You click your tongue. "If I'm actually trying to be quiet then I'll be able to." 

"I'm having a hard time believing you." 

You roll your eyes, but in reality you're trying not to laugh at the blank expression Dan Heng's giving you right now. Even with his flushed cheeks and messy hair. 

"Please?" You decide to beg, in a tone that's deliberately soft and airy and as much as Dan Heng knows exactly what you're trying to do; both of his hands rest flat on your hips, and he breathes out a sigh that tells you he's going to do exactly what you're asking anyway. 

"I suggest you try harder this time around then." 

You would've cheered had you not been reminded of your company. So instead, you wrap your arms around his shoulders and lean into give him a peck that doesn't last nearly as long as you wished it to. 

But you know you have to check something beforehand. So from your place still on top of Dan Heng, you angle yourself back— peering over the side of the bed in hopes of catching a glance of Sunday in his makeshift nest. 

You have to squint into the dark to see. 

You nudge Dan Heng. "Do you think he's asleep?" 

"It is doubtful." 

"Really? But he's been so quiet." You try to focus your eyes a bit more in the darkness until you're finally able to catch a glimpse of him. Sunday looks asleep— nuzzled up against one of the thicker blankets with his ear feathers resting softly around his cheeks. His eyes are closed, his breathing is soft. 

You frown. "He looks so serene. Seems pretty asleep to me." 

"I believe he just looks like that." He shrugs. 

"Well that's hardly fair."

You both turn to look at eachother for a beat. Then for a second. 

Until by the third, your lips are slamming against Dan Heng's once more and your hands are back in his hair; he welcomes you eagerly, his hands squeezing into your hips until you're pressing flushed and tight against him. You already feel so incredibly flustered, twisting yourself up in your boyfriend's lap despite the way your friend is sleeping only centimetres away. It's risky— but you can't help it, you need him. 

You atleast do as you said you would, trying to muffle every blissful sound your body wishes to cry out by pushing them behind Dan Heng's teeth. 

It almost works, almost— but a few break through against your will, driven by his insatiable kisses and it's enough to make your boyfriend's hands squish into your thighs as if to try and get your attention. 

"Perhaps we should—" Dan Heng starts but you cut him off. 

"He's definitely asleep."

"You would be mistaken actually." Sunday chooses that moment to respond from his place on the floor, and his voice is sudden enough to almost scare you off of Dan Heng's lap entirely had he not been holding you so tight. 

Your boyfriend looks at you. Face falling flat, but still flushed. 

"I told you."

You think you would've launched yourself into the cosmos out of embarrassment had Sunday not shifted in his sheets and distracted you, drawing both of your attentions as you timidly crawl off of Dan Heng's lap and sit by his side instead. 

"Apologies, I did not mean to startle you. And it was not my intention to easedrop either." Sunday starts, fidgeting with his hands. 

"You could've said something sooner, Sunday." You begin to do the same. "This is so embarrassing." 

But it seems Sunday isn't doing too well himself. When you look up to glance at him, you can just about make out the flush of his face— half obscured by the feathers of his wings curling around his cheeks. But even in the dim lighting of your room it's obvious he's red, which says enough about just how deep of a shade it must be for you to be able to notice. 

"We apologise if we woke you." Dan Heng eventually speaks up, ever the calm one. "It was not our intention to make you uncomfortable." 

But one look in his direction shows off the impression of his half-hard cock in his pants, and even that is too much for you to deal with. You bury your head in your hands and grumble, not only incredibly humiliated but now even hornier having been interrupted. 

Before you can say anything more, Sunday clears his throat— barely able to look at you. 

"I do not wish to intrude, I will easily excuse myself to elsewhere around the Express should you prefer. After all, you were already generous enough to offer me the opportunity to sleep here but you owe me no such kindness should.... circumstances change...."

You stare at him then. Really stare at him. And maybe that's when it clicks— the circumstances of Sunday resting on the floor while you made out with your boyfriend in bed. You don't know how long he's been listening but considering the expression he's wearing, you assume it wasn't all of a sudden. 

You blink and Sunday seems to grow uncomfortable beneath your gaze. A slight enough movement to bring your attention to something much more condemning— because now that you're suddenly aware of the bulge he's obviously trying to hide, you can't find it in yourself to ignore it. 

"Have you ever kissed a girl before, Sunday?" You blurt out, the question sudden enough for even Dan Heng to whip around and look at you. 

"I- I think that is hardly appropriate to share, I mean..." Sunday stammers. "I have had certain relations in the past, nevertheless I believe that—" 

"You're a virgin, aren't you?" You cut him off again. 

Sunday's cheeks appear to flush even pinker. 

"Perhaps." 

Dan Heng's palm rests down on your thigh after that, a wordless plea for you to take it easy and when it makes you notice the way Sunday's burying his face behind his wings, you think maybe he's got a point. 

"What? You don't have to be ashamed about it, I think it's cute," You try to comfort instead. "There's no way you didn't have offers, look at you— halovians are well known for being handsome, aren't they? Then what's the problem?"

"It... simply was not my priority, that is all." 

"So you admit it then? You're a virgin?" 

You gape, because you just can't help yourself. But when you turn to Dan Heng— half expecting him to be just as taken back, he only offers you a shrug. 

"I thought it was quite obvious, was it not?" 

Your attention is drawn back by the sound of shuffling blankets, and then in a moment Sunday is pushing himself to stand and brushing down his clothes. 

"Perhaps I should take my leave."

"You've never been curious?" You call after him. 

You have no idea what you're doing. You can even feel Dan Heng staring at the side of your face as if he's asking you the same thing, and perhaps it's to do with how horny you are right now, or maybe it's because you do feel a bit of pity for Sunday not having felt intimacy before. 

But now you can't stop. You're not sure you even want to. 

You admit he's handsome, sure he's no Dan Heng, but you had meant it when you said it earlier. From the way that he carries himself to his features— his wings, his eyes, his halo. Even now that he's staring at you with such an…. unreadable expression you can't help but want to kick your feet. 

"What?" Sunday looks almost perplexed. 

"Curious?" You repeat, because you're in too deep now. "You've never thought about what it would be like to touch a girl?" 

Sunday doesn't answer right away, he fidgets a bit more. He scratches a hand through his hair, fluttering the feathers of his wings at the same time and then a sudden realisation dawns on you. 

"Wait— You didn't take a vow, right?"

You swear you hear Dan Heng huff out a laugh at your panicked voice. Sunday's palm rests over his face. 

"I really shouldn't overstay my welcome, I- I am sure Pom-Pom will have somewhere in mind for me to-" 

"You staying here isn't an issue." Dan Heng is the one to cut him off this time, earning a look from you aswell. You had thought yourself to be digging your own grave with your insistent questions knowing your boyfriend was right there with no intervention. 

But when Dan Heng turns to meet your eyes after a moment, he seems to be thinking the same thing as you are. 

And it looks like he's on board. 

You turn yourself back towards Sunday, who's frozen in his spot. "But you're not trapped here either, you can leave right now if you want. I'll pretend this conversation never happened and then we'll go back to normal, there's always an armchair waiting for you somewhere, right?" 

Sunday appears to think on that for a moment, and you wonder what sort of things are going on in his mind. You're sure it seems as ridiculous to him as is sounds to you— the night has went from an innocent sleepover between friends to well…. an implication of something to come that holds much more weight… should he decide to stay that is.

You watch as Sunday shifts from one foot to the other, and then with a delicate flutter of his wings he's looking away from you again. 

"If… if it is truly no trouble…" 

You don't respond to that, but you clasp your hands together as if pleased with his answer. It's quiet for a moment then, aside from the shift of the comforter beneath you as you push yourself onto your knees and you catch Dan Heng's gaze in the movement. 

He looks at you— in that grounding, beautiful way that he always does. And then he nods, as if giving you silent permission. 

"Do you two do this often then?" Sunday asks as he watches you get comfortable. 

"No." You say, "Maybe you're just special."

He flushes at that, and you're surprised that the same man who was once so powerful within Penacony would be so easily undone by a few compliments. Pleasantly. 

You can tell that he's out of his element, most likely due to his own inexperience but you're not above taking the lead in this moment— deciding to start with something soft first to test the waters. 

Your hand outstretches towards the man opposite you, and at the same time you feel Dan Heng's arm loop around your waist. 

"Come here." You beckon Sunday closer, a command that he obeys with ease. He moves with a strange grace, his shoulders pulled back, his steps steady and confident. But you notice the furrow of his brows, the curiosity in his gaze. 

When he comes to stand just off the side of the bed you're kneeling on, you look up at him through your lashes. 

"Can I touch them?" You ask, motioning to the wings that elegantly extend from his throat. "I'll be gentle." 

The grey feathers appear to shudder out at the question before Sunday nods. 

"If you would like." 

Dan Heng remains silent behind you, but you can feel his eyes on your features from where he's tethered at your side. His thumb is stroking at the points in your waist where his hand rests, and when you reach out to brush your fingers through Sunday's ear feathers for the first time— you feel him squeeze. 

"They're so soft, you must take great care of them." You say, combing your hand through the nerves of Sunday's wings as his lips part wordlessly. You don't point out the way his whole body seems to clench. "Are they sensitive?" 

"At certain times." Sunday whispers, "Halovians do not often allow others to touch them without reason. Lest it stir an unwelcome reaction." 

"Is this one unwelcome?" 

Your question deliberately accompanies an experimental squeeze of your fingers against the base of Sunday's wings, making them flutter.

"N-not at all." Sunday's next breath shudders out of him. "Quite the opposite."

"That's good." 

The flush on the tips of his cheeks deepens slightly as his wings appear to bend into your touch. 

Sunday looks at you then, and Dan Heng gives your waist another stroke in response. Then you hear his body shift behind you— until you feel him come to kneel at your back and he steadies you against his chest with a touch that's grounding and safe. 

You continue to massage your hands through Sunday's wings, squeezing and applying pressure to certain spots that he seems to favour. With every brush of your fingertips, he appears to get more confident— his lips parting as sounds of lithe and quiet pleasure appear to threaten to spill from behind his teeth. 

He's rocking slightly where he stands, and perhaps you'd be doing the same were Dan Heng not holding you upright— allowing you to use his chest to lean against as Sunday's body tries to sway closer into your touch. 

But Dan Heng’s hands on your waist tether you to reality, despite the way anticipation makes you feel lightheaded and giddy. You press yourself back a bit further, curling into his chest and you feel him lean forward to smear his lips against your neck— pressing a few delicate kisses up the column of your throat as you bare more of your weight back into him.

It's incredibly erotic, having Dan Heng kiss his way up your neck while you're massaging Sunday's wings. You feel pinpricks of pleasure begin to gather beneath your skin as your boyfriend's lips press against the sensitive places he knows you like, and Sunday watches you as you dig your hips back into Dan Heng's crotch— humming when you feel his bulge greet you in return. 

As for Sunday himself, well it’s safe to say he’s pretty overwhelmed right now.

He’s always thought you to be kind, and he’s acutely aware of the possibility of you always appearing during his quieter moments because you feel sorry for him. 

It’s not that he deliberately isolates himself from the Express in the moments you happen to come find him. But it’s more so, Sunday just feels like he’s finally able to exercise his freedom to take a moment of repose whenever he requires it. Back when he was the head of the Oak family, he often found himself chained to the grandeur banquets— forcing himself to socialise even when he felt like he was due to collapse due to his own exhaustion, forcing a smile and a laugh just to keep up appearances. 

But now, as he’s come to find himself a member of the Express— it’s much the opposite. In fact, Mr Yang actually encourages him to get more rest than he ever would’ve considered to take himself. Always insisting that a proper night of sleep would do him good. 

Though it seems tonight, especially now, will be another sleepless one. 

"Are you certain you want this?" Dan Heng interrupts Sunday's train of thought with his question. When he snaps back out of it, he realises you're both staring. "You can stop this at any time." Dan Heng assures him. 

"Apologies, it seems I… lost my train of thought is all." Sunday shakes his head. "I'm fine." 

"Don't overthink it." Dan Heng says again, lips still pressing against your throat and Sunday appreciates the advice as he's drawn back to the pressure of your fingers on his wings. 

He wonders if you can both see how hard he is— how damp the inside of his slacks have become since this all started. If he were to be honest, he's been hard since way before you even touched him; turned on by the simple sounds of your desperation when you believed him to be asleep. 

But he's never been one to feel so… out of control. And as much as Sunday would usually crave the feeling of taking charge in most moments— he can't help but feel particularly out of his depth right now. 

You stroke your fingertips across the top of Sunday's wings and it's so sensitive and good that he feels his body almost crumble; it's concerning actually, he believes he could cum with just this. He moans at that, the pleasure outweighing his embarrassment as he watches Dan Heng continue to kiss at your neck— his hands roaming your body, palming at your breasts and waist at the same time as you curl and back yourself up into his touch. 

It's a spur of the moment thing, the way Sunday reaches out to do the same; to perhaps try his hand at spurring that same reaction from you himself. But when his fingers lift and tilt within even an inch of your direction, Dan Heng's eyes rise again to meet him.

"That would not be wise." Dan Heng says, his voice so absolute it almost chills Sunday as he hesitates. 

"I—" 

"Are you ready for more now, Sunday?" You cut him off, looking at him through long lashes as Dan Heng stays watching from his place behind you. Your dreamy tone is a stark contrast to the almost uncharacteristically rougher tone that just came from your boyfriend, but he doesn't think too much into it. 

"Yes." Sunday responds anyway, "It appears I am at your mercy."

Dan Heng moves from behind you first, resting himself down on the mattress and then he looks at Sunday again. "I suggest you do not get carried away then." 

And he feels vaguely like he's being scolded. 

You follow after him, sitting between your boyfriend's legs with your back to his chest. You angle your hips up a little higher before quickly kicking off the bottoms of your pyjamas and your underwear and getting yourself comfortable. It catches him off guard, the sudden glimpse of your pussy so unfiltered and already so… slick. Your folds are glistening even in the dim lighting of your room on the Express and Sunday wants nothing more than to reach forward and swipe his fingers through it. 

He feels the angle spur a response in him, one that's deep in his lower abdomen as his cock strains against the fabric of his slacks once more and his mouth feels suddenly dry. 

But despite your faux confidence you're feeling just as overwhelmed as you can imagine Sunday is. From your position in Dan Heng's lap you can feel how hard he is, bulge pressing up against your lower back as his breathing makes goosebumps burst across the flesh of your shoulders and neck. 

Not to mention the way Sunday's looking at you, the gold of his eyes appears to shine as he takes you in— admiring your intimate skin is his entirety and it takes everything in you to not close your legs and shy away from it. 

Maybe it's because you know Dan Heng's got you, and it seems he's enjoying this just as much as you are— despite his cool exterior, the warmth of his palm as it rests on the inside of your thigh feels incredible and that alone drives you to keep up whatever game you're playing. You press your back further into his chest before looking up at your new partner from beneath your lashes. 

But Sunday doesn't seem to notice you bringing your foot up until it's pressing beneath the hem of his shirt and you use it to drag the fabric upwards before pressing the sole against his chest. He can't help himself from wrapping his hand around your ankle and squeezing it tight, suddenly feeling like he can't breath at the action. 

"Your turn." You say, acting innocent like you're not showing him your pussy and teasing him with your touch. "Or do you want me to help you?" 

You giggle, so sinfully cute that Sunday feels lightheaded again at the idea of you undressing him. He could lose himself in the image of it, your hands tucking beneath his waistband before pulling it down, blinking up at him as his cock springs free; he feels almost bewildered by his own want. 

It's only when Dan Heng's arm wraps around your shoulders from behind does he find himself on solid ground again and your foot falls back onto the mattress with a soft thud. 

"I am sure he can handle it." Dan Heng assures you, his lips pressing against your ear as your tugged closer to his chest. 

"Yes." Sunday says the same. "You needn't worry about me." 

Sunday's a bit clumsy in the moments after— quickly discarding himself of his slacks and shirt before folding them up neatly and placing them aside. Even in these moments, he cannot skip on his habits but when he feels that first sting of sexual freedom that comes with pulling off his boxers he can't help the way he sucks in through his teeth. 

It leaves him bare in a way he's never felt before, standing infront of you and Dan Heng as you lie back against your boyfriend's chest on the mattress. Your eyes on Sunday's cock. 

"It's so beautiful, Sunday." You say, authentically sweet. "It suits you."

The praise still makes Sunday feel suddenly self-conscious. 

"My apologies if my inexperience hinders this for either of you." 

But it is Dan Heng that responds to him first. His hand comes over to rest on your inner thigh as he spreads your legs wide enough to hook them over his own, and it almost seems like an offering. 

"You need not apologise, though perhaps it's best if you follow my lead." 

"Yeah, Dan Heng's right." You agree. "It's supposed to be fun anyway, so don't worry about it, okay?" 

That does a little for Sunday's anxieties but still he finds himself feeling rather awkward. He swallows heavily for a moment, and then with another glance at your glistening folds his wings shudder again. 

"What's wrong?" You smile, beckoning him closer with a simple blink rather than an outstretched hand this time. "I think you're past being shy now, come closer."

"Let me guide you, okay?" You watch as Sunday does, spreading wide so he has enough space to settle between your legs. "It's really easy once you get the hang of it." 

Your eyes lock on the space below his hips, and he feels his wings instinctively curl around his cheeks in that way they often did whenever he was flustered. 

Sunday watches Dan Heng loop an arm around your waist as he holds you steady, allowing you to rely on him as you turn all of your focus onto Sunday's cock. The first time he feels your fingers reach up to graze along his shaft, he almost cums right there and then, already finding the sensation to feel miles better than his own hand. 

You suck your lower lip between your teeth as you reward Sunday with a few more strokes of your fist, and he feels his expression break into something much less controlled than he's used to as his legs threaten to buckle beneath him. But he can feel Dan Heng staring at him from over your shoulder and his gaze is enough to keep him in check. 

You appear to find a pace quite quickly, though it remains slow and steady, as if you can already tell what he likes. You leave soft touches up the sensitive veins on the side of Sunday's cock and brush your thumb along the sensitive tip, allowing your hand to wrap all the way around him as you easily pinpoint and squeeze at the spots that make him shake. 

"Does it feel good?" You ask, continuing that rhythm along his cock as you send him a heated look from beneath your lashes. 

He feels like he can barely think, but somehow he manages to find words as he readjusts himself between your spread thighs. 

"Astoundingly so." Sunday responds, though he doesn't think that even comes close to just how incredible you're making him feel. "Nevertheless— it is not only my own enjoyment I desire, but that of yours too." 

"You're so thoughtful." 

You seem to giggle again at that, a sound he's growing quite fond of, though it's not mean-spirited and sounds more as if you're pleased. Your free arm blindly reaches back to anchor yourself against Dan Heng and as if the action was a wordless request, your boyfriends hands begin to move against you. 

Sunday can't take his eyes off the way Dan Heng's fingers pull back the folds of your pussy at first— bathing you in tenative, soft touches that despite their litheness seem to spur such a reaction from you it makes your hold on him almost waver. 

But at the same time, it makes Sunday's mouth water and his cock twitch, watching the way two fingers being pressed against your clit is enough to make your back arch— your lips parting to moan as your pussy is spread wide again on Dan Heng's next touch and he takes in the delicate softness and warmth that he wishes to feel for himself. 

His wings flutter at his neck and he looks at you again, a depth to his gaze that you could surely swim in. "Is there something more you require of me, such as…." To have him inside of you, that's what he's implying. His eyes glance down between your legs as if to signify it. 

But with another particularly drool-worthy twitch of your thighs and another few pumps of your hand along Sunday's cock, you lean back into Dan Heng's chest and smile, twisting into your boyfriend's arms as you shake your head and he continues to massage at you with two fingers. 

"This is fine for now." Your lashes flutter as you take a moment to gather the precum from Sunday's tip and smear it along him; making everything feel much more soft and wet. But he doesn't know where to look— trying to decide whether he should admire your beautiful expressions, or watch the way Dan Heng's fingers are drawing another sticky circle through the delicate petals of your pussy and noting how your body twitches in response. 

Your neck turns to look over your shoulder as Dan Heng's eyes finds yours. "And you?" 

The look he gives you in response is so intense, Sunday almost feels it. His fingers come forward to tilt up your chin, “I can handle that part.” 

“Are you sure, I—“ Sunday interjects but Dan Heng's looks at him again, with that same sharp gaze that he had met him with earlier.

“Quite certain.”

His tone leaves no room for argument. 

“Ofcourse.” Sunday says, though his words are wound tight. "It is not my intention to overstep nor take your generosity for granted.”

Dan Heng helps you to your knees easily as he shoves his pants down from beneath you, leaving you hovering above his lap as you face Sunday, allowing him to take in the way your pupils are blown wide and your lips are swollen. He wishes he could kiss you, just to feel what it's like; but there's a part of him that tells him not to take advantage of your kindness; as if your hand is not wrapped around his cock. 

But perhaps that opportunity will come eventually. 

Though for you, you feel like you're already in heaven. 

It only takes seconds, before Dan Heng's cock is springing free and resting against the inside of your thigh; smearing precum along your skin and only moments before he's got it wrapped in his own fist— angling you in a way that has it pressing up against your entrance. You watch as Sunday bites on his lower lip as he watches, and you're not sure if it's all of the attention you feel like is on you right now, or the way Dan Heng lets his cock swipe through your folds; but you're utterly soaked. 

“It’s okay, Sunday. You feel good so far— this is only the first time." You say with such kindness it makes Sunday shudder, but your voice breaks off when you begin to lower yourself down on Dan Heng as he all but splits you apart. 

You don't think you'll ever get used to the stretch, even in this form— it never seems to subside, splitting you apart as your head rolls back but you still manage to push more of Sunday's cock into your tightly wound fist until your hand is squeezing at the base. 

"Do… ah— you want me to put my mouth on it?" You say through fluttered lashes. 

You're certain you hear Sunday gulp. 

"If…. if you're sure and— it is not too much trouble." 

"I want to." 

You lean forward quickly following his permission, forcing Dan Heng to have to hold you steady as he sinks another few inches inside of you— particularly deep this time as your toes curl from where they're folded up beneath you, making your head swirl. You exhale across the sensitive glands in Sunday's cock at first— half to tease him and half to keep yourself coherent, but then comes the first, gentle little kiss that you smear against the tip and he helps you with your reach by taking a step closer. 

And it does help. It helps so much, because by your next sharp inhale you're able to wrap your lips around the tip and suck— and that pressure alone is enough to make Sunday's wings shiver out as he rests his hand on your shoulder. 

You try to keep your focus on him, but as you continue to sink down on him and Dan Heng at the same time— feeding yourself another inch of Sunday's shaft while your boyfriend presses more into your pussy, you feel so incredibly full it's overwhelming. It feels like you're out of body, pleasure making your head feel thick and heavy as your tongue begins to tease the underside of Sunday's cock and your hand is continuing to pump what you can't fit in just yet. 

You gag around him, taking a little too much at once as your throat tightens up all of a sudden and then you begin your withdrawal; leaving spit coating along the flushed veins of his cock as Sunday's hips lean forward to follow your movements. It's as if he's beckoning you not to leave. But when Dan Heng chooses that very opportunity to sink all the way inside of you, you can't help but whine from where your lips are still wrapping around him and Sunday almost breaks. 

You feel like you might pass out. So full and stuffed as your mouth and pussy are both kept busy, thankfully— Dan Heng gives you a moment, letting you get used to the stretch and when you try to blink the stars from your eyes, you notice the way Sunday's staring down at you. Its beautiful really, the way he's watching you twist your hips on top of your boyfriend; his halo just visible over the top of his head as his messy hair frames his flushed cheeks— he looks like he's absolutely enamoured by you. 

But Sunday's cock remains tight against your palm, and despite your current state you still find it in yourself to press a few sensitive kisses up the sides of him, blinking at him as you do so. 

"How does it feel?" You steel yourself enough to ask, breathing hard. Despite how full you feel, despite your eagerness to be stuffed from both sides— your need. 

"Your technique is sure enough …. q-quite impressive."

"So you don't want me to stop?" 

You feel the way Sunday's cock throbs against your palm at your question; as if answering for him, and part of you wonders if he's going to begin to beg. But it appears he's able to keep some semblance of himself at least when he responds. 

"Without a doubt, I do not wish for this to end so soon."

"That's good." 

Dan Heng's voice sounds after that, a soft "Are you ready? Let me know if it gets too much." as his hands stroke up and down your back. 

And as if answering for you; your body begins to shake in anticipation as Dan Heng offers you a few gentle, test thrusts— making sure you're ready before he leans over to smear some soothing kisses along the back of your shoulder. You watch Sunday's lips move with a fluttering blink, and you assume he might be cursing beneath his breath were it not drowned out by the way you're back to suckling at the head of his cock. 

You feel like your ears are ringing and Sunday's hips stutter as he tries so hard not to thrust into your throat. But that same moment, is when Dan Heng begins to find a his pace, and nothing could've ever prepared you for how good it feels to be fucked from one side while taking cock from the other. 

You've never quite felt anything like it. You readjust your knees on the mattress before Dan Heng's hands come to squeeze at your hips and he finds a rhythm to rock up into you. Its slow at first, each thrust long and deep, pushing up against the spongy, sensitive spots inside of you with such an ease that you don't even notice that you're suddenly bouncing on his lap to chase more of it. 

But you use that same momentum to stuff even more of Sunday's length even deeper into your mouth, feeling him hit the back of your throat before he lunges forward and your walls shudder tight around Dan Heng at just how desperate the man above you seems to be. It spurs you on, so you continue to suckle and kiss all over his cock until Dan Heng's voice appears to draw both of your attention. 

"How are you holding up?" He asks, part breathless as he continues to fuck up into your pussy, but still sounding far more composed than you feel.

Sunday thinks he's talking to him but he's not, he's speaking to you. With your mouth stuffed full of cock and your dazed expression— you hardly manage a Mhm. So you pull off for a moment to answer him, replacing your mouth with your fist in the meantime, but Dan Heng tilts your head back to face him and then he hums, murmurs something beneath his breath and kisses you instead. 

You don't see it, but Dan Heng looks at Sunday then, locks his gaze as his mouth moves with yours and the look he gives him almost feels predatory— like the way an animal would guard their resources. Sunday's never seen Dan Heng in such a way; used to his more friendly, but relaxed personality. 

But this, how he is now as he bounces you on his lap and at the same time; watches you stroke at Sunday's cock, makes Dan Heng appear much more dangerous. Possessive even, when his tongue presses its way between your lips and his sharp eyes narrow at the halovian opposite him. 

Sunday makes a mental note of that behaviour, but he doesn't cease his slow, back and forth movements either, thrusting into your fist with an eagerness he would normally be ashamed of. His hips stutter as he rolls the head of his cock through your closely gripped fingers again and this time his lips part, his voice hitching with the exhale that you breath into Dan Heng's mouth. 

You gasp as you break the kiss, and as if Dan Heng can feel something Sunday can't he begins to reach around your hips to rub at your pussy again. It makes your head drop back to moan for a second— so incredibly broken and lost in mindless pleasure but still you find it in yourself to lean forward, allowing Sunday between your lips again as you go back to suckling on the tip of his cock. 

Its like something from one of his most sinful fantasies; to have Dan Heng fucking you while you suck Sunday off and he almost feels guilty for having you in such a position. But there's a part of him, a past part of him that wishes it were he that was getting to feel the sweet hug of your pussy right now— and as he watches your body clench and stutter with every wet slap against Dan Heng's hips, he can't help himself from touching you. 

He ignores the look it earns him from behind you, but he's still respectable enough to not take it too far. Sunday brushes the hair back from your face and watches as you take more of his cock, your eyes fluttering closed at your obscene pleasure as your throat relaxes and you swallow around him. It earns you a moan, then another trembling pump of his hips before you glance up at him through your lashes and that seems to send him hurtling towards his orgasm with a speed he was not expecting. 

Though it appears he's not alone, from where your lips wrap around him— Sunday can feel the way you're moaning around his cock, drooling all over his shaft as Dan Heng continues to rub at your pussy with two fingers while he fucks you. Even your boyfriend has began to moan himself, groans that appear more controlled but rougher in comparison to Sunday's more desperate sounds. 

Sunday feels tension begin to pinch at his shoulders, his thighs shaking as you begin another wet withdrawal and then all of a sudden— with a particularly deep thrust of Dan Heng's cock it sends you forward. Your nose presses against the base of Sunday's cock so suddenly it knocks the air out of him, sending him curling forward as he feels those first tendrils of pleasure begin to take root in his body as his orgasm suddenly blooms. 

It floods into your mouth until you choke, forcing you to draw back so you can really taste his load— though it only takes a few more seconds before you're following him off that edge and having to break away. Dan Heng continues to fuck you through your own organs as he holds you steady, one arm looping around your waist while the other stays between your folds. 

You pump Sunday's cock to draw out his pleasure at the same time, causing a few of the remaining drops of his cum to fall and splatter over your bottom lip and chest and Sunday feels like he might actually pass out at the way his load appears to pearl on top of your skin. 

As your body begins to seize and twitch on top of Dan Heng, Sunday notices the way his pace also does the same— soon followed by a clipped grunt of his own before he can see the sticky ring that appears to form at the base of Dan Heng's cock. 

Everything feels so wet and warm in the aftermath. The long strokes of your fist along Sunday's cock have turned to slow pets, fingers dancing along the now flushed skin until he's shuddering and taking half of a step back. You finish it with a kiss against his tip, as if bidding his pretty cock farewell and then you all but collapse back into Dan Heng's chest as he catches you. 

"How do you feel?" You ask as you take in Sunday's completely roused state. He's much different now compared to how you're used to seeing him; with his incredibly flushed expression and his messy hair, his slacks around his ankles and his wings curling around his cheeks. 

It's quite cute you think, miles from the man you're sure everyone once thought him to be. 

"You held up quite well." Dan Heng offers to Sunday first. 

Followed by your voice as you find yourself comfortable on his softening cock. "Soooo…. how was it?" You murmur, drawing Sunday's gaze to you this time and there appears to be a dull glow to it that wasn't there before. 

"Yes, it was… quite remarkable." 

"I like that compliment." You smile back, watching Sunday's wings spasm in the aftermath of his orgasm as he fumbles to pull back on his underwear and clothes. "But one more thing, come here one more time!" 

It takes considerable effort to push yourself up, still plugged up by Dan Heng's cock but you manage to grab at the chest of Sunday's shirt before all but pulling him into you. Its quick and catches him off guard, the way your lips are soft against his— as if rewarding him with a kiss that is so utterly sweet that he almost melts into you. 

You think he actually might when you feel his body relax, and when you tease along his lips with a press of your tongue— you take pride in the dazed expression it leaves him with when you suddenly pull away. You sink back into Dan Heng's chest with a little kick of your feet, and try not to smile too hard at the way Sunday seems so utterly perplexed and…. blissfully dazed. 

"Maybe you'll have a much better sleep tonight compared to when you first got here." 

You joke, shattering the tension in a lighthearted way that seems to bring Sunday back. He clears his throat. 

"Heh, perhaps that may be the case." He says, but fidgets. "Though I should most likely clean myself up first, I dislike making a mess at the best of times." 

There's a lull of silence after that, and you can tell by the look on Sunday's face that he appears to be thinking. He gathers up the rest of his things, albeit not much, before turning to leave the room before you can stop him. 

"You know, you can still sleep in this room." You say before he can go, causing Sunday to still in his step out of the door before he turns. 

"She is right." Dan Heng agrees, hugging you tight. "Our offer still stands despite what has just taken place." 

You don't know for certain, but you think Sunday seems to relax at that. He exhales a breath, then sighs— as if suddenly remembering how to breath. 

"Then I will see to it that I shan't wake you both on my return." 

You laugh, knowing that no matter how loud he is you're definitely too spent to wake up for anything tonight. "We'll consider it your revenge for earlier." 

"Heh. Perhaps I am owed that much." 

If you ask Steve, he’ll say you’ve always the quiet sibling. Which is ironic, considering Steve Harrington has never been quiet a single day in his life.

But you guess compared to him—the hair, the confidence, the king of Hawkins High—you’re the quiet one. The studious one. The one teachers actually like.

You don’t feel like the calm one; you just prefer observing people instead of talking to them. It’s easier. Comfortable. Safer.

Anyway, all of that is just to explain why, on the first Tuesday of October in tenth grade, you are sitting in the back of Mr. Clarke’s class, doodling hexagons in the corner of your notebook and minding your own business, when your life quietly shifts without you realizing.

Lucas Sinclair sits at the front, beside his friends. The loud ones, you've labeled them over the course of the semester. They've always been that way, especially in middle school. Not loud in an obnoxious way, but they always have questions for Mr. Clarke. It's quite amusing, really. 

You have always noticed Lucas Sinclair.

Maybe not in any grand, life-changing way, but in that small, secret way where you register how cute someone is before you can stop yourself. He's focused, pencil tapping, eyebrows knitted. His back is straight, and his hand shoots up more often than half the class. He's… determined. You admire that in a quiet, distant way.

He doesn’t look at you. He rarely, if ever, looks back here. To be fair, most people don’t—unless they're looking for a Harrington. Steve has made your last name loud. You keep it soft. So you sit there—doodling, invisible, perfectly content—until Mr. Clarke clears his throat in the way that means trouble.

“Miss Harrington?”

Your head snaps up, the way a cat does when a toaster pops.

Every head in class turns. Including Lucas Sinclair’s.

“Yes?” You ask, trying to sound like you haven’t been drawing geometric flowers for the past ten minutes.

Mr. Clarke gestures to the board. “Would you mind walking us through number five? I noticed you weren’t taking notes, so I want to be sure you’re following.”

Translation: I think you’re distracted. Prove me wrong.

You swallow, push your chair back, and walk to the front. Your heart hammers, but your voice—thank God—comes out steady. You explain the problem. Step-by-step. Clear, concise, maybe a little too soft-spoken, but correct.

When you finish, Mr. Clarke’s eyebrows lift the way they do when one of the loud boys, like Dustin Henderson, asks him a question that makes an impression on him.

“Excellent work.”

You nod, cheeks warm, and turn back toward your seat.

That’s when it happens.

Lucas looks at you.

Not the casual glance you give someone walking by. A real look. Surprised, impressed… almost curious. It's small. A flicker. But little did you know it's the start of something bigger—friendship, crushes, chaos, heartbreak, healing—all of it, tangled together like the messy physics of your teenage lives.

But you don't know any of that yet.

All you know is this:

Lucas Sinclair has just noticed you. And for reasons you wouldn’t understand until much later—your heart stammers and your stomach flips upside down.

The next couple days are full of quiet glances. Not dramatic ones—just the kind that linger half a second too long. A smile exchange when you pass in the hallway; a soft nod across the cafeteria; a moment in English class when you catch him watching you and he looks away so fast he shifts nervously in his seat.

And then you realize something embarrassing:

You are waking up in the morning and combing through your hair three more times than usual.

Not because you care that much about school. Not because you have anywhere special to be. But because of him. Because maybe—just maybe—you hope that Lucas Sinclair might keep noticing you.

Apparently, you aren't subtle.

“Who’s got you all dolled up today, hm?” Steve asks one morning, leaning against the kitchen counter with a smirk. He bites into the chocolate chip waffle he holds.

“What are you talking about?” You ask, but he reaches out and flicks the scrunchie in your hair lightly.

“You always wear your hair down. You never wear this unless you’re trying to impress someone.” His eyes narrow. “Is it Dustin? Please tell me it’s not Dustin Henderson.”

“It’s not Dustin.”

“So it is someone.” He persists. “Is it Mike Wheeler? It'll be good if it's Mike, because—”

“It’s no one, Steve.” You shove past him, cheeks warm. “It’s called personal grooming.”

He grins like he’s caught you red-handed. “Oh, my little sister has a crush.” He places a hand over his chest dramatically.

“I hope Jonathan Byers gives you another punch. And on the mouth this time, so that you shut up,” You mutter on your way out.

He laughs—because his teasing definitely worked.

The universe must’ve thought that was funny, because on your way to third block, Dustin Henderson collides with you like a human wrecking ball.

“Sorry—sorry—oh crap—!”

Your folder slides across the hallway. Your pens scatter everywhere, and Dustin scrambles like he’s defusing a bomb. Then, another pair of hands appear on the floor beside yours.

Lucas.

“Hey,” he says softly, picking up your notebook before you could reach it. “Sorry about him. He doesn’t watch where he’s going when he’s excited.”

As he lifts the notebook, the cover flips slightly and Lucas’s eyes catch on your doodles spilling across the front page in pen and pencil, revealing the half-finished sketch you’d been working on earlier: a roller skater, mid-jump in the air, motion lines curling like smoke.

His eyebrows lift, soft and earnest. “You drew this? It’s… really good.” You freeze—because compliments aren’t usually delivered to you, and definitely not in warm, chest-deep voices by boys with unfairly pretty eyes.

You nod, heat crawling up your neck.

“Oh, um… thank you,” you manage, the words tripping out softer than intended. Lucas smiles like he genuinely means it before closing the notebook gently and handing it back.

“Yeah, Dustin...” you say, brushing hair from your face—finally replying to his earlier apology. “He’s… always excited.” You're an observer, of course you’ve seen that over the years.

Lucas laughs quietly—a warm, chest-deep sound. When he hands you your notebook, he hesitates before letting go.

“I… like your hair.” His eyes flick upward, shy. “It looks nice.”

Your heart does an acrobatic somersault. His smile and brown eyes are distractingly gorgeous, and you have to remind yourself to say something. Anything.

“Thanks," you breathe. "And you—you always look nice.”

It’s a vague thing to say, the kind of compliment that tumbles out before you can think, but it lands—it makes his smile tilt gentler, like your words hit somewhere he wasn’t expecting.

You walk to class feeling lighter than air.

That's the same day she shows up.

Max Mayfield.

Mr. Clarke introduces her with the kind of cautious tone teachers use when they’re not sure if a new student is going to be polite, or throw a desk.

Red hair drapes over her shoulders, with a skateboard tucked under her arm. Her expression is fierce and unimpressed by the entire state of Indiana.

Lucas sits upright like someone has just yanked him by invisible strings.

You shouldn’t care. You barely know Lucas, but watching him watch her stirs something sharp in your chest, something unfamiliar, and uncomfortable...

Jealousy?

Max walks past him. Past the front row of rowdy boys. Past the next couple rows entirely. Despite some of the welcoming, empty seats.

She sits next to you, way in the back; and your breath hitches. Because up close, she looks… different. Not just cool or fierce—but kind of gorgeous. Soft around the edges in a way you wouldn’t notice unless you really looked.

You did. One good look.

You smile at her.

She blinks, surprised—like she didn’t get many warm expressions from girls her age.

Then she smiles back. It's small, but you see it—it's real, and almost hesitant. Something flickers in her eyes—something curious. Then she fixes her gaze on Mr. Clarke again.

Both of you try not to think too much about it. But later, you’d realize that this moment—this tiny shared smile—is the beginning of something neither of you have the words for.

Throughout the lesson, she keeps glancing at you, like she's trying to figure you out. Lucas keeps glancing back at her.

And at you. Then back at her.

And you sit there with a scrunchie in your hair, doodles in your notebook, a heart beating too fast, and absolutely no idea what kind of beautiful chaos you are about to fall into.

Max Mayfield didn’t talk to anyone on her first day—except you. Not much. Not loudly, but enough that when the bell rings, she lingers beside your desk instead of bolting for the door.

“Hey,” she says, shifting her skateboard under her arm. “Um. Thanks. For… earlier.”

“For what?” You ask, shoving your doodle notebook into your bag.

“You know.” She scratches her cheek. “For not looking at me like I’m some kind of freak.”

“Oh.” You shrug. “I don’t think you’re a freak.”

“Yeah, well, when you’re the new girl, everyone sort of looks at you like you are.”

You both stand there, with small smiles, until she nods once—sharp, and decisive.

“You’re cool.”

You laugh softly. “No one’s ever said that to me before.” 

She follows you out into the hallway to your locker. “There’s a first time for everything,” Max declares, chin lifting.

“Well, thanks." Your cheeks warm. "Max, right? My name is—”

Dustin’s voice thunders down the hall, before you can properly introduce yourself. “HEY—!” He skids to a stop, nearly crashing into Max, then notices you. “Oh. Uh. Hi, Harrington.”

“Hi… Henderson,” You say, because you still aren't sure how to talk to him. Especially after his collision into you this morning. That's the most he's ever spoken to you, really. It's almost like he avoids you purposely, but you've always shrugged it off.

He turns back to Max, dramatic. “I’m Dustin—you wanna hang out with us tonight? For Halloween?”

Lucas rushes up behind him, breathless. He notices you, and his whole expression warms.

“Hey,” he says to you softly.

“Hi,” you reply, hoping the blush blooming on your cheeks isn't as obvious as the heat you feel creeping up your neck. Then he looks at Max. “I’m Lucas.”

Max looks between all of us, then shrugs like she doesn't care.

“I’ll consider joining… if she can come too.” She jerks her head toward you.

Dustin’s face twists like she’s suggested inviting the school principal. “Uh… I mean—” He stalls. “We kind of already have the group—”

“Of course she can come.” Lucas cuts him off instantly.

His smile toward you is shy but certain. Your heart practically skips a beat.

“Cool. Um, thanks,” you say, trying not to sound too thrilled. “If… if that’s okay,” you add, quietly.

“It is,” Lucas says so surely it makes Max grin. And that was that.

Hanging out with Max and the boys is loud, chaotic, borderline dangerous, and somehow the most fun you’ve ever had.

Sure, going trick-or-treating with Steve was always fun. He's an amazingly awesome brother, though, you’ll never admit that to him. Steve always dresses up with you, and you’d both put on a scary movie and stuff your faces with all the candy you’d collected from the night.

At least until it got too late. Steve always had a Halloween party he’d leave for. Every year. 

You never understood how he manages to be invited to one every single Halloween. It was always easier for him. To make friends. To talk and hang out with other people his age. 

Max walks beside you the whole night. Lucas keeps glancing back at you, always slowing down until he ends up on your other side. 

Dustin suggests ending the night with a movie, to which you all agree. Mike and Will argue about which Halloween movie is the best of all time. And you… feel included. For the first time in a long time.

But after that night, things grow complicated.

Mike doesn't love the idea of Max being in their circle. Dustin loves the idea of you being in it even less. You don't understand what you ever did to Dustin for him to approach you the way he does.

For Mike, it isn't personal. He just doesn't trust easily—and the boys are dealing with secrets bigger than school projects and physics homework.

And slowly, you could feel the shift.

Whispers you weren’t included in.

Side conversations that stop when you and Max approach. Huddled plans at the lockers that never include your names.

“Seriously?” Max hisses one afternoon when she catches Lucas, Dustin, and Mike whispering without you. “You guys are acting like little kids, excluding us the way you do."

Dustin and Mike look at each other before rushing off somewhere.

"So, they're just gonna ignore us?" you ask, trying not to sound too offended. But Lucas hears the hurt in your tone.

He winces. “It’s not—look, it’s complicated.”

“It always is,” Max snaps. “We're only your friends when it's convenient for you, right?”

You hover behind her, wishing you could disappear into your backpack.

“It’s fine,” you whisper. “We don’t have to be involved—”

“No,” Max says sharply, turning to you. “You’re smart. You care. And you’re here. You don’t get to back out.” Her voice softens. “We’re in this together.”

Lucas rubs the back of his neck. “I… didn’t mean to shut you both out,” he says, voice low and guilty. “Really.”

You could see in his expression that he's being sincere. Still, you don't understand all the secrecy.

Max crosses her arms. “Then prove it.”

Later that day, he does.

Lucas pulls you aside near the bike racks, eyes darting like he's about to confess to a crime. “Okay, listen.” He takes a deep breath. “You want in? Fine. I'll tell you everything.”

“What, like… everything everything?” Max challenges.

“Yes… but it comes with risks.” He looks at you both like it’d hurt him to tell you. After you and Max agree to his terms, he tells you about it all. The Demogorgon. The Upside Down. The labs. El. All of it—messy, terrifying... ridiculous.

By minute four, Max is squinting, skeptical. By minute five, you're certain he's joking. By minute six, both of you burst into disbelieving laughter.

“Lucas, that’s... something,” you say, fighting a smile. “You’re telling me my brother—Steve—fought a monster with a baseball bat?”

Lucas nods emphatically. “With nails in it!”

You stare. “My Steve?”

Max laughs. “‘The hair’ Harrington?”

“Yes!” Lucas insists, eyes hopeful.

You shake your head. “Lucas, Steve couldn’t take on Jonathan Byers in a fist fight. And, I'm sorry, but the monsters—?"

“Ask him! I can prove it.”

Max exchanges a look with you, her expression softening into something almost protective. “We’ll… think about it,” she says, grabbing your wrist. “Come on, Harrington. Before he tries to convince us there are zombies, and thinks we're stupid enough to believe that too.”

"I don't think you're—"

She tugs you away, but you glance back.

Lucas stands there watching you, hopeless. His shoulders slump in defeat.

You give him a small, apologetic smile.

And the way his face lights up—even just a little—tells you everything you aren't ready to admit.

Later, the wind is cold enough to nip at your cheeks as you glide down the sidewalk on your rollerblades, backpack bouncing lightly against your spine. You’re still not technically allowed to go far from school on your own, but Steve is working through a fatal Wheeler heartbreak, and… well, if he didn’t want you venturing out, maybe he should have remembered to wait for you before speeding over to Nancy's house.

Besides, you're a high schooler now. You're not a little girl; Steve knows that.

You brake at the Hargrove-Mayfield driveway, gravel crunching awkwardly under your wheels. Max’s house feels… a little intimidating. You practiced what you were going to say at least twenty times in the bathroom mirror, but now every possible script evaporates.

You ring the doorbell.

You hear loud music blaring from inside. Then, you hear footsteps, and a lock clicks. The door swings open, and Max Mayfield stares back at you.

Her face softens immediately. “You skate?”

You glance down at your rollerblades, sheepish. “Yeah. It’s… different from your kind of skating, but I, um, noticed you did too.”

Max follows your gaze to her snapped skateboard leaning against the wall. A shadow crosses her expression.

“Yeah. I do. But my stupid brother broke it.” She gestures at him working out in the living room.

You blink. “Older brothers are totally annoying. Mine left me at school to go beg his ex-girlfriend to take him back.”

Max gives you a slow look—something like recognition, or maybe relief. A tiny, appreciative smile lifts her mouth.

“C’mon,” she says, stepping aside. “Get in here.”

You hover just inside her bedroom door, taking in the neon poster on the wall, the mess of cassette tapes, the comics on her desk. Max grabs the broken board and starts aggressively taping the deck back together.

“So,” she says without looking up, “you skating on those things in grass, or…?"

You snort. “I make it work.”

Max grins, shaking her head. “You’re weird.”

“So are you.”

She seems to like that answer. “Does your brother always forget you at school?” she asks.

“His mind has been somewhere else lately…” you reply. “Does your brother always break your stuff?”

“He breaks things when he’s mad.” You can tell that the topic makes her uncomfortable.

A second later, the doorbell rings again.

Max groans, still aggressively trying to tape her board. “Not again.”

You open your mouth to offer help when— “MAX!” a male voice calls from down the hallway. “MAX, YOU GONNA GET THAT?”

Max groans dramatically and hops off her bed. You contemplate following, but she says, “I’ll be back.”

Max cracks the door open. Billy is in the background, smoking, lifting weights with loud music blaring.

Lucas stands outside, out of breath, hopeful, clutching his bike handlebars like they’re the only thing keeping him upright.

“I can prove it,” he blurts. “Everything I told you. And Y/N.”

Back in Max’s room, you’re startled to find Lucas outside her window. Max walks in then, closing the door behind her. She opens her window door.

Lucas smiles at you, a little shy, but bolder than before. He turns to Max. “If you wanna know the truth, you both should see it.”

Max crosses her arms, and turns to you. “What do you think?” 

You nod. "Let's check it out."

“Come on,” Lucas urges. Max jumps onto the back of Lucas’s bike like she’s done it her whole life. You take off on your rollerblades beside them, wheels wobbling in the grass but you refuse to fall behind.

Lucas looks back at you just once.

A small, relieved smile. And you try not to melt into the ground right then and there.

Metal clangs somewhere in the distance. You see two figures behind a pile of trashed car parts. Gravel spits under your wheels as you roll to a stop beside Max and Lucas.

Dustin pops up from behind a pile of junk. “Dude, seriously?”

Steve emerges next, holding that spiked baseball bat like he was born with it strapped to his back. “Who’s that?” he asks Dustin, nodding toward Max, as she emerges with Lucas first.

But then his eyes land on you.

He stops dead.

“…What the hell are you doing here, Y/N?”

You cross your arms. “I can ask you the same thing.”

“No—no, I’m the older brother,” he says, pointing at himself. “Plus, I asked you first.”

“You're the one who forgot about me at school!”

Steve blinks hard—like he’s buffering—and drags a hand through his hair in that stressed, borderline-melodramatic way of his. “Okay—okay, first of all? I didn’t forget you. I just… got distracted.”

“By what?”

“I—” His jaw works, eyes darting away. “—had something come up.”

“Oh really? Something came up?” you shoot back. “I thought you were at Nancy’s. Since when are you friends with Dustin Henderson?”

Steve throws his hands out like that’s somehow the most outrageous part of this. “I was at Nancy’s! And Henderson just—he was just there!” He gestures vaguely at Dustin, like he appeared out of thin air. “You know what? It doesn’t matter.”

You narrow your eyes. “What the hell are you doing with Dustin?”

Steve shuts his mouth like he just realized he walked straight into a trap. He points between the two of you. “No—what the hell are you doing with Dustin?”

"I'm not with Dustin. I came with Lucas." You gesture at the bat next. “So then, it is true? He told me everything.”

Steve’s eyes widen. “He told you—?”

“You told her—?” Dustin and Steve say in unison, both sounding personally betrayed.

Lucas lifts his shoulders helplessly. “I… thought they deserved to know…”

Max nudges your arm, a little proud. You nudge her back.

Steve drags a hand over his face. “Oh my god. I’m never gonna hear the end of this. Seriously, Y/N. You shouldn’t be here. And you, Sinclair, what are you, out of your damn mind?”

You blink at your older brother, still trying to fully process everything.

"I told Dustin: Keep. Y/N. Out of this. Then you go and tell her!?"

It doesn't take more than a second for you to place it together. It wasn't Dustin giving you the cold-shoulder, it was Steve asking him to avoid you.

“Steve, don’t blame this on him. What were you thinking? You really fought a… demo-thing?”

“Demogorgon,” Dustin corrects.

“Well whatever it is — are you insane—?!”

Steve cuts in firmly. “We’ll talk about this at home.”

You don’t get a chance to argue. Because Dustin and Steve seem pretty set on carrying out the plan Lucas told you about. So, you all get to work setting up a trap—to capture, what Dustin called, a demo-dog. You couldn’t believe it, really.

But that’s not what you remember most about the night.

That night is different than any you’ve experienced before.

Not just because you see an alien monster for the first time.

Not just because you watch your older brother almost get attacked—not just by one, but by three—nearly sending you into cardiac arrest.

And not just because Lucas holds yours and Max's hand in a moment a fear.

But because you talk. Like, really talk.

For the first time.

Because while Steve and Dustin fuss with raw meat and nail-bats, while the junkyard settles into a waiting silence thick enough to choke on, the three of you end up huddled at the top of the abandoned bus—anticipation buzzing so hard you swear it could light the whole yard.

Max tells you about how she misses home. How she misses her dad.

“My mom and stepdad, they wanted a fresh start away from him. As if… as if he was the problem, which is total bull. And things are just worse now. My step brother’s always been a dick, but now he's just angry… all the time. And… well, he can’t take it out on my mom, so..."

“So he takes it out on you?” Lucas' voice is gentle, cautious.

“I don’t even know why I’m telling you this. It’s just... I know that I can be a jerk like him sometimes, and I do not want to be like him. Ever." She bites down hard and you see it—the anger, yes, but the hurt underneath it. Something vulnerable. Something she doesn’t show anyone. "I guess, I’m angry too, and I’m sorry."

Her eyes look almost glassy. "Jesus! What’s wrong with me?" She laughs lightly to compensate for her emotions.

Luckily, Lucas is great at comforting, you learn. Better with words than you have ever been.

“You're nothing like your brother, Max. Okay?” His voice is reassuring.

“Yeah. You’re different. And kind." You add softly, your gaze fixing on hers for more than three seconds for the first time. You want her to know you're being sincere, even if holding eye contact is hard for you to do.

Max looks over at you, startled—like no one’s ever said that to her before.

Then Lucas speaks, but it’s different this time. His voice is lower, honest. Like something he’s been holding close.

“People treat me differently sometimes,” he says. “Not my friends—not Mike or Will or Dustin. They’re… they’re the only ones who treat me like I’m normal.” He hesitates. “But others? Kids at school. Adults. It’s not the same rules for me.”

Your breath catches. You think of things you’re only now old enough to understand.

Lucas picks at a loose thread on his zip-up jacket. “Sometimes I don’t know if I’m fighting monsters or… just the world.”

Max stares at him like her heart breaks a little.

“Monsters or the world, you have us now too,” you assure him.

Lucas grins softly at you both, his brown eyes sparkling under the moonlight.

You swallow, throat tight. “I don’t… really have anyone to compare that to. I’ve never had friends. Like, real ones. People only knew me as Steve Harrington’s little sister. I was just… background noise. A loner. Easier to ignore.”

Saying it out loud feels like peeling skin. Like exposing something raw.

You look away. “It took me a while to know for sure if either of you really wanted me around. If you really liked me.”

Max nudges your knee with hers, and says softly, "I do. You know that.”

Lucas’s voice is gentle. “I do too. A lot.”

You look up.

And they’re both looking at you with this… open, unguarded sincerity. Like you’re not background noise at all. Like you matter. Like you belong here with them, in this place you never expected to be.

A strange heat flutters under your ribs.

For a moment, the world shrinks to just the three of you—sharing secrets in a rusted junkyard, leaning close in the dark while something snarls in the distance.

You startle, and the night tilts back into danger.

But you’re not alone anymore.

Not after this. Not ever again.

That summer tastes like cherry icees and movie-theater air-conditioning. Like neon lights reflecting off the shiny floor tiles. Like meeting a new friend named El. Like Max and Lucas aiming french fries at each other's mouths in the food court. Meanwhile the rest of you laugh over other matters—like a movie you just watched together, or an arcade game you beat Dustin at.

And like confusion. A lot of confusion.

Because somehow, without any of you agreeing on it, the three of you become… a thing. Not a relationship thing. More like... a gravitational thing.

You, Max, and Lucas—you move together. Sit together. Laugh together. No matter how the day starts, you always end up side-by-side.

The first time you’re truly confused, you’re not prepared for it.

El grabs your hand while you’re walking through the mall—the way girls do when you’re excited, pulling you toward a store with a gasp about some outfit on display.

And before you can blink, Max is suddenly right there.

“You okay?” you ask, a little confused. She’s smiling, but it’s the tight kind. A step closer than usual, her arm brushing yours.

Almost like she’s… intercepting?

You try not to think too much into it, but you see it again a couple days later.

Mike tells a joke, El laughs, you laugh, and then El loops her arm through yours. And Max—in one quick motion—slips between you two, gently separating your arms with a casual, “Come on, we’re getting pretzels.”

She does it so naturally you almost think you imagined it.

Almost.

But you start to think Lucas notices it too.

Because you catch him staring at Max afterward, head slightly tilted, and she glares at him in that “shut up” way. Then he glances at you, a shy grin on his lips, like he’s trying to decode something.

You swallow a sip of your Coke and stare at the fountain to avoid thinking too hard about it.

As for Lucas, he doesn’t understand what’s happening.

He’s had crushes before—of course, on Max, and okay, maybe, definitely on you—Harrington’s sister—since like the sixth grade—but both? At the same time? 

That’s… not normal, right?

Every time Max smiles at him, his stomach flips. Every time you smile at him, it drops in a different direction entirely.

And when the two of you laugh together? He’s done.

Absolutely gone. Goodbye.

He tries to act normal. (Fails.)

Tries to pick one person to like. (Fails.)

Tries to pretend he’s not imagining holding both your hands. (Fails spectacularly.)

He tells himself this is a problem for Future Lucas.

Present Lucas just tries not to blush every time either of you look at him.

You start to notice something is… shifting. It creeps up on you slowly. How Max sometimes walks closer to you than necessary. How Lucas’s voice softens a fraction when he asks if you want to split fries. How their small arguments occasionally end with both of them glancing at you, like your reaction secretly matters.

Like you’re suddenly the axis they’re orbiting.

You’re not sure what it means. And you’re not sure you’re allowed to ask.

But you like it. You really like it. Even if you don’t understand it yet.

One Friday evening, Steve leans against the kitchen counter, half-watching you pace back and forth. You’re supposed to be “getting snacks ready,” but all you’ve actually done is re-adjust the same hair scrunchie in every reflective surface available. Making sure your hair-do looks perfect.

The same scrunchie hair-do Lucas complimented last time.

Steve finally squints at you. “Okay, what’s going on? You look like you’re about to meet the President. Or… I don’t know… Tom Cruise.”

“It’s nothing,” you mutter, fluffing your hair for the eleventh time.

But Steve’s your big brother. Against his will. His powers of perception are annoyingly sharp when it comes to you.

He straightens. “Hold on.”

And you freeze.

He eyes the scrunchie. The lip gloss. The nervous pacing. The fact that you keep checking the clock as if lives depend on punctuality.

“…Who,” he demands, “are you doing all this for?”

You open your mouth—but then the doorbell rings.

When you open the front door, Max and Lucas stand there, smiling, holding a stack of VHS tapes. And Steve watches your entire face light up like someone plugged you into a wall.

He instantly points at Lucas. “No.”

You blink. “Steve, what—”

“No,” he repeats louder. “Lucas Sinclair??? Why not—I don’t know—someone who can’t get eaten or taken or attacked by a demon monster on a random Tuesday?!”

Lucas stares at him, offended. “Dude, what—”

“If anything alien comes near you, I’m throwing him at it first.” Steve points at you, then Lucas.

"Will you calm down? We're just hanging out, Steve."

He throws a dish towel at the wall. “I can’t do this right now. I’m walking away.”

But later, when you’re sitting beside Lucas on the couch, knees touching, whispering jokes while Max tries to untangle the VHS tape, Steve watches from the doorway.

He sees the way Lucas glances at you.

And despite all his dramatics, his expression softens.

As the days pass, you don’t realize it, but you’re doing it now too. Acting the way Max did when El got too close to you. 

One afternoon, Max careens down the ramp at the skate park too fast, wheels skidding. She tries to turn—fails—and slams straight into another skater, and they both tumble.

“Max!” you yell, taking large strides on your rollerblades to meet her side.

The girl Max collided with sits up, brushing gravel from Max’s elbow. “Hey, hey—are you okay?” she asks gently, touching Max’s arm.

Max blinks at her—and blushes, just slightly.

Something flares in your chest. Sharp and unexpectedly.

You step forward, quicker than you mean to, fingers curling around Max’s wrist.

“She’s fine,” you blurt, pulling Max gently but firmly away. The girl looks confused, and Max looks even more confused.

You don’t stop until you’re both near the sidewalk, out of earshot.

"Are you okay?" your voice finally softens, looking over her for any other injuries.

Max raises an eyebrow. “What was that?”

You swallow. “I—just didn’t want her touching you. I mean—she collided into you!“

Her gaze lingers on you. A little too intense. A little too knowing, you think. Then she laughs. “It was an accident, Harrington.” 

“You don’t know that,” you say dryly. “Come on. Can't keep Lucas waiting for us.” You brush it off, and skate away, but she only shakes her head, amused at your defensiveness.

That same day, Starcourt Mall is crowded, loud, neon-soaked.

Lucas holds up a velvet scrunchie. “Here, this one looks like your vibe.”

Your pulse quickens, and feel a flush blossoming on your cheeks. “You bought this for me?”

He shrugs, pretending to be casual but very much not, then slides it over your wrist. “Yeah. It just… reminded me of you.”

You’re about to respond when— “Harrington!”

You turn, and recognize it to be a guy from your English class, jogging over.

Lucas' smile instantly melts away, eyes narrowing at the him.

“Hey,” he says, smiling brightly. “I was gonna call you, only I didn't have your number—uh, do you maybe wanna go out sometime? Maybe get a milkshake?”

Lucas steps forward so quick, you jolt. His posture shifts—shoulders wide, one foot sliding half a step ahead like he’s quietly drawing a boundary. He doesn’t touch you, but the message is clear: you’re not standing alone in this conversation.

“She already has plans,” he says, voice calm but firm.

You blink at him. “I—I do?”

Lucas nods without breaking eye contact with the boy. “Yeah, we're hanging out today. And tomorrow."

Your brain short-circuits. “We—we are?” you whisper up at him, heat flushing your ears.

Lucas meets your eyes just long enough for you to feel it in your stomach. “Yeah,” he murmurs. “We are.”

The guy shifts awkwardly, scratching the back of his neck. “My bad. I didn’t mean to interrupt or anything.”

“You didn’t,” Lucas says politely enough, but his stance doesn’t budge.

The boy hesitates, then backs off. “Right. See you around, Harrington.”

As soon as he’s out of earshot, you turn to Lucas, heart pounding. “We have plans?”

He shrugs like it’s the most obvious thing in the world—but his cheeks are warm. “Well… we do now.”

“Then, I can't wait,” you admit, softly.

So, the following day at the mall, the plans go through, like Lucas said.

The plan is to grab ice cream, and check out the arcade. Sure, you're in high school, but the guys insist on video games. You suppose that's the price you pay for being friends with dweebs, and having a crush on one. You really don't mind it at all, so long as Max and Lucas are there.

When you walk into Scoops Ahoy a couple minutes later with the others, Steve notices that lately, you put more effort into dressing nicely, or looking pretty. At first, he thinks it's because his little sister is getting older, but he can't help his intrusive thoughts. “Do you like someone? You can tell me. Actually—don’t tell me. Actually—tell me. It's Sinclair, isn't it?”

“Will you stop that, Steve? You're embarrassing me. Seriously, stop.” And you thank Robin for nudging his side when he says too much.

He puts himself between you and any teenage boy who looks your direction for longer than two seconds.

Especially Lucas. He remembers you’re still seventeen and decides Lucas counts the most, knowing how close you two have grown over the summer.

“Sinclair!” he calls across the food court one day. “Remember the code: arms-length or I break yours.”

“Steve!” you hiss. Lucas nearly drops his smoothie.

Max just rolls her eyes. “You are literally insane,” she tells Steve.

“Thank you,” he replies proudly.

The mall is crowded enough that no one really notices—or cares—when Max threads her fingers through yours.

To anyone else, it probably looks normal. Girls do that. Friends do that.

But Lucas sees it. And you feel it.

Because Max’s thumb brushes the side of your hand in a slow, absent stroke while she leans in to point out something in a store window. Her hand stays in yours even after the moment passes.

Dustin glances back. “Cute,” he says, shrugging. “Girls always do that.”

Mike shrugs in agreement, already complaining about the line at Hot Dog on a Stick.

But Lucas…

He keeps walking, but he doesn’t take his eyes off your joined hands.

Not in a jealous way. Not confused. Just… soft. Like he’s surprised to witness a moment he wasn’t included in, but somehow still warmed by.

Max notices him watching and releases your hand slowly—almost reluctantly.

It’s late June when you show up at the Wheeler backyard with something hidden in your closed fist.

Max is sitting on the picnic table, one foot tapping to the beat of whatever’s blasting from the boombox. Lucas and Mike are arguing about whether New Coke is a crime against humanity.

You walk straight toward Max.

“Got you something,” you say, suddenly shy.

Her head tilts. “Really? For me?”

You hold out your hand and reveal a thin, braided bracelet — red and purple, knotted unevenly but made with real effort.

Max freezes for a moment.

Lucas notices and stops mid-sentence.

Mike keeps trying to make his point because he’s Mike.

“It’s nothing big,” you add quickly. “Just noticed your old one was fraying and… I don’t know. Thought you might like this.”

Max takes it from your hand like it’s breakable.

“Wow,” she breathes. And then—there it is.

A tiny blush. So faint you think you imagined it. A soft pink climbing her cheekbones, gone as soon as it appeared.

But you saw it.

“Put it on me?” Max asks, voice quieter than usual.

Your fingers brush her wrist as you tie the knot. She doesn’t pull away. Not even a little.

You swallow nervously. You still don't fully understand why your pulse hammers when you're around her.

Across from you, Lucas tries not to stare. But he fails miserably.

He watches the whole exchange—the blush, the whisper-soft smiles, the way your hands linger.

He tells himself he’s totally, absolutely fine. Still, he finds himself flustered—heart pounding, hands sweating, almost like, he likes seeing how close you and Max are. He really likes it. He finds the feelings weird, but tries to ignore it.

Later in Mike's basement, you glance over and catch Lucas watching Max—something warm and admiring in his expression.

You don’t know what to call the feeling it gives you: a flutter in your stomach, a rush in your chest, not jealousy exactly…

… it's something else. Something you don’t have words for yet.

That following week at the movies, the lights dim as the film starts, and you settle in—Lucas on your right, Max on your left, all three of you sharing the same massive tub of popcorn.

When Lucas reaches in to grab popcorn and his hand brushes yours, Max notices, and you swear you see her blush behind the shy smile she throws your way.

At this point, Lucas knows he’s in trouble.

Like real, actual, Hawkins-level trouble.

Because Max laughs at something on screen and he swears he feels it in his spine. And then she hands the popcorn to you—and your fingers brush and Max smiles at you, and his stomach does something weird and traitorous.

But then you lean into him—just barely—and his heart does a different weird thing.

Great. Cool. Awesome.

He likes you. Both of you. Like, a lot.

It's overwhelming, and confusing. It makes him want to walk into the woods and scream into a tree.

And what’s worse? This isn't just some small crush anymore. It feels like something permanent, something that anchors itself inside him and refuses to leave. A quiet, steady tug towards both of you.

He's doomed.

After the movies, all of you are on the rooftop of Starcourt after closing. Dustin rambles about magnetic anomalies and cosmic energy. The others are focused, asking questions, trying to follow.

But you're not listening.

How could you?

You're lying on your back between Lucas and Max, arms touching, warmth soaking through the thin summer shirts.

Max’s pinky brushes yours for a second too long, and for a minute, you think it might've been intentional. That thought disappears quickly when Lucas hooks his pinky around your other hand—a silent, secret gesture in the dark.

You feel like you want to do the same with Max, and the thought confuses you. And it scares you.

So you don't.

But for right now, this is enough. Having both of them on either side of you. Breathing slow and steady under the summer stars.

And for the first time… you think you understand why your heart has felt so strange lately.

Why it feels so full.

Your feelings... they're different, and that terrifies you. You don't fully understand them, and that scares you even more.

After some time, the mall has finally gone quiet, and the others have have gone home, except your two favorite people.

No chatter, no neon buzz, no Scoops Ahoy bell ringing every five minutes. Just the warm hum of summer, a distant car stereo echoing somewhere across the parking lot, and the three of you sitting on the Starcourt roof like you belong there.

Lucas is lying back, arms tucked behind his head. Max sits cross-legged beside you, rhythmically tapping her skateboard wheels against the concrete. Your legs dangle over the ledge, swinging lazily in the evening breeze. Max leans her head on your shoulder.

You take a long breath, tasting the leftover sweetness of the ice cream Steve smuggled out for you before going back to finish locking up.

“I wish every night felt like this,” you admit.

The moment you say it, Lucas sits up and blurts before he can stop himself: "Me too. I like you both. A lot. Like— too much.”

Your stomach drops. And there's a heart-stopping, breathless silence.

Max turns fast, surprise painting her beautiful features. “Lucas—”

“I know it’s stupid,” he rushes, panicking now, “And I know that it's weird, okay? I don’t wanna mess anything up. I’ve tried to stop it, I swear— but I like you—” he points at you, face flushed, “—and I like Max—and it’s confusing, but I can’t help it anymore. I'm sorry—I just—I can’t keep pretending I don’t.”

His face falls into his hands, defeated. Like he's ruined everything.

But you and Max share a look. And the whole world seems to pause, the distant music fading into a soft static.

Over the time you've spent getting to know Max, you learn that she's scared to open up sometimes; to be honest about how she feels. But you also learn she's fiercely brave. She shows it when she reaches across the rooftop and gently pulls Lucas' hands down so that he lifts his head again.

Her eyes are gentle in a way you’ve never seen before.

"Lucas you're not the only one who's confused," she admits, quietly. Her voice isn't guarded—it’s honest. Max swallows hard, "I like you too... And her."

She looks at you, and the expression on her face is so raw, something warm blooms in your chest.

Lucas’ breath catches.

Your pulse hammers, and your throat goes tight all at once.

You open your mouth but nothing comes out. You've always been the quieter one. And this moment is too intense, too precious for words. So you say it the only way you can.

You take both their hands, and whisper. "Me too."

Lucas stares at your intertwined fingers like he's afraid to blink. Max bites the inside of her cheek like she’s trying not to smile too hard.

None of you move—not for a long moment—afraid the whole thing might shatter.

It’s Max who moves first. Very slowly, she shifts closer, her knee brushing yours, and then, you realize she's so close to you that her breath mixes with yours in the warm night.

“Is this okay…?” she asks.

All you can do is nod simply, heart hammering against your ribs harder than it ever has before. Your gaze flicks to her lips briefly.

Max leans in—shy and slow—then presses her lips to yours.

It’s barely a kiss. A hesitant brush of her lips against yours, like asking a question. A brush that sends heat up your neck.

You kiss her back gently.

Her hand flutters at your waist, as if afraid to hold on too tight. When you part, she looks dazed. You probably do too.

Then, you hear Lucas' voice from your right. “…Can I?”

Both you and Max nod, your cheeks flushed.

He steps closer to you first, and at this point, your heart is trying to escape your chest. He brings himself to cup your face, and his eyes drop to your lips, then slowly, his hand slides from your cheek to the back of your neck, drawing you closer.

He leans in slowly—painfully slowly—and kisses you like you’re something fragile he’s terrified of breaking. You kiss him back, slightly more confident than the first kiss you gave Max. It's warm, and sweet. It's perfect.

When he pulls back, he’s breathless. A subtle, yet contagious grin on his pretty face.

Then Max nudges him with her shoulder. “My turn,” she mutters, there's a playful, anticipatory tone in her voice.

Lucas smiles, and Max kisses him too, with a little more confidence than she had with you. He pulls back looking like someone unplugged his brain.

You all look dazed, and your hands link again in the dim glow of the rooftop under the parking lot lights.

You’re a mess. A happy one.

“What… does this mean?” you whisper.

Lucas turns his head first.

“I don’t know what to call it,” he says softly. “And I don’t know how it works. But I know it means something to me.”

“Me too,” you and Max say at the exact same time.

You all laugh quietly—breathless and shaky. None of you say it out loud, but the fear is there. That no one else will understand. That adults won’t get it. That the world won’t get it.

So you lift your pinky, voice tiny:

“Secret? Between us?”

Lucas’s eyes soften. He hooks his pinky with yours immediately.

“Between us,” he promises.

Max lifts hers too, looping it with both of yours.

“Our secret,” she echoes.

Your three pinkies link. Three hearts thudding. And all three of you sit there afterward—like you’ve just discovered the world is bigger than you ever knew.

That night, after a long mall shift for Steve, he drives you home. But you’re not alone in the backseat.

Max is asleep on your shoulder, and Lucas is asleep leaning into your other side.

The AC hums and Steve watches the rearview mirror with raised eyebrows but says nothing for once.

And you think:

If I don't know how this works… I don’t mind not knowing.

Because it feels right. All of it.

Them. You. Together.

The next couple days blur together. You’re wrapped up in that blissful stretch where you want more of each other all the time. It’s that addictive early stage where being apart feels impossible—that giddy, all-in part of a relationship where you’re basically glued together. Except it's not a relationship... none of you are sure what to call it.

You spend your days at Lucas' house or yours, but never at Max's because Billy couldn't stand any of you. You spent the days mostly at yours, given you're the least supervised at your house.

Or, at least you thought you were.

Your door is cracked open a few inches. You don't notice, because well... you're a little distracted.

Because Lucas’s hand is cupping your cheek in that soft way he does now, warm and gentle as he’s kissing you softly—the kind of kiss that makes your stomach flip and your brain go warm and fizzy.

Max sits on your bed beside you, legs touching yours, brushing hair out of your face with her nails painted chipped blue.

You’re holding her hand without even realizing it. It’s soft, and steady. It's comforting.

Lucas pulls away, smiling at you—then leans over to press a quick kiss to Max’s lips.

She responds nervously, startled but quietly pleased—then she turns back toward you, brushing your hair behind your ear again, as if it’s your turn—

“WHAT THE HELL, SINCLAIR?!”

All three of you detonate into chaos.

Lucas literally FALLS OFF YOUR BED.

Max yanks her hand out of yours so fast she almost falls backwards.

You whip your head toward the doorway—and Steve stands there. Frozen. Eyes unblinking saucers of horror. Mouth hanging open. Hand still on the doorknob.

He looks like he just walked in on a demon summoning.

“STEVE!” you yelp. “KNOCK!”

“Knock?!” His voice cracks. “KNOCK?!”

He points at Lucas on the floor, sputtering outrage. “He had— your face— his lips—and YOU—I JUST SAW YOU KISSING MY SISTER—AND MAX?!”

Lucas, still on the rug, shrugs, surprisingly calm. “I— I slipped...?”

You roll your eyes at Lucas' lame attempt at lying.

“You SLIPPED? ON WHAT?!” Steve screeches. “LOVE TRIANGLE GREASE?!”

Max steps in, “It wasn’t what it looked like, Steve—”

“You KISSED him back!” Steve accuses.

Max chokes on air. “I— I panicked!”

“You panicked? YOU panicked?!” Steve shrieks. “I walked in and saw SINCLAIR SWAPPING SPIT WITH TWO GIRLS LIKE HE’S JAMES BOND—”

“Steve!” you shove him into the hallway, hands to his chest. “OUT!"

“This is ILLEGAL. You’re not allowed to have boys in your room!”

Lucas, finally stands from the floor, and croaks, “So Max gets a pass, but I don't?”

“YES!” Steve fires back without thinking. “BECAUSE MAX DOESN’T GO AROUND KISSING MY LITTLE SISTER—”

He whips toward Max, accusing. “NOW, DO YOU, MAX?!”

Max turns so red she looks radioactive. You think it's cute. But right now isn't the time for distractions. You re-focus, and see she opens her mouth, then closes it. “…Um,” she swallows.

Great. That’s it. You’re going to be grounded for eternity.

“I AM NOT GOING ANYWHERE,” he declares, slurry with betrayal. “Not until someone explains why Lucas Sinclair is tonguing BOTH OF YOU!”

Lucas shakes his head, lifting his hands in the air, cautiously. “I wasn’t tonguing—"

"YOU SHUT IT!" Then Steve wheels on Max.

“And YOU— what were YOU doing holding my sister’s hand?!”

“We’re— it’s— it’s complicated,” you finally say, stepping in front of Max.

“COMPLICATED?! Is THAT what this is?!” He flails his arms, gesturing a huge circle around all of you.

“Oh my GOD,” Steve mutters, shoving his hands through his hair, pacing in tiny, hysterical circles. “Oh my god, oh my god. When did babysitting become THIS?!”

“STEVE!” you grab his shoulders and force him still. “Stop freaking out!”

“I WILL NOT STOP FREAKING OUT,” he cries, pointing at Lucas like a courtroom attorney. “NOT UNTIL SINCLAIR EXPLAINS WHY HE KISSED MAYFIELD AND THEN MY SISTER LIKE HE HAS A SCHEDULE!”

Lucas watches him pace, eyes wild. “I—I like them!”

Steve screams internally. “No. No, no, no. Don't say that, Sinclair. Don’t make this real.”

Max interlaces her fingers with Lucas and gives his hand a squeeze, fully supporting his decision to be honest with him. “Steve, it’s— complicated.”

“COMPLICATED?!” Steve shrieks. “DO YOU HAVE A SPREADSHEET FOR THIS?”

You all stare at him.

He stares at you.

Then—he turns around, and nearly walks straight into the wall.

The next day, the Scoops Ahoy uniform does NOTHING to keep your older brother emotionally stable.

Steve is confused, traumatized, and VERY sure Lucas Sinclair is double-dating you girls.

He’s supposed to be scooping samples and ringing up customers, but instead he’s leaning against the counter with his head in his hands, muttering.

Robin taps a cone against his forehead. “Okay, Steve. Spill. You’ve been glazed-over all morning. What happened? Did your hair betray you? Did a customer call you ‘sir’ again?”

Steve lifts his head slowly.

“I walked in on them," he whispers.

Robin blinks. “On who?”

He makes a circle motion with his hands. “Them. The thing. The triangle. THE… SITUATION.”

Robin squints. “Steve, you're going to need to use actual nouns.”

He inhales sharply through his nose. "My sister was kissing Lucas Sinclair."

Robin nods slowly. "Okay. I mean. Teenagers. Not surprising."

"And Max was holding her hand."

Robin blinks.

Steve throws his hands up. “EXACTLY!”

“Wait wait wait— Max? Quiet, scowly Max? She held your sister’s HAND? Like romantically?”

Steve throws his hands up. “I don’t KNOW! I don’t know ANYTHING anymore! Am I losing my mind?!”

“Uh—okay,” Robin says. “So… maybe your sister likes girls too?”

Steve stares at her, unblinking. “That’s not why I’m upset, Robin. THE PROBLEM IS I ALSO SAW SINCLAIR KISSING MAX.”

Robin freezes, head tilting. “Oh.”

Steve waves his arms like a malfunctioning windmill. "YEAH. Exactly. OH.”

Robin’s mouth twitches. “So you’re saying… Lucas is… two-timing?”

“TWO-TIMING?!” Steve squeaks. “I THINK HE INVENTED A WHOLE NEW CATEGORY.”

Robin cackles. “Oh my god. Your face. Steve, breathe.”

“I SAW BOTH OF HIS LIPS ON TWO DIFFERENT GIRLS IN UNDER TEN SECONDS.”

“That’s… efficient?” Robin offers.

“ROBIN.”

She pats his shoulder, dying laughing. “Steve, look. Maybe they’re all—you know—figuring it out... together?”

"What is there to figure out? CHRIST! LIKE MY SISTER IS IN SOME LOVE GEOMETRY PROBLEM?”

Robin leans in. “Do you want the good news?”

“Does it remove yesterday from my memory?”

“No,” she says, "but you're being dramatic."

Steve sags onto the counter, and the bell rings. Robin glances over his shoulder.

“Oh,” she says, biting a grin. “Speak of the devil.”

You walk in. Then Max, followed by Lucas.

Max looks at the ice cream board. Lucas looks anywhere but at Steve, and you look like an awfully innocent teenager, batting your lashes at your older brother with a shy smile.

Robin whispers fast: “Stop staring like you’re about to pass out—”

“Hi,” you say softly. “We… wanted cones.”

“Uh-huh,” Steve says, somewhere between monotone and threatening. Robin nudges him with her knee under the counter.

“Act normal,” she hisses.

“I AM acting normal!”

“You’re sweating.”

“I SWEAT WHEN I’M NORMAL.”

Robin beams. “Hey guys! Don’t mind Captain Breakdown here. He’s had a rough morning.”

Lucas looks away, Max sighs, and you shake your head at your older brother.

Steve jabs a finger toward Lucas. “We’re talking later.”

Lucas doesn't argue, just pays for everyone's cones.

Robin elbows him again. “Harrington, stop it.”

Steve grumbles under his breath while scooping Max’s cone like it personally offended him.

Steve sits the three of you on the living room couch. He stands in front of you with a notepad.

A literal notepad.

Max leans toward you, and whispers, “is he serious?”

Lucas leans the other way. “If we run now, we can make it through the backyard back to my house.”

You whisper, “He’ll chase us.”

They know you’re right. Steve clears his throat loudly.

“Okay.” He lifts the notepad dramatically. “GROUND. RULES.”

You all groan.

Steve glares. “Shut it. This is important.”

He flips to page one.

RULE #1: NO KISSING IN THIS HOUSE. EVER.

“You will NOT kiss in bedrooms. Or kitchen corners. Or hallways. Or stairwells. Or closets. Or ANY rooms in this house. Got it?”

You raise a hand. “So… no kissing?”

“Right.”

“Anywhere?”

“You heard me.”

Lucas squints. “Like… ever again?”

Steve blinks, then hesitates. “…Not— not NEVER. Just— NEVER WHERE I CAN SEE IT.”

Max lifts a brow. “So we can kiss outside?”

“NO— I— THAT’S NOT—” He sputters. “STOP FINDING LOOPHOLES.”

Robin walks in from the kitchen with a soda. “What’s happening?”

“PARENTING,” Steve says.

Robin snorts. “Oh yeah, this is definitely going well.”

He flips to page two.

RULE #2: MAX AND LUCAS KEEP THEIR HANDS TO THEMSELVES

Max starts, "but—"

"NO."

Then Lucas, "what if—"

"STOP."

"But Steve—" he interrupts you.

“I JUST DON’T WANT ANYONE TOUCHING ANYONE ANYMORE.”

Robin: “He’s spiraling.”

Steve whirls on her. “THE KIDS ARE TOUCHING EACH OTHER, ROBIN.”

“Yeah, that’s usually how kissing works.”

“ROBIN.”

She shuts up, laughing into her soda.

Another dramatic page flips to page three.

RULE #3: THE DOOR STAYS OPEN.

“Three inches,” Steve declares. “Like Hopper said. But since you three—” He gestures wildly at the group, “—have created… whatever this is—your door stays open…”

He thinks and calculates, “—eight inches.”

“Eight?” Max repeats. “That’s not open. That’s invite-people-to-spy open.”

“GOOD.” Steve slams the notepad shut. “If I hear ONE weird sound? I am THROWING WATER.”

Lucas deadpans, “Like we’re feral raccoons?”

“Yes,” Steve says without a blink.

You lean forward and gently take the notepad out of his hands.

“Steve,” you say softly, “we’re not doing anything wrong.”

He deflates. Completely. Like someone let all the air out of him.

“I know,” he mumbles. “I know. I just— you’re my kid sister. And Lucas is Lucas. And Max is— Max. And I walked in on—” He waves both hands in the air like the memory physically hurts him. “—whatever THAT was. And I don’t have a manual for THIS. This is advanced-level parenting!”

Max’s voice is surprisingly soft. “You don’t have to protect us from each other.”

Lucas nods. “We’re not going to hurt her.”

You look between them. “We just wanna be... together. We'll be hanging out in my room, that's all.”

Steve rubs his face. “…I know.”

Robin pats his back like he’s a stressed-out single parent. “See?” she tells him. “They’re more mature than you think. They've got it handled.”

Steve sighs heavily. “Fine,” he says. “But I reserve the right to freak out at ANY moment.”

“Noted,” you say.

“And?” Steve adds.

“And we’ll… keep the door open,” Lucas says reluctantly.

Steve raises a finger. “EIGHT inches.”

Max rolls her eyes. “Oh my god.”

You spend the rest of the the month glued at each other's sides. And by the end of July, everyone’s given up trying to figure you three out. You arrive places together. You leave together. You move like planets caught in the same orbit.

“Package deal,” Mike mutters one afternoon.

Dustin shrugs. “They’ve been like this all summer.”

He’s right. They’re absolutely right. And you're enjoying every second of it.

example: Bruce Wayne + 104 (and tell me if you want something specific)

100 Ex! Husband/Boyfriend (and tell me if they'll be back together at the end)

101 Brother's Best Friend

102 Rivals/Enemies to Lovers (both heroes)

103 Hero x Villain dynamics

104 Fake Dating

105 Gala trouble (reader x chosen character in a Wayne Gala) - if you want Gala Trouble + Fake Dating, press 1055

106 Forced Proximity (during a mission)

107 Superhero x Civilian

108 Platonic!Reader

109 Secret Relationship

110 Your choice (describe your idea in the request)

* Even if you chose a number, I would like if you describe a bit of your idea/prompt in case you have any preferences❤️

Characters accepted

𖦹 Bruce Wayne

𖦹 Richard Grayson

𖦹 Jason Todd

𖦹 Tim Drake

𖦹 Damian Wayne

𖦹 Duke Thomas

𖦹 Clark Kent

𖦹 Roy Harper

𖦹 Wally West

𖦹 Conner Kent

𖦹 John Kent

Rules:

- As long as you follow my guidelines, you can ask anything you want, please be polite and kind! Rude asks will be ignored.

- ATTENTION: combo (fics that has multiple povs like this and this) and smaus are not included in this special event.

- I don't know how many requests I'll be taking, since I don't even know if this won't flop jdsncjk but anyway...

⋆⭒˚.⋆ Do NOT repost, copy, translate or use my texts on AI!

🍰Main Taglist: @fromrory @demigod-jack-hearth @maaaahhhiii @sixtoads @astraeasworld @i-gotta-go-so-much-bigger @lulasgna

It's a Tuesday. Nothing special about it. The kind of Tuesday that bleeds into every other Tuesday, gray and unremarkable.

Steve is behind the counter at Family Video, spinning a pen between his fingers, half-listening to Robin chatter about something that happened at the coffee shop.

"—and she was just sitting there, Steve, drinking her coffee like a normal person, and I thought, I have to talk to her. I have to. So I did."

"You talked to a stranger. Shocking. Do you want a gold medal?"

"Shut up. She's amazing. Like, actual sunshine. You're gonna love her."

"You say that about everyone."

"No, I mean it this time. She's new in town and she doesn't know anyone and I invited her to hang out with us tonight." Robin checks her watch. "Actually, she should be here any minute."

Steve sighs. "Robin."

"What? She's nice! You'll like her. Just... be normal. For once."

"I'm always normal."

"You're really not."

The bell over the door chimes. Steve looks up.

And the world tilts sideways.

You're standing in the doorway, backlit by the afternoon sun, and for a second, you're just a silhouette, both familiar and not, a shape his brain can't quite place. Then you step forward, and...

It's you.

Same eyes. Same smile. Same way of tilting your head when you're nervous, a habit you've had since you were six years old. You're older now, taller, your face different in a hundred small ways — but he'd know you anywhere.

You haven't seen him yet. You're looking at Robin, waving, crossing the store with that easy walk you always had.

"Robin! Hi! Sorry I'm late, I got turned around. This town is so different than I remember."

Robin laughs, pulling you into a hug. "You remember Hawkins? I thought you just moved here."

"I did. I mean, I re-moved here. I grew up here." You pull back, grinning. "A long time ago. Like, elementary school ages."

"No way." Robin's eyes go wide. "That's crazy."

"I know, right? I haven't been back since my parents moved us away. It's so weird being here." You glance around the store, taking it in. "This place used to be a bakery, I think. Or maybe I'm making that up."

Steve can't move. Can't breathe. Can't do anything except stand there, gripping the counter, staring at you like you're a ghost.

Robin notices. "Oh! I'm being so impolite. This is Steve. He's my work bestie. Be nice to him, he's sensitive."

You turn, and your eyes finally, finally, meet his.

You tilt your head. Study his face. Your brow furrows slightly, like you're trying to place him, then your eyes go wide. "No." The word comes out barely a whisper. "No way."

Steve swallows. "Hi."

You take a step closer. Then another. Your hand comes up, hovering, like you want to touch his face but you're not sure if he's real.

"Steve?" Your voice cracks. "Steve Harrington?"

He nods. Can't speak. Can't do anything except look at you, drink you in, try to reconcile the woman in front of him with the little girl who used to steal his crayons and share her snacks.

You slap a hand over your mouth. Then you're laughing, God how he missed that laugh, and throwing your arms around him.

Steve catches you on instinct, pulls you close, holds on like you might disappear. You fit. After all these years, you still fit perfectly against him.

"Oh my god," you mumble into his shoulder. "Oh my god. Stevie."

The nickname that no one has ever used since you breaks something open in his chest.

"You're here." His voice is rough. "You're actually here."

"I'm here." You pull back just enough to look at him, hands still on his arms like you're afraid he'll vanish. "I can't believe — you're so tall. You were such a shrimp last time I saw you."

He laughs despite himself. "I was not a shrimp."

"You were absolutely a shrimp." You punch his arm, light, familiar. "I used to beat you in races every single time."

"You tripped me!"

"You tripped yourself," you retort, grinning so wide your cheeks hurt.

Robin is standing behind the counter with her mouth hanging open. "Okay." She holds up her hands. "Okay. I need someone to explain what's happening right now, because I am very confused."

You turn to her, still smiling, and Steve realises he hasn't stopped staring at you. Can't stop. Doesn't want to stop.

"We know each other," you say. "Childhood best friends."

"Like, best best friends," Steve adds, because apparently he's incapable of letting you tell this story alone. "We were inseparable."

"Until my parents moved us away." You shrug. "Fourth grade. We lost touch."

Robin's eyes bounce between you like she's watching a tennis match. "You're telling me that my new friend—the one I literally just met at a coffee shop—is your childhood best friend? Who you've never mentioned, somehow?"

"I mentioned her."

"Once. Vaguely. With a lot of staring into the distance."

Steve's ears go pink. "I didn't stare into the distance."

"You absolutely stared into the distance. It was all very dramatic."

You laugh, and the sound does something complicated to Steve's insides. He watches the way your nose crinkles, the way your whole face lights up, and his heart goes to mush.

"So," you say, turning back to him, "what have you been up to for the last fifteen years? Besides growing a foot or two?"

He shakes his head, still smiling like an idiot. "I don't even know where to start."

"Start with the highlights." You lean against the counter, making yourself comfortable. "I've got time."

You end up talking for an hour.

Robin chips in occasionally, but mostly she just watches, fascinated, as the two of you fall back into a rhythm that shouldn't still exist after all these years. But it does. It's like no time has passed at all.

Steve tells you about high school—the edited version, the one that doesn't make him sound like too much of a jerk. You tell him about your high school, about the cities you've lived in, about the jobs you've had. He asks questions, genuine questions, because he actually wants to know. He wants to know everything.

"You look good," he says at one point, and then immediately wants to take it back because that was too much, too forward, too—

You smile. "You too, Stevie. You look really good."

His heart does a backflip.

The afternoon stretches on. Customers come and go. Robin handles most of them, throwing knowing looks at Steve every time she catches him staring at you again.

Which is often.

He can't help it. You're right there. After all these years, you're just right there, leaning against his counter like you never left, and he can't stop looking at you. The way your hair falls over your shoulder. The way you bite your lip when you're thinking. The way your eyes light up when you talk about something you love.

He's got it bad. He knows he's got it bad. He doesn't care.

"So," you say eventually, glancing at the clock, "I should probably head out. Let you two actually work."

"You don't have to." The words come out too fast, too eager. Steve tries to play it cool. "I mean, if you want to stay. But also if you need to go, that's cool too. Obviously."

You tilt your head, that familiar gesture, and smile. "I could stay a little longer."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah."

Another hour passes. Then another. By the time the sun starts to set, you've covered everything — jobs, relationships (or lack thereof), favourite movies, least favourite foods, the time you both got in trouble for trying to build a raft out of scavenged wood and nearly sank in the creek.

"You remember that?" Steve asks, delighted.

"You nearly drowned! Of course I remember!"

"I did not nearly drown. I was swimming."

"You were flailing and screaming for help. I had to pull you out."

"I was playing."

"You were drowning, Steven."

Robin laughs, leaning against the counter. "Your legal name is Steven? Dingus, how did this never come up?"

"He's only called that when he's in trouble," you grin at Steve. "Which was often."

He should be embarrassed. He's not. He's too busy watching you, memorising the way you look in the fading light, the way your presence fills up the whole store.

"Hey." The words come out before he can stop them. "We're having a movie night tonight. At my place. Nothing fancy, just some friends hanging out. You should come."

You blink. "Really?"

"Yeah. I mean—" He runs a hand through his hair, suddenly nervous. "Only if you want to. No pressure. It's just... it'd be nice, to have you there."

When you smile and say, "I'd love that, Stevie," and Robin mimics gagging, Steve doesn't even care that he probably looks like a lovesick puppy. He's too busy floating six feet off the ground.

You show up at his house that night with a bag of Starbursts.

"I wasn't sure what to bring," you say, holding them out. "But I remembered you liked these. The blue ones especially. You'd always trade me for my blues."

Steve's eyes flicker from the candy in your hand to your eyes. "You remembered that?"

"Of course I remembered." You shrug, a little shy. "I told you. I remember everything."

He takes the bag, fingers brushing yours. "I still like the blue ones best."

"Good. I... um, I picked out all the others. So there's only blue ones in the packet."

He blinks. "You—" His voice comes out weird. He clears his throat. "You picked out all the non-blue ones? For me?"

You shrug again, but your cheeks are growing warm. "Yeah. I wanted you to have them. The good ones. Without having to pick through the packet."

He doesn't know what to say. You remembered. You remembered his favourite candy, and you took the time to pick out all the other flavours just so he could have exactly what he liked.

No one does that. No one has ever done that.

Except you.

He says your name softly. "That's—" He stops, because he doesn't have words big enough.

You shift on your feet, suddenly looking unsure. "Is it weird? I thought it might be weird. I just—when I saw them at the store, I thought of you, and—"

"It's not weird." He steps closer, still holding the bag like it's something precious. "It's the nicest thing anyone's done for me in a long time."

Your face softens. "Really?"

"Really."

You're standing in his doorway, backlit by the porch light, and Steve thinks you might be the most beautiful thing he's ever seen. The evening air is cool, carrying the scent of fallen leaves and the distant hum of cicadas.

You're wearing a soft sweater that's slightly too big, jeans that fit just right, and you're looking at him like he's someone worth looking at.

He wants to remember this moment forever.

"Come in," he says finally, stepping aside. "Everyone should be here soon."

You duck past him into the house, and he catches a hint of your perfume, something he already knows is going to haunt him for weeks. "Am I too early?" you ask, glancing around his living room. It's empty for now, just the two of you and the soft glow of the lamps Steve always keeps on.

"No." The word comes out too fast. He tries again, softer. "No, you're perfect. I mean.... perfect timing. You have perfect timing."

You raise an eyebrow, amused. "Smooth, Harrington."

"Shut up." He's grinning though, can't help it. "Make yourself comfortable. You want something to drink? I've got soda, water, probably some beer somewhere. Do you drink?"

"Yeah, sometimes." You settle onto the couch, curling into the corner. "I'm not a huge fan of beer, though. It's just kind of... bitter? I don't know. Not my thing."

Steve's eyebrows shoot up. "Really? I feel like everyone our age is supposed to like beer or pretend beer is amazing."

You laugh. "Right? I've never understood it."

You end up talking again. For twenty minutes, without stopping. It's not even awkward, at all. It's easy. You're easy to talk to.

The door bursts open soon enough.

"Steve! We're here! And we brought snacks, so you better be grateful—"

Dustin stops dead in the doorway, eyes landing on you. Mike, Lucas and Will pile in behind him, nearly crashing into his back.

"Oh," Dustin says. "Who's this?"

Steve stands, suddenly protective in a way he can't explain. "This is—"

"Robin's new friend," you supply, standing with a smile. "And Steve's old one, as we've realised."

Dustin's eyebrows shoot up. "Old friend?"

"Childhood best friends," Steve clarifies. "We knew each other when we were kids."

"Childhood best friends," Mike repeats slowly, a grin spreading across his face. "Huh."

"Don't start, Wheeler."

"She's pretty," Lucas observes. "Really pretty."

"Sinclair!"

"What? I'm just stating facts."

You laugh, bright and easy, and Lucas grins like he's just won a prize. "Careful," you say, tilting your head at him. "I might start thinking you're trying to flatter me into sharing my snacks."

Lucas's eyes light up. "Is that a possibility?"

"Depends on how good your flattery is."

"I'm very good at flattery."

"He's really not," Mike mutters.

"Shut up, Mike."

Dustin is watching you with narrowed eyes, like he's trying to figure you out. You meet his gaze and smile.

"You're Dustin, right? Steve mentioned you."

"Did he." Dustin's voice is flat, but there's curiosity underneath. "What did he say?"

"That you're the brains of the operation. And that you once convinced him aliens were real for three months."

Dustin's face breaks into a massive grin. "He told you about that?"

"He left out the best parts, I'm guessing."

"Oh, the best parts are legendary. There was this one time—"

"Dustin's insufferable enough already," Mike interrupts. "Please don't encourage him."

"I'm not encouraging. I'm gathering intel." You wink at Dustin. "For blackmail purposes."

Dustin stares at you for a beat. Then he turns to Steve with something like reverence. "I like her. She stays."

"Glad you approve, Henderson."

Steve tunes out the rest of the conversation. He's much too focused on you. You're laughing at something Dustin said, your whole face lit up, and Steve realises he's been staring again.

He can't help it. You're just—you're here. After all these years, you're sitting on his couch, talking to his weird adopted family, fitting in like you've always been part of it.

The door opens again, and Max walks in with El.

Max takes one look at you, eyebrows raised. "Who's the newbie?"

"My childhood best friend," Steve explains for what feels like the hundredth time. "Just moved back. We haven't seen each other in like ten years."

"Huh." Max gives you a long, assessing look. "I'm Max. This is El."

"Hi, Max. Hi, El. Nice to meet you."

El peers at you with big, curious eyes. You smile at her, warm and genuine, and Steve feels his chest tighten.

"I like your necklace," you murmur.

El glances down at the pearl necklace Mike bought her last year, then back at you. A small smile touches her lips. "Thank you."

You're sandwiched between them now, Max on one side and El on the other, and Steve watches from across the room as you somehow fit right in. He can't look away.

"What's your favourite movie?" El asks.

"That's a hard one. Depends on my mood, I think."

"Scary movies?"

"Sometimes. I like the special effects. They're pretty cool, right?"

El's eyes light up. "Mike likes those too. The... special effects."

"Mike has good taste, then."

"Debatable," Max mutters.

"She's good with them," Robin says, appearing at Steve's side. "Really good."

"Yeah." His voice is soft. "She is."

"You look kinda sad about it."

"I'm not sad." He pauses, watches you ruffle El's hair gently. "I just—I wanted to talk to her more. And now she's been stolen by the gremlins."

"Don't tell me you're jealous of a couple of teenagers."

Steve shrugs, a smile tugging at his lips as he watches you pass out the other coloured Starbursts to the kids. At one point, Dustin asks where the blue ones are, and you just smile.

"Sorry, Dustin. The blue ones are spoken for."

Dustin's eyes narrow. "Spoken for? By who?"

You glance at Steve, just for a second, and something warm passes between you. "They're someone's favourite."

Dustin follows your gaze, lands on Steve and grins. "Oh. Oh. I see how it is."

"You don't see anything," Steve says quickly.

"I see everything." Dustin leans back, arms crossed, looking insufferably pleased with himself. "The blue ones are for Steve. Steve gets special treatment. This is huge."

"They're just candy," you protest, but your cheeks are pink.

"They're not just candy." Dustin turns to the others. "Do you understand what this means?"

"That Steve has a favourite colour?" Will offers.

"No, dumbass," Dustin sighs.

You're laughing now, and Steve wants to die but also never wants this moment to end. You catch his eye across the room and smile.

He's in so much trouble.

After the movie, Max and El leave first. They offered you to join their sleepover at the Byers' house, which you'd declined, much to their disappointment, but you'd promised to hang out with them later this week.

Dustin's next, clapping Steve on the shoulder. "Good job, Steve. She's a keeper."

"She's not—we're not—"

"Sure." Dustin grins, that knowing look firmly in place. "Whatever you say, Steve."

Mike and Lucas follow, throwing casual goodbyes over their shoulders.

Robin hugs you goodbye, whispers something in your ear that makes you blush and swat at her arm. She cackles, throws Steve a wink, and disappears into the night.

And then it's just you and Steve.

You're still on the couch, curled into the corner, looking around at the scattered popcorn bowls and empty soda cans. "This was really fun."

"Yeah?" Steve's leaning against the back of the couch, watching you. "You're not just saying that?"

"I never just say things." You stretch, catlike, and Steve absolutely does not stare at the sliver of skin that appears between your sweater and your jeans. "Your friends are great. Weird, but great."

"That's the best way to describe them." He pushes off the couch, starts gathering empty cans. "You don't have to help, by the way. You're a guest."

You're already standing, collecting popcorn bowls. "I know. I want to."

"You want to clean up after a bunch of teenagers?"

"I want to help you." You say it simply, like it's obvious, and Steve doesn't know what to do with that. So he just nods, and the two of you move around his living room in easy silence, tidying up.

It's domestic in a way that makes his chest tight. You fitting into his space, picking up cushions, straightening blankets, tossing trash.

You belong here. That's the thought that keeps circling in his head. You belong here, in his house, with his people, in his life.

"You know," you say, dropping a handful of napkins in the trash, "I was really nervous about tonight."

Steve pauses, an empty soda can in each hand. "You were? You seemed totally comfortable."

"I'm good at faking it." You shrug. "But yeah. New town, new people, new... everything. Even though I did live here, I don't know. I wasn't sure how I'd fit in."

"And now?"

You smile. "Now I'm really glad I came."

Steve sets down the cans, crosses to where you're standing by the kitchen island. "Me too." You're looking at him with those big, warm eyes, and Steve thinks he could get lost in them.

"Hey," he says, before he can lose his nerve. "Are you doing anything tomorrow?"

You tilt your head. "Depends. Why?"

"A few of us are gonna hang out. Robin, obviously. Nancy and Jonathan." He rubs the back of his neck, suddenly nervous. "Just a smaller group. More low-key. I thought maybe you'd want to come?"

"You want me to come?"

"I mean—only if you want to. No pressure. But yeah, I'd like it if you were there." He pauses, steels himself. "I'd like to spend more time with you. If that's okay."

You're quiet for a moment, and Steve's heart hammers in his chest. Then you smile — that same smile from when you were nine.

"I'd love that, Stevie."

"Okay," he murmurs. Watches the strand of hair that's fallen in front of your face and reaches up before you can, tucking it behind your ear, fingers lingering longer than necessary.

You leave, promising to meet him and the others tomorrow at the diner for lunch.

Steve closes the door behind you and leans against it, eyes shut, hand pressed to his chest like he can physically slow down his racing heart. He pushes off the door eventually, walking over slowly to the couch, sinking into the spot you just left. It's still warm. He tells himself that's not weird, that anyone would notice that, that it doesn't mean anything.

He's lying.

His fingers brush the cushion where you were sitting, and he thinks about the way you looked tonight. He thinks about the Starbursts. The blue ones, all picked out just for him. The way you'd shrugged like it was nothing, like it wasn't the most thoughtful thing anyone had ever done.

Steve scrubs a hand over his face, exhausted and wired at the same time. He should go to bed. He has work tomorrow, and then lunch with you. But his mind won't stop spinning, caught in a loop of your smile, your laugh, the way your eyes crinkle at the corners when you're happy.

He remembers that from when you were kids. The way your whole face would light up when you were happy, like the sun coming out from behind clouds. It's the same now. Brighter, even.

You haven't changed much, he thinks. He can see the little kid in you still.

He thinks about the years you were gone. All the moments you missed, all the things he wishes you'd been there for. He thinks about the person he used to be — King Steve, asshole extraordinaire — and wonders what you would have thought of him if you'd seen him then. Would you have recognised him? Would you have wanted to?

He thinks about the person he is now. The person you seem to see when you look at him. He hopes you think he's good. That maybe, just maybe, someday he might be worthy of you.

He falls asleep on the couch. He dreams of forts in the woods and secret handshakes and a little girl with mud on her face, holding up a frog and grinning like she'd just found treasure.

Steve's the first one at the diner the next day. He grabs a booth near the window, where he can see the parking lot. He orders a coffee he doesn't really want, just to have something to do with his hands.

Robin's the first to arrive, sliding into the booth across from him with a knowing grin. "You're here early."

"Traffic was light," Steve mutters, taking a sip of his coffee even though it's still too hot.

Robin snorts. "It's a five-minute drive from your house." She steals his coffee, takes a sip, then slides the cup back to him. "She's coming, by the way. I ran into her at the grocery store this morning. She said she'd be here."

Steve's heart does that stupid flip thing again. "I didn't ask."

"You didn't have to. Your face did." Robin grins. "Relax. She likes you."

"She doesn't—we're just—"

"Steve." Robin's voice is flat. "She picked the blue ones out of a whole bag of Starbursts. For you. That's not 'just' anything."

He doesn't have an answer for that.

The diner is quiet this time of day — the lunch rush hasn't started yet, and the breakfast crowd is long gone. Robin orders her own coffee, stirs sugar into it when it arrives.

"You know, you could just tell her."

"Tell her what?"

"How you feel." She shrugs. "It's not complicated. 'Hey, I've known you since we were kids and I think you're amazing and also really pretty and I'd like to kiss you.' Simple."

Steve chokes on his coffee. "I am not saying that."

"Why not? It's true."

"It's—" He runs a hand through his hair. "We just reconnected. I don't want to rush anything. What if she doesn't feel the same way? What if I scare her off?"

Robin considers this. "Okay, fair. But also, have you seen the way she looks at you?"

"What way?"

"You're clueless."

Before Steve can respond, Nancy walks in, Jonathan right behind her, both of them looking slightly windswept from the walk.

"Sorry we're late," Nancy says, sliding into the booth next to Robin. "Jonathan lost track of time developing photos."

"I didn't lose track of time," Jonathan protests, sitting beside her. "I was in the zone. There's a difference."

Steve's eyes drift to the parking lot again. Still no sign of your car.

"So," Nancy says. "This new friend of Robin's. Also apparently your childhood best friend. The one you've been staring at all week."

"I haven't been staring."

"You've been staring. Jonathan noticed too."

Jonathan nods without looking away from the window. "It's impressive, actually. The level of focus."

"I hate all of you," Steve mutters.

"You love us. And you're nervous because she's late and you're worried she changed her mind."

"I'm not—" He stops. Sighs. "Okay, maybe a little."

"Steve. She showed up at your house with a bag of candy she specially prepared for you. She's not going to change her mind."

"How do you know?"

"Because I have eyes." Nancy's voice is dry. "And because Robin told me about the Starbursts. That's not nothing."

"She's right," Jonathan adds, finally turning from the window. "People don't do that for people they don't care about."

Steve wants to believe them. He does. But his eyes keep drifting back to the parking lot, watching for your car, waiting for you to appear.

Ten more minutes pass, during which Robin and Nancy get into a heated debate about something Steve's not listening to and Jonathan takes a picture of the salt shaker.

And then, finally, your car pulls into the lot.

Steve sits up straighter, watching you park, watching you step out, watching you pause to look around with that familiar tilt to your head.

"See?" Robin nudges him. "She's here. Told you."

You push through the diner door, and the little bell above it chimes. Your eyes scan the room, land on their booth, and you smile — but it's different this time. Apologetic. Embarrassed.

"Sorry I'm late!" You slide into the booth next to Steve, close enough that your arm brushes his. "I got lost again. I swear, this town is trying to confuse me on purpose."

"You got lost coming to the diner?" Nancy asks, amused. "It's literally a straight shot from your apartment."

"A straight shot with, like, four turns and no street signs and a really confusing intersection." You blow out a breath, pushing your hair out of your face. "I ended up near the old mill somehow."

"The old mill?" Robin's eyebrows shoot up. "That's, like, twenty minutes in the wrong direction."

"I know!" You laugh, embarrassed. "I'm hopeless. I should just start leaving breadcrumbs."

Steve's heart, which had been racing with worry, finally settles. You're here. You're okay. You just got lost.

"I was starting to think you'd changed your mind," he says quietly, before he can stop himself.

You turn to him, your expression softening. "No, Stevie. I wouldn't do that." You bump your shoulder against his. "It takes more than a confusing intersection to get rid of me."

"Okay, okay, enough with the eye contact," Robin interrupts. "Some of us are trying to eat."

Nancy laughs. "Robin, let them have their moment. It's cute."

Lunch is fun, easier than you thought it'd be. Afterwards, you all linger outside the diner, reluctant to let the afternoon end.

Robin stretches her arms above her head. "I gotta get to work. Some of us have actual jobs."

"You work at the same place as Steve," Nancy points out.

"Exactly. Which means I have to deal with him and customers. It's exhausting."

Steve flips her off, but he's smiling.

Nancy and Jonathan head off toward his car. He's got an arm around her and she's smiling into his shoulder, looking disgustingly cute.

Robin hugs you goodbye and shoves Steve's shoulder a little before disappearing down the street, too.

You're standing close, close enough that he can see the way the sunlight catches your hair. You're fidgeting with the strap of your bag, looking anywhere but at him.

"So," you say. "That was fun."

"Yeah." He shoves his hands in his pockets, suddenly awkward. "Really fun."

A pause. You bite your lip.

"Steve?"

"Yeah?"

"I was wondering..." You trail off, cheeks warming. "I mean, if you're not busy or whatever... do you maybe want to hang out again? Soon? Just us?"

His heart stops.

"I know we just hung out," you continue quickly, words tumbling out. "And you probably have stuff to do, and I don't want to be annoying or anything, it's just—I really like talking to you, and I feel like we have so much to catch up on, and—"

Steve says your name to stop you. You stop, looking at him with those big, warm eyes.

"I'd love to hang out again." He's grinning, can't help it. "Any time. Just say when."

Your face lights up. "Really?"

"Really."

"Okay." You're smiling now, that bright, sunshine smile. "How about tomorrow? We could go for a walk or something? If the weather's nice?"

"It's supposed to be nice." He's definitely grinning like an idiot. "I could pick you up around one? So you don't get lost."

You laugh, that bright sound he's already addicted to. "Wow. Rude. But also... fair. One o'clock sounds perfect."

"Perfect," he echoes.

You're both just standing there now, neither quite ready to leave. The afternoon sun is warm on Steve's shoulders, and you're looking at him with that soft expression, the one that makes his chest feel tight in the best way.

"I should probably go," you say eventually, but you don't move.

"Yeah. Me too. Probably." He doesn't move either.

"Thanks for today. And last night. And... everything." You shrug, a little shy. "I know I just showed up out of nowhere and turned your life upside down, but you've been really great about it."

You hug him again — longer this time, your arms around his waist, your cheek pressed to his chest.

When you pull back, your cheeks are flushed. "Okay. Bye, Stevie."

"Bye."

You walk to your car, and Steve watches the whole way, committing it to memory. You glance back before you slip into the drivers' seat, smiling before you disappear inside.

He stands there for a long time after you're gone, feeling like the luckiest guy in the world. He thinks this might be the beginning of something.

Something good.

Something real.

'Would it be an invasion of privacy to snoop through his drawers?' Dick thought.

'Nah, we're best friends!'

And with that, he made his way over to the table in a few strides. There was a lamp, an empty glass, and a protein bar wrapper on top. Three drawers where his charger could potentially be.

He opened the first to see painkillers, bandages, more food wrappers and crumbs.

The second drawer was full of random pens and pencils, his headphones and a handful of guitar picks.

Finally, the last drawer contains a pile of condoms, his charger, and a stack of photos... of you?

Why does Wally have photos of you? You're his girlfriend.

Dick picked up the first few photos. They were innocent—nothing wrong with them, but it was still weird. You were smiling and laughing in all the photos. You also seemed to be in Wally's bed or clothes in a lot of them. A sinking pit formed in his stomach. You and Wally were good friends, naturally you're his girfriend. The two of you getting along was a requirement. The photos were innocent; you laughing in bed, wearing his jumper whilst playing a video game, Wally teaching you how to play guitar. It couldn't be what he was thinking. You two would never do that to him, right?

His hopeful thoughts were burst as he flipped to the next picture; your bare back on display, covered in hickeys. Your hair was tousled and you were face down in a pillow.

You giggled as Wally gently placed you onto your bed. He leaned over and captured your lips in a sweet kiss, you couldn't help but smile into it. As another soft laugh left you his hands found their way to your waist, sliding over your the waistband of your jeans and under your t-shirt (Dick's t-shirt).

If you had been wearing that the first night you two got involved with another like this, it probably would've never happened. The guilt of taking his best friend's shirt off of you, his best friend's girlfriend would have eaten him alive. But now, a whole month after that first night together, a whole month finally noticing how desperate and unsatisfied Dick left you, there's barley an once of guilt in him.

Wally continued to make out with you as your hands roamed eachother's bodies. You nails clawed at his back through his jumper. He broke away from you and sat up, graciously removing the barrier between you and his bare skin. When the jumper came over his head he was met with the sight of your smile. Your eyes roamed over his abs and biceps. They certainly weren't as grand as Dick's but he made up for it with the legs and speed. And most notably being there whenever you needed him.

You sat up and snaked an arm around his neck and the other hand took a fistful of his hair. The kiss was passionate and hungry. His hands landed on your waist again but only briefly before he went to tear off your jeans. It was a swift motion, you barely registered him removing your belt before you were left in your panties. His hands caressed and massaged your ass. One hand snaked it's way up to fiddle with the clasp of your bra. He pulled it back and let it snap against your skin. Breaking away from fhe kiss you gasped and he snickered. He went to undo your bra but you slapped his hand away. He pouted and you smirked as you shuffled back to give him a but of a show. Your hands found the hem of the t-shirt as your eyes found his. You removed the shirt over your head and tossed it to the side. Wally lowly whistled at the sight of you in your underwear. In a pornographic manner you crawled foward, never breaking eye contact. Wally's breath caught in his chest as your hands and mouth slithered up his body. Your hands felt up his muscles while your lips and tongue worshipped the rest of him. He couldn't help but groan. Eventually you reached his collarbone, then his neck—you made sure to give his adam's apple special treatment—before heading to his jaw and finishing at his pouty lips. You hummed into the kisses as he leaned foward, pushing you back down onto the mattress. He positioned you to rest your head on the pillows.

"Fuck, youre beautiful." He sighed at the sight of you, lying half-naked beneath him with smudged lipgloss. He kissed you deeply and cupped your breasts. He shivered as your nails raked along his back. You moaned into the kiss as his thumbs brushed over your nipples. Your body arched into him as you reached your arms around to unclasp your bra.

"Need a hand, baby?" He asked. You grunted in annoyance when the bra wouldnt unclasp. You rolled over, your rear brushing agaisnt Wally just right. He quickly unclaspped the bra and bent down to kiss your shoulder blades.

"Wally—fuck." You moaned as he kissed all over you and grinded hastily. He pushed you into the mattress causing your clit to rub agaisnt the sheets. You groaned as Wally massaged your body and covered your skin in heavy kisses...

You were covered in kiss marks and sweat, now resting your head on Wally's chest. Your breathing was ragged and your mind was a haze. The heavy feeling if sleep started to overcome you until Wally moved out from under you. You childishly groaned in annoyance as you fell into the pillows beanth.

"Sorry babe, just got an idea!" You lifted your head to see Wally walking over to the vanity. An eyebrow raised as you watched him pick up your pink polaroid camera.

"Whatcha doing genius?" Wally laughed at your question as he turned and walked back over. You stared up at him dreary-ly, and suddenly—SNAP—you covered your squinting eyes from the flash. Wally pulled the dark photo out and shook it a bit.

"You have to wait with these don't you?" He asked. You nodded with your face buried in the pillows. He placed the developing photo on the nightstand, right beside the open condom packet. They were like his trophies. He scooted closer and positioned himself above you.

"Hold still baby." Wally said as he snapped another photo. He placed the new photo on the nightstand and grabbed the first one. It was already developing. He grinned.

"Awesome!" He commented. You shot on hand out to smack his leg at his remark.

"Ow! What was that for?" You laughed to yourself.

"Nah, seriously babe you have to see this." He held the picture up for you. You shifted your face out of the pillow and holy shit—you looked awesome.

"You look like a pornstar!" You fully shifted and elbowed Wally in the stomach.

"I meant it as a compliment!"

Dick felt like he could be sick. How could you do this to him? The both of you. His girlfriend and his best friend. As much as it pained him Dick's curiosity got the best of him. He continued going through the photos.

There was one of your ass with a prominent red hand mark. Another taken by you whilst straddling Wally of him covered in lipstick and scratch marks. An up-close picture of your bare chest. One of you on your knees dressed in Lacy blue lingerie, that Dick had bought you. He had seen enough. He tossed the photos back into the drawer angrily, before realising he'd need them as evidence of your affair. And he also didn't want Wally to have these photos. He stormed out of Wally's room and headed straight for yours.

Meanwhile, you were in your room, not alone of course. Wally was with you too. It was as friendly as a meet-up can get. Except you were both naked and making out. But you have to understand that he's just helping you! God knows Dick's barely ever around and when he is nursing a horrid injury, he's in no condition to satisfy you. You and Dick do have sex but it's every now and again. Like once a month maybe. That's a generous outlook. And in your time of need, Wally was there for you. Did the initial night go a lot further than you thought? Definitely. You found yourself looking foward to waving Dick goodbye and waving Wally hello.

You were in the Med Bay with Dick. He'd just come back from a long mission, you haven’t seen him in nearly three weeks. Dick got a nasty injury though; a deep stab wound in the abdomen. He was in a dreary state when you were let in to see him.

Now you were sitting at his side brushing hair out of his face. You felt so bad, partly because he was injured and you loved him, but another part of you was mad though. Mad that he was gone for so long and now that he's back you don't get to spend proper time together. And you felt so guilty about it. You'd felt this way for a while, but never found the time to bring it up. Probably because most of your talks are texting or phone calls these days, and this is an in-person conversation.

"You feeling any better?" You asked quietly, afraid to disturb the little peace he had.

He groaned through gritted teeth, "I'm fine." Even though he clearly wasn't he continued to try to adjust his position.

"Let me h—"

"I don't need to be coddled Y/n!" He slapped your hand away from him. That was the final nail in the coffin of your relationship.

"Fine." You replied coldly before leaving the room.

On your way out you bumped shoulders with someone. You were too busy glaring at the ground to notice who.

Wally was never too busy to notice you though. Ever since you joined the team he hasn't been able to keep his eyes off you. You dont even want to imagine the despair he felt when the team found out about your and Dick's relationship. He was all "congratulations man!" in the moment but he cried most of the night. Kept giving out to himself for not making a move, then for thinking you would've even considered saying yes.

"Dude, everything alright?" Wally asked.

"Yeah, it's just..." Dick trailed off. "She can be so clingy."

Wally was taken aback by the annoyance in Dick's voice.

'Your girlfriend is clingy? And that's a bad thing how?' Was all he could think. What he would do to have someone like you cling to him.

"I thought this would be easy, our relationship. She's a part of the team she understands what I do and there's no secrets—yet she clings to me every second she gets like I don't have a job to do!" Dick ranted and Wally stared in confusion. He just truly couldn't see what the issue was. You two spend so much time apart of course you're going to be all over him when you finally see him. Wally would kill to have that.

Later on, the team had all returned to their rooms for the night, except two. Dick was still in the Med Bay and Wally was heading back to his room after getting a midnight snack. As he passed your room he stopped in his tracks. The door was slightly ajar and he could hear faint noises. A buzzing sound and moaning. He knew he shouldn't be eavesdropping on something so private, but he couldn't help it. He felt his cheeks grow hot and his pants get tight. All of a sudden the buzzing stopped.

"Oh for fuck sake!" You whined. Wally peaked through the crack of the door to see you furiously clicking the button of your vibrator.

"Oh c'mon!" You cried, actually. He could hear the waver in your voice and see faint tears in your eyes. All the tension between you and Dick paired with your sexual frustration was getting to you. Wally doesn't know what came over him but all of a sudden he was gently knocking on your door.

"Hey Y/n, you good?" He asked with a weird tone. A mix of nervousness, embarrassment, and faux sauve. You jumped at the sound of his voice, quickly shoving the vibrator under the blanket. You pulled the blanket over your chest even though you had a top on.

"Uh—W—Wally hey!" You stuttered. Your knuckles were white from clenching the blanket so hard. Your face was burning hot.

You sniffled, "Yeah, im fine! What are you doing up?"

"I was getting a snack and—um—" he swallowed thickly. "—I-I don't mean to intrude, but um..." he paused to choose his words carefully. "I know you and Dick aren't...going so strong at the moment," you raised a brow waiting for him to finsh. "I just wanted to let you know that I'm always here."

You stared at him with wide eyes. Was he saying what you think he was saying?

"Okay, thank you." You nodded and fidgeted with the blanket.

"I mean it I'm always here...for anything."

"Anything?"

"Anything."

Inevitably, Wally ended up at the foot of your bed. His hands gripping your bare legs and slowly kissing his way up your legs, until he was face to face with your pussy. He took a helpless breath at the sight of your body, begging and pleading for attention. Attention he knew he could give you. Wally looked up to you, and he subconsciously licked his lips. All you did was nod with a guilt-ridden expression. Your head was screaming no, but the rest of you was screaming yes. With your consent, Wally wasted no time diving in. His lips attached themselves around your pulsing clit.

The warm sensation of his mouth made you sigh in relief, only for you to suddenly gasp. "Oh—" You clasped a hand over your mouth and whimpered into your palm as your back arched.

It hadn't crossed your mind that super-speed worked for all of his body. He was a human vibrator.

Wally detached himself from you. "I know it's a lot b—" Wally was cut off by you shoving his face back down.

"Don't stop!" You begged. "Please!"

What was Wally to do? Say no? When you're arching into him like that, there was no way he could. A groan slipped out of him as you pulled on his hair. He gripped your thighs tightly and threw them over his shoulders. They held him in a headlock but they were spasming. He could barely breathe but not a single complaint would ever escape him. He was living the dream; head between your thighs, listening to your muffled screams of ecstasy. You sucked and kissed your clit like his life depended on it. Like this was his legacy and he'd hate to disappoint anyone.

"Oh—fuck!" You bit down on your fingers and squeezed your eyes shut. Wally was about to ask if something was wrong but a wave of sweet cum spurted out. He left your clit for licking up your juices like a starved puppy. The leaking cum wasn't enough for him, he needed every drop of it. Your hand gripped his hair as you shoved his tongue into your sopping hole. His tongue lapped up every drop of cum, rubbing along your walls just right in the process.

"Oh my—Wally!" You cried, your free hand occupying itself with your breast. Wally felt his cock throb in his sweatpants. The sight of you throwing your head back, touching yourself and screaming his name. It's something he thought only existed in his wet dreams. Your thighs were chocking him and he fucking loved it. He moaned at the feeling of you rutting up into him. The fact that he could make you feel this good made him proud.

Wally continued eating you out for what felt like hours. And it probably was, considering the speck of sunlight that was peaking through your curtains. He was so pussy drunk. He couldn't stop. He rode you through all of your highs, not once giving you a break. He had lost time to make up for. All those nights he jerked off alone to the sounds of you touching yourself in the room below. Or the once in a blue moon occasion you were being dicked down by Dick. At some point, you ended up sitting on Wally's face. Suffocating him even more. You tried to pull that hovering bullshit on him but he just pulled you straight down.

"Holy shit..." you wobbled from your spot on top of him. He's just ridden you through probably your fifth orgasm? You've lost count. A whine escaped him as you manoeuvred. You hovered above, now facing the other way. Your shaking hands reached for his soaked sweatpants. You pulled them down and kissed his hard beanth his boxers. His breath stuttered and his fingers dug into your hips.

"You don't have to..."

"I want to please..." you pathetically begged looking over your shoulder at him. Your face was wet with tears from overstimulation. He nodded and you wasted no time removing his boxers and deep throating his cock. Wally let out an almost pornographic moan. It was quickly muffled by your weight as you sat back down. Your tongue slided along his cock perfectly.

"You're so hot." He muttered into your dripping pussy. Your legs squeezed around his head in response. He slithered his hands down to massage your ass. A satisfied moan elicited from you, sending vibrations through him, causing his cock to twitch frantically.

Your tongue stroked the side of him and flicked against the tip. To be honest, you don't think you've ever tried this hard for someone. He has given you several orgasms though so it's the right thing to do. It didn't take long for both of you to come, considering you were putty in his hands and he was desperate for you. Wally dug into you as you began to squirm, your moans and whimpers were getting him off earlier but now that your mouth was around his cock and every little thing sent vibrations, he was gone. You let go of Wally and shrieked out a moan as he came right after. Cum shot up onto your face and some leaked down himself. You lifted yourself off Wally, balancing on shaking legs, but leaned down to clean him up. He groaned. He sat up and grabbed your waist, turning you to face him and he almost came again at the sight of you. You were drunk on your high(s) and covered in sweat and cum. He grabbed some tissues from the nightstand and cleaned your face.

"You're so beautiful." He whispered. You said nothing in response, you're brain was to fucked out to form a sentence. So you just lightly giggled before dropping your head onto his shoulder. Wally laid you down. He made sure your pillows were propped up right and your blanket covered you before slipping out.

"Wally..." You took his hand in yours and stared at him with pleading eyes. Your body felt like jelly but you used all your might to pull him back into bed with you. He carefully embraced you and brushed your hair out of your face. He really wanted to kiss all over your face but decided that was too couple-y for now.

Dick's footsteps were heavy but unheard by you and Wally, to caught up in your dirty laundry activities. Dick was seething in rage. How could you do this to him? His hand reached for the doorknob but halted. All he could hear was his uneven breathing along with giggles and moans. He carefully twisted the doorknob and pushed the door open. Just a bit, enough to see in, but not enough for the two of you to spot him peeking. There you were, his girlfriend, straddling his best friend. Wally's hands were restrained by handcuffs. The chain was wrapped around part of the headboard, detaining him from touching you. His head occasionally banged off the headboard in agony due to your teasing movements. He wasn't able to put his hands on you and your riding him so slowly that it hurts. All you did was giggle.

"Baby please!" He whined. He would just thrust into but when he tried that earlier you got off him. His fingers twitch, aching to carress your skin, and his cock twitched inside you begging for faster momentum. You laughed as you began to bounce a little. Wally arched into you and grinded ever so slightly. He needed more movement but he didn't want to risk you getting off him.

"Easy cowboy," You teased. Your hands lay flat on his abdomen and you ceased all movements. He whined again. "Be a good boy and you'll get what you want!"

His hands curled into fists. He was trying to hold back and do as you said.

"Wait—hold still," you commanded as you reached for your nightstand. Dick grimaced at the sound of Wally groaning as you lifted partly off him. "Say cheese!" A flash lit up the room as you captured Wally's torment on Polaroid, as always.

You put the camera and the developing picture down and cupped his face. He looked drunk. A dopey grin, rosy cheeks and baby hairs stuck to his sweaty forehead. Both of your lips were glossy and swollen. You leaned in and captured his lips. Dick felt his heart drop. The realisation had dawned upon him that you and Wally weren't simply sleeping together, you loved him and he loved you. The kiss was passionate and not in a lustful way. The sweet and silly gesture of taking photos together, sexual or not, spoke a lot more than words.

Dick backed away from the door and entered his own bedroom, next door. He slid to the floor after softly closing the door. The Polaroids were crumpled in his hands. He spilled them onto the floor. His vision was clouded with sweet images of you and another man, his best friend. Dick couldn't even cry out his frustrations in peace as the sounds of you and Wally making love got louder. And Dick couldn't ignore the painful boner in his pants any longer. He swiftly pulled his sweats down and reached into his boxers. Even if you were cheating on him, he still loved you to some extent and fuck, seeing you top Wally was honestly really hot. He groped himself to the sound of you and Wally through the wall. He felt like a pervert. Dick slowed at the sound of muttering. He couldn't pick up what you and Wally were saying in whispers.

"You've been good, c'mere." You stopped your grinding and took the key for the handcuffs off the nightstand. You held back a laugh at Wally's satisfactory 'yes!' that he sighed to himself. Once the cuffs were undone he launched himself at you. The cuffs and key fell somewhere on the ground as Wally pulled you close. His face buried in your chest, pressing and licking kisses along your skin, and his hands roamed everywhere.

"Thank you baby, I'm going to make you feel so good!" Wally held your close and rolled over. Landing with you on your back beneath him. He stayed close, hugging you. He began to thrust into you. His inhumanely fast pace still catching you off guard.

Dick's dick throbbed and twitched in his hand when he heard you squeal. His hand was covered in pre-cum. Your squeal was followed by moans and more moans. He rutted up into his fist pathetically. Here he is jerking off alone while his girfriend has sex with someone else. What a story to tell. It didn't take long for Dick to cum, you and him were having issues for a while and he'd been super busy so he had a lot of sexual frustration. As he was coming down from his high you were both reaching yours.

"Oh—fuck!" You whined.

"I've got you baby!" Wally caressed your hair and kissed at your neck. You were almost there, just a few more. As Wally felt you orgasm he sat up and pulled out. Your stomach was coated I'm his fluids.

"Sorry, I'll clean you up." Wally pressed a chaste kiss to your cheek before heading towards the bathroom.

He came back with a warm cloth and cleaned you up. He settled beside you with his arms around your waist. Your fingers played with his hair and it felt like heaven.

"I love you." Wally mumbled.

Dick felt his heart shattering.

"I love you too."

Of all the stupid things you’ve done in your life, walking directly into the glowing purple room on a hostile spaceship definitely ranks first.

You’d just finished fighting your way through the horde of robots that occupied the ship when you spotted it. Bruce had been in a heated discussion with Hal, scanning something in the alien-robot helmets that you didn’t quite understand. Barry had scratched his neck, trying to play mediator.

No one but you seemed to notice the glowing, whispering room only a few short steps down the hall. No one seemed to notice the incredible scent—oddly reminiscent of Diana’s perfume—or the way it beckoned you in.

No one noticed as you shuffled your feet towards it in a trance, picked up an ID card from one of the deceased robots, and scanned yourself into the room.

It was Clark that noticed first, his superior hearing perking up the minute he heard the soft click of the door. “What are you doing?”

Barry’s on his feet in an instant, tearing away from the argument. It’s a millisecond, maybe two, before he gets to you. But he’s too late. 

Dazed, you’d already stumbled into the purple mist, the door sealing shut behind you.

The minutes after that were a blur. The mist had wrapped around you, invaded every pore, filled every breath until you weren’t sure if you were breathing or drowning. The burning in your lungs snapped you out of your trance and you immediately spun around to pound on the glass door in front of you.

It didn’t give. Even through Clark and Diana’s joint efforts, through every construct Hal could build and every plan Bruce could think of, the door didn’t give. You were trapped. Utterly helpless, suffocating.

The room only got hotter from there, the perfumey scent that had once been enticing now made your stomach churn. Your muscles weakened and you let yourself slide against the door, resigning yourself to dying on an alien-robot spaceship.

You were unconscious by the time the door opened three minutes later. Diana had immediately grabbed you and dragged you out, scrunching up her nose at the scent coming from the room.

Bruce checked your pulse, Clark scanning over you with his xray vision to make sure you weren’t injured. For all intents and purposes, you were fine. Sure, your core temperature was a little elevated, and yeah, you were unconscious—but you were fine.

Which brings you to now: waking up on the cold metal floor, a horrible ache rattling the back of your skull. There’s a scratch in your throat, a new sort of heat pulsing through you.

You blink up at the five faces above you, forcing yourself to sit up. The pain in the back of your head sharpens to a point as you sit, a trickle of blood leaking from your nose and over your lips.

You wipe it on the back of your hand without thinking, looking groggily around the room. “What happened?”

“That’s what we’re trying to find out,” Bruce says gruffly.

Diana crouches down next to you, brushing a thumb over the steady stream of blood coming from your nose. “How are you feeling?”

“Dizzy,” you admit. “Everything hurts.”

You open your mouth to apologize for wandering off and to warn them about the trance-like state the gas from the room put you in, but freeze when a wave of warmth rolls over you. It starts in your chest, radiating out through your veins and pooling in your lower stomach.

And then it burns, like acid is eating through your organs. You double over, gagging from the pain, pulling your knees into your stomach. Short, gasping breaths leave your lips.

Barry crouches on your other side, laying a gentle hand on your back. “Easy now, easy.” He looks at Diana over your head, frowning, “she’s a thousand degrees.”

The Amazonian nods solemnly though she doesn’t dare open her mouth lest her words make you feel even more anxious.

Somewhere off to the side, while you’re trying to keep your stomach from flipping inside out, Hal and Bruce are trying to figure out just what exactly was in that room. The purple coloured smoke was unlike anything either of them had seen before, and though neither of them want to admit it, that doesn’t bode well for an antidote.

The pain in your stomach subsides, narrowing down to your core. Your eyes shoot wide at the all too familiar feeling. You swallow, casting your gaze down. 

“How’s the pain?” Clark asks, lips pursed in a frown. 

His eyes lock with Diana’s in a silent conversation, Clark assessing your vitals as subtly as he can. You’ve only grown hotter since you woke up, the pain you once felt all over localizing to your lower half.

You double over in pain again, your stomach cramping the way it would when you’re on your period. Heat pools in your underwear, leaking through to the inner seams of your suit. Your lungs ache for air but every breath feels warm and shallow.

Diana rubs a hand over your lower stomach and the minute her palm makes contact, the pain briefly subsides. The sweet relief of a deep breath expands your lungs.

You lean into her touch, tilting your head to rest on her broad shoulders. The closer you are to her, the more of her that fills your senses, the better you feel.

At the same time you make this revelation, Bruce and Hal are joining back with the group.

Though it’s rare to see Bruce smile in his Batman persona as it is, the deep frown on his face feels like a bad sign. “We’ve figured out what the toxin was.”

Next to Bruce, Hal is an equal mix of concerned and flustered. The pair of them only makes your anxiety spike, the pain you’d staved off coming back. 

“What is it?” Barry asks, his own hand resting comfortingly on your knee.

“The good news is that it’s not exactly a poison.”

You look up at Hal through your lashes, waiting for him to say more, about how this could possibly be good news. 

It’s Bruce that speaks up. “It’s a lab made chemical, meant to help with population regrowth on near-desolated planets.” 

No matter how horribly, desperately you don't want it to be true, you know that it is. Before he even continues speaking, a part of you knows what he’s going to say next. Knows what’s coming to you.

“It inflicts damage on your body, staying in your system until you either satiate it or…” He trails off and you swear the frown lines on his face deepen.

No one dares ask what comes after ‘or’.

It’s Diana that breaks the silence. “How is it satiated?”

“Population regrowth,” your voice cracks on the word. “You fix it by reproducing.”

Bruce nods solemnly, confirming what you already knew.

You lay your palms flat on the floor, trying to push yourself to your knees. The minute Diana and Barry’s hands fall off of you, the pain comes back tenfold, radiating up your spine until you’re dizzy.

The blood drips faster from your nose now, a metallic taste filling your mouth. You swallow it back, “if I can just—if we get back to the ship, I can take care of it.”

Barry’s hand finds its way back into your palm, the other one wiping away the blood that spills over your lip. “She won’t make it that long,” he looks up at Bruce with desperate eyes, “will she?”

Again, he shakes his head.

The drop in morale at that moment is so severe you can feel it, tensions rising around you. It’s only now that the gravity of the situation really settles into your chest.

Fear rises to your throat like bile. You’re going to die here, you’re going to die because you made a stupid mistake. And the only way you can stop it, the only way you can fix yourself, is to strip down in front of your friends—your coworkers—and fuck yourself like an unfixed dog.

“How long does it last?” Your voice sounds weaker now.

“We don’t know,” Hal admits. “From the scan Clark did on you, it could be hours, it could be days.”

Hours. Though you’re practically soaked through with arousal, though your pussy flutters in anticipation, the thought of masturbating with them in the room for hours makes your heart drop.

“I can stay here and you guys go back to the ship and I can meet you there—”

Please, god, do not let me have to touch myself in front of my coworkers.

You’re surprised when it’s not Hal or Bruce that speaks next, it’s Barry. “It doesn’t work like that, does it?” 

Spoken like a true scientist. 

“It’s for repopulation,” Bruce reiterates. “If you stay here alone, you will die.”

Hal’s eyes find yours from behind his mask. “You feel it, don’t you?” He gestures to the way Barry’s holding you, “the way touch makes the pain go away. The way the pain triples when you try to pull away.”

He speaks on the experience so eloquently, you can’t help but wonder if he’s gone through this before. There’s an expression on his face that you can’t quite read, one beyond the concern. One that looks an awful lot like understanding.

“So…” Clark begins. 

“I either have sex with someone, or I die.” You look around the room, at each of the people around you, “it’s not fair. I can’t ask any of you to do that.”

The chorus of voices surprises you, though it probably shouldn’t given who you’re with. “I’ll do it.”

Damn heroes, always trying to rectify situations at the cost of themselves.

“I’d be taking advantage,” you frown, the pain in your stomach starting to come back again. “It’s unfair.”

Diana cups your face, turning your head to face her. “How is it that you’re the one in danger, and yet you’re worried about us?”

The feeling of her fingertips on your skin ignites something in you, simultaneously soothing the pain that lingers at the back of your spine.

You shrug your shoulders. “I just…don’t want any of you to do something you don’t want to.”

Again, they begin to protest, heads shaking at your antics. 

Leave it to Hal Jordan to ask the hard questions. “So, who do you want to do it?” 

“I—” You suck in a breath, Diana and Barry’s touch not chasing away the pain as well as it was before. “I don’t care, I trust you all. Just don’t let me die. Please.”

Right now, you’re not sure there’s anyone you trust more than the people in the room. You’ve dealt with countless problems by their sides, confided in them about all of your problems, grabbed beers with them after saving the world.

Your trust in them is unshakeable, absolute. 

Immediately, the room dissolves into discussion. There’s arguments on who does it, on what they need to do, how careful they need to be. They discuss the possibility of the chemical spreading, of someone else being inflicted. Barry rises to his feet, dropping your hand to join the discussion.

And while the men argue, Diana cups your jaw and pulls you in for a dizzying kiss. Her lips are soft on yours, and despite the blood that’s dried to your own lips, she doesn’t seem to mind. 

Her other hand finds the small of your back, drawing shapes over your spine. Her grip on you is strong, reassuring, a total comfort. You fall into her completely, letting her guide you onto your back, the cold metal of the floor staving off some of your heat.

Her tongue swipes across the back of your teeth, that familiar taste of hers filling your mouth. Her other hand trails down to the seam of your pants, dipping inside to rub at your heat. 

For a minute, she’s surprised at how wet you are, how swollen your clit already is. But then she pushes past her shock, her thumb rubbing circles with just enough pressure to have wave after wave of ecstasy rolling over you.

She pulls away—just for a second—to pull your pants down to your knees, giving herself easier access to you. Her mouth greedily swallows every moan before it can hit the air, muffling it from the men still arguing around you.

Every touch is intentional, every swish of her tongue in your mouth synchronized with her finger on your clit. You’re sure the drug must be heightening your senses, making you all too sensitive to her touch.

She’s barely slipped a finger inside of you when you’re already coming undone, electricity bolting up your spine as your walls pulse around her finger. The aftershocks of your orgasm chase away the pain, the fear—everything.

"Good girl," she praises. "I'll take care of you."

And then she’s kissing down your chest, lips sucking at your neck. She starts to slowly move her finger inside of you again, her other hand leaving your face to push the fabric of your shirt up. She kisses further down, lips getting closer and closer to where she’s fucking you with her finger.

Just as her mouth attaches to your clit, another finger pushes inside of you. A particularly loud moan slips from your lips and without Diana there to muffle it, the cacophonous arguing stops.

“Holy shit,” Hal breathes, and suddenly you’re way too aware of four sets of eyes watching the two of you.

Diana looks up at you, long lashes framing her eyes. “Let them watch,” she says, “maybe they could learn something.”

Her fingers curl inside of you and you moan again, the sound rattling the room. You arch your back, whining. Your eyes flutter shut, that knot in your stomach building up almost as fast as it did the first time.

Your thighs shake on either side of her head, nails digging into your palms. You try to close your legs but then they’re being forced apart by a pair of floating green hands.

You blink at Hal, who’s since discarded his mask. He grins in return.

And then you’re finishing again, slick coating Diana’s face and tongue as she eats you through it. You can feel their eyes on you even through your orgasm, even as your eyes flutter closed and your muscles all twitch.

Then Diana is pulling her mouth away, taking deep breaths as she gives you a minute of rest. It’s only a minute, but already the pain starts to come back as a dull ache.

“How are you feeling?” Clark asks.

“It’s starting to hurt again…”

He doesn’t ask another question before he’s replacing Diana on the floor in front of you, adjusting his suit until he can free his cock. He’s already somewhat hard—the two of you had put on quite the show.

Clark and Diana’s willingness to fuck you in front of everybody almost has you feeling guilty for your hesitance earlier. You trust these people, you love these people. How could you doubt that?

“Come here,” he opens his arms to you, “I got you.”

And then you’re crawling into his arms, letting him pick you off the floor. With his strength, he does it with ease, slowly lowering you down onto his cock. The minute his head pierces your entrance, you have to bite down on your lip to keep from being too loud.

You take him inch by inch, your body adjusting much more easily than it usually would. Despite your aching need, Clark’s gentle with you. He takes his time, watching every twitch of your body for a sign he should stop.

When you’ve finally taken all of him, the two of you gasp in sync. You wrap your arms around his neck, tangling your fingers in his hair. He tightens his grips around your thighs and then he’s lifting you up and dropping you back down on his cock.

With every motion, he pierces deeper inside of you. Your walls suck him in, beg him for more, beg him to go deeper. You’re so close to him, you can feel the beat of his heart, hear every tiny hitch in his breath.

He guides you up and down his cock like a toy, and you let him, going boneless in his arms. Lurid sounds leave your lips but you’re long past the point of caring. You drag your hands from his neck down to his back, scratching at his shoulders, though Clark doesn’t seem to mind.

“You’re so warm,” he groans. “So hot.”

Maybe it’s the toxin or your own overstimulation but it only takes a few minutes before you’re finishing again, muscles clenching up, pussy tightening around Clark’s cock like it’s trying to milk him dry. He fixes his lips against yours, bearing your weight completely while you orgasm.

“That’s it. Let it all out, sweetheart.”

It’s only a few more thrusts for Clark before he’s finishing too. Both the heat and the sudden tightness of your walls is too much for him. He presses his hips flush against yours, the head of his cock kissing your cervix as he comes. He fills you up, the warm fluid slowly leaking out of you. 

He kisses you again, softly. “Do you need more?”

You feel horribly greedy as you nod your head yes, barely registering what’s happening as Clark passes you to Hal and Bruce.

The two men take you between them, holding you up despite the way your knees shake and threaten to buckle at any second.

Hal pulls you in for a tantalizing kiss. It’s needy and sloppy, punctuated with the desperation he feels after watching you get fucked by his teammates. Bruce’s hands make quick work of your uniform, finishing what Diana had started earlier. 

Being free from the fabric cools you down only slightly, the heat from their bodies immediately making up for it. There’s a flash of green light and then there’s a bed only a few feet away from you.

Bruce grabs you, practically throwing you on top of it before the two men and Barry join you. 

It’s a blur of hands and lips from there, the three of them somehow wrestling you onto your knees. Bruce is behind you, lining his cock up with your entrance, while Hal and Barry both sit on their knees in front.

Bruce taps your back, just once. "You're still okay?"

You weakly hum in agreement, arching your back to encourage him.

Bruce doesn’t waste a second before he pushes himself inside of you, Clark’s leftover cum acting as lube. Your mouth falls open in a gasp, Barry slipping his fingers inside. You don’t even think, your lips just close around them and you start sucking.

Bruce’s thrusts are aggressive, rocking both you and the bed, sending Barry’s fingers further down your throat. And then he’s replacing his fingers with his cock, your jaw aching at the sudden stretch.

You let your eyes flutter closed, letting the two men use you. Every thrust sends you further against the other, a perfectly choreographed dance between them. One goes deep and sends the other deeper, Bruce’s thick cock filling you so much that it’s hard to breathe.

Meanwhile, Hal rubs the hair away from your face and the sweat away from your forehead. “You’re like a pro,” he jokes. “You’re taking them so well.”

Barry gasps as you swirl your tongue around the head of his cock. “Fuck, Hal, you gotta try.”

And then they’re switching places, Hal’s cock replacing Barry’s in your mouth, Barry’s lips attacking the side of your neck instead.

Bruce digs his fingers deeper into your hips, fingertips sure to bruise you the next day. He slams himself deeper against you, every thrust punctuated with a cock muffled moan from you.

“That’s it,” his gruff voice calls out. “Just keep taking it.”

Barry’s teeth graze the side of your neck, his hand slipping down to rub circles on your clit and that’s all it takes for you to come undone all over again. Your arms shake violently, sending you pitching forward on the bed. Lucky for you, Barry catches your head, keeping you up the best he can while you get spitroasted on their cocks. 

Bruce fucks you through your high and then he’s falling apart with you, his cock twitching in your walls. With one final, rough thrust, he pushes himself in balls deep and lets himself cum inside of you.

Hal pulls his cock out of your mouth, letting you breathe freely while you fight the aftershocks of your orgasm.

When you’ve finally come to enough, you blink up at the man. “Want you next,” you declare, “you and Barry.”

And after the show you’ve put on, neither man is in any place to argue. Barry holds you against his chest while Hal moves away, repositioning himself where Bruce was only a minute ago.

Hal helps you move your quivering thighs on either side of Barry’s, grabbing the man’s cock and slipping the head inside of you. Bruce and Clark’s cum drips out, sliding down his shaft and onto his thighs.

Barry’s tip slips inside of you easily, his arms wrapping around your back to hold you still while Hal positions himself. The Lantern grips your hip with one hand and slowly guides his cock to your entrance with the other.

There’s pressure, your aching hole struggling to accommodate both of them, but Hal Jordan is not one to give up. 

He rubs a hand up your back, “breathe, baby. Deep breaths.”

You try to do as he says, letting yourself go limp against Barry. With your muscles relaxed, his cock slides inside of you easily. You’re full, so full you can barely move, but fuck it feels so good. That constant gnawing heat that’s been plaguing you dissipates into almost nothing, every thought in your head clears away.

Barry thrusts first and it’s such a tight fit that that alone has your eyes rolling back. Hal goes next, the friction of their cocks inside of you making your mind go blank. They continue in that rhythm, sloppy at first as they try to find a suitable pace.

"F-fuck, it's so tight." Barry curses.

Barry kisses at your cheek, your temple, the side of your head, trying to soothe you as both men fuck into you. Your pussy aches, your walls shaking sheerly from the fullness.

Hal digs his nails into your skin, crescent marks of his fingers matching Bruce’s from only a few minutes ago. His thrusts are frantic and fast and nearly violent, sending you further into Barry’s chest with every single one.

Barry is only slightly better, faster than Hal and just as punishing, but much less desperate.

"That's it, baby," Hal praises. "Let us take care of you."

You let yourself fall against them, let them fuck you while your mind goes entirely blank. That knot inside of you builds and builds and builds, heat radiating from your core until you finally snap and cum.

It’s already a tight fit with both of them inside of you but with your walls clenching up, it’s almost painful. Hal comes first, his cock twitching and filling you up pretty much the second you finish.

Barry’s next, the combined heat of your slick and Hal’s too much for him. He squeezes you tightly against his chest while he finishes inside of you, hot cum filling you to the brim.

You’re left sweaty and gasping, laying against Barry’s chest on the construct bed that Hal made.

Barry kisses the side of your head. “How are you feeling?”

“G-good, I think.” 

It’s a few minutes before the three of you untangle from each other, both Hal and Barry climbing off of the bed. Barry offers you a hand, helping you onto your feet and keeping you up despite the exhaustion plaguing your body.

“I-I’m feeling better,” you announce to no one in particular. “Thank you guys for helping.”

“That’s good,” Bruce says, gesturing over his shoulder. “But we have another problem now.”

You squint, following the line his finger points to to see Diana, flushed and naked, and Clark, on his knees and eating her out.

Fuck, you think to yourself. It must have been contagious after all.

dc masterlist | navigation | kinktober 2025

Nightingale was never about spectacle.

Nightingale wasn’t about fear the way Gotham expected her vigilantes to be.

You didn’t leave criminals dangling from gargoyles or broken on rooftops.

You left lights on.

You left women alive.

Domestic violence calls that never reached the GCPD because the system had failed them too many times already. Trafficking routes traced through shell corporations and fake charities—quietly dismantled, money frozen, victims relocated before anyone could “disappear” them again. Women whose bank accounts had been drained, whose names were blacklisted, whose abusers were powerful enough that the law “couldn’t do anything.”

You could.

So you did.

You paid hospital bills anonymously. You funneled Wayne money through three layers of shell foundations into women’s shelters, legal aid funds, relocation programs. You personally escorted survivors to safe houses at three in the morning, sitting with them until they fell asleep because they were afraid the quiet meant danger.

Sometimes you stayed all night.

Sometimes you left behind your jacket because they were cold.

Sometimes you'd leave a couple hundred dollars behind.

And you never told your family.

Not because you didn’t trust them—but because this wasn’t about being a Bat. This wasn’t about legacy or justice or the symbol.

This was about women.

And then one night, it broke.

It started with a single video.

A woman sitting in her car, phone propped against the steering wheel, voice shaking but determined.

“I don’t know if she’ll ever see this,” the woman said, “but Nightingale saved my life. Gotham City isn't the greatest and I'm so glad that there is a woman out there helping her fellow women.”

The clip spread faster than anyone expected.

Then another. Then another.

A nurse who talked about the night you stopped her husband from killing her and waited with her until the paramedics came. A college student who described being pulled out of a sex trafficking ring two hours before she was supposed to be shipped overseas. A mother of three who said you paid for her divorce lawyer and never once asked for thanks.

They didn’t know your face. They didn’t know your name.

They just knew the symbol on your chest and the way you spoke softly when everything else felt like screaming.

The headlines exploded.

WHO IS NIGHTINGALE? THE VIGILANTE GOTHAM’S WOMEN TRUST SHE SAVED US

Bruce found out when Alfred quietly turned up the volume in the Batcave.

Displayed upon the mega screen of the Batcomputer. Fox News, NBC, GNN, every news network in New Jersey had your symbol aired.

Dick was halfway through a joke. Jason was leaning against the console. Tim had his tablet out. Damian was pretending not to listen. Then Cass pointed to the screen, and everyone's gaze followed.

The screen showed a female news anchor, expression serious.

“Reports confirm that the vigilante known as Nightingale has been operating a parallel network focused specifically on protecting women from domestic violence, sexual exploitation, and trafficking—often succeeding where the system failed."

Her partner went on to speak, "With great triumph, sex crimes in Gotham have been on a steady decline over the past few months, and with more and more women coming out about their personal experiences with the super heroine, Nightingale's impact on women's rights cannot be understated.”

Bruce didn’t speak.

He just… stared.

Each new testimony hit like a punch to the chest.

Dick’s smile faded first. Jason’s jaw clenched so hard it ached. Tim stopped typing entirely. Damian’s eyes flicked to Bruce, then away, like he didn’t know what to do with the emotion swelling in his chest.

The male anchor turned to his female counterpart, witnessing her hesitation, she went on to confess her personal experience with you, how she was nearly mugged outside the station, and you protected her.

"I will forever be indebted to her." She said solemnly.

“She did all that,” Dick murmured. “Without backup.”

Jason swallowed. “Without telling us.”

Bruce’s hands were shaking.

Not with anger.

With awe.

The report ended with a statistic: millions donated anonymously to women’s shelters over the past several years—funds traced back to Wayne-adjacent accounts.

Bruce exhaled slowly.

“That was her,” he said.

Not a question.

A fact.

At the Watchtower, it was worse—in the best, most devastating way.

Black Canary watched the report with her arms crossed, eyes shining. Wonder Woman’s expression softened into something reverent. Hawkgirl nodded once, sharp and proud.

“She did it the right way,” Dinah said quietly. “She didn’t centre herself.”

Diana looked at Bruce. “You raised her well.”

Bruce couldn’t answer.

He was too busy realising that while he had been teaching his children how to fight crime, you had been teaching yourself how to heal damage the world refused to see.

When you finally walked into the Cave that night, still in civilian clothes, exhausted and unaware—

Everyone turned to look at you.

The silence was loud.

“…There something on my face?” you asked, blinking.

Bruce crossed the room in three long strides and pulled you into a hug so tight it stole the breath from your lungs.

“I’m proud of you,” he said into your hair, voice breaking. “I’m so proud of you.”

Dick hugged you next, then Jason, then Tim. Even Damian stepped forward, stiff and serious.

“You protected them,” he said quietly. “As a warrior should.”

You didn’t know what to say.

At the Watchtower the next day, the women found you first.

Dinah hugged you like family. Diana clasped your hands between hers. Kendra bumped her shoulder against yours with a smirk. “Guess we’ve got competition.”

The League commended you—not as a vigilante, not as a Bat—but as something rarer.

A woman who changed lives without demanding credit.

And online?

Women loved you. They painted murals. They shared stories, whispered your name like a promise.

You never asked for the spotlight.

But when it found you, it didn’t burn.

It illuminated.

And your family—your father, your brothers, your sisters—stood behind you, hearts full, knowing something new and unshakable:

You weren’t just fighting Gotham’s darkness.

You were giving women their light back.

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Sources! -

Dividers - @bbyg4rlhelps

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