it's all waiting there for you

He has been getting them for as long as you've known him, and they were nothing at the beginning. He had this unbelievable way of placating your questions whenever they bubbled up, catching your wrist when you reached for his forehead, pressing his lips into the centre of your palm.

Quit looking at me like that.

Like what?

Like I'm dying or something.

The grin that followed had worked a thousand times before, making you roll your eyes and calling him dramatic. He'd tell you it was rich coming from you, and fifteen minutes later the conversation would have turned entirely.

He made it look so easy, as he did most things that upset him. You had seen him do it in crowded bars or restaurants, sunglasses hooked over his nose long after the sun disappeared because he insisted they went with his look. In the grocery aisles, squinting in the fluorescents, one eye narrowed slightly as he inspected produce, waiting for whatever was pressing against his skull to pass.

If nobody looked closely, he could hide it, but you knew him better. The last one had knocked him out flat, barely able to see out of his left eye. He'd made it halfway through some ridiculous insistence that the two of you could still go out, that you could make it to the movies, that he's honestly fine, and—oh, you gotta stop worrying, baby—it's nothing—

You'd taken his keys, drawn the curtains and ordered pizza neither of you really ate. He stretched out along the sofa with his head in your lap, one arm folded loosely across his stomach, the television turned down so low it might as well have been silent. You'd run your fingers through his hair, and he pretended he didn't particularly care one way or another. You'd figured out the exact place at the base of his skull that makes the tension leave his shoulders. If you scratch lightly there, the groan that leaves him travels his whole body.

You turn behind you to reach for the cupboard, grabbing a glass.

This morning had begun as they always do. Folded against him, cheek against the warm skin of his chest, him still mostly asleep with an arm heavy around your waist. His childhood bedroom was still filled with pieces of him everywhere, old trophies, records from when he told you he worked at a radio station, a sports pennant he has yet to take down, all things left over from versions of himself you never knew; stories he has only ever given you in pieces.

You detangled yourself, reaching over to pull the curtains open, but when that first stripe of morning escaped, he had recoiled, his hands coming up immediately.

He said it hurt a little bit, which meant yes. You'd learned the scale by now. A little bit meant he could already feel it coming, it's annoying meant it hurt, and I'm fine generally meant he was anything but. It was a tiresome game you played with him, but you were willing to play it nonetheless.

You fill the glass from the tap and take the packet of painkillers from beneath the sink, used to it by now. Steve was stubborn in every direction except the sensible one.

You'd suggested the doctor, then got shot down immediately, always behind a joke. Must be something knocked loose while playing basketball back in the day. You pushed a little harder, and he mentioned a few fights in high school, his attitude was worse then, if you can believe it. Jonathan Byers, apparently. You'd nearly laughed when he told you. Jonathan, the man whom he greets like an old war buddy whenever he is back in town, who crashes on the sofa and steals Steve's beer, who spends an entire evening arguing with him over which movie is suitable. There are pieces of Steve's past that appear like that. It's always brief, but what you do know is that they were bad years.

Everyone he's close with seems to share an understanding that dissolves whenever you get too close. You let it lie; everyone is entitled to parts of themselves they aren't ready to hand over. But there is a difference between privacy and watching your boyfriend lie in a dark room, unable to help himself because something hurts too badly.

And lately, that difference has begun to frighten you.

The glass is cold against your palm as you leave the kitchen; the Harrington house always seems large when Steve's parents aren't in it. They never are these days. He rarely talks about them either, another door you know better than to push against.

Your socks make almost no noise against the stairs, holding the glass steady as you climb. Pressing the bedroom door open with the tips of your fingers.

It is dark as your eyes adjust, the curtains still drawn. Steve is still in bed, the duvet slipped further down since you left him, bunched low around his waist. His bare torso rises and falls, one hand tucked by his head and the other over his face.

You let the door fall shut behind you; he doesn't move. You tread slowly across the room and set down the glass, careful not to make too much noise. He shifts slightly in the bed, his arm lowering a fraction.

"Hey," you whisper, perching on the edge of the mattress.

He turns more towards you, eyes tired as he blinks. You reach forward to meet him halfway, brushing the hair away from his forehead. His skin isn't feverish; you knew it wouldn't be, you've checked enough times in the past. You let your fingers linger as they scratch lightly against his scalp, earning you a soft sigh through his nose.

“Brought you some painkillers," you tell him, his eyes falling shut.

“Thank you, baby," he murmurs. His words are thick with sleep, slightly pained as they leave him.

"You're welcome," you say, pulling your hand away.

He makes the tremendous effort of opening his eyes again; they are soft as the corner of his mouth lifts.

"Hi," he says.

"Hi," you return, laughing quietly.

Steve shifts as he starts pushing himself upright, and you reach for his arm to help him steady. His face tightens at the movement, eyebrows pulling together, but it's gone fast. Or rather, he makes it gone. He breathes out, shoulders rolling backwards as though there had been nothing there at all as he shuffles himself against the headboard. You don't say anything as he reaches towards the bedside table, picking up the pills and tossing them into his mouth, dry.

“Steve," you begin to chide as you pick up the glass. “I brought you water.”

"Mm," he hums as he begins to take a sip.

You stare at him as he lowers it and puts it back on the table. Watching him swallow the tablets has done little to improve your mood. He hates taking them dry, once complained to Dustin for fifteen minutes about not having something to wash them down, said it was dangerous—what if they got stuck?

You watch him sink back against the pillows. “Sorry I'm not more exciting this morning.”

You roll your eyes. “I think I'll survive.”

“Yeah?”

“Maybe. It's touch and go.”

“Damn.” His eyes stay closed, but his mouth twitches. “Knew I was losing my touch.” He holds his arms out toward you. "C'mere."

“Steve.”

One eye opens. There is the faintest grin on his face now, crooked and lazy, you can feel your resolve weakening.

“You should lie still," you tell him.

“I am lying still,” he quips back.

“I'm just gonna distract you.”

“Impossible, angel,” he holds his arms out wider. “Now, come here.”

You huff, but he knows he's won. The bastard even smiles a little more when you crawl across the mattress towards him.

“Don't be smug. You have a migraine.”

“Pretty sure I’m allowed both.”

Damn him.

You settle down carefully into his side, letting his arms close around you, exhaling as you settle into him. The muscles across his chest are still tight beneath your palm, and his shoulders haven't fully relaxed. Even holding you, there is a tension running through him, some invisible wire drawn from the base of his skull down the length of his spine.

You tuck your head against him as his chin rests lightly on your head. Your fingertips wander over his chest, tracing meaningless shapes across warm skin. A line, a circle. The edge of a rib, round and back again. You avoid the marks lower down, the ones you're not allowed to touch. The ones that stare at you as you ache to know why.

“You feeling any better than this morning?” You start instead, pulling your thoughts back.

Steve doesn't hesitate. “I am now.”

You close your eyes.

Always the romantic.

“Steve,” you lift your head enough to look at him. “I'm serious.”

“So am I,” he says, one eyebrow lifting.

You let your head drop back against his shoulder.

Fine.

For now, you let him have it. His fingers continue their lazy path along your back.

“We can cancel dinner tonight,” you say quietly.

His hand stills for half a second before starting up again, like nothing happened. “No, don’t," he starts. 'I’ll be fine by then—honest. You know how these things go. Couple hours, I’ll be good.”

But you do know how these things go; you've seen it before.

By six o'clock, the worst of it will probably have loosened its grip on him. He'll shower, stand beneath the water for too long because heat apparently helps, though he insists it doesn't. He'll come out with his hair still damp, grab the first shirt his hand touches and make some stupid joke about being good as new. You'll go out, and he'll insist on driving, because he wants to be the gentleman. At the restaurant, he'll sit with his back to the brightest light without mentioning it. He'll catch you staring, and he'll wink. And eventually, because he is frighteningly practiced at suffering without inconvenience, there will come a point where even you start wondering whether perhaps he really is fine.

You just wish he’d let you in sometimes. Even just a little.

“It's really not a big deal,” you say. “We can stay here. Watch something. I can find something in the fridge.”

“Baby, I told you, I’m gonna be fine. It’s just dinner. Not exactly a big deal.”

“Then we can cancel?” you ask, optimistically.

“The pills haven't even kicked in yet,” he shifts beneath you, settling more comfortably into the pillows. “Gotta give 'em a chance.”

You hum, though the urge to keep pushing only grows. He knows exactly how to get you to give in, soft touches and teasing words until whatever you were worrying about starts to slip away. But this time, you can’t quite shake the gnawing feeling in your stomach; the phone call that morning.

“You've had three migraines this month," you start tentatively, and you can feel the hand on your back slow. You keep your cheek against his chest as you continue. “That's more than usual.”

He doesn't answer, his palm travelling upwards between your shoulder blades.

“Steve?” You ask, a little firmer. “Are you listening to me?”

“I'm listening.”

You lift yourself onto one elbow, but he doesn't glance down.

“Hey, look at me,” you say as his eyes meet yours. You study him, the tired look in his face, shadows beneath his eyes. “Don't they worry you?”

They worry you plenty.

He shrugs, but the movement is awkward with you tucked beneath him. "Not really,” he says noncommittally. “They go as quick as they come.”

You stare at him. “That isn't always—”

“I'm fine,” he tells you, suddenly short. "Seriously, drop it. It'll be gone by this evening.”

You touched the nerve again.

He moves away now, pulling one arm away and rolling towards the nightstand, apparently done with the conversation. You feel the irritation boil beneath your ribs, the same that is likely swimming through him too.

"Steve, all I'm saying is that—"

“Can we not?” he says over his shoulder, dragging a hand down his face. “Can we just—I don’t want to do this right now.”

There it is again, the deflection.

You do want to do this right now; you want to help him. You should have done something ages ago, but you have been patient, far more patient than you wanted to be. You could tell him later, once the pills have kicked in, when he’s smiling again and smugly insisting he told you so. Maybe that would be kinder, but later, he’ll argue, he'll put on that face again and pretend that everything is fine. Right now, with his head pounding and his patience worn thin, he won’t have nearly as much fight in him.

“I called the doctor,” you tell him. It’s out there now, maybe this is finally progress. “I made the appointment this morning.”

That stops him.

“Why would—" he falters. "Why would you do that?”

There is no sleep left in his voice, though his words are still quiet, stripped of the warm rasp. His eyes are still tired, still narrowed faintly against the dim light leaking around the curtains, but something behind them has sharpened.

“Steve, you cannot be serious—”

“I didn’t ask you to," he says bluntly.

“I know you didn’t.”

“Then why—I mean—” he shakes his head.

You push yourself upright. “Because you weren’t going to.”

“Yeah, well, I didn’t ask you to do that.”

“Oh, come on,” you say as you stare at him, disbelief beginning to edge out the guilt you had expected to feel. “Even you have to admit this is getting kind of weird.”

His jaw shifts. “It’s not weird.”

“Steve—”

“It’s not like I’m the only person who gets them,” he cuts in, rubbing the heel of his hand against his temple.

“Three in a month?”

“It happens.”

“And the fact that sometimes you can barely see?”

His expression hardens. “It’s genetic.”

“Okay,” you say. “Have you asked your parents? Your dad?”

Low blow.

You know it the second you say it. Steve's relationship with his parents is strained on a good day and practically nonexistent on the others. They had been absent for most of high school, preferring whichever house they had been staying in along the East Coast while Steve rattled around Hawkins alone. They are not much better now; their presence in his life seems to arrive entirely through answering-machine messages and occasional phone calls he spends twenty minutes avoiding before finally caving.

You know exactly what you are doing, and he knows it too.

“No,” he grits out. “I haven’t.”

“Maybe you should. If it’s genetic, like you keep saying.”

His eyes flash. “Why? What’s it matter?”

You huff, irritation sparking hot now, hot enough to make you careless. “Because maybe then you could, I don’t know, figure out what’s going on here?” You gesture at him, to the state of everything. “Maybe you could actually solve one of your own problems instead of everybody else’s.”

Another low blow.

Apparently you’re collecting them.

You love his selflessness. You love that he will answer the phone at midnight, already pulling on shoes before one of the kids has finished explaining what is wrong. He comes to you, crisis after ridiculous crisis. You love that Steve shows up. Again and again and again, for everybody. You just wish he would occasionally consider himself worthy of the same effort.

“I’m fine, okay?" he says, "we already did this.”

“No, Steve, I don’t think we did.”

“Yes—fuck—we have.”

“No, you’ve said you’re fine and then changed the subject. That isn’t the same thing as having a conversation.”

He drags a hand over his face. “Oh my God.”

“I mean it.” Your anger is starting to fray now. “We don’t talk about a lot of things, okay? And I’ve let that go, because I know you don’t—”

Steve throws the duvet back. He swings his legs over the side of the bed and stands, a little too quickly. His hand catches against the mattress.

“Steve—”

“I’m not getting into this with you this morning.”

He crosses the room towards the wardrobe. He yanks open the door hard enough that it rebounds slightly and begins rifling through the clothes inside. He finds a jumper and pulls it over his head aggressively; his hair catches beneath the collar, sticking out slightly at the back.

“Steve, wait, I'm—" He keeps walking as you scramble out of bed after him. “Jesus, can you stop?”

He starts down the stairs, hand tight against the bannister as you follow him, your frustration growing with every step. You trail after him as he goes into the kitchen, flicking on the light with a flinch.

“See?" You hold out your hand in disbelief. "You can’t even turn the lights on.”

He doesn't respond to you as he moves towards the coffee machine, body on autopilot as he ignores you behind him. Your anger twists painfully in your chest.

“Are you seriously making coffee?”

“Yes," he says shortly.

“You have a migraine.”

“Wow, really? Hadn't noticed.”

He reaches for the coffee tin before stopping halfway, fingers curling around the edge of the counter. He bows his head, rubbing two fingers hard against his temple.

There he is. Hurting.

“Steve," your voice is softer now, more steady. "You get why I'm asking, though, right?"

His eyes stay closed, and you are far too into it now, months of swallowed questions beginning to crowd behind your teeth.

“Listen, I know there’s shit you don’t like talking about,” you continue. “I know there are things that happened before we met and I get that. I can get that. Everybody is allowed to have things they don’t want to talk about—but you won’t even go to the doctor for a headache?”

He cannot think you're being unreasonable here.

"Honey," he begins, the sarcasm so thick it makes your skin prickle. “People don’t run to the doctor every time their head hurts.”

The way he speaks to you makes something ugly flare. You don’t like being talked down to, and you can feel something equally sharp rising to meet it.

“You know it’s more than a headache,” you snap. “Quit playing around. It doesn’t look good on you.”

It is unbearably quiet in the kitchen, knowing you're pushing harder than you ever have before on this.

There is a point in almost every argument where he usually gives; you know it well. You have seen it when the two of you bicker about leaving wet towels on the floor or whose turn it was to buy groceries. His mouth twitches as he decides whatever he was angry about isn't worth being angry with you. But you don't see it now; you see his eyes sharpen, rising to meet yours.

“I’m not playing around. I’m trying to tell you it’s nothing, and you keep making it into this huge thing.”

“Because it is a thing!”

“No, it isn’t.” His palm hits the counter, not quite a slam but hard enough that the spoon beside the coffee machine jumps. “You’re acting like I’m fucking dying or something.”

“I’m just trying to help, okay? I'm just looking out for you."

“I’ve got it, okay?” He sighs. “I can handle myself.”

“No, Steve, sometimes you can’t. That's the whole point here.”

Low blow, for the third time.

His jaw locks, and you know you should stop this here. You should cross the kitchen and touch him, apologise for the way that sounded, because it isn’t what you mean. You don't think he's helpless, don't think he's incapable. God, if anything, Steve has spent so much of his life proving the opposite that sometimes you want to shake him for it. But you are hurt too. And tired—so tired—and, if you were being truthful, you were frightened for him. You keep going.

“All I’m saying is that you don't have to do everything by yourself all the time. Eventually you’re going to need somebody to help you with more than whatever this is," you gesture at him exasperatedly.

Steve's fingers tighten; the muscles in his forearm stand out beneath his skin. He takes a slow breath through his nose, and you watch the frustration settle over him, that familiar wall going up between you.

You have seen him angry before, though never often.

He's got a sharp tongue, and usually you find it funny. Sometimes Robin will say something about his high school days, and he will immediately glare at her, colour creeping beneath his cheeks while everyone else laughs at some joke you aren't in on. Once, Dustin had started talking, but Steve had thrown an arm around your shoulders, dragged you against his side and told you not to listen to him. Seriously, the kid's a pathological liar, can't trust a word that comes out his mouth—

You hadn't thought much about it, but you see it now. The tiny shift in his face as he decides that defending himself isn't working. So he falls back on the one thing that has always worked for him.

He goes on the attack.

“Maybe I don’t want your help. You ever think about that?” You blink, but he doesn’t look away. If anything, his expression hardens. “I was doing just fine before you started getting involved. I’ll be fine without your help.”

“That isn't what I—” you try to interrupt, but he cuts you off with a sharp shake of his head.

“I don’t need you playing nurse because you feel sorry for me.”

Your mouth falls open. “That’s not what I’m doing—”

“No?” A humourless laugh slips out of him. He looks at you like he’s daring you to argue. “Come on. I get it. I know what this looks like.”

Your stomach drops. You’re not sure where he’s going with this now, and something in his face tells you you’re not going to like it. He gestures around the kitchen, the house. The enormous house, all of it immaculate and empty.

“Steve Harrington,” he says with a bitter laugh. “Big empty house, parents never around, nobody giving a shit if I eat or sleep or take a fucking aspirin.” His mouth twists. “Real sad, right?”

“That is not what I think.”

“No? Could’ve fooled me.”

You stare at him, genuinely stunned now by the venom beginning to seep between his words. Not even ten minutes ago, he’d been pulling you into his chest, his mouth crooked into that sleepy smile. Now, there’s nothing soft left in him. He’s all teeth.

“Don’t fucking do that," you hiss out, your patience wrecked.

“Do what?”

“That—” your voice rises. “That patronising thing like you know what I’m thinking better than I do.”

He pushes away from the counter, the sarcasm returning. “Sweetheart. Look at me.”

“Steve—”

“No, no, look at me.”

You do, and immediately wish you hadn’t. The sweet boy who held you this morning is gone. So is the one who begs for five more minutes in bed on the weekends, half-asleep and warm. The boy who always reaches across the console at red lights just to squeeze your knee is gone too. What’s left is angry and sharp, though you can still see the fear buried somewhere in his eyes. You don’t understand how the hell you got here over a damn doctor’s appointment. Right now, you’re not sure you understand him at all.

“Listen to me, okay? I’m not a kid. I don’t need you acting like my mom just ’cause you feel sorry for me.”

Your face burns. “I don't—”

“You do,” his voice finally rises. “You obviously fucking do.”

You shake your head in disbelief and turn away from him, dragging a hand through your hair. The sheer audacity of it leaves you speechless. You can only stare at the counter, trying to figure out what the hell you’re even supposed to say to him.

“I can see it. Every time you look at me, it’s there.” He says, voice tight. “Like I’m some sad fucking case you gotta take care of.”

You don’t answer. You don’t answer because, suddenly, it hurts. You know he’s being cruel on purpose, but somewhere beneath the anger, his words start to sink in anyway. You start wondering if maybe he means them, if maybe they’re true.

You think of all the times you’ve caught him rubbing absent circles over the scars on his side when he thinks you aren’t looking. Every question you’ve asked that somehow went unanswered, every Christmas morning spent around this cavernous house without his parents, every casual story about high school that always seems to stop just before it gets important. You think of all the times your heart has ached for him, being thrown back in your face.

“Oh, fuck you, Steve,” you say as you shake your head at him. “I'm not doing this because I pity you, for gods' sake—”

“Sure you aren't—”

“I’m doing this because I love you, you fucking asshole," his nostrils flare. “And if you’re too stubborn to make the appointment yourself, then fine. Fine. Be stubborn.” You throw a hand up. “I’ll drag you there myself if I have to. The doctor can tell you how completely insane you’re being, and then maybe—maybe we can finally be done with this.”

All that can be heard in the kitchen is your breathing, your breathing and the low buzz of the fridge. The space feels too large between the two of you. Steve stares at you, and you watch him choose his next movement carefully, letting your words wash over him.

Something frightened rises in his eyes, and you catch it before he can bury it again. You let yourself believe that maybe, this might be it. The moment he finally tells you, tells you everything.

Maybe you're being naive, asking for something he doesn't know how to share. But he looks so hollow and so tired, so full of hurt that all you want is to take some of it away. To let him empty a little of it into you. To use you, just this once, for whatever comfort you can give him. You would let him; you would always let him. Perhaps this is what it has always been like for him, letting people take and take because being useful is easier than being known. Letting them lean until all that weight starts to feel like love. Giving pieces of himself away so quietly that nobody ever thinks to ask what it costs him.

The fear that was once there is gone in an instant, buried beneath something much older, much meaner. For years, his friends have joked about King Steve as though he were somebody else entirely. A boy left behind in school corridors and locker rooms, a stupid haircut with a stupid reputation. A version of himself they can laugh about now because surely enough time has passed he could never resurface.

But people don’t become someone else completely; some instincts just get buried. And Steve Harrington still knows how to be mean in the way he perfected in high school. He knows how to pick at something until you’re embarrassed you ever cared about it, how to turn a soft spot into a punchline and make you feel stupid for letting him see it in the first place. He has spent enough time watching you to know every bruise by heart, knowing exactly where to push to hurt.

His eyes move over your face. When he speaks, his voice is almost gentle.

“You wanna know what I think?” Your chest rises sharply. His mouth pulls into something that isn’t quite a smile. “I think you need me to need you. ’Cause if I’m fine, if I can handle my own shit, then—well, what the hell are you even doing here?”

Christ, Steve.

You don't feel anything as the words leave him. No anger or hurt where you thought it would come. You feel numb, actually. Just an emptiness where every single thought disappears within you, your heart contracting at his admission.

So that’s what he thinks your love is.

“Wow.” You nod once, already blinking the wetness that is gathering on your lashes. “You really wanna talk about needing to be needed, Steve?” Your mouth twists as you deliver the final blow. “Look in the fucking mirror.”

Steve's face falls as he comes back to himself, your words jolting him out of his nasty haze, but what did he expect? He got what he wanted, found the thing that would finally make you stop. Whatever satisfaction there might have been in landing the blow lasts less than a heartbeat.

“Angel—”

You laugh then, not quite meaning to as your vision begins to blur.

Fuck.

You blink again, hard, but the tears come anyway.

“Jesus Christ," you mutter to yourself.

“Hey—” His voice changes. “Hey, no, I—”

You are already moving. You turn and leave the kitchen before he can say anything else, walking quickly enough that the hallway tilts slightly around you. Your heart is beating painfully hard, turning your hands clumsy and your breath too shallow.

You need to leave.

“Hey—hey, wait—” his footsteps follow you. You find your bag where you dropped it beside the table in the hall and wrench it upwards. “Baby, wait, I didn’t—”

You ignore him, looking for your shoes beneath the coat rack. You shove one foot into the first, heel crushing the back down because your fingers are shaking too badly to fix it properly.

“Just—just hang on a second,” his hand closes around your arm.

“Get off," you grit out as you pull yourself away.

He lets go immediately, but he still stands too close. The anger is gone from his face as you take a glance; now, all that remains is fear. Stone cold fear.

“I didn’t mean that,” he says. "I didn’t—baby, honest—I didn’t mean it.”

You shove your other foot into your shoe. “Move.”

“I just—”

“Steve, stop it.”

“Just—just listen to me for a second, okay?” His words are coming fast, panicked. “I had a headache, and you were—you kept talking about it, and I just wanted you to stop—”

You shake your head and reach for the front door, not allowing him to finish, but he moves just as quickly at your side.

“I wanted to stop talking about it,” he says. “That’s all—I just—I needed to get you to stop talking.”

His hand comes down tentatively on your shoulder, but you shrug him off again before he can settle there. The same hand that held you so gently this morning leaves the place it touched burning.

You risk a glance up at him. His brown eyes keep moving across your face like he is trying to find the right thing to say and discovering, perhaps for the first time in his life, that sometimes there is no right thing to say after you’ve said the worst one.

“I just—I wanted you to drop it,” he says, voice catching. “That’s all.”

“There are other ways to make me drop something, Steve.”

Anything other than that.

“I know, I shouldn't have—”

“You don’t get to say shit like that to me,” you say as his eyes drop. “You—you don’t get to just find the worst thing you can think of and throw it at me in the heat of the moment, or—or because your head hurts or because I’m annoying you. You can’t do that when you're just angry.”

Or scared.

“I know.”

“Stop saying you know!”

“Then I’m sorry—” his voice cracks around it. “I’m sorry. Okay?—I’m really sorry. I shouldn’t have pushed it. Just—” he catches himself before touching you again. “Just take your shoes off, okay? Just stay," he gestures vaguely towards the stairs, towards the kitchen. “I'll stop—I'll drop it, I swear.”

You turn back towards the door, not wanting to listen to him trying to fix this.

“We’ve still got dinner tonight,” he continues desperately. “Remember? We’ll go out. I’m paying.”

A disbelieving laugh escapes you. “You think dinner fixes this?”

“No,” he shakes his head quickly. “No, that’s not what I meant. I just—fuck, I don’t know. I’m trying here.”

You wish he wouldn’t.

He could have let you closer long ago, could have opened something this morning. It didn't have to be much, just a little. You thought if you loved him patiently enough, he might someday hand you one small piece of it. But all because you pushed a little too much, he had shoved you back ten times harder.

You wipe furiously at your cheek as you shove past him, the front door opens beneath your hand and daylight comes crashing in. You see him wince but refuse to stop, putting one foot in front of another on autopilot. Your bag slides down your shoulder as you dig inside for the keys.

“Wait, wait—sweetheart, please.”

You keep walking. The gravel bites beneath his bare feet behind you.

“Steve,” you mutter, fumbling through your bag. “Go inside.”

You find the keys and stand sideways as you unlock the car. He stands just behind you, breathing heavily. The brightness must be agony; his hand against his forehead, shielding his eyes. You reach the car and wrench open the door, but he catches it before you can climb inside.

“When’s the appointment?”

“What?”

“The doctor.” He blinks against the light. “When is it?”

You stare at him, watching the desperate rise and fall of his chest.

“I’ll go,” he repeats. “Okay? I’ll go. You can come with me.”

You push him away as you climb into the driver's seat and shut the door. The keys shake between your fingers as you try to put them in the ignition.

“I’m serious. You can come in with me, you can sit there, you can—you can tell ’em whatever you want. I don’t care.”

The engine turns over, finally springing to life as you grip the steering wheel, your eyes swimming.

“Don’t—don’t go. Please, just—shit, just wait, okay? You can’t—you can’t leave like this. Let me fix it. Please.”

You close your eyes and take in a long drag from your nose. You want nothing more than to turn this damn engine off, climb out and march him right back into a dark room and make him lie down. You want to press something cold against his forehead and crawl beneath the blankets. You want his arms around you as he murmurs apologies into your hair until morning bleeds into afternoon then evening, until this whole disaster becomes something you can laugh about months from now. You want to forgive him before you have even had time to grieve the previous version you thought you knew.

This is exactly why you have to get away. Loving Steve has always been easiest when he is sorry. He goes soft around the edges, looks at you with those wounded eyes. You know if you stay, you’ll forgive him before you’ve even finished hurting. So you have to leave while it still aches enough to go.

“Steve, I don’t want to talk to you right now.”

His face goes still; he just stares at you through the open window, like he’s waiting for the rest of the sentence. Like surely there has to be something after that.

“Okay—okay, you don’t have to,” he takes a step back from the car, though he stays bent toward the window, his eyes never leave yours. “That’s—yeah. That’s okay... But you will, right?”

Your hand stills on the gear shift, and he swallows hard.

“Eventually, I mean.” His voice is smaller now. “You’ll—you’ll come back?”

You put the car into reverse as he begins to panic.

“Wait, wait—” His hand slips from the door as the car begins to move. “You’re coming back, though, right?”

You can’t answer him. You don’t know what the answer is. Maybe you should give him something. A tomorrow or a later. Some mercy he can hold onto after everything he took from you in that kitchen.

“Angel?”

He’s standing barefoot in the drive, eyes red and shining. He looks frightened. Young, somehow. Like underneath all that anger and all those carefully chosen words is the same boy who learned too early that people leave and houses stay empty.

“Angel,” he says again, and his voice breaks around it. “You’ll come back, won’t you?”

The tears spill hot down your cheeks. You grip the steering wheel until your fingers ache. “Take care of yourself, Steve.”

His whole face falls, like somewhere inside him, a light goes out. You start backing down the driveway, but he doesn't follow you this time. You watch him in the rearview mirror as you go, getting smaller and smaller beneath the morning sky. Behind him, the house rises, huge and immaculate, too many windows, too many rooms, all that space waiting to swallow him whole.

You keep driving until eventually there is more white behind him than there is Steve. You turn onto the road as he disappears from the mirror.

Only when there is no chance of him seeing you break do you finally let yourself cry.

“Hey. Uh. It’s me. I went. To the appointment, I mean. She wants me to see somebody else about the headaches, so… I’m gonna do that. You don’t have to call me. I know you said you didn’t wanna talk. Just wanted you to know I went. Okay—uh, bye.”

The tape softly comes to an end. You stand beside the stove, staring at nothing in particular as the answering machine concludes, again.

At least he listened to one thing.

You have played the message enough times now that you could probably recite every hesitation along with him. It came yesterday, sometime around noon, but you hadn't answered the phone when it rang. You'd been sitting cross-legged on your bed with a book open in your lap, reading the same paragraph for what must have been twenty minutes. You'd let it ring, knowing who would be on the other line. The voice you didn't have the energy to face.

You got exactly what you wanted. Someone had taken one look at him and decided they warranted somebody else’s attention. Usually, an I told you so tastes sweet. This one's only bitter.

You reach for the wooden spoon before the sauce can catch against the bottom of the pan, scraping slowly around the edge. The anger you felt has begun to drift, not holding so tight today. The first twenty-four hours had been different; you had been furious then.

You had not been kind that morning. There were moments you wished you could drag back between your teeth, swallow before they reached him. But not the appointment; you cannot bring yourself to regret that.

You're sorry you frightened him, sorry you pushed when he was hurting, that somewhere along the way concern turned into interrogation and both of you became more interested in winning than listening. But you are not sorry that someone is finally going to look at him.

At least one of us is getting somewhere.

You turn the heat down. Physically, at least, Steve seems to be getting somewhere. Whatever is happening mentally is another matter entirely; not if he feels anything like you do. You've never liked being angry, even on the best of days, and this anger feels especially exhausting because it refuses to burn clean.

Your bed was cold this morning, which is rare for a Tuesday. The two of you sleep together most nights, arranging your routines and toothbrushes next to each other. He prefers your place. Claims your mattress is better, though his probably costs more.

Mostly, you suspect, he likes that you live closer to the school. Twenty extra minutes in bed is twenty extra minutes in bed, which he rarely uses wisely. He rolls over you, warm weight and sleep-mussed hair, his soft mouth finding softer places along your neck, your chest—

You scrape the spoon around the bottom of the pan again.

Don't think about it.

You can’t keep mourning a version of him you’re not sure ever existed. Maybe only in your memory is he still the boy who would make an idiot of himself just to hear you laugh.

Who’s to say what was real anymore?

For so long, you had thought you knew him, thought you were one of the only people who could understand. You know he likes his coffee too sweet, which songs he'll change halfway through and which ones will make him drum the wheel. You know when he is lying, when he is tired. You know how he loves people. That might be the part you know best: he loves like somebody trying to make himself indispensable.

You had thought knowing all of that meant knowing him, but Steve is a map of unfinished stories.

The flat smells warm, garlic and tomatoes and whatever herbs you had thrown into the pan without thinking. Usually, he would have wandered into the kitchen by this point, lifted the lid despite being explicitly told not to, burned his fingers on something and then acted shocked when it happened.

You like to think you did know him, in a way. Just not the way you thought you did.

You taste the sauce, add salt, and turn toward the cupboard to find a bowl. Only to be interrupted by a small knock coming from the door.

Who could—

It's so quiet you almost convince yourself you imagined it, but then it comes again.

Surely it couldn't be—

You turn the hob off and make your way towards the sound, your stomach already sinking because you have a feeling who will be waiting on the other side. One look through the small peephole confirms it.

Why is he here now?

You pull back.

Fuck.

He told you—he told you he wasn’t going to make you talk. You hadn’t wanted to do this now; you consider ignoring him entirely.

But you do know this about him: Steve is persistent, especially when he thinks someone is hurting, and once he’s made up his mind, it’ll take far more than a closed door to make him leave.

Damn it.

You hesitantly undo the lock, but leave the chain in place before opening it fully those few inches. You need the barrier there, just in case you do something stupid.

You risk a glance through the narrow sliver of the doorway, letting your eyes travel over him. It’s obvious he came straight from work—white shirt creased and tucked into dark trousers, sleeves shoved up toward his elbows. No tie, the top two buttons undone, no blazer either. Probably tossed across the backseat of his car.

Your gaze drifts back up to his face. His eyes are brown and heavy, shadows sitting deep beneath them, and there’s something almost startled in the way he looks at you. Like he hadn’t really expected you to open the door. You hadn’t expected it either. You still don’t want to see him.

“Hi," he begins, shifting on his feet.

“Hi,” you say bluntly, watching him cautiously. His face falls a little when you don’t open the door any farther.

Too bad. He earned the distance.

“Uh,” he begins again. “Did—did you get my message?”

Your fingers tighten around the wood. “Yes.”

He nods again, resigning himself to the fact that you’re not going to budge. Not this time, not like you usually do after a fight. He probably knew it would be like this before he came, but he’s here anyway, so he tries. “I—uh, I went.”

You sigh at the hopeful lilt in his voice. “I know.”

“No, yeah, I know you know.” He says quickly. “Obviously. I just—I saw your note in the kitchen. The one with the number?"

There is something almost childlike in the way he tells you this, like he did what was asked of him and is waiting to be told he did well.

“Okay,” you say slowly, not offering him any help.

“They—uh—they gave me some pills,” he continues. “Something stronger—not, like, crazy strong or anything. And they said they wanna refer me to somebody else, some specialist guy, I don't remember what kind exactly, but they wrote it down, so... I'm gonna go.”

“Okay,” you repeat again, allowing another silence.

He looks at you, through the gap that feels far too small, waiting for something, waiting for the reward. He's always been like that, though he’d never admit it aloud—always watching your face for some small sign that he got it right, that he helped, that you needed him and he managed to be what you needed. A quiet good job, a hand in his hair, the reassurance that whatever he’s just dragged himself through meant something because it mattered to you.

You are proud of him, in a way. But pride is not forgiveness, and love is not permission, and you have spent too long confusing the two where he is concerned.

His eyebrows pull together. “You're not gonna say anything?”

It doesn’t sound like a dig. If anything, it sounds hopeful, not helping with the hurt that is once again making itself known.

Why should you be the one making this easier for him?

You didn’t ask for any of this, didn’t ask him to come over. Now he’s standing here like going to one doctor’s appointment might earn him some small piece of forgiveness.

“What do you want me to say, Steve?” His eyes drop. “That I’m proud of you? That you did a good job?”

“No, I just thought—”

“You thought what?” you cut in through the narrow gap. “That because you did one small thing, everything would just be fine again?” Your fingers tighten around the edge of the door. “Do you even remember what we were fighting about?”

You knew how this would go. Steve showing up with the one part he could fix neatly while everything underneath it remained untouched. The avoidance, the shutting you out. The way he could make you feel foolish for reaching toward him and then act surprised when you finally stopped.

You can live around locked doors for a while, learn which questions not to ask. But for how long? How long until there is another morning like that one? Another fight born from nothing more terrible than you loving him and Steve still not knowing what to do when someone tries to love him back?

His silence is answer enough. Frustration burns hot beneath your skin, tears already beginning to gather behind your eyes.

Coward.

“I—I think you should go,” you manage; you don’t have it in you to dance around the truth tonight. “I can’t do this right now.”

“No, wait, there’s—”

You start to close the door, but his hand shoots into the gap. The edge catches hard against his fingers, but he doesn’t even flinch.

Always the fucking martyr.

“Steve—”

“Just—” He begins. “Just open the door, okay? I wanna talk. I do. I want you to understand.”

“I can’t understand.”

Not when he doesn't let you.

The words come out louder than you intend, and whatever was holding you together finally gives. The frustration spills over again before you can stop it, pent up and angry. Angry at him for springing this on you now, for not tending to this wound months ago.

“I can’t—I don’t understand why you won’t just talk to me.” You scrub at your face, emotions getting the better of you. “I don’t like this, Steve. I don’t—I feel like I don’t know you sometimes. Like you’re here, and then you’re not. Like you’re always just—just one step away from me.” You shake your head. “And I can’t—I don’t know how to follow you there.”

And now that you’ve started, you can’t seem to stop. It isn’t only that morning anymore. It’s every half-answer and every subject changed too quickly. Every story with the important pieces carved out of it.

Your fingers curl tighter, and on the other side, Steve has gone completely still.

“I—I don’t know what I am to you sometimes.” Your voice cracks as you swallow around the ache in your throat. “I know you come to me. I know you hold me and you sleep beside me and you—” Another breath shudders out of you. “You let me make you feel better. But I don’t feel like you let me have you.”

The words come out small. Pathetic, almost.

“I feel like I’m just somewhere you go when you don’t wanna be inside your own head anymore.” You wipe at your cheeks, but the tears keep coming. “Like—like you can crawl into me and hide for a little while, and I’ll—I’ll hold you, and I’ll love you, and then the second it gets too close, you just—you just leave me there.” You look at him through the narrow opening. “I hold you all the time, Steve. I—I do. I hold anything you can give me.” Your mouth trembles. “I just don’t think you’ve ever—” You shake your head, crying harder now. “I don’t think you’ve ever really held me back.”

The words hang there between you, broken only by the sound of your ragged breathing.

There. You finally said it.

After weeks of circling around it, swallowing it back, pretending you could live with it if you just loved him carefully enough. Your chest caves inward as the last of your anger finally gives way, cracking clean open into grief. You know it needed to be said, you know that, but it doesn't make it hurt any less.

You pull your hand away from the door to cover your mouth, trying to smother the sound that comes out of you, but Steve wrenches the door back against the chain immediately.

“Open the door.” His voice is urgent now.

“Steve—”

“No, no—just, please. Please, open it.” His fingers curl around the edge of it like he could somehow pull himself through the few inches between you. “I’m right here, okay? I’m—I’m right here.”

You shake your head, crying too hard to answer.

“Baby, don’t—” His voice catches. “Don’t cry—not because of me—Jesus, please.” His hand appears through the gap, but there isn’t enough room. His fingers catch nothing but air. “Just unlock it. Please. Just—just let me in.”

You squeeze your eyes shut. You can hear him shift from the other side, desperate to cross the distance.

“I need you. Okay? I do. I need you," his breath shudders as his fingers flex uselessly against the door. “Just let me in. Please. I’ll try, I swear, I’ll try. Just—” His voice drops. “Please. You’re right there and I can’t—I can’t—just let me in.”

Something in you gives at the sound of him. You’re so tired—so fucking tired—of carrying all of this by yourself, of waking up angry and going to bed missing him anyway, no longer even sure which version of him you’re missing.

You shouldn't—

Against every better instinct you have, you push the door closed just enough to reach the chain. Your fingers are shaking so badly you nearly miss it.

The second it comes free, Steve is there.

His hands find you immediately, holding you to him. One arm wraps around your back, and the other cradles your head, pulling you against him, letting you lean on him. You fist both hands in the front of his shirt and hold on as he folds around you. His palm moves slowly, again and again, smoothing your hair while you cry into his chest. He presses his cheek against the top of your head and keeps shushing you under his breath, soft but frantic, adrenaline coursing through his body.

“Hey, hey—shh. C’mon, angel. Don’t cry over me, okay? You’re alright, it's alright.”

You want to laugh.

It's not alright. It's not going to be alright.

The silence of the last few days has settled too deeply inside you, all that space pressing into places his arms can’t quite reach. You can touch him now, feel the warmth of him, the steady rise and fall of his chest, his hands.

But what good is touching someone when you still can’t understand them?

You cry harder into him, into the strange, impossible shape of Steve Harrington—soft beneath your hands and still somehow unknowable. So kind it hurts and so familiar he feels like home, so often a stranger you can't reach.

“Come on,” he murmurs, and you let him guide you to sit on the sofa, but you don’t let go of him. Your hands stay twisted, and something in his face breaks at the sight of it—at the fact that he let you get this far. “C’mon, sweetheart, I’m here, aren't I? I’m here now.”

His words are sweet, gentle. But that's all they are, hollow and soft.

Useless.

“But you’re not, Steve," you lift your head shakily. "You're just not."

His hand stills where it has been moving over your hair, watching the ache move across his face. His mouth parts slowly and his eyes soften.

“Sweetheart—”

“Maybe this needed to happen.”

His head comes up sharply. “No—no, don’t say that.”

You look down between you, at the wrinkles your fists have left. His hands are still on you, but there is something almost tentative in his touch that unnerves you more than his panic at the door had.

Almost like he's preparing for something.

“I don’t expect you to tell me everything,” you say eventually. “I don’t—I never did.”

He looks at you, and something about the silence tells you that perhaps a small part of him had been afraid that was exactly what you meant.

“I know there are things you don’t want to talk about. I know—and that’s fine. They’re yours.” Your fingers flatten against his chest; beneath your palm, his heartbeat is going too fast. “But I can’t keep—I can’t keep asking you something and then watching you shut down like I’ve—like I’ve stepped on a fucking landmine.”

His jaw shifts. “I don't mean to.”

“Then why?” You press desperately.

Why can't he at least try?

“Because it’s not—” He breathes out hard through his nose, frustrated. He pulls back just enough to look at you properly, his face drawn with the effort of arranging something he has clearly never intended to put into words. “It’s not just me that it would be bad for. Okay? You gotta understand that.”

A small chill goes through you. “What does that even mean?”

He's still talking in riddles.

“Baby,” He drags one hand over the back of his neck, and there he is again, that old reflex beginning to rise—the frustration, the scrambling search for somewhere else to take the conversation. “Can you just—”

“No,” you grit out, and his eyes flick back to yours. You hate how quickly fear makes you stubborn. You hate even more that you can feel him preparing to retreat. “No,” you repeat. “I can't. I can't keep doing this.”

Something in his face gives as his shoulders shrink a fraction.

“Baby,” he says quietly, “it won't be good for you.”

“I don’t care.”

“You don’t even know what you’re asking.”

“Then tell me—anything," you beg, and you hate how small you sound. “Just—God, Steve, give me one thing. One real thing. Something that tells me this isn’t what it’s always going to be like.”

The apartment seems suddenly too quiet around you. Outside, a car passes along the road, tyres hissing. Ordinary sounds from an ordinary evening. Steve looks anything but ordinary as you watch the thoughts move behind his eyes.

His gaze drops to your mouth, then your shoulder; his fingers flex against your back. He looks briefly toward the door, and something inside your chest twists at the instinct of it—not because you think he will leave, but because some part of him clearly wants to.

He wants to run again.

Always fucking running.

“Okay,” he whispers with a small nod, though it seems more for himself than you. “Okay. We can—uh."

Steve stares at his hands. You can feel his breathing against your shoulder, too measured to be natural. You have seen him nervous before. Before parents evening, before calling his dad, but this is different.

If letting someone in hurts him this much, then perhaps there was never meant to be room for you there at all.

You can't do this anymore.

“Steve,” you whisper. “If you can never do this, maybe we aren't—”

“No.” His answer is immediate. He looks at you, and there is something painfully earnest in his expression. “No, don’t—don’t say that. That’s not what I want.”

Then what does he want? You to roll over and shut up when he decides you've had enough of him for that day?

Your throat tightens as his fingers leave your waist. His fingers rise up to rub against his temple, the same spot that is the root of all of this. His hand stays there, two fingers resting against the place you've seen him press a hundred times before.

You didn't want it to end like this.

You think you can manage without him here. At least, you hope you can. Loving him had once been as easy as breathing; in the beginning, you thought he had given himself to you completely. Maybe you were wrong; there were always rooms inside him he intended to keep locked.

And if this is something he cannot give you—if letting you in is a piece he simply cannot bring himself to face—then you will have to learn how to accept that. You cannot spend your life loving a ghost, reaching for someone who disappears the moment you get too close.

You hope, eventually, you can make peace with it. You hope he can too.

“It, uh…” He clears his throat, pulling you back into the room. “It happened the summer of—of ’85.”

You frown, not following, unsure where this is headed.

“The fire,” he says. “At the mall. That’s when they started,” he continues, fingers brushing his temple. His mouth pulls tight. “That’s—uh, when they started to happen for real.”

You go very still as he looks away.

Oh.

He looks somewhere far, not just staring at the wall. He stares somewhere you cannot follow; as usual, his gaze settles blankly in the distance. His face empties; the nerves are still there, but everything else seems to draw inward, leaving him strangely glazed over.

You don't move. You barely breathe.

You've waited so long for this. Months of questions swallowed before they reached your tongue, scars you taught your fingers to move around rather than across. You have imagined this moment in a hundred different ways. You thought that if he ever opened the door, even an inch, relief would be the first thing you felt.

Looking at his face now, you begin to think you shouldn't have knocked.

“It was, uh…” he wets his lips. His voice sounds strangely distant, like he is repeating something someone else once told him. “It was the summer after I graduated. I didn't—y'know, I didn't get the grades for college or anything, dad decided I needed to learn about the real world.”

There is the ghost of something sarcastic in the last few words, not quite a joke, he doesn't seem capable of making one properly right now.

“S'where I met Rob.”

Okay, that part you know.

You know the ridiculous blue shorts and the sailor hat you once found stuffed behind a box at the back of his wardrobe. It had been early enough in your relationship that you were still learning which things you were allowed to tease him about, and you'd emerged with the shirt held against yourself, laughing while Steve groaned into his hands.

Oh, come on, Harrington. Don't tell me you wouldn't wear it for me.

Absolutely not.

You don't know. Maybe I'm into sailors.

Then find another sailor.

You'd chased him around the room with the hat until he'd caught you around the waist and thrown you onto the bed. You remember him laughing then, cheeks pink while he tried to wrestle the thing out of your hands. You remember asking afterwards why he had kept it if he hated the uniform so much.

Dunno. Should burn the damn thing.

Sitting beside him now, you realise with a sick feeling that perhaps he had meant it.

“We worked together. Me and her, then Dustin came back from camp.”

You nod faintly. He breathes in through his nose, and you think that might be all he gives you. Then his hand starts moving against his slacks again, rubbing once down his thigh, then back up. Something to do with himself, something grounding.

“He was so excited.” A little more of Steve appears in his voice, something warmer creeping in. “You know how he gets. Couldn't just come home like a normal person. Had this whole radio thing built on a hill, dragged everyone up there to see it.” He glances at you as if checking whether you're still with him.

You remain still, eyes on him, wrapped around every word.

“Huge thing. Probably illegal somehow, knowing Henderson.” His breath catches around what almost becomes a laugh. “Kid used those walkies for everything back then.”

You can picture it easily enough. Dustin at fourteen, Steve several years younger than the man sitting beside you and already allowing himself to be dragged into whatever scheme the kid had invented.

“He thought he picked something up,” he says. “On the radio. Some transmission—I don't know—some kinda code or something. Wasn't English. He thought we could crack it. And I thought… hey, why not? I didn't really have anything else going on. Scoop ice cream, drive home. Pretty packed schedule.” One shoulder lifts and falls. “So we started messing with it. Thought it'd give us something to do.”

It sounds simple enough: kids in the summer, cracking codes and saving the world—the kind of make-believe everyone wishes they’d lived when they were young. But you know this story doesn’t end happily. Not when you can feel him practically vibrating beside you. Not when he can barely meet your eyes as he talks about the people who mean more to him than anything.

“It turned out to be something.” The room seems to contract around the words. "Something realer than we thought. Realer than I thought.”

That finally makes him look at you. His eyes find yours and stay there, and you can see the fear beginning to bleed. You don’t know what to say that could make any of it feel okay. You probably look a mess, tear tracks dried tight against your cheeks, swollen eyes, hair a mess from burying your face against him. You don't know if you look safe. You don't know how to make yourself be safe. You want to reach out for him, desperately.

“We got too close.” His gaze drops again.

“Where?” you ask cautiously, unable to help yourself.

“I can't—” The answer comes so quickly that you immediately regret asking. His shoulders tighten. “Sorry. I can't. Just… somewhere we weren't supposed to be.”

You don't push this time, letting him breathe. He presses his mouth together before he continues.

“We should've stopped. Way before that. I should've stopped it.” His palms are sliding over his knees now, restless against the fabric. “I should've sent the kids home when we realised it wasn't some stupid radio thing.”

“The kids?”

There were more?

“Erica.”

You stare at him. “Erica? Lucas's Erica?”

“Yeah.”

Your stomach drops another inch.

You know Erica Sinclair. Not well, but enough. You've seen her sprawled across the armchair at Lucas and Max's house, suggesting everyone around her is painfully beneath her intellectual level. You've heard her dismantle Steve with three sentences while he points furiously at her and demands to know why nobody ever tells her to respect her elders. She is so self-assured now. Your mind scrambles backwards through the years.

“How... how old was she?”

Steve gives a horrible shake of his head. “Ten? Eleven? I don't—fuck, I don't know.”

You understand immediately that he’s asked himself that question before. Probably more times than you ever will. His whole career now orbits around children, the way he watches over them, never lets them feel small or overlooked. You can’t imagine what it would do to him if one of them got hurt on his watch. You’re not sure he could bear it.

Suddenly, pieces of him that never quite made sense before are beginning to fall into place.

“Steve…”

“I never should've let them come.”

“You couldn't have—”

“I could.” His answer is sharp, though not angry with you. “I was the oldest. Robin was—she was closer, but I was supposed to…” He stops, jaw working. “I knew better. I should've known better.”

He was barely nineteen. A kid himself.

“We weren't supposed to be there,” he repeats. “And the people who were there… They were important. High up, I guess. Military or government or—fuck, I don't know what they were.”

Steve looks down at his hands. They are trembling now, only slightly, but enough that you can see it.

“They were doing shit under the mall.” His words begin coming faster, as though now that he has said the impossible part aloud he has to outrun your reaction to it. “Like underneath it. I don't—I don't know if it was built because of them or if they got there after or what. I never figured that part out.”

You feel cold despite the warmth of the room. You've heard the stories of what happened. The newspaper photographs, smoke rising black against a summer sky, names printed in columns afterwards, Hawkins mourning another inexplicable tragedy. A fire. That was the story, the one the town went with.

You never would have guessed that Steve had spent all this time carrying the weight of a lie he was expected to keep alive every day.

His breathing has changed, each inhale a little shorter than the last. You move before you can think better of it, leaning closer and resting your hand gently against his thigh, because you don’t know what else to give him. You don’t know what could possibly be enough.

He drags in a breath through his nose and lets it out slowly between his teeth, like even that takes effort now. Your palm stays where it is, warm against the dark fabric, the smallest reassurance you can offer.

“They were gonna get the kids.” His voice catches. “They were gonna—they…” He presses his lips together. “They didn't.” His hand comes down over yours suddenly, gripping hard enough that you feel the bones in your fingers shift. “They didn't get 'em. Dustin and Erica got out. They got us, and they—” Nothing comes. His mouth remains open, but whatever word had been travelling toward it seems to die somewhere inside him. '"And they—”

“Hey.” Your voice comes out instinctively soft, he shakes his head. “Steve, it's okay, you can stop—”

“No, I—” He turns toward you abruptly. His eyes are too bright now. “No. I wanna do this.”

“You don't have to.”

He's said more than enough.

“I know.” He swallows hard. “I know, I just—I want to. I'm just… I'm no good at it.”

Your heart breaks for him again.

Steve has never been good with words. He tells stories backwards, starts halfway through and remembers the beginning when he's already reached the end. He once spent ten minutes trying to explain the plot of a movie to you before Robin yelled from the other room that he had confused two entirely different films. He has told you that he barely scraped through essays in high school, that he'd stare at a blank sheet until the words began swimming and then write whatever came to mind five minutes before the bell.

Words don't arrive neatly, especially these ones. Especially not after years spent making sure they never arrived at all.

“Then don't be good at it.” You curl your fingers beneath his, trying to offer some semblance of comfort. “Just tell it badly.”

Tell it any way he can.

He almost smiles. It is such a wounded thing that your chest aches at the sight of it. You watch him gather himself again, gathering sentences the same way someone might gather broken glass, knowing every piece can cut him, knowing he has to pick them up anyway.

“They thought we knew something,” he says eventually. “We didn't. But I guess from where they were standing… didn't exactly look like that.” His knee has begun bouncing beneath your hand. “They asked questions—fuck, so many questions. Didn't matter what kind, I didn't know the answers.” His tongue passes over his bottom lip. “They—uh—they knocked me around pretty bad.”

Knocked him around?

“What does that mean?” you ask.

“I—I don't remember all of it.” He drags a hand through his hair, fingers catching briefly at the roots. His breathing has begun to climb again. “I remember some. Not all. They hit me and—” He stops. “It doesn't matter.”

You bite the inside of your cheek until it hurts. He keeps going.

“They didn't hurt Rob.” Relief flashes across his face when he says it. “When I came to, she was there. She was alright. I mean, scared shitless and yelling at me, so… pretty normal. But after that it got…” His voice thins. “Angel, it got so much worse.”

Your heart pounds so hard it hurts. You don’t want to hear the rest. You don’t want the picture of him like that lodged inside you forever—blood on somebody else’s knuckles, his body limp, barely conscious, barely breathing. You want to shut it out.

But you asked for this. God, you asked for this over and over. You begged him to let you in.

So you sit there and listen. You listen to what they did to him.

“They gave us something.” His palm flies to the side of his neck as his fingers press there. "I don't know what it was. I never knew. They just—” The words barely make it out. “A needle or something. I don't—I don't know.” His hand shakes harder against his throat. “They put something in us and it—it fucked with your head. Couldn't think right. Couldn't think—”

You want to stop him. Tell him it’s too much, that he doesn’t have to drag himself through whatever this is all over again. You want to apologise for ever asking, tell him this is enough—more than enough.

But you can’t seem to speak. You can only sit there, stunned into silence, horror written plainly across your face.

“We got out,” he manages to say, the words falling over. “We got out, but by then it was—there was already—there was—” His hand comes down hard against his thigh. “Fuck, I'm sorry—”

His mouth stays open like there is another word waiting behind his teeth, but nothing comes. He swallows once. Twice. His shoulders draw tight beneath his shirt and he presses the heel of his hand against his sternum, like he can force whatever is happening back down.

But he shakes his head hard, as though he can physically knock himself back into the room. Trying to finish what you started.

“I know how it sounds, angel—but you gotta believe me.” He finally looks at you, and the fear in his face is so naked that your own breath catches. “I wanna tell you. I do. I really do, it's just—I can't. Not all of it. It's not me—it's not—" His words are beginning to trip over each other. “It's not—it's you. You can't—it isn't something you can just know and then go back, okay? It's not like that. There's shit that if you know it then you're—you can't just—”

He tries to breathe through it. You watch his nostrils flare, his jaw clench, the muscles in his throat working around breaths that never seem to settle anywhere. He bends forward slightly, elbows braced against his knees, and you think he might be sick. His chest jerks beneath the thin shirt. He drags another breath in, too fast, then another before the first has properly left.

Whatever distant place his mind had gone to while he told you the story is suddenly not distant at all.

“Steve.”

“I can't—”

“Hey—”

“I'm—I'm trying—but I—I'm sorry—”

His face crumples and you can't hold back any longer. He's dragged it open with bleeding hands and now he is standing on the other side of it, shaking.

You reach out and his body curls into yours, larger than you and somehow suddenly easy to gather, his face disappearing into the curve of your neck as you wrap both arms around his shoulders. He grips you immediately. One arm locks around your waist, the other bunching fabric at your back, dragging you so close there is nowhere left for air between you.

What had they done to him?

“Shh, it's okay,” you whisper into his hair. “It's okay. You can stop. You can stop now.”

His breath burns against your neck. He is shaking. Not the delicate tremor you noticed in his hands before, but something deep and involuntary that seems to move through his whole body. His shoulders jerk beneath your palms as he fights for breath, and you hold him tighter, one hand cradling the back of his head.

You are horrified. There is no other word for it. Horrified by the shape of what has been hiding inside him all this time.

Nineteen.

Working in an ice cream shop because his father wanted him taught some stupid fucking lesson about responsibility. He had followed a kid with a radio because he was bored. He had found something he shouldn't have found and, because he is Steve, he had put himself between it and children and somebody had hurt him for it. Not a stupid high-school fight or some exaggerated story he could laugh about with Jonathan over beers. Interrogated—drugged. You don't know how badly they beat him because he cannot remember.

Your stomach turns violently as you think about his migraines. His flinch beneath fluorescent lights. The way he sometimes wakes disoriented and insists he was only dreaming, God.

What else happened to him?

If this is the story he can tell you, what the hell is the one he can't?

“I’m sorry.” His voice is muffled against your neck. “I’m sorry—I—I can't tell you the rest—"

“Steve—”

“I can't tell you the rest.” His fingers tighten desperately in your clothes. "I—” His breathing catches painfully. “I'm fucking this up.”

“You're not—”

“I am. I can't even—I can't get it out right.”

Your eyes fill. He sounds angry with himself now, which somehow hurts worse than anything else.

“You did,” you whisper softly. "You did enough, you've done enough, okay?"

Steve makes a broken sound against your neck, halfway between a breath and something he refuses to let become a sob. You hold him through it.

Only an hour ago, you had been crying against his chest while he tried desperately to gather you back together. Now the shape of you has reversed. Your arms are around him., your mouth brushes his temple as you murmur whatever quiet assurances come to you, none of them sufficient, all of them true.

You're here. I've got you. That's enough.

For once, he lets himself be the one held.

“No more apologising,” you tell him gently.

“But I can't—you deserve—” His breath shudders out against your skin. “Fuck, angel, you deserve more than this.”

Something in you snaps quietly back into place. You pull away just enough to look at him, and for the first time, you think you finally see him. Not the version Steve Harrington has spent years carefully arranging for everyone else, but the thing underneath it. The last pieces of him slot together all at once.

Of course this terrifies him.

Letting someone in. Letting someone help. Handing over the parts of himself he has spent so long protecting and trusting that they won’t be used against him. He knows how to give until there is almost nothing left of him; he has never learned what to do when someone tries to give something back. He will offer his time, himself, without hesitation, but ask him to place something fragile in another person’s hands and suddenly he has no idea how to breathe.

Because what if they don’t catch it? What if they don’t catch him?

And suddenly you can see the boy he must have been beneath all that high-school bravado—teeth and attitude and carefully sharpened edges, desperate to be seen and terrified of what might happen if anyone looked too closely. Be cruel first, funny first, useful first. Anything but be the one standing there with his hands empty, asking someone to just stay.

He doesn’t know how to be the one who needs saving. Not while he still has a body he can exhaust, not while there is still blood in him to give.

Being frightened is one thing; letting somebody see that he is frightened is something else entirely. Letting them see how lonely he has been, how scared, how badly he wants to be held onto—that, somehow, is the unbearable part. As though the truth of him would be too heavy for anybody else to carry. As though loving him means he has failed to protect you from himself.

And God, what a shame for him that you are already far too gone.

Those honey-brown eyes and those gentle hands ruined any chance you had of walking away untouched a long time ago.

He has cracked himself open for you now, however reluctantly, however painfully. Maybe it is the hardest thing Steve Harrington has ever done: standing in front of someone without a weapon, without a joke, without anything left to offer except the truth.

So you look at the pieces he has finally trusted you enough to show you, unflinching as you gather them softly.

“Don't say that,” You hold his face a little more firmly. “Don't say that, please.”

“Angel—”

“No.” Your own voice breaks, but you don't look away. “Don't you dare say that. You hear me?”

Your thumb moves; a tear has gathered beneath his eye, caught against the flushed curve of his cheek, and you brush it away with the pad of your finger. His eyes flutter at the touch, leaning into your palm instinctively. Your hand slides farther along his cheek, fingers disappearing into the hair above his ear. His eyes fall shut as another tear escapes anyway, warm against the side of your hand, and the guilt that has been sitting quietly beneath everything rises hard enough to turn your stomach.

You wanted this.

Not this—not him shaking in your arms, voice splitting around memories he could barely force through his teeth—but you had wanted the truth. You had demanded some piece of him he had spent years keeping buried, and now you understand.

God, you understand.

Steve would walk barefoot into hell if somebody he loved was standing on the other side of it. He would take the hit, stay behind, put himself between children and men with guns and call it what anybody else would have done. He would carry people until his arms gave out and then apologise for dropping them.

He asks for so little in return.

You cannot put it back, cannot make him unknow the feeling of saying it aloud, but you can be gentle with what he has given you. You asked him to open his hands; now it is your turn to hold what fell out.

“I don't want anything else,” you tell him. He opens his eyes; your thumbs rest beneath them, catching the dampness before it can travel any farther. “I don't want anyone else,” you say again, quieter. “I just want you.”

“Angel…”

“All I've ever wanted was to know you.”

His mouth trembles faintly. You shake your head before he can misunderstand you again.

“I mean you.” Your fingers curl lightly against his jaw. “I wanted to know why you disappear sometimes, to know where you go when you're sitting right beside me and suddenly it feels like you're a hundred miles away.” Your voice begins to break again, but this time you let it. “I wanted to know how to love you when you do that.”

You know how to do that now.

Steve jerks his head from your hands with a small shake, looking away from you. “No, you don't.”

Your hands fall uselessly into the space between you.

“Steve—”

He looks at you, and you see it again. The terror, the fear that somehow he has shown too much of himself and that you will leave.

He has spent years watching people leave Hawkins in pieces. Some of them went to college or simply moved away. People grew older, discovered larger worlds, bigger lives, better things. And he stayed, perhaps somewhere along the way he convinced himself that there was virtue in it.

Maybe if he remained exactly where everyone had left him, they would always know where to find him when they needed something. Now he is looking at you like surely this is the moment you realise there are easier people to love, far away from here.

“You can't mean that,” he says.

You move before he can retreat any farther, sliding closer.

You rise onto your knees, and his gaze flickers downward when you bring one leg over his lap, settling carefully across his thighs. Something catches in his expression, but he makes no attempt to stop you; he doesn't have the fight in him anymore. His hands hover uncertainly near your hips, not quite touching.

After what he's done, he isn't sure he's still allowed.

You decide for him, curling yourself over him and catching the collar of his shirt between your fingers, smoothing the fabric. He looks up at you from underneath tired lashes, his face flushed. His eyes are soft now, brown gone almost black in the dim light, watching you, expectantly. As though he is waiting for you to tell him what happens next. Waiting to find out whether he has ruined this too.

You slide your hands upward instead; your fingers disappear into his hair.

A shaky breath leaves him, too deep to be a sigh. He relishes the feel of your hands on him; even after such a short time apart, his body still craves you, still aches for the reassurance that you want him.

You'll always want him.

His shoulders drop, chin tips fractionally upward into the touch before he seems to realise he's doing it, and your heart squeezes painfully at how little encouragement it takes.

There he is. Your Steve.

Not King Steve, sharp-eyed and vicious, nor the frightened nineteen-year-old stumbling through memories. Not the man at your door begging you to let him in. Your Steve, tired and tender and desperate to know what you think of him now.

“I do mean it,” you whisper as his eyes open. You drag your fingers slowly through the hair at his temples, smoothing it away from his forehead. “All I've ever wanted was you.” You lean closer until your noses nearly brush. “Not what you can do for me. Not who you can save." You cup his face before he can look away. “All I needed was you.”

Steve leans back slightly beneath your hands, his head resting against the sofa. Your thumb moves along the curve of his cheek; his skin is warm beneath your palm, soft where, years ago, somebody else's hands had left bruises you'll never see.

Your touch becomes gentler without you meaning it to. You smooth your palm along his cheek until he turns instinctively into your hand, lips grazing the heel of it on a trembling exhale.

You know this about him. Steve wants to do be good.

It sounds so painfully small when reduced to those words, almost childish, but it lives at the centre of him. He wants to be useful. Reliable. The person you call first and thank afterward. He will drive across town in the middle of the night and complain the entire way because complaining lets him pretend he isn't secretly pleased somebody thought of him.

Yeah, whatever.

Wasn't a big deal.

But you have seen the little change in him anyway. The way his shoulders straighten, the tiny satisfaction he tries to hide. Because he has spent most of his life wanting somebody to look at him and tell him he did something right.

You lean down and kiss him, and he hums against your lips, almost painfully. It has only been three days, but three days suddenly feels enormous. Three days spent wondering whether the last kiss you shared had already happened without either of you realising it.

He sighs against you, melting completely into your touch, taking whatever you’re willing to give him. He doesn’t care if it’s only crumbs; he’ll take them. He’ll take anything, so long as you don’t run, so long as there’s still some way for him to stay.

His hand finds your waist, fingers spreading wide as he pulls you closer until your body fits against his. His mouth is soft as it moves against your own, careful, still keeping a distance after everything that happened tonight. You curl your fingers tighter in his hair and feel the restraint in him give slightly.

“Thank you,” you whisper against his mouth.

His eyebrows pinch together. “For what?”

You brush your nose against his. “For telling me.”

“Angel—”

“I'm telling you, thank you, Steve,” you say, leaving no room for him to doubt how much you mean it.

He shakes his head, already trying to escape. “I didn't really—”

“You did.”

“I barely told you any—”

“You did enough.”

That stops him, and the reaction is small. So small that you might have missed it if you didn't know him the way you do. His fingers tighten around as he lets a breath out through his nose, suddenly unsteady.

There he is.

You soften your voice. “You did good.”

He makes a sound, something dragged unwillingly from somewhere deep in his chest. His head immediately begins to shake again. “Don't—”

"Don't what?" You watch colour begin travelling slowly up his throat, your fingers slide from his hair to the nape of his neck. “Tell you that you did good?”

His jaw tightens. “Baby—stop.”

There is warning in the word, but it is undermined spectacularly by the way his eyes refuse to meet yours.

You lean closer, your mouth brushing the corner of his jaw. “You did.”

Another tremor moves through him; your lips travel slowly toward his ear.

Steve breathes your name like a warning now, but you ignore him, pushing him even deeper. “I'm proud of you.”

His head falls backward against the sofa.

The sound that leaves him this time is unmistakable, low and wrecked enough that heat rushes immediately through you. His hands flex and you can feel exactly how badly your words are affecting him, his whole body responding before pride can catch up and smother the reaction.

You smile faintly against his neck as his hips shift beneath you.

Got him.

All that bravado, the years spent making himself indispensable, shrugging off every bruise and every victory. Steve will throw himself bodily into danger without thinking, but tell him you're proud of him and suddenly he doesn't know where to put his hands.

You kiss the sensitive place beneath his ear and his fingers dig into your sides.

“Jesus,” he breathes.

“You're good,” you whisper as his chest rises sharply beneath you.

“Baby—”

“So good for me,” you praise.

Steve's hips shift involuntarily beneath yours as his cheeks grow darker; you give his hair the smallest tug as his breath catches, not letting him escape your words. He groans when you tug at the roots, letting you guide him however you please. Pliant beneath your hands, utterly willing.

"I love you," you say as he shudders. His hands climb from your waist to your back, pulling you closer.

“Say—say it again," he rasps and you still at his tone. “Please—angel, please. Say it again.”

Gladly.

"I love you, Steve," You tug his hair once more, enough to pull another involuntary noise from his throat, and immediately soothe the sting with your fingers. "I'll always love you."

The words seem to go straight through him. His hips jerk upward before he can stop them, and you move with him instinctively, meeting the motion. A broken groan catches against your shoulder as his forehead drops heavily there, his whole body tightening beneath you.

“Please—” he grits out when you roll against him again, harder this time. He sounds wrecked already, dizzy with it—the praise, the unbearable combination of being wanted and being made to admit how badly he wants you back. “Please, baby, I need—”

“What do you need?” you ask softly, refusing to let him disappear behind half-finished sentences. “Tell me, and it’s yours.”

Your hand slips between your bodies, smoothing over his lower stomach, tracing lazy circles everywhere except where he’s trying to guide you.

“Fuck.” His head tips back, frustration pulling tight across his face. “You—you know where.”

You smile, not letting him get away with it. “Gotta get better at asking for help, Steve.”

He does, not just here, not just when he's flushed and desperate beneath you. He needs to learn that wanting doesn't make him weak, that you can't help him if he keeps making you guess. This is a start. He looks so ruined by it that you can’t help pressing your mouth to his neck, teeth catching gently against the sensitive skin there as he hisses.

“Shit—” he whines helplessly, desire and embarrassment leaking through his tone.

“C’mon,” you murmur against his throat, knowing exactly how badly you’re tormenting him now. Your hand drifts lower, still quite giving him what he wants. “Just say it.”

He makes a frustrated sound, fingers tightening against you as he fights to find his voice. His legs shift restlessly, chasing even the smallest bit of relief, but the movement only presses you closer together. The faint friction tears whatever he meant to say from his throat, leaving him breathless instead.

“It’s yours,” you promise, softer now. “Whatever you need. But you’ve gotta tell me where it hurts, Steve.” You lift your head just enough to look at him. “Gotta tell me so I can make it better.”

He grits his teeth as your hands brush over his belt buckle, toying with the metal, not quite opening it yet. Embarrassment and vulnerability flush dark across his cheeks. His hips twitch again, helpless, before he forces them still.

“Need—need you on my cock,” he gasps, the words scraped raw from his throat. “Need you riding me, angel. Need to feel you—fuck, need to watch you come apart because of me.” His voice breaks on the last word, hips jerking uselessly beneath you. “Please. I need it—tell me what to say and I’ll say it, just please—please don’t make me wait anymore.”

He sounds so pretty when he gets like this.

You hum against his lips as you slip from his lap, and the loss of you seems to hit him all at once. His eyes follow you helplessly, hungry and almost pained, like looking away would cost him something. By the time you crawl back toward him, he already looks wrecked—breathing uneven, gaze fixed on you, hands flexing like he doesn’t quite trust himself to reach.

You settle back over him, your hands working slowly at the buckle of his belt. His stay exactly where they are, resting at his sides, not moving an inch.

This is what he wants, to let you decide, to tell him what to do, to take the choice out of his hands entirely. He doesn’t want to think. He wants to be looked after, handled, given only what you decide he can have until there’s nothing left in his head but you.

Whatever you give him, he’ll take gladly.

The belt comes free, and you ease the zipper down, and his cock springs out, heavy and flushed, the head already gleaming. He hisses as the cooler air hits him. Your fingers wrap around him gently, stroking once from base to tip, agonisingly slow. His fingers dig into your thighs hard enough to bruise as he fights the urge to buck up into your fist.

“Please—” he begs, brown eyes pleading as his hair falls against his forhead.

“Patience,” you tell him, leaning in to press a kiss to his shuddering mouth. You can feel the tension rolling off him in waves. “Gonna give you what you need, but you gotta be patient.”

He groans, low and broken, as you rise up on your knees and angle yourself over him. The head of his cock nudges against your folds, but you don’t sink down. Not yet. You rock just enough to tease him, watching the way his jaw clenches, the way his eyes go half-lidded and desperate, until his hands are shaking.

“Baby, I need—”

You cut him off by sliding down in one slow, deliberate motion, taking every inch until you’re flush against him. Your mouth falls open on a silent gasp as the stretch blooms hot. You stay there, just breathing, letting your body adjust to the thick fullness of him. His legs shift restlessly beneath you; you feel him force the urge to thrust up, muscles trembling with the effort. Your palms press flat to his chest, feeling the frantic hammer of his heart as he tries to restrain himself.

“Feel so good,” you praise him, and you swear you feel his cock twitch harder inside you at the words. “Shit, Steve… I missed you.”

You use his shoulders for leverage and start to move—slow, torturous rolls of your hips that lift you almost off him before you sink back down, taking him deep again.

“Missed—missed you too,” he grits out, voice strained as he tries to keep his body obedient. His eyes stay locked on every blissed-out shift of your body, watching himself disappear inside you over and over.

You look at him, eyes glazed over, completely at your mercy and loving every second of it as he lets himself sink deeper, giving himself over to the feeling. He focuses on nothing but you, the woman he loves moving against him, the sweet sounds you make leaving room for little else in his head.

You reach up and catch his jaw in one hand, pinning him back against the sofa cushions as you start to ride him harder. The change in pace drags a rough groan from his throat. He swallows hard against your palm, eyes fluttering as he feels you starting to lose yourself in what he can give you.

It feels so foreign. He’s used to being the one who works for it, the one on top, whether he’s over you or between your legs. He’s always the one putting in the effort, the one who keeps going until you’re ruined beneath him, trembling and breathless, unable to think straight anymore.

This is different.

Tonight he has to stay still, has to let you take care of him, take what you need from him, and the effort of it shows in every tight line of his body.

Your lips crash into his, rough and claiming, not letting him think of anything else but the weight of you on top of him, the heat of you around him, the way you’re treating him. You squeeze his jaw a little tighter and another broken moan spills into your mouth. He leans into the pressure instead of away from it, almost chasing the sharp edge of discomfort, loving the way it blurs everything else until he feels strangely weightless beneath you.

When you pull back just enough to look at him, his eyes are unfocused, lips parted, completely gone on the feeling while your hips keep their relentless rhythm.

“Does it feel good?” you ask, teasing him with the question when you already know how difficult it is for him to answer once he’s this far gone.

“Yes—yes, baby, it feels good,” he grits out, the words almost punched from him. “Gripping me so tight, I can feel it—I can feel it, shit—”

You love it when he gets like this. When the sharp edges of him blur and he can’t think of anything but this. This is his reward for telling you the truth earlier. You can give him this, always. He can lose himself in you when it gets too much; you can take him away, make him focus on nothing more than the feeling of your heat wrapped around him.

You tug his hair, sharp enough to make his eyes snap open and focus on you again. They’re completely glazed, pupils blown wide.

“Touch me, Steve.”

He doesn’t hesitate. One hand slides between your bodies, fingers finding your clit and rubbing in tight circles that make your hips stutter and a moan tear from your throat. The dual sensation—his cock filling you so deep and his fingers working you so precisely—makes your thighs tremble.

You can feel him getting closer, the way his breathing turns ragged, the way his hips start to twitch up in tiny thrusts despite his best efforts.

"Baby, I'm gonna—"

“Don't cum yet,” you say bluntly, earning you another groan as his eyes shut.

You know it’s cruel. You know exactly how mean you’re being, and maybe that’s part of what makes the sounds he gives you so unbearably beautiful.

He’ll hold out because you asked him to, because pleasing you gives him something else to cling to, one simple instruction where there used to be a hundred thoughts. And you know him well enough to know he’ll try until it hurts, until he’s shaking with the effort of being good for you. He’s always been like that, so eager to make someone else happy, and right now you’re shameless enough to use it.

You’ll let him keep trying, keep enduring, until even that effort dissolves and there’s nothing left in his head but you.

"You're—you're killing me here—" he grits out. "I—I can't."

You slow above him, and his hands immediately reach for you, trying to keep you moving. His face twists with frustration as his eyes snap open, wide and pleading, silently begging you not to stop.

"Yes, you can," you tell him softly. "You want to be good, don't you?"

“Yes—yes, I do. Please. I’ll do anything, just please—”

You shush him gently before he can unravel any further, scattering soft kisses over his cheeks, his temple, the corner of his mouth until his pleading breaks apart into shaky breaths. The second you start moving again, he sucks in deep, lips falling open with helpless relief as the tension drains out of him all at once.

You move more firmly against him, watching his jaw tighten as he fights to keep himself composed, desperate not to lose control, determined to follow the one simple instruction you’ve given him. You lean down close to his ear and bite hard enough to make his mouth fall open, drawing out those sweet, wrecked sounds you’ve been aching to hear.

“I’m close, Steve,” you tell him between shaky breaths. “I’m close.”

“Shit, I know, angel. Fuck—I know,” he rambles, voice wrecked. “Can feel you squeezing me.”

His fingers tremble as they keep working against your clit, slipping slightly with the effort. The coil low in your stomach pulls tighter, heat building fast enough to make your rhythm falter. His other hand catches you immediately, steadying you against him while his breathing turns tight and uneven. He’s still trying so hard, still following every word you gave him, even now.

“You can let go now, Steve,” you murmur against his lips, almost mercifully, and his whole body goes taut beneath you.

You kiss him before the sound can fully leave him, swallowing the broken noise he makes as the last of his restraint gives way. The feeling pulls you over the edge with him, your breath catching as you cling to him, shaking through it with your mouth still pressed to his.

His hips snap up as he spills deep inside you, a long wrecked groan tearing from his throat. His whole body shudders beneath you, tears almost slipping from the corners of his eyes as he feels the white-hot pleasure. Both of his release and the knowledge that he followed your instructions perfectly.

You stay there, both trembling, forehead pressed to his, breathing like you’ve run for miles. His arms come up slowly, wrapping around your back, holding you close while the aftershocks ripple through both of you.

For a long moment, neither of you says anything. Steve just holds you against him, his face buried in the curve of your neck as he murmurs half-coherent words into your skin, the only thing keeping him tethered, keeping him here with you.

It takes him a while to move, waiting until your breathing has almost settled. You lift your head reluctantly from his shoulder and find him watching you with an expression so open it makes something inside you ache. The frantic edge has gone from him now, so has the embarrassment that had coloured his face only minutes ago. What remains is softer, tired around the eyes, his hair fallen hopelessly across his forehead.

“Hey,” he murmurs shakily.

“Hey,” you return, a soft smile playing on your lips.

His gaze travels over you for a second, lingering everywhere and nowhere. There is something almost solemn about it as he shifts you next to him, hissing at the loss of contact before he tucks himself back in his briefs.

“I love you,” he tells you, as you settle in next to him. “I should say it more.”

“You do,” you insist. “Just... sometimes it gets lost in translation.”

He laughs at that, barely more than a breath, but its the first one you've heard from him in days. It's the first sound that feels uncomplicated. His mouth curves, tired and crooked, and something young slips back into his face.

You brush the hair away from his forehead and let your fingers linger there, smoothing the unruly pieces back into place. He closes his eyes for half a second beneath the touch.

“You gonna stay tonight?” you ask.

The question seems to surprise him more than it should. The earlier uncertainty returns just a little, the carefulness.

“Can I?”

You nod. A tiredness settles over you almost immediately, exhaustion creeping into every limb now that your body has finally decided the crisis is over. You lean against the sofa and rub your eyes.

“I made dinner,” you mumble. “If you want some.”

He hums thoughtfully and leans forward, pressing a slow kiss against your lips. Something changes in his face. Relief, perhaps, some return to normalcy. You brush your fingers through his hair once more before reluctantly pushing yourself upright.

“I should probably shower,” you murmur, trying to push yourself to your feet only for your legs to wobble beneath you.

He catches you immediately, one arm coming up around your waist before you can stumble back into him. The haze in his expression clears at once, replaced by concern as he looks you over.

“Hey, easy,” he says softly. “I’ll come with you.”

He stands carefully, keeping hold of you as he helps you up with him, one hand steady at your waist while the other finds yours. He doesn’t move until he’s sure you’re balanced, watching your face for any sign that you’re not.

He follows you down the hallway.

The bathroom light is warmer than the others in your flat, casting everything in soft yellow as he steps inside. There is something strangely intimate about the mundanity of it after everything else. Toothbrushes beside the sink, shampoo balanced on the edge of the bath. Steve's razor is still sitting where he'd left it earlier in the week, before either of you knew how badly things were about to go wrong.

He starts undoing what remains of his shirt and shrugs it from his shoulders, laying it beside the sink. His trousers follow, and you watch him without meaning to. The difference is that tonight he doesn't turn.

He stands there beneath the bathroom light, pale marks cutting across his skin, old and uneven, some thicker than others. You've spent months teaching yourself not to look at them for too long, not to let your fingers wander near them, not to ask. Your eyes rest there openly now and he follows your gaze. His hand moves almost absently across his side, fingertips tracing one of the larger scars.

“It was an animal.” You look at him, but he keeps his gaze lowered. He rubs his thumb across the pale skin again. “By the lake,” he adds.

That's all. No explanation and no story. You don't ask what kind of animal. You only cross the small bathroom and wrap your arms around him, proud of him once again.

Steve breathes out as your body meets his. His arms circle you almost immediately. You tilt your face upward and kiss him. That is the thank you; he melts into it.

There is no urgency this time, nothing desperate to prove, nothing either of you needs to repair in the space between one breath and the next. His mouth moves softly against yours, one hand settling at the back of your neck while the other rests against your waist. When you pull away, his eyes stay closed.

“You joining me?”

He opens his eyes. He looks at the shower, then at you. “That might be the dumbest question you've asked all evening.”

You stare at him. “Considering this evening, that's impressive.”

He grins and there he is again. You turn the water on before he can get too pleased with himself.

The bathroom slowly fills with steam. You wash his back. It should be an ordinary thing, and one day it will become ordinary. Your hands move differently over him, your palms travel over his shoulders, down the line of his spine, across old scars and unmarked skin alike.

He doesn't flinch, doesn't joke. He simply stands beneath the water and lets you.

Later, he washes yours, standing so close behind you that it becomes increasingly obvious neither of you is accomplishing much in the way of actually getting clean. He buries his face against your wet hair and you let him.

Dinner has gone slightly cold by the time you remember it. You reheat the sauce while he hovers, freshly showered and wearing the clothes he'd apparently left here months ago. At the table, his foot finds yours beneath it. And just like that, for several minutes, you are only the two of you again.

He watches you laugh at something stupid he says, chin propped against his hand, eyes softer than you've seen them all evening. When you catch him staring, he doesn't look away. Later, in bed, he practically climbs on top of you, and you feel his smile against the back of your neck. For someone who spent years pretending he didn't particularly need anybody, Steve Harrington is astonishingly clingy when given permission.

You turn in his arms until you're facing him. You can barely see him in the darkness, only the faint outline of his nose, his hair, the shine of his eyes when they catch what little light comes through the curtains. A moment later he pulls you closer, tucking your head beneath his chin. Within minutes, his breathing begins to deepen. You listen to him beside you, feel the weight of his arm across your waist and the slow movement of his chest against yours.

You know this isn't finished.

There will be other days when he goes quiet and disappears somewhere behind his own eyes. There will be questions you want to ask and answers he cannot give you. There will probably be arguments. There will certainly be moments when his first instinct is still to make a joke, shrug something off, insist he's fine until the word has lost all meaning.

Years of survival don't disappear because somebody asks nicely; love isn't going to make him fearless.

The pieces he gives you may never fit neatly together. There may always be spaces between them, shapes you cannot name, stories belonging partly to other people and partly to a version of him who still lives somewhere beneath his skin. But tonight he gave you something.

Steve shifts in his sleep, nose brushing against your hair. You smile into the darkness. It will take time.

There will be days when loving him requires patience, and days when loving him requires leaving him alone. Days when he will need to be reminded that being cared for is not the same thing as owing somebody something. There will be days when you will need reminding that loving him does not entitle you to every secret he carries.

But there will also be good mornings. Coffee too sweet and five more minutes in bed, his shoes appearing beside yours, the sound of his key eventually turning in your door. Little ordinary things. A life built not from one enormous confession, but a thousand smaller acts of trust.

Beside you, Steve murmurs something unintelligible and pulls you even closer. You close your eyes. For so long, you had mistaken knowing him for having every piece. Now you think perhaps this is enough, knowing there will be more when he is ready.

You press your mouth softly against his chest and feel him stir beneath you. His hand finds the back of your head even in sleep. It is enough. He is enough.

a/n: this is the longest thing i have ever written, i swear i rewrote the whole thing at least twice before i was happy with the ending. still don't know how i feel about it but i needed to get it out of my drafts!! i was going to post it in two parts but fuck it, i am always impatient when i see that so i did it in one

this is my second fic here, so i hope you enjoyed!! reqs are open as i am kind of out of ideas for now, also want to write for some other characters (both in and outside of ST, so we shall see)