He really should have moved. He had an itch near his shoulder blade, his hip was starting to complain, and one of your pillows had somehow ended up beneath his ribs instead of his head. But you made a small sound in your sleep, not quite a word, more of a complaint, and his whole body went obediently still.

That was the embarrassing part, the obedience.

He used to think he knew what control looked like. Back in high school, control had been clean sneakers, good hair, one hand on the steering wheel with a grin that suggested he had somewhere better to be. Control had been leaning against lockers with his jacket open, making girls laugh without letting them see whether he cared. 

He had spent entire afternoons pretending nothing touched him. Not his father’s voice, not his mother’s absence, and especially not the way an empty house sounded when you walked into it after dark.

Now, there you were, breathing into his pillow, stealing his blankets, and he was afraid to blink too loudly.

You shifted, dragging the sheet with you. Steve watched the corner of your mouth press against the pillow. A piece of hair had gotten stuck there, and for one wild, stupid second, he considered brushing it away. Then, he imagined waking you up and having to explain that he had been staring at you before dawn because he had developed the emotional stability of a golden retriever, so he did nothing.

You mumbled something.

He held his breath listening in.

It might have been his name. It might have been nonsense. It might have been a complaint about the blankets you had already stolen. Whatever it was, it hit him with such a hard quiet fondness that he had to look at the ceiling instead of your face.

“Jesus,” he whispered finally, barely moving his lips.

You didn't wake up, you only burrowed deeper into the pillow instead.

He stayed there another minute, then two, bargaining with himself like a man trying to escape a crime scene without disturbing the evidence. 

If he got up now, he could do something. Something good. Something normal-boyfriend thoughtful. Coffee, maybe. 

You liked coffee in the morning, though not the way he made it. He always got the ratio wrong. Too bitter once, too watery the next, and one terrible morning he had added too much creamer because he thought the color looked right, only for you to take one sip and pause in that polite way that meant you were deciding whether honesty was worth hurting his feelings.

“It’s fine,” you had tried to emphasize by taking a sip, one that had your face trying to hide its scrunch. 

“It’s absolutely not fine,” he sighed after watching your face.

You argued instantly for his defense. “No, it’s drinkable!”

Steve only looked at you and frowned.  “That’s worse.”

Now he imagined the coffee machine screaming awake in the kitchen, all grinding and gurgling and traitorous steam. He pictured you sitting up too fast, hair messy, eyes narrowed, asking what time it was. He pictured himself holding a mug with both hands, guilty and overprepared. The thought made his stomach twist.

A note, then.

A note was quiet. A note couldn't burn. A note did not involve appliances with vendettas.

Steve slid out from under the sheet with the caution of someone defusing a bomb. The mattress dipped and he froze. You frowned in your sleep, reaching blindly across the space he had left behind. His chest went tight. He almost got back in bed right then, because apparently all you had to do was reach for him without knowing it and he became useless.

Instead, he carefully tucked the blanket around your shoulder since you had stolen it and he loved you, and apparently those two facts could coexist.

The kitchen floor was cold under his bare feet. He found a pen in the junk drawer after moving two batteries, a receipt, a rubber band, and a screwdriver he didn't even remember putting there. The first piece of paper he found was the back of an envelope. He stood at the counter, hunched over it, the pen hovering, and immediately forgot every word he had ever known.

Have a good day.

No, that sounded like something you wrote to a coworker you barely tolerated.

I miss you already.

He stared at that one in his head for a full five seconds, then winced so hard his eyes shut. Too much. Way too much. You would probably like it, which somehow made it worse. He could already hear Robin’s voice in his skull if she ever found out. “Oh, wow, Harrington. Writing little pining notes now? Should I give you privacy with your stationery?”

He tried again.

Don’t forget to eat.

That sounded bossy. Also hypocritical, since he lived half his life on vending-machine pretzels and whatever leftovers you bullied him into taking.

He scratched at his stubbled jaw, looked toward the bedroom, then back at the blank envelope. The whole apartment felt paused around him, waiting.

Finally, he wrote:

Morning. You looked tired last night, so don’t rush today. I’ll call you on my break. — Steve

He stared at it. It was not smooth,  or impressive. It didn't sound like a guy in a movie who knew exactly when to lower his voice and say the thing that made people believe in love again. It sounded like him. 

Slightly awkward. Worried in a practical way. Too careful with the word love because sometimes the size of it still made him feel unsteady.

He added, after a moment:

P.S. You stole the covers again. I forgive you.

That helped.

He was halfway to the bathroom mirror when he stopped, looked down at the paper, and did something so stupid he almost groaned before he finished doing it. 

He kissed the corner. A quick, embarrassed press of his mouth to the envelope, barely anything, it was the kind of thing nobody would know about unless they were him and cursed with the memory.

Then, he stuck it to your mirror.

He stood there in the bathroom doorway with his arms crossed over his bare chest, staring at the note until he hated himself a little.

“Real smooth,” he muttered with a disbelieving scoff.

Behind him, from the bedroom, you made another sleepy sound.

Steve turned immediately, all irritation with himself gone. He went back to bed because he had twenty minutes before he needed to start getting ready, and because you had reached across the mattress again, and because all his big ideas about being cool had not survived the simple fact of being wanted by you.

——

By midday, he had rewound the same tape three times and still couldn't even remember whether he had put it in the comedy section or the returns pile.

The store smelled like plastic cases, carpet cleaner, and the faint buttery ghost of popcorn from the machine Keith insisted attracted customers even when it mostly attracted children with sticky hands. The fluorescent lights hummed overhead. Outside, Hawkins moved through another ordinary day, cars rolling through the lot.

Steve stood behind the counter with a stack of returned movies in front of him and your grocery list in his pocket.

He hadn't meant to keep it. 

You had written it three days ago in a rush, standing in the kitchen with the phone tucked between your cheek and shoulder with one sock sliding down your ankle. Eggs, detergent, apples, cereal, that spicy treat you liked even though it made your eyes water. The list had been crooked and impatient, with letters looping into each other and one corner wrinkled where you had shoved it into your pocket and forgotten all about it. He found it later in his car and instead of throwing it away like a normal person, he folded it twice and put it in his glove box.

Then this morning, before leaving for work, he had moved it to his pocket.

That was where he was now as a person, it was funny in how simplistic it was. Carrying around evidence that you bought cereal.

The bell over the door jingled, and Steve looked up too fast, half expecting you for no good reason. It was only Mrs. Kline with her grandson, who wanted the same cartoon he rented every Friday and always returned with the case sticky. 

Steve gave them his customer-service smile, the one that still worked even when his brain had wandered several miles away.

“Afternoon,” he greeted lightly. “Back for the dinosaur one?”

The kid nodded with grave intensity.

“Solid choice. Dinosaurs hold up.”

Mrs. Kline asked him whether the late fee had been removed from her account, and Steve answered, and he was pretty sure he answered correctly. But while he scanned the tape, he noticed the candy rack near the register. There was the sour kind you liked, the one you had mentioned offhandedly while half-asleep on his couch, saying you hadn't had it in forever. It was not dramatic in its mention. 

You hadn't sighed wistfully or begged him to find it. You had just said it and then moved on, tugging your sleeves over your hands because his living room was always colder than yours.

He stared at the candy until Mrs. Kline cleared her throat.

“Sorry,” Steve said at last and handed over the receipt. “Machine’s been weird.”

The machine had not been weird.

Robin would have noticed. Robin noticed everything and then made it unbearable.

She was not working until later, which was both a relief and a problem. A relief because no one was there to catch him smiling at candy. A problem because without Robin’s constant commentary, his thoughts had too much room to run around unsupervised.

——

By lunch, he had bought the candy and put it in his jacket pocket, then driven across town instead of eating. Your car was parked near the back of the lot where you worked, a little crooked between the lines. 

He told himself he was only checking because you mentioned a funny sound when you started it yesterday. A ticking, maybe. Or a rattle. You had waved it off while reaching for your keys, and he frowned instantly, “That’s not a real diagnosis,” and you simply shrugged, “I’m not diagnosing it, I’m ignoring it.”

So now he crouched beside your car in the heat, with his sleeves pushed up, checking the oil with the seriousness of a man performing surgery.

It was not romantic in the way movies thought romance worked. He knew that well by now. Steve’s knee landed in gravel, his hands got greasy, and a bead of sweat ran down the back of his neck. Someone from the next row over gave him a suspicious look while loading groceries into their trunk.

“It’s my girlfriend’s car,” Steve clarified at the awkward hovering and then immediately wished he had said nothing instead. 

The woman raised her eyebrows and promptly shut her trunk.

Great. Perfect. Now he looked suspicious and weirdly defensive.

He wiped the dipstick, checked it again, and then topped off the oil from the bottle he kept in his trunk because apparently loving you also meant preparing for your car to betray you at any moment. 

Your windshield had a smear of dust and pollen across it, so he cleaned that too. At first, he told himself he would only do the driver’s side. Then the passenger side looked worse by comparison. Then, the back window annoyed him. By the time he finished, he was late getting back and had one clean rag, one dirty rag, and an expression that would absolutely not survive questioning.

Back in the driver’s seat, he reached into his pocket and pulled out your grocery list.

The paper had softened at the folds. He ran his thumb over the word apples. Your handwriting leaned slightly when you wrote faster. There was a tiny ink blot near the bottom where the pen must have paused.

Steve sighed before he could stop himself.

The sound was so deeply ridiculous that he looked around the empty car, deeply offended.

“Nope,” he scoffed aloud. “Absolutely not.”

But he didn't put the list away right away.

The radio played low, some love song he would have changed if anyone else had been in the car. He sat there for another minute with one elbow against the window and the other hand holding that stupid list, and let himself miss you in the middle of a parking lot at one in the afternoon.

 It was inconvenient, this kind of missing.

There was no reason for it. He had seen you that morning. He will see you tonight. Still, some part of him kept looking for you in every ordinary thing, turning candy wrappers and passing cars and bad handwriting into proof that you existed somewhere nearby.

Steve used to make fun of guys like this. 

Guys who bought snacks because a girl mentioned them once. Guys who remembered coffee orders and carried hair ties on their gearshift and smiled at stoplights because of something no one else could hear.

He used to think they had lost the plot.

Now, Steve was pretty sure they had found it.

When evening came, you arrived with tired eyes and a voice that had gone quiet around the edges.

Steve noticed before you said anything. He always noticed the air around you, though he was learning not to pounce on it. 

There was a way you moved when the day had taken more from you than you wanted to admit: slower at the door, keys held too long in your hand, shoes nudged off without care for where they landed. 

Your shoulders didn't slump dramatically. You didn't collapse into his arms or deliver some perfect speech about exhaustion like some small embarrassing part of him might’ve enjoyed. You just stood in the entryway for a second after closing the door, looking at nothing, gathering enough patience to become a person again.

He was on the couch with a movie already in the VCR with two glasses of water on the coffee table, and the candy placed beside yours without comment.

“You ate?” Steve’s question came soft. You blinked at him, then at the candy.

“That’s not dinner.”

“Wasn’t the question.”

You gave him a look that had less force than usual. “Mostly.”

“Mostly means no.”

“Mostly means mostly.”

“It means no with confidence.”

Your mouth twitched, not quite a smile but close enough that he took it as a victory. Steve got up without making a thing of it and went to the kitchen. You followed him only far enough to lean against the doorway with arms folded loosely against your chest, watching him move around cabinets he now knew better than he meant to. He reheated leftovers, then bent down when he dropped a fork, cursed under his breath, and heard you laugh softly behind him.

“Don’t laugh! I’m providing a service.”

“Are you now?”

“I am.” You hummed, and the sound eased something in him.

By the time the movie started, the room had settled into lamplight and low volume. The windows were dark reflecting the couch and the soft mess of blankets, and the side of Steve’s face when he looked toward you instead of the screen. You had eaten enough to satisfy him and not enough to satisfy yourself, probably, but he let it go. Your feet ended up in his lap because they always did by now, not through ceremony but habit. 

One day it had happened by accident; now his hands reached for your ankle before he even realizes he decided.

The movie played something loud and dramatic, a car chase maybe, or people arguing in a room with too much smoke. Steve barely followed it. His thumb moved along the arch of your foot, slow and steady. You had one arm tucked under your head, your body curled sideways beneath the throw blanket. Every now and then, your eyes opened at the sound of a raised voice on-screen, then drifted shut again.

“Too hard?” Steve’s voice came soft as he adjusted his pressure, eyes fully on you.

“No,” you murmured, falling victim to the comfort of the throw pillow under your head. “S’fine.”

“That means good or fine like my coffee?”

You opened one eye and smiled, and the smile undid him. “Better than your coffee.”

“Wow.”

“You asked.”

Steve smiled back before he could acknowledge it. “That’s on me then.”

You fell quiet again, and this time he didn't attempt to fill the space. He was learning that too. Not every silence needed him to entertain it. Sometimes you only wanted him there, warm and solid and not asking you to explain the whole shape of your day before you had even survived it. 

He used to get nervous in the quiet. 

Quiet had always felt like judgment in his parents’ house, the long pause before someone decided what he had done wrong. With you, the quiet had texture. It was the soft drag of fabric when you shifted, it was the ice settling in a glass, even the way your breathing slowed while the television painted blue light over the walls.

He looked down at your feet in his lap, at the chipped polish on one toe, at the place your sock had left a faint line around your ankle. He rubbed his thumb over it gently until it faded.

This, the thought came welcomed.

Not the big stuff. Not dates where he wore the right shirt and made reservations and checked his hair in every reflective surface. Not the exciting parts people asked about. Not even the kissing, though he was still strongly in favor of that.

It was this. 

Your tired feet in his lap, your half-finished water on the table, and the way you trusted him enough to be boring near him.

That word scared him once.

Boring.

He had spent so much time trying to be impressive because impressive felt better than ordinary. Ordinary could be overlooked. Ordinary could be left. Ordinary could sit alone in a big house and wait for headlights that never come up the driveway.

But this kind of ordinary did not feel empty, it felt lived in. 

It had socks on the floor and leftover containers in the fridge and your hair ties around his wrist because you had put it there earlier and forgotten to take it back. It had him learning which blanket you reached for first. It had your knee bumping his thigh under the table. 

It had both of you saying things wrong because you were tired and then laughing halfway through an argument neither of you cared enough to win.

Steve glanced at you again and found you watching him.

“What?” he asked with the awkward tone of someone who was caught being in a daydream.

“You’re doing it again.”

“What?”

“Thinking way too loud.”

He scoffed, but it came out weak. Steve's hands never soft their small, featherlight touches against you. “That’s not a thing.”

You gave him an unconvinced look. “It is when you do it.”

He shrugged with a light smile on his face. “I’m watching the movie.”

“You don’t know anyone’s name in this movie.”

He looked at the screen. A man he had never seen before was pointing a gun at another man he also did not recognize.

“That’s… Bill,” Steve threw a guess at the water.

“His name is not Bill.”

“You don’t know that.”

You snorted at his words. “I do, because his wife yelled ‘Martin’ five minutes ago.”

Steve paused and then doubled down because he liked the twinkle in your eyes. “Bill is the nickname then.”

You laughed then, and your foot shifted under his hand, pressing lightly against his palm. He smiled before he could make himself look casual.

After a while, you sat up just enough to move closer. It was entirely ungraceful. The blanket tangled around your knees, your elbow knocked against his ribs, and he made an exaggerated sound of pain that earned him a sleepy glare. Then you settled against his side with your head near his chest, and one hand resting over his stomach. His arm went around you automatically.

“Okay?” Steve asked, quieter now. His head tipped slightly to look at you in his side. 

You nodded against him and sighed, content. “Just tired is all.”

“I know.”

Your voice came smaller now, but just as sincere. “You don’t have to do all this.”

“All what?”

You made a vague motion with your hand. The food. The movie. The foot rub. The candy on the table. The cleaned windshield you had noticed but had not mentioned yet, probably because you were waiting to decide whether to scold him for messing with your car or kiss him for caring.

Steve looked down at you again,  “I know I don’t have to.”

You were quiet long enough that he thought you might have fallen asleep. Then you laughed again into his collarbone, the memory of it fresh in your awareness. “You checked my oil, huh?”

He grimaced at the television, his fingers rubbing up and down your arm. “Maybe.”

“Steve,”

Steve's shoulders shrugged in immediate defense. “It was making a noise!”

You sighed. “It always makes a noise.”

“That’s really not better.”

“You’re impossible.”

Steve kissed at your temple. “Your car is impossible.”

Your fingers moved once against his shirt, a small, absent stroke that undid him more effectively than any declaration could have. “Thank you,” your heart fluttered against his. 

He swallowed, “yeah. Of course.”

Steve seemed like he wanted to say more, something about how of course he would check your oil, and buy your candy, and leave notes on mirrors, and lie still in bed while his arm went numb because you had fallen asleep touching him. Something about how you had made his life feel less like a performance and more like a place he could come home to. 

Something about fifty years from now, which was insane because he was still the kind of guy who forgot to buy more milk until the carton made that rude empty noise in his hand. 

But the words crowded together and turned clumsy on his tongue, so instead he kissed your forehead with a smile on his lips.

You exhaled and the tension in your body loosened by degrees. Your hand relaxed over his stomach, leading up under his shirt and softly humming when he made a noise at the cold touch. On-screen, someone shouted and Steve reached for the remote and lowered the volume until the movie became background noise, all muffled engines and distant voices.

Steve was never good at wanting, or more accurately, he was never good at getting what he wanted. The future came unsteady with his life. 

Next week. Next shift. Next fight. Next thing he would get wrong.

He had never been good at imagining too far ahead without feeling foolish for wanting anything specific. Wanting made disappointment sharper. Wanting gave the world a target.

But with you half-asleep against him, the thought came easily and almost without fear.

He wanted mornings where you stole the covers. He wanted afternoons where he bought snacks for no reason except that you had once said you liked them. He wanted evenings with bad movies and tired jokes and your feet in his lap. And he wanted to know which mug you would reach for at forty, whether you would still mumble in your sleep at fifty, whether he would still wake up before you and try not to move because some part of him never got over being chosen.

The thought scared him a little at how strong it seemed.

But beneath the fear was something steadier, all practical and warm. It was the same feeling that made him keep oil in his trunk and your grocery list in his pocket. 

Love, he was discovering, was not always a lightning strike. Sometimes it was maintenance. Attention. The quiet decision to notice what someone needed and try, awkwardly and earnestly, to meet it.

Your breathing deepened and broke him out of his mind

“Hey,” Steve whispered against the crown of your head because he couldn't help himself. “You asleep?”

No answer.

He waited for another minute.

Still nothing, no response came.

His arm had started to tingle where your shoulder pressed into it. Pins and needles crept down toward his wrist. He also, inconveniently, needed to use the bathroom. Not desperately yet, but enough that he became aware of that it would only grow more persuasive with time.

Steve looked at you then, asleep against his chest, mouth slightly open, and your face softened by exhaustion and lamplight.

Then he looked toward the hallway, then back at you back no answer came.

“Great,” he whispered with a small exhale. His fingers never let up their small tracings on your exposed skin. “Had a long day, honey?”

You didn't move, or gain consciousness to respond. Only reaching for the familiar steady warmth of him in your side.

Steve let his head rest against the back of the couch and accepted his fate with a solemn resignation. His arm went from tingling to numb. The movie ended quickly after. The room dimmed into the quiet after the credits and the tape clicked softly inside the machine.

He stayed exactly where he was because your hand was curled in his shirt.

And because your breathing warmed the side of his neck in a way that he'd started to be soothed by.

And because even holding you badly and carefully and without moving an inch, Steve understood that this was the part of his life he'd been trying to get to all along.