missmultifandom

Similarly, you were there through his horrible prepubescent hormones, his growth spurt hitting later in life. You tripped Christy Morris after she called him short, embarrassing him in front of the class. Her accident overshadowed his embarrassment when she went crying to the office, chocolate milk staining the front of her white dress. Steve’s eyes met yours across the lunchroom, and you sent him a simple shrug. It was mindless, the urge to protect him. It went both ways. It was soon clear to everyone in Hawkins that the two of you would do anything for the other.

Steve held your hand when your dog died, letting you sob into his shoulders. He came to your house the next day, a bundle of picked dandelions in his hand. It was the first time a boy brought you flowers; he told you that you deserved them every day since it made you smile. And you believed him. When his parents got a new job, leaving him at your house or with strange relatives, he’d hide his face in your pillow, pretending tears weren’t racking his body. You’d run your tiny hands through his hair, and once he was done, you’d force him to watch movies with you. Making him laugh so hard that he no longer felt the absence of his parents. He would never be abandoned, because you’d never leave him. 

The summer before high school, the two of you made a pact. Bound in the blood of scraped knees and years of friendship. 

“We’re gonna be friends forever, you know that, right?” Steve asked, both of your backs pressed against the hot fabric of the trampoline. His hair was getting longer, his voice already deeper. 

You had changed, too, your body developing in ways that made boys in school look at you longer. You started caring more about your appearance, making Steve call you gross every time you’d put on lip gloss. In the same way, you’d smack him with the hairspray can he stole from you. 

“Of course I know that,” You said, “Why?” 

He huffed, throwing his arm over his forehead in an attempt to quell the Indiana heat. “High school is just scary. What if we make new friends?” 

You shrugged, not really thinking too much about it. “We both have other friends already.” 

“But none of them are like you.” He said the meaning of his words wouldn’t come to him until much later. 

“I know.” You smirked, kicking his shin with your foot. “Even when the world changes, our friends, school, and even when we change as people. It won’t matter because our friendship never will. We’re unchangeable.” 

He laughed at your word choices, pushing your foot away from his playfully. “Growing up is scary.” He admitted after a brief moment of silence. 

You hummed in agreement, reaching your hand down to grab his. Lacing your fingers together as if you’ve done it a thousand times, because you have. 

“You make it not so scary.” You smiled, the two of you staring at the clouds. 

“Pinky promise?” Steve asked, his voice betraying him. You just smiled, bringing up your other hand that wasn’t in his, holding out your pinky. He did the same, lacing your two pinkies together in an unspoken vow. 

Time is a fickle thing. Nothing ever happens as you plan it; it’s the only consistency in the world. When the two of you stepped foot into Hawkin’s High, it was inevitable that things would change. He made the basketball team, coming over to your house with his jersey in hand. Jumping up and down, swearing you needed to join the Cheerleading team. You smacked him upside the head for even entertaining the idea. He made fun of you for joining the library club, a realization coming over you two that your High School experiences were heading into different directions. You promised to go to each of his games, and he said he would read one book a year for you. A compromise of sorts. 

At his first basketball game, Trina Robbins kissed him courtside, her pom poms shaking wildly at her sides. It was the first time you saw him as a man, not just the little boy who’d help you catch fireflies in the backyard. You ran to him after the game, arms slinging around his shoulders in congratulations. He spun you around, his joyful laugh ringing in your ears. 

“I’m so proud of you!” You gawked, his arms still wrapped around you. It wasn’t until you heard a loud cough from behind you. Trina and her friends were standing behind you, evil smirks on their faces. 

“Y/n! This is my girlfriend Trina.” He smiled widely, his arm leaving your body quickly. He walked over to her, his arm slinging across her shoulders. “Babe, this is my friend I grew up with.” 

Her perfectly sculpted eyebrow arched, “Oh? Steve didn’t mention you.” 

You hoped the sound of the rowdy gymnasium covered the sound of your heart shattering. He didn’t even tell you he had a crush, let alone a girlfriend. Then he didn’t mention you at all. You knew Steve, your Stevie, would never do this. You brushed it off, a hopeless, dumb teenage boy in love. It was fine. 

You braved it with a smile, ignoring their judgmental glares that Steve seemed oblivious to. “Well, nice to meet you, Trina. You did great.” 

“I know.” She smirked, pulling Steve away. “Come on, I want ice cream.” And he was dragging her out the door. 

He turned back, waving at you. “I’ll see you around!” 

You sent him a wave back, riding your bike home in pitiful silence. Absent was the sound of his bike pedaling next to yours, his incessant complaining about assignments and practice. 

It was just a simple interaction, one you tried not to dwell on. But little did you know it would be the first crack in the glass. Your interaction with Steve at school was becoming little to none as the weeks passed. Trina was glued to his hip, and when she wasn’t, his mean older teammates were. You still saw him some weekends, helping him study for his English tests. Inevitably, doing the assignments for him. He was still the same Steve you knew and loved, but something was different. 

He no longer reached for your hand as much as he used to, and there were no more hugs goodbye. You knew this would happen when the two of you started dating, but soon the phone calls stopped. The weekend hangouts in his parents' basement were replaced with him going to parties. He no longer rode with you to school, biking halfway across town to let Trina ride on his pegs. You passed each other in the hallways, soft smiles and waves were all you got for the majority of the year. 

It was the week before Summer break, and you were excited. You and your friends had planned a slumber party, painting nails, hair rollers in, and the stereo in your room blaring your newest cassettes. Preparing your future Summer plans. Celebrating the end of finals, gossiping about going into your sophomore year. You were flipping through a magazine, ready to point out a pair of shoes, when there was a loud tapping at your window. 

The girls jumped, eyes wide at the sight of none other than Steve. His arms were clinging to the ledge, tapping on the glass. It feels like it has been ages since you’ve spoken to him, let alone seeing him, ready to climb into your room. 

“What the hell?” Imogen yelled, her hand cradling her chest. 

You rolled your eyes, ripping open the window. “What are you doing?” 

“I just wanted to-oh oh, hi ladies.” He paused, looking past you to wave flirtatiously at your friends. 

Your fingers flicked his forehead, “Out with it.” 

“Mom wants you over Sunday night for dinner. Said it’s been too long. Still thinks she loves you more than me. Also, just wanted to see you.” He cheesed, to which you pretended it didn’t make your heart pound. 

“Okay. You could've called.” 

“Can’t see your annoyed face through the phone.” 

You glared at him, making him cower. “Okay, okay. See you Sunday!” Then he was off, his feet hitting the ground with a thud. You lay back down on the floor, content to skim through he magazine once again. Trying to calm the thud of your heart. But your friends were not letting it go. 

“You have the Steve Harrington sneaking through your window?” Jessica gawked, running and watching where he ran back to his bike. 

“He’s my best friend.” You laughed nervously, watching her and Imogen stare at each other. An all-knowing look in their eyes. “He could’ve used the front door; he probably just wanted to show off.” 

“Does that happen often?” Jessica asked, her line of questioning not done. 

“Not as much as it used it. Sometimes I’ll go to his, but I’ll use the front door like a normal person. “ You shrugged mindlessly, “His bed is comfier anyway.” 

What you thought was an innocent moment turned out to be anything but. When you walked into school the last day, you were met with too many eyes on you. From the moment you walked to your locker, the whispers were evident. Your palms were sweaty as you stumbled, unlocking the combination lock. 

“Y/n.” Imogen rushed towards you, out of breath from seemingly running to you. “I’m so sorry. I told Jessica not to say anything, but she really wants to be on the cheer squad next year-” 

“What?” You sputtered, “Say what?” 

Before Imogen could spit it out, the school doors slammed open. Everyone’s eyes are on you. There stood Trina, complete with her group of friends. Her face was red, anger evident. You had zero idea what was happening, assuming Steve broke her heart and she was coming to take it out on you. 

“Hey, you whore.” Trina spat, getting in your face within seconds. Your back pressed against your lock, eyebrows raised. Imogen had run off, muttering something about being back. You were left alone, nothing but a pissed off squad of cheerleaders at your neck, with half the school watching. You felt like you were in a bad 70s movie, living out your worst nightmare. 

“What’s your fucking problem?” You asked, fingers clutching your stack of books like your life depended on it. 

“I knew from the moment Steve introduced us that you’d be a problem. With your pathetic “poor me” face. You just couldn’t accept that he wanted me, huh?” She spoke, your mind still reeling. 

“I literally have no clue what you’re talking about.” You tried to push past her, her friends pushing you back roughly into the lockers. Your books going flying from your hands. 

“We’re talking about you fucking my boyfriend.” She spoke slowly, “I heard that you guys crawl into each other's windows and you spread your legs for him.” 

Jessica. That fucking bitch Jessica. Your heart ached; you thought she was your friend. She knew nothing was happening between you two. 

“I never fucked Steve.” A blush crept up your neck at your words, “He’s just my best friend. I’ve known him since I was in diapers.” 

“Bullshit. You can lie to me, but she saw him literally hanging from your window.” 

You didn’t know where the bravery came from, clinging to your pride as much as you could. “You know, Trina, I know no one ever wants to be around you unless you’re putting out, but there’s this thing called friends-” 

Her hand backhanded your cheek before you could finish, the sting making your eyes water. On instinct, you raised your hand back, unable to get anything in before one of her friends kicked you in the shin. The other’s joining in. Pain bloomed through your body as you fought back, getting outnumbered within seconds. It was a blur; in seconds, they were on you, only stopping when they heard a yell down the hallway. 

Imogen was running back, Steve in tow. He was in his gym clothes, his eyes wild. 

“Get the hell off her.” He barked, his arm coming up to pull Trina’s shoulder back. “What the hell is your problem?” 

Her other friends scattered, leaving you slumped on your feet. Arm cradling your stomach, which was bound to be covered in bruises. You couldn’t meet his eyes, but you felt his worried gaze on you. 

“What’s my problem? My problem is you. Cheating on me with this loser?” She screamed, getting the attention of teachers who slowly poured into the hall. 

“Y/n? Nothing happened. God, she’s like my sister.” It wasn’t the first time the comparison had been made, but it was the first time Steve had said it. He didn’t like the way the words shaped in his mouth, his throat going dry before he spoke back up again. “Y/n is my best friend. I told you that.” 

He pushed her aside, dropping to his knees to look over you. He cupped your chin, forcing you to look up at him. Unshed tears were heavy in your eyes, blinking them away when he checked you over for injuries. 

“Are you okay?” He whispered, helping you stand upright. You didn’t answer, keeping your gaze on the floor. Willing yourself to wake up from this nightmare. 

“Steve, I’m sorry.” Trina whimpered, watching her social status flash before her eyes. Steve pushed you behind his back, his eyes wild with fury, while looking at her. 

“You know what, Trina. I don’t think you have the right to call anyone a whore, considering you put out on our first date.” Steve’s words were cruel, an ice to them you’ve never heard before. “You can go to hell. If you ever come near her again, you or your bitchy friends. I will ruin your life. Understood?” 

He was met with silence, tears falling down her cheeks. Little did Hawkins know this was the start of the infamous King Steve. 

“Matter of fact, if anyone has issues with her, they come to me.” He yelled, right before the teachers swarmed in, grabbing Trina by the arm. 

Steve held your hand in silence to the nurse’s office, his eyes squeezing shut when you showed the nurse your reddened skin. 

“It’ll probably bruise, nothing bad enough to go to the hospital for.” She said, snapping her gloves off. “I’m gonna have the office call your parents up here.” 

All you could do was nod, picking at the skin around your nails harshly. 

“Y/n…” Steve whispered, his hand finding yours. You let him lace your fingers together tightly. It had been so long since you held his hand, but it still fit perfectly in yours. “I’m so sorry.” 

You shook your head, “S’my fault. I made a joke to Jessica about how your bed is comfier than mine. I didn’t think she’d take it wrong, definitely didn’t think she’d tell half the school about it.” 

“No, no. It’s not your fault. I haven’t been the best of a friend lately.” He admitted, letting his thumb rub over the top of your hand. “Can’t believe I let a stupid girl get in between us.” 

His pained laugh made you roll your eyes, “Don’t care if you get a girlfriend, Stevie. Just want you to still talk to me.”

“I promise. God, I promise it’ll never happen again.” He laughed shakily, pressing soft kisses to your hand. 

Things had still changed, changed so much sometimes it seemed like you were lifetimes apart from the two kids that sat hand in hand on that trampoline. But you’d accept any change, as long as he was still in your life. Without him, there was a hole in the shape of him, lodged in the middle of your chest. You felt the hole close, each moment Steve grinned at you. Promising to take you out for ice cream as soon as your parents show up. 

Sophomore year rolled by so quickly, you wished you could have grabbed time, and begged her to slow down. Steve had grown a new reputation in school. King Steve, they called him, claiming him the royalty of Hawkins High. Little did they know the king of Hawkins made you blow-dry and hairspray his hair every morning. His girlfriends, or trysts as you liked to call them, all knew you. Whispers of the Trina incident followed every relationship of his; he just smiled and told them you’d always be more important than them. They either accepted it or they didn’t. 

Dating for you didn’t come nearly as easily; most of the boys at school were so scared of Steve they steered clear of you with a ten-foot pole. It only got worse when he began hanging out with Carol and Tommy G. You hated them, despised how they fed into Steve’s ever-growing ego. They were kind to you, most of the time. It was clear they tolerated you only. 

Every time Steve would grab you by the shoulders, pulling you into a hug in the hall, they’d groan. 

“Gotta hug my girl.” He’d shrug, kissing your forehead goodbye before going off to class. Imogen would just roll her eyes, swearing up and down that the two of you just needed to start dating. You’d cringe, shaking her off. He was just your best friend you’d tell her. When she’d swear her and her best friend didn’t act like that, all you could do was shrug. “That’s just me and Steve.” 

You didn’t have your first official boyfriend until the summer before Junior year, and Steve hated him. Hated him for reasons you were still unclear about. He was on the debate team, the most innocent, nerdiest of boys who had captured your heart. So when he broke your heart three weeks into the year, Steve had held you in his arms as you sobbed, brushing your hair down, swearing he’d kill him. 

“I really will, I promise. I’ll use the beamer. Catch him on a foggy night and just boom,” Steve spoke, making your chest rattle with laughter. “Blood and guts everywhere.” 

“It would ruin your nice and shiny car.” You pouted through your tears. For his 16th birthday, Steve’s dad had presented him with the infamous burgundy BMW. He’d almost spun the tires out pulling into your driveway. That night, the two of you went through a whole tank of gas, driving everywhere around town. You couldn’t imagine your ex-boyfriend's murder ruining that car. 

“Would be worth it to see you smile.” He said, watching your puffy cheeks as you sat up. 

“He was such a dickhead.” You frowned, rubbing your tired eyes. “I really thought what we had over the summer was good. Then he sees Rebecca in chemistry and thinks she’d be a better lay than me.” 

Steve’s brows furrowed, “Did he say that?” 

“It was implied.” You grumbled, fumbling with a loose thread from his shirt. “Can’t believe I lost my virginity to someone who asked if he was going to put it in the wrong hole.” 

A loud laugh tore from his chest, “Wait, what?” 

“He wanted to make sure, and I quote: “Is it in your vagina or your pee hole?” You burst out laughing, rubbing your face. 

The two of you laughed until your chests hurt, Steve going on and on. “Dude, poor fucking Rebecca,” 

“Poor Rebecca.” You wheezed, taking a deep breath in. It was good to laugh. It was good to be in Steve’s arms, the two of you lazily lounging in his bed. 

“Hey,” Steve spoke up, “Do you wanna order pizza and disgrace his yearbook picture?” 

You scoffed, “I’m offended you’d even ask Stevie.” 

The two of you did just that, you ended up falling asleep on his bed. The two of you waking up in a tangled mess of arms. His body pressed against yours. In an awkward shuffle, you pulled away, and he nearly flung off the bed. Stuttering that he had to go to the bathroom, the door slammed shut. All you could do was laugh. 

He drove you to school that morning, and you walked alongside. When you passed by Nancy Wheeler and her friend, Barb, Steve paused, sending a flirty wave her way. Your eyes squinted, waiting to speak until you got to his locker. 

“Nancy Wheeler, huh?” You asked, ignoring the blush creeping up on his face. 

“We’ve just been talking a little.” He admitted, rubbing the back of his neck. You hadn’t seen him this flustered before. Not over a girl. You ignored the weird sinking feeling in your stomach, smiling teasingly at him. 

“Oh, so someone has a crush.” You sang, making him shush you. Looking around, like everyone would hear. 

“Just because my love life failed this year doesn't mean yours has to; ask her out.” You encouraged him, closing his locker for him. 

He gave you a sympathetic look, patting your cheek gently. “Just because that loser broke your heart doesn't mean you can’t try again. Now I don’t think any men in this town deserve you, but I do want you happy.” 

You nodded against his hand, mourning the loss of warmth when he pulled away. 

“Go get him, tiger.” You smirked, watching him run down the hallway. 

It was no surprise you were once again regretting your words a few weeks later, doing your best to avoid where Steve had his tongue shoved down Nancy’s throat in the middle of the hallway. 

“They’re disgusting.” Barb had spoken; you didn’t know the girl well, but as Nancy joined your orbit, she had followed. 

“Sometimes I wonder if she ever gets tired of him slobbering all over her face.” You said, causing Barb to giggle. 

“Hey, you and Sam aren’t much better. Staring longingly at each other in homeroom.” She teased, making you roll your eyes. Sam was your friend, just a friend. There had been a few moments you thought something more could bloom between the two of you, but you shrugged it off. Unsure if you wanted to deal with another inescapable heartbreak. 

“Y/n! Barb.” Nancy stuttered, just now realising the two of you were standing next to her. Her face was flustered, and Steve stood there unbothered as usual. “What are you talking about?” 

“How Y/n needs to woman up and ask Sam out,” Barb said. 

“No, don’t ever ask a man out. That’s the man's job.” Steve shook his head, pulling Nancy to his chest. 

“I think if she wants to ask him out, that’s fine. Cute even. I have art with Sam, he’s really sweet.” Nancy smiled, staring nervously at you. You were friendly with Nancy, but the two of you didn’t have much in common, it felt like sometimes. Steve went on and on about how Nancy thought you hated her. 

“I’m not asking anyone out, but thank you, Nancy.” You sighed, your head hitting the locker. “I’m just gonna die alone.” 

“Little Y/n not able to get laid?” Tommy’s shrill voice ruined the moment the four of you were having. 

“That’s not what your dad said last night.” You squinted your eyes at him, Carol responding with a sarcastic laugh. 

“You kiss Steve’s ass with that mouth?” He asked, making Nancy tense. You didn’t miss it, Steve did. 

“He has this running joke that I feed Steve’s ego blindly, that’s why we’re friends. Tommy finds friendship as this impossible-to-grasp concept. One could only wonder why.” You told her with a smile, “He also thinks he’s much funnier than he actually is.” 

“Hey, cut it out. God, you two fight like animals.” Steve sighed, “While we’re all here. My house. Tonight. Parents are gone.” 

“It’s Tuesday.” You deadpanned, not ready to get roped into another one of the Harringtons' infamous get-togethers. 

“It’s Tuesday.” Tommy mocked, grunting when Steve elbowed him in the stomach. 

“A party?” Nancy asked, her innocent face looking up at Steve. 

“Ding, ding!” Carol laughed, making you roll your eyes. 

While they broke into conversation about the party, your eyes followed Nancy’s. Watching Jonathan Byers tacking up missing posters for his brother. 

“Oh, God, that’s depressing.” Carol snickered, and Barb walked away before the conversation got worse. You didn’t blame her; every time the couple spoke, it made your skin crawl. 

“Should we say something?” Nancy asked, eyes full of empathy. You knew her little brother was friends with his. 

“I don’t think he speaks.”

“How much you want to bet he killed him?” Tommy laughed, your head turning to meet Steve's. 

You scoffed, “Your friends are fucking assholes. You know that?” And with that, you stormed off, determined to find Sam. You were going to ask him out; you deserved your own happiness. Your own life outside of Steve’s little bubble. 

-

Your fingers twirled in the phone cord, “Y/n, please. Tommy said he’s sorry. Please just come.” Steve begged through the phone. You could hear them snickering in the background. He wanted you at this stupid party; he cleaned his pool out and everything. Even got your favorite wine coolers. 

“I’m with Sam.” You blurted out, The man you spoke of caught your eye. He was sitting on your bed cross-legged, shirt askew. Maybe you did decide to ask him out and sneak him in through your window. 

“So bring him,” Steve said after a brief pause. “Barb is here. If she’s here, there’s no reason you can’t be. Please.” The begging in his voice made your resolve crumble. Sucking you right back in. 

About an hour later, you were stalking into Steve’s backyard, hand in hand with Sam. Sam was beautiful. Taller with shaggy hair, you couldn’t help but immediately notice how different he looked from Steve. Wondering why your brain forced you to compare the two. There was no time to dwell on that. 

You introduced him to everyone, making sure to flip Tommy the bird while doing so. 

“Steve. I  heard a lot about you, man.” Sam spoke, holding his hand out for Steve to shake. It took Steve a moment to shake his hand. Probably gripping harder than he needed to. 

Once that was out of the way, you all found a good rhythm, chatting and drinking cheap beers. You're sipping on your strawberry wine coolers, Carol cringing with each sip of beer. 

“No fair, why did she get nice drinks?” She whined. 

“Because she doesn’t drink beer. They’re her favorite.” Steve laughed, a billow of cigarette smoke falling out of his mouth. 

You couldn’t help the smirk that graced your lips, leaning back into Sam’s chest. As much as they loved King Steve, none of them knew him the way you did. He knew you like it was the easiest thing in the world, while Tommy and Carol barely scratched the surface. They knew it too. Nancy was different; you knew she really cared for Steve. You just worried he’d break her heart; you warned him if he did, he’d never hear the end of it. She was different from the other girls. 

“It’s different this time, Y/n.” He swore, flicking his pencil on the library table. 

“What, like you love her?” You asked. 

He paused, thinking for a moment. “I think so. Not as much as I love you, and not in the same way. “ He hummed. 

“Aww, wait, so you’re really falling in love with her?” You cooed, “What happened to King Steve?” 

“Oh shut up.” He grumbled, right before the two of you were shushed by library goers. 

When your brain came back into focus, they were shotgunning beers, your eyes rolling at the dick measuring contest Steve and Tommy were perpetually in. You looked back at Barb, forcing her to join you and Sam’s little group. 

“When they’re around women, they turn into animals. Everything is a contest.” You said, making the first smile appear on her face this night. 

“Sam, you don’t wanna join?” She asked, making his chest rumble in laughter. 

“I don’t think I need to chug a beer to impress Y/n. She’d probably call me a meathead.” 

“You know me so well.” You smiled, pressing a soft kiss to his lips. 

A large splash made you gasp, watching Carol come up from the pool. Tommy was standing there with a smirk on his face. 

“What the hell, Tommy?” She shrieked, him jumping in beside her. It was then Steve’s turn to copy him, throwing Nancy and himself in the deep end. 

“I broke my arm in this pool when I was 6. Don’t get any ideas.” You told Sam. 

“So you’ve known Steve a while, huh?” He asked, watching the couples play about in the water. 

“Since we were babies. We grew up together.” 

“You guys couldn’t be more different.” He said it was an innocent comment. But it made you feel weird, frowning slightly. 

“I guess I’m a little boring. A lot nicer to look at, though.” 

“Disagree with the first part, but agree to the last.” He said, nuzzling his head in your neck. 

“Hey, lovebirds,” Steve yelled, ruining the moment by splashing water at you two, “Get in.” 

You shook your head, “I’m not ruining my shirt.” 

“So take it off.” Tommy whistled. Carol smacking him upside the head. 

“Didn’t know you wanted to see me shirtless that bad.” You teased back, Sam’s arm draping across your chest. 

“I think everyone would enjoy the show, some more than others.” He whistled, Steve’s eyes shooting daggers into his skull. 

“At least get in with us, Y/n,” Nancy spoke up, a smile on her face. 

You turned to look at Sam, “I’ll get undressed if you do.” He teased. 

“Fuck you all.” You grumbled, sitting up. You let Sam’s hands travel to the hem of your shirt, pulling it up over your head. 

“Fold it, it’s cashmere.” You muttered to him, watching him place it gently in one of the chairs. Leaving out the part where it was a Christmas present from Steve’s parents. 

Sam tugged his own shirt over his head, ignoring the hollers of the boys. You ignored the gazes, keeping your shorts on. Clad in those and a plain black bra. Thankful it at least wasn’t white today. 

“Okay on-” You started, readying yourself for a countdown before you saw Sam running at you full force. 

“Wait-no.” You squealed, being pushed into the pool. The cold water shocked your body, coming up with a shriek. “Fuck that’s cold.” 

Sam’s hair was dripping all over his face, swimming over to hold you in his arms. You wrapped your legs around his waist, holding onto his shoulders for dear life. 

“We should play a game,” Carol spoke up, a devilish grin on her face. 

The group of you didn’t stay in the pool much longer after that, a few games of chicken before you were all shivering. There were only so many times you could push Carol into the water aggressively before someone got mad. 

“I’m so cold.” Carol’s teeth were chattering while you wrapped the towel around yourself. 

“I heard his mom’s room has a fireplace.” Tommy’s eyebrows waved suggestively at her. 

“Gross, Steve, you’re gonna let them fuck in your parents' bed?” You groaned. Steve turned back, his eyes locking onto yours for what felt like the first time that night. This was while Nancy and Barb had a heated exchange, Barb storming off. You felt bad, making a mental note to bring her a muffin tomorrow morning in homeroom to apologize. 

“Unless you and Sam want it first.” He said, making you cringe. 

“We’re probably gonna head out.” You sighed, bidding them a goodnight. 

“Hey man, thanks for inviting me,” Sam said to Steve, Steve responding with a tight-lipped smile. All you could do was squint at the man, watching him walk into the house. 

“I guess we should head back.” You mumbled as soon as the two of you were alone, his hands resting on your hips. 

“I guess,” He sighed playfully. “Or we could take advantage of his empty backyard.” 

You gasped, “I’m not fucking you in my friend's yard.” 

He shook his head, “I didn’t say all that.” He pulled you to one of the beach chairs, laying you down against the cold plastic. 

Your heart was beating out of your chest, his lips pressed against yours hungrily. You kissed him back with fever, letting his tongue enter your open mouth. You gasped against him, feeling his hands cup your chest. Squeezing them before his hand trailed south, popping open the buttons of your soaked shorts. 

“This okay?” He grumbled against your lips. You weren’t sure if it was the wine coolers or the warmth of his body against yours, but you nodded. 

His hand slipped into your underwear easily, fingers finding the spot that had your back arching against the chair. Your eyes fluttered open when he hit that sweet spot inside you. 

Your gaze accidentally landed on Steve’s window, the curtains open and wide. The warmth in your stomach grew as, watched his bare back ripple on the bed. There was no doubt what he and Nancy were doing. You looked away quickly, pressing your lips to Sam’s again. Pretending you didn’t just come around his fingers, looking at your best friend. You prayed he didn’t see it, the guilt radiating off of you. You shoved it down, focusing on his body against yours. 

Little did any of you know that Johnathan Byers was in the woods just feet away, snapping photos of all of you. 

-

Barb was absent from homeroom, and Sam swore to you that there was no reason to be worried. The roads were hard to navigate on Steve’s road, especially at night. It was more likely that she was too embarrassed or tired to come in. It still made a weird, nagging feeling bloom in your chest. 

At lunch, you reluctantly joined the band of misfits again. Sam’s arm was lying against the back of your chair, Steve sitting across from you. Tommy was convinced he got frostbite from the pool, putting his disgusting foot on the lunch table, making you gag. 

“Hey, Y/n.” You turned around, watching Nancy walk up to the table on a mission. “When you left, did you see Barb?” 

You shook your head, Tommy cutting you off. “What?” 

“Barbara. She’s not here today.” Nancy spoke, her patience running thin. 

“I seriously have no idea who you’re talking about.” He shrugged. 

“Come on, don’t be an ass, man. Did you...Did you see her leave last night or not?” 

“No, she was gone when we left,” Tommy answered, Carol leaning over the table. 

“Probably couldn’t stand listening to all that moaning.” She moaned, beginning to moan Steve’s name loudly. Tommy joined in mocking Nancy loudly. 

Steve kicked him under the table, telling them to cut it out. You rolled your eyes, “I was worried this morning, but I think maybe she’s just skipping. We were out late last night.” 

“Yeah,” Sam perked up, “She’s not usually a party goer, you know? Not used to running on a few hours of sleep.” 

“Yeah, sure,” Nancy said with a tight lip. 

After lunch, you were excited to finally go home, kissing Sam goodbye when he left for his art club. It was then that you saw Steve walking towards you in the hall, grabbing your arm harshly. 

“Steve, what the fuck?” You asked, letting him angrily drag you into the parking lot with him. “What’s going on?” Carol, Tommy, and one of Carol’s friends, Nicole, followed along. Steve’s sights were on Jonathan Byers as he walked to his car. 

“Steve, if you’re going to be an asshole to him, I’m not-” You were cut off by Carol, looking at you for the first time with genuine sympathy in her eyes. 

“Y/n. Apparently, he was taking pictures of us last night.” She said, your eyes widening. Nicole simply nodded. You turned your head back to the disaster that was waiting to unfold. 

“Hey, man,” Steve shouted, his voice wavering in anger. You don’t think he was this angry when Trina had you pinned against the lockers freshman year. 

“What’s going on?” Jonathan stuttered, looking at all of you with wide eyes. 

“Nicole here was, uh, telling us about your work.” He said Carol and Tommy agreed. Swearing, it sounded like the coolest art in the world. 

“And we’d just love to take a look. You know, as... connoisseurs of art.” 

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” He lied, Tommy snatching his backpack off of him, tossing it over to Steve. 

“Please, give me my bag.” He pleaded, Steve, ignoring him. Rifling through it to pull out a stack of photos. You leaned against his shoulder, watching him shuffle through the photos. Your heart fell into your stomach, seeing photos of you all getting out of the pool. Then Nancy upstairs, undressing in the window. Then his focus was on you, Sam’s hands down your pants. Your head tilted back in pleasure. Tears stung in your eyes, ripping the photos out of his hand. 

“Let me see,” Tommy said, snatching a few from Steve’s hand. He and Carol taking turns looking through them. “Yeah, this isn’t creepy at all.

“I was looking for my brother.” He tried to defend himself, unable to look any of you in the eyes. 

“No. No, this is called stalking.” Steve spoke, “Not only did you trespass, but you took perv photos of my best friend and my girlfriend. On my property. During private moments.” 

Nancy took the perfect moment to walk up, her face concerned, watching the tears in your eyes. “What’s going on?” 

“Here’s the starring lady.” Carol smirked, “One of them, anyway. I have to say Y/n, looks like he was rocking your world.” 

You crushed the photos in your hand, shoving them frantically into your bag. Steve shot Carol a look that could kill, “Shut the fuck up for once, Carol.” 

“This creep was spying on us last night,” She said, ignoring Steve’s outburst,  handing Nancy a photo. “He was probably gonna save this one for later.” 

Her expression matched yours, one of embarrassment and disgust. 

“See, you can tell that he knows it was wrong, but…” Steve reached out to wipe Jonathan's sleeve, the boy flinching. “Man, that’s the thing about perverts... It’s hardwired into ’em. You know, they just can’t help themselves.” 

You couldn’t watch this; the whole situation made your stomach turn. 

“So…We’ll just have to take away his toy,” Steve said, grabbing the camera. 

“Steve…” Nancy warned. 

“No, please, not the camera,” he begged, watching Steve pretend to give it back. Your whole body cringed when Steve dropped the camera, the lenses shattering on the asphalt. 

He stepped into Jonathan’s face again, pulling him by his collar. “If I find out you have pictures of her anywhere on that thing, it’ll be the last thing you see.” He spat, pushing him back roughly. Steve didn’t have to specify who he was referring to by the way he looked at you, before storming away. 

You and Nancy were frozen, watching the ripped-up photos crumple to the ground. 

“He shouldn’t have done that,” Nancy spoke quietly, eyes on the broken camera. 

“Please don’t make me verbally agree with Carol and Tommy.” You begged, “He wasn’t just creeping on you. There are pictures of me on there, too.” 

“Yeah, almost seems like Steve’s more upset about those than mine.” She mumbled under her breath. 

“What do you mean by that?” You stopped her, grabbing her arm. 

She jerked it away, snatching up the rest of the pictures. “Nothing. Just nothing, Y/n.” 

You were left standing there, dumbfounded. You looked back between Jonathan and the remains of his camera. 

“I hope you find your brother.” You managed out, walking back towards the group. Steve’s arm wraps around your wrist, pulling you to him. 

“You still going to the game?” He asked, his skin still warm from frustration. You shook your head no, pulling away from his grasp. 

“I’m just gonna head home.” 

He looked down at you, concern lacing his features. “Call you later?” 

All you could do was give him a weak smile. He paused, holding out his pinky. You stared at his finger; you hadn’t done a pinky promise with him in years. You laced yours with his, “Promise.” 

You avoided Nancy’s stares when you walked away, holding your hand close to your chest. 

-

They found Barbara’s car in a ditch a mile from Steve’s house, 3 days later. In a ditch you passed on the way home that night, unknowing that her body was pinned inside the vehicle for days. 

A week later, they found Will Byers alive in the woods, malnourished and traumatized, but alive. You were thankful there was at least one positive to the recent events in Hawkins. Nancy was in hysterics at Barb’s funeral, and Sam held you through the guilt. The two of you eventually made it official. Dating him was easier than it had been before, almost too easy. Sometimes it felt like you were putting on a show, living your life as you were taught you were supposed to. 

Time passed, as it often did. Senior year was full of jobs and college applications, and getting swept up in talk of the future. Despite your insistence on Steve studying and you doing half of his English assignments, his grades weren’t good. You held his hand, swore to him it would all be fine. But you knew his dad, and you knew the type of son his dad wanted him to be. Somehow, Halloween had crept up on you; flyers to Tina’s party floated around the halls. 

Despite Steve’s incessant begging to get you to join the pair, Sam was out of town visiting family, and you weren’t interested in third wheeling. Nancy had already been distant with you ever since the Jonathan incident; the last thing you wanted to do was make it worse. Late that night, you stayed in bed, only being roused by your phone ringing. You tried to ignore it, but the caller was only calling again. You rolled over, angrily gripping the phone off the hook.

“Hello?” You barked.

“Y/n..” Steve’s faraway voice came in through the phone. 

“Steve?” You questioned, confused as to what number he was calling you from. 

“Y/n. I need a ride. Nancy left me.” He mumbled. 

Your eyes nearly bugged out of your head at his words, jumping up to slip on some clothes. 

“You at Tina’s?” He responded with a mumbled yes. 

“I’ll be there in 15. Please do not go anywhere.” You made him promise, not holding drunk Steve to anything. You sped there, parting drunken bodies to find Steve. Sunglasses still perched on top of his head, his eyes hazy. 

“Guys, it’s my best friend.” He laughed, flinging his body onto yours. You pushed him off with a grunt, grabbing him by the arm. Dragging him out into the yard. Using all your strength as he kept going, deadweight on his feet.

This wasn’t the first time you had to pick a drunk Steve up from somewhere, but this was the worst. 

“Bullshit.” Steve slurred, his body slumping more in your hold. 

“What?” You were exasperated at this point, just barely able to toss his body into your passenger seat. 

“Bullshit. Nancy said it was all Bullshit. Didn’t love me.” He whined, his face pained with each word. 

Your brows furrowed, “Nancy loves you.” That was all you could manage to say, reaching over him to buckle him in. 

“No, no, she doesn’t.” He whined by the time you started the car, driving him slowly to his house. You only had to pull over once for him to throw up, thankful he didn’t ruin your floorboards. 

Getting him up into his room was easy, seeing as he threw up a portion of the alcohol in his system. 

“Come on, Joel Goodson, let’s get you to bed.” You sighed, taking the sunglasses off of him despite his protests. He took his own shirt off, not bothering with his pants, as he curled up in the bed. You watched his eyes flutter closed, his chest rising and falling. He looked peaceful, the frown lines he had earlier melting away. You moved the blanket over him, ready to leave before he stopped you. 

“Please don’t leave me.” He whimpered, not even opening his eyes. 

Your heart splintered open in your chest, crawling into bed with him. He nuzzled into your side, probably going to drool all over your sweater. That was fine, as long as he got some sleep. 

“Thank you,” He mumbled, “M’loving me. Wish it was you.” 

“What?” You asked, your heart falling into your stomach. The only response you got was his gentle snores. You didn’t get any sleep that night, content to lie on your back. Brushing your hands through his hair, staring at the ceiling, wondering what he meant. Or if he’d even remember. 

That wasn’t something you had the time for, deciding to push it into the back of your mind. 

Safe to say he didn’t when you woke up to him throwing up in his side table trash can, making you cringe. You did what you did best, taking care of him. He told you the story of what happened between him and Nancy, not liking your response. 

“I don’t think she deserves you, Stevie.” 

“Come on-” 

“I mean it, I know she’s going through a lot, but you didn’t kill Barb. It was an accident.”

He was quiet for a moment, hesitant to say the rest of the story. “She also thinks I’m in love with you.” 

The mood in the room shifted, the tension thick. “W-what? Why would she think that?” You stuttered out. 

He shrugged, not meeting your eyes. “I didn’t defend her honor enough with Jonathan, which is funny considering she forgave him.”

“She forgave him?” You scowled, trying to do your best to forget that night ever happened. The pictures were burnt in your fireplace, alongside photos of you and your ex. 

“Told her she wasn’t allowed to do that since he took pictures of you, too. She didn’t like that.” 

“What a bitch.” You mumbled, grabbing his hand in yours. 

“Dating is hard.” He gave you a sad smile, to which you nodded. “How are you and Sam?” 

You shrugged, “Fine. I think it's a little too fine. Sometimes I feel bad that he’s too sweet, too forgiving, too- I don’t know, is it mean to say boring?” 

“He does seem a little lame,” He teased, you hitting his chest playfully. He winced, holding his head, “I might throw up, don’t do that.” 

“He’s not lame. I just think something is wrong with me. Sometimes it feels like I can’t love him like I’m supposed to. Like I'm broken.” You admitted, watching his eyes soften at your admission. 

“I think you love me just right.” His words were quiet, heavier than before. “You’re not broken, Y/n.” 

“You don’t make it easy.” You joked, unraveling your hands. Maybe one day you’d explain to him that loving him was the easiest thing in the world, because you never had to think twice. From the moment you were born, there was an invisible thread tying you to him. Instead, you pushed it down, slapping his chest playfully. 

“Especially when you smell like an expired liquor store.” 

“Hey!” He whined. 

It was all fine, everything was fine. He went to shower, and you went home. He was going to buy Nancy flowers, and you were going to wait by the phone, waiting for Sam to call. So why did it feel so wrong? 

-

You got a call from Steve the next afternoon, asking if you’d come over. You obliged, only to be godsmacked by his bruised and bloodied face. 

“Oh my god? What the fuck?” You asked, rushing inside the door. 

“Am I an asshole?” He asked, ignoring your concerns. 

“What?” You muttered, dragging him into the bathroom. You immediately grabbed the first aid kit, ready to wipe his face with an alcohol pad. He stopped you, grabbing your wrist loosely. 

“Am I an asshole?” He repeated, his dark brown eyes heavy with sadness. 

“I mean, sure sometimes,” You’d never lie to him, “But you aren’t an asshole, you can just act like one.” 

“I did something really stupid.” He admitted. 

“Oh, really? I can’t tell.” You snarked, pressing the pad to his face. Making him wince in pain while you cleaned off the dried blood. “Let me guess, Nancy.” Her name tasted bitter on your tongue. 

He cocked his head to the side, “You don’t like her?” 

“I’m starting not to Stevie.” You admitted, bandaging the cut under his eyes closed. 

“Went to apologize to her with flowers for the other night, Jonathan Byers was in her bed. Tommy and Carol convinced me to spraypaint some bullshit at the theatre about her being a slut, he kicked my ass.” You took a moment to soak in his story, finishing with one last pink bandage. 

“Well, I guess you deserved a small ass kicking, but not this bad.” You winced. “Am I allowed to beat her ass?” 

“Y/n..” 

You threw your hands up, “Sorry, sorry!” 

In the silence, you cleaned up the bloodied paper, washing your hands in the sink. He stayed still, his brows furrowed in thought. A frown line forming into the crease of his forehead, you wanted nothing more than to rub your thumb over it. Releasing all the tension from him. 

“Penny for your thoughts?” You asked, placing your hand next to his on the counter. Propping yourself up next to him, your arms brushing.

“Do you ever think about it?” 

“Bout what?” You asked, oblivious to what thoughts were rolling around in that head of his. 

“How much easier it would be if we were in love.” 

Who would have thought 11 words would tilt your world on its axis? You must have been silent for longer than you thought. Steve speaking up again, “I mean, imagine how easy it would be. We’re already basically a couple anyway. Imagine if we were in love.” There was a subtle hopefulness in his voice; you told yourself you were reading into things. 

“Yeah. Imagine.” Your voice felt foreign to you. 

The silence was thick again, Steve’s eyes heavy on you. 

“Penny for your thoughts?” He copied you, his arm rubbing against yours, intentionally this time. Like he needed your touch to ground himself with each word he spoke. The sensation makes chills go up your spine. 

“I think,” You cleared your throat, “That you just got hit in the head a lot. You need ice.” 

If Steve was going to speak, you didn’t hear, too busy gliding out of the bathroom into the kitchen. Your hands shaking with adrenaline as you get him an ice pack ready. 

“Y-yeah.” He laughed, “Probably have brain damage or something.” 

With your doctoring, you gave Steve a clean bill of health, leaving him with instructions to ice and call you if his head hurt any worse. The entire drive home, all you could think about was Sam. 

Sam made you feel steady, like you were safe on the shore. Feet planted in the sand, a war, breeze flowing through the air. Why wasn’t it enough? Why didn’t it make you feel alive? 

-

Adulthood snuck up on you, graduation coming and going. You were ashamed to admit you were relieved he and Nancy were finally done. He seemed sad, but lighter. You had Dustin to thank for that, the kid he semi-adopted, despite him claiming he didn’t. The kid adored him. When he went off to summer camp, Steve nearly shed a tear, swearing you to secrecy that you’d never tell him that. He’d never live it down. 

When the mall opened up, it was the perfect opportunity for ‘real world experience’ as Steve’s father called it. Scoops Ahoy had hired him on the spot, complete with the cutest little outfit to go with it. You found a simpler, less embarrassing job at a bookstore at the end of the hall. The two of you were still able to spend too much time with each other. 

His co-worker Robin became your best friend, much to Steve’s chagrin. If he thought you were picking on him, each time the two of you were together, it was Steve’s own personal level of hell. 

Today’s topic of discussion was his horrible flirting skills. Being back on the market had made him rusty, fumbling around every single girl that walked in. Robin’s ‘You Suck’ board had made you cry out of laughter when she showed you. 

“Ladies, 3 o’clock,” Robin whispered, pulling your head down behind the window. The two of you are ready to spy on him. 

“Ahoy, ladies! Didn't see you there. Would you guys like to set sail on this ocean of flavor with me? I'll be your captain. I'm Steve Harrington.” He spoke, too high a volume for the quiet store. The girls cringed with each word. 

“Oh my god, he’s hopeless.” Robin sighed. 

You couldn’t help but agree, “It’s like a car crash. I can’t stop watching.” 

He stumbled his way through offering ice cream samples, the girls taking their scoops awkwardly and leaving in a fit of giggles. Steve closed his eyes, “I don’t wanna hear it.” 

“Oh, you’re gonna hear it.” 

-

Steve’s freckled shoulders were underneath your hands, your fingers digging into his muscle. 

“God, you feel so good.” His voice was raspy, the moan coming deep from his chest. He was deep inside you, his hips rutting frantically against your own. The sound of skin slapping against skin echoed in the room. The headboard slapping the wall. 

“Steve, Steve.” You moaned his name like a broken record, his lips nipping at your neck. His name fit perfectly on your tongue. 

“There you go, honey, you gonna cum around me?” He asked, looking down at you. Your eyes meet his as you.. 

You woke up in a hot sweat, fingers twisting in the sheets. There was a thin layer of sweat covering your body, chest rising and falling. Sam lay next to you, as still as a board. You let out a shaky breath, the throbbing between your legs reminding you of what you just experienced. Slipping out of bed silently was easy, grabbing a glass of water with shaky hands. The fantasies your mind conjured up played like a highlight reel as you stared into the dark room. 

“What the fuck.” You breathed, laying your head down on the cool counter. Hoping the granite would quell the fire blooming through your body. 

Steve’s words from last fall echoed in your mind. 

“Have you ever thought about us?” 

You felt queasy, content to head back upstairs. Crawling into bed with Sam as if nothing had happened. It was fine; you can’t control your dreams. There’s no such thing as bad thoughts, only actions. And nothing had happened, nothing will happen. 

-

The dream was haunting your every move, every time Sam tried to initiate anything, his face blurred with Steve’s. It’s like you were cursed. You began to see Steve in everything. Every place around Hawkins you frequented, memories lingered on all of your clothes. You couldn’t escape him, and a sick, cruel part of you didn’t want to. 

“You okay?” Sam asked, his hand still steady on your hips. Sam. He was kissing you; he wanted you. You blinked away the faraway look in your eyes, nodding weakly. 

“Just got distracted.” 

You refused to be haunted by make-believe, bringing Sam down to your level. Kissing him hard. Fingers pressed into his shoulders. Your brain continued terrorizing you, flashing you images of your dream. Before you realised it, you were mirroring the exact position. You moaned and twisted your body every which way, fighting for that feeling. When he slipped inside, all you could think about was Steve. Would he touch you like this? 

“Is that good?” Sam interrupted your thinking, noticing how quiet you had been. His hips slowing down. Catching onto your wood behavior. 

“Y-yeah.” You lied, smiling up at him. “Maybe just a little harder?” 

He obliged, the headboard creaking against the wall. Your eyes fluttered shut again, letting yourself indulge. Just for a moment. You told yourself it was to test your theory, but you knew what it was. It was the carnal urge to let yourself crave him. Just once, to let your mind wander into the feelings you’ve pushed so far back in your mind. 

You thought about his plump lips, the way his hair falls on his forehead after basketball practice, the swell of his biceps, and the happy trail you see when he stretches. Steve. All you could think about was Steve, every neuron in your body lighting up at the mere thought of him. 

“You like that?” Sam asked, watching your back arch. 

All you could do was nod, watching a highlight reel behind your eyelids. You imagined what his body would feel like against yours, heavy and slick with sweat. How he’d feel pressed inside you. How attentive he would be. You couldn’t take it, your legs shaking around his hips. 

“Stev-Sam.” You stuttered, covering it up with an obnoxious moan. Pushing it down, pushing down every single thought of him that made you feel alive. Your eyes stayed shut when he came, scared your eyes would tell him everything. 

“God baby, you really liked that, huh?” He yawned, pressing a kiss to your forehead. 

That night, you cried in the shower, scrubbing every inch of your body raw. Doing everything you could to feel clean, the sin and disgust clinging to your skin like a bad perfume. 

-

The next day at work, your hands were shaky. You were spacy, constantly zoning in and out. The mall patrons only occupied you when they had questions. Working at a bookstore was the ideal place for peace and quiet, but now it felt like your own personal hell. Trapped in these walls. 

When the clock hit noon, you were running through the mall, nearly knocking down entire families in your path. 

The familiar Scoops Ahoy sign made you sigh. Steve would be on break right now. At least you didn’t have to face him. Your body collided with another, his cologne alerting you to his presence before he did. 

“Where’s the fire?” Steve laughed, his hands falling to your hips. That was normal, that was something that happened. But now it felt like the fire was inside of you, burning you from the inside out. 

“Uh, I just need to see Robin. I’m out of girl things. Pads, tampons, you know.” You stuttered out a lie, trying not to watch the way his lips parted when he spoke. 

“I have some in my car for you, you know.” He started, you cutting him off. 

“Yes! Thank you. Can you go get them?” Your eyes were wide, your voice too loud, and he just squinted at you. 

“Okay..I don’t remember your period making you this weird.” He grumbled, letting go of you. “I’ll be back. I can get you some chocolate from Bon Bon?” 

“I’d love that.” Your face softened, feeling horrible for lying to him. As soon as his back disappeared amongst the crowd of people, you jumped over the counter, Robin’s scooper flying out of her hand. 

“What the hell?” She asked, eyeing your disheveled appearance. 

“Hey Robin.” 

“Hey, Y/n.” She mocked your cadence.

“Can I tell you something, if you swear on your life to never mention it to another living soul?” Her face got serious, noticing your expression.  

“Yes, of course.” 

You took a deep breath, saying the next sentence so quickly that only someone like Robin would have been able to understand it. “I had a sex dream about Steve last night, and that’s never happened before, ever. I’ve never thought of him that way, maybe once or twice in passing as a curious teen, but never seriously, and now I can’t stop thinking about it.” 

Her eyes were wide, your chest heaving from the speed at which you word vomited at her. 

“A sex dream?” Her jaw was on the floor, “Steve? Your best friend since birth, Steve?” 

You shushed her, spinning around the empty Scoops Ahoy like a woman on a mission. 

“Yes.”

“I mean, I’ve had a sex dream about Smurfette once, so I wouldn’t think too much about it.” She offered, watching your still panicked face. 

“Wait,” She paused, “What do you mean you can’t stop thinking about it?” 

“I don’t wanna talk about it.” You grumbled, knowing Robin wasn’t going to let it go. 

“Nope, you can’t drop a bombshell on me and not elaborate.” 

You grabbed her arm, pulling her into the backroom. Watching through the window anxiously as if he was going to materialize at any moment. 

“I just keep thinking about it. Like earlier, he was speaking, and all I could think about was that my dream lips had touched his dream lips. Then I couldn’t stop thinking about what it would be like to kiss him.” You rambled, “Then I look at him and feel guilty. Like I’m dirty and sinful because I can’t stop thinking about, dreaming about him naked. And inside of me-” 

“Whoa! Too much information-” Robin cut you off. 

You ignored her, “And he’s my best friend. My Stevie. So what do I do? I can’t even look him in the eyes anymore.” 

“Do you like him?” She spoke slowly, like she was poking a frightened bear. 

You stopped your anxious pacing, tears welling up in your eyes. You were so overwhelmed you could barely think, and you shook your head. “N-no?” 

“Babes, you didn’t sound too confident there.” 

“Can I tell you something else awful?” You whispered, there was never a filter between you and Robin. There probably never would be. 

She nodded softly at you to speak. 

“When Sam and I had sex the first time, I almost called him Steve. A-and I thought maybe I just you know? Two S names and all,” You laughed manically. “Then the dream, so I’m wondering if it’s always been subconscious. So when Sam and I had sex last night, I closed my eyes and imagined Steve. And I did it again.” 

When it was off your chest, you felt lighter, albeit dizzy. 

“And?” She added, her eyes wide. 

“I was really sad to open my eyes and see Sam.” You cried, tears pouring down your cheeks now. “And Sam was like Wow, you’ve never been so into it before and I’m so awful. I’m such a bad person.” 

Robin was the only person in the world you could trust to tell. You liked Sam, you really did. But you couldn’t feel a fraction of what you felt just thinking about Steve with him. You felt broken, stringing the man along because you couldn’t face the music. 

“Honey.” Robin frowned, pulling your shaking frame into her arms. “I don’t think you’re a bad person. I just think you’re in love with Steve.” 

You shook your head frantically, “I can’t be. Can’t. It’ll ruin everything.” 

Robin’s lips tightened in a straight line, choosing her words carefully. The entire Summer Robin has had to endure similar conversations with Steve. How they still didn’t see it was beyond Robin. The entirety of Hawkins thought they had been dating for years. 

“But there’s that chance he could feel the same way. You won’t know unless you try.” 

You were saved by the door busting open. Steve’s arms are full of various bags. Pads, tampons, and various snacks. “I wasn’t sure what you wanted, just got one of everything. Robin, I got you some gummies-” He rambled, looking up to see the two of you embracing, tears pouring down your face. 

He held out the bags to you nervously, “I’m sorry your vagina is bleeding.” 

The moment the words left his mouth, you and Robin fell into each other laughing, Steve’s face going red.

 “Women.” He muttered, tossing the bags onto the table with a thud. 

-

Robin’s words sat heavily on your mind, but instead of listening to her sound advice, you ignored it. Ignored the horrible feeling in your gut and prayed it would go away after some time. Now you were walking up to Steve’s front door, Sam’s hand in yours. 

The kids had conned him into hosting a movie night, complete with all the junk food you all could gather. You, Sam, Robin, and Steve were the designated chaperones. Although it’s not like they actually listened to anything any of you said. You were bombarded when you walked through the door, getting tugged in different directions by various kids. The girls wanted your advice on something, Dustin needed you to convince Steve to let them swim after dinner, and the rest of the boys were screeching about some game. 

“Go ahead,” Sam had chuckled, “Love you.” 

That was another new development. Sam had told you he loved you multiple times now. Each time you sent him a tight-lipped smile, no words escaped your mouth.  It broke your heart that you couldn’t love him. You loved being loved by him, and you were selfish enough to drag him along. 

“That was awkward,” Max muttered. You ignored it. Letting them drag you into the house. 

After the kids had run you ragged, you found Steve in the kitchen setting up the multiple boxes of pizza. 

“Remind me again why I signed up for this?” Steve sighed, gesturing to the gaggle of children currently destroying his living room. 

“Because they were getting sick of the mall. It’s summer break.” You laughed, “And you are the one who designated yourself as the babysitter.” 

He sighed, “Still..” 

“And you love me?” You giggled, grabbing a stack of plates from the cabinet. 

“That I do.” He said, his eyes meeting yours before they caught Sam’s hovering behind you. 

“I love you. Love you enough to tell you that I’m not helping you clean this up tomorrow.” 

Sam cleared his throat, and you whipped around. Startled by his presence. 

“Hi-” 

“Can we talk?” He cut you off, shooting Steve daggers behind your back. 

“Okay?” You stuttered, taken off guard. Steve excused himself, patting your arm gently before he slid past you two. Leaving you both alone in his kitchen, Sam’s eyes dark on yours. 

“What’s wrong?” You asked. 

“Why do you let him do that?” 

Your brows furrowed, “Let who do what?” 

“Steve. You let him give you those pathetic puppy dog eyes.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” 

“Oh come on,” He laughed, the tension growing thick, “He glares at me like I’m going to attack him at any second, then he looks at you like a kicked dog. He touches you whenever he gets the chance. And you just let him.” 

“Sam, it’s-” You stuttered, “It’s how we’ve always been.” 

“Yeah, well, it’s getting sort of ridiculous, Y/n.” He scoffed, spinning around to head for the door. 

You followed, ripping the door open behind him. “What is?” 

“You!” He yelled, his hands waving in front of you. With all the commotion, you gave it a few minutes before Steve and Robin followed you outside. No doubt the kids had their ears pressed to the door. What an embarrassing disaster this night has turned into

“Sam-” 

“Have you just been playing in my face for over a year?” He asked, his voice thick with emotion. 

You shook your head quickly, tears welling in your eyes. “No, no Sam no. I would never.” 

“So you love me?” 

You went silent, your bottom lip wobbling. 

“You can’t even fucking say it.” He spat. “That’s all I wanted from you, but you can’t even give me that.” 

“Is this because I told Steve I love him?” You whimpered, willing the tears not to fall. “We’ve been telling each other we love each other since we could speak.” 

He shook his head, “No. Something changed. Either you’re too blind to see it or-” He cut himself off, letting out a heartbroken laugh. The front door opens behind you. You knew who it was, without turning around. Steve would always come for you; he always has. What you’ve truly wanted has been right in front of you, and you never realized it until now. 

“There’s your knight and shining armor.” Sam scoffed, rubbing his mouth with his hand. 

“Y/n, are you okay?” Steve ignored Sam’s words, his soft voice speaking to you only. The voice he used before kissing your bandaids over scraped knees. The voice that got you through the darkest times. The same one that asked you that night, he asked if you’d ever thought about it. 

“She’s fine. We’re talking, can we please have a moment?” Sam spoke when you didn’t, tears falling freely down your cheeks now. 

“I wasn’t speaking to you,” Steve responded, his hands on his hips now. 

Sam laughed, a cruel one. “I know you can’t fight Harrington, so don’t bother.” 

“Stop.” You spoke weakly, turning around. “Steve, just give us a second.” 

His eyes met yours, the two of you having a silent conversation with your eyes. He was ready to turn inside, but this only angered Sam further. 

“Actually, no, Steve, you should stay.” Sam’s voice chilled you to your bones, your eyes snapping to his. Despite your protests, he continued. “We were just talking about how Y/n doesn’t love me. Apparently, you’re all she can think about.” 

“Bullshit-”

“You’re dreaming about him, Y/n! You have repressed your feelings so far down that you don’t even realize how pathetic it is. God, it’s so fucking embarrassing being with you, watching the two of you dance around each other.” 

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” You cried, confused as to how he would even know about your dreams, your feelings. 

“You say his name in your sleep. You say his name during sex.” He let out in a heartbreaking laugh, “You think I didn’t hear you? You think I don’t see that faraway look in your eyes? When you look disappointed to see me there?” 

It was as if you could feel your world falling apart all around you; you wanted nothing more than the world to swallow you whole. Steve’s eyes were burning into the back of your head; you couldn’t face him. Not when Sam was laying it all out in the open, flaying your heart open right here for Steve to see. 

“That doesn’t mean I never cared for you.” You sniffled, “Sam, I could love you, I could.” 

“I wish I could believe that. I really do.” He sighed, shuffling his feet. 

Steve stayed quiet, unsure of what to do. He was stuck against the door, his heart aching for you. Even for Sam. 

“You know what the worst part of all of this was?” He laughed, tears filling his eyes, “I always knew this would be how it ended. You, running into his arms. Everyone warned me, but I loved you too much to listen.” 

“I’m so sorry.” You blubbered, your arms wrapped around yourself. This was it; you couldn’t go back from this. 

He shook his head, “No. Not really, you’re not..” Were his last words as he turned around, speeding off down the road in his truck 

Everything you had ever known was dissipating in front of your eyes. All the plans you had made. That metaphorical box of feelings you had been cramming to the brim finally crumbled underneath its own weight. You were scared you were going to drown. The unknown picking up your body and dragging you to sea. 

“Y/n..” There was that voice again, your forever anchor. You shook your head, wiping away your tears. You couldn’t face him, you couldn't do this. 

“We gotta talk about it.” His voice was thick, “We gotta get it out.” 

“I can’t.” You whimpered, hiding your face in your hands. 

He stepped forward anyway, grabbing your wrists in his hands. Pulling them away to expose your tear-stained cheeks. 

“It’s just me. It’s just me.” He reassured you, holding your face in his hands. He held you as if his whole world was resting upon his palms, because it was. 

“That’s the problem.” You cried, eyes still squeezed shut. If you opened your eyes and saw him, it would all be real; the weight of this would crash on your shoulders. But you knew he’d be there to catch you. 

He let you steady yourself, pressing his forehead to yours. Waiting for your frantic breaths to match his, your shaking hands gripped his jacket. Searching for a lifeline. 

“All this time….” He cleared his throat. “Why didn’t you tell me?” 

Your eyes shot open at his words, his eyes glossy, full of a thousand unsaid words. 

“I've spent so many years dancing around it. Pushing it down and just praying it would go away. If I thought about it too hard, if I let the idea cross my mind, it would never go away. So I couldn’t. Couldn’t lose you.” You cried. 

“You’d never lose me. Look at me, Y/n Y/l/n.” He promised, forcing you to keep your eyes on him. He wasn't going to let you look away, not now. 

 “The love I have for you,” his voice cracking, “The love I have for you transcends every possible doubt you have in your mind. I look for you in every room, every time I need you, you are right there, you’ve always been right there. Through it all. If I could go back, I'd kick myself for letting you get away from me for so long, but it doesn’t matter. Because we’re right here. And I'm not going anywhere. However long it takes, whatever it takes. You’ve always been my girl.” 

You nodded, “Pinky promise?” It came out as a pathetic whimper, tears slipping down Steve’s cheeks, matching your own. 

“Yes,” He gave you a teary laugh, “Pinky promise.” His hand came up, his pinky finding yours. He leaned down, kissing your knuckles. Suddenly, you were both 13 again, the same Indiana sun beaming down on you two. 

“I choose you and me, religiously. Through everything, everyone in my life. Not because I felt like I needed to, but because I wanted to. There was no one else, god, there was never anyone else I’ve loved as much as I love you.” He cried, his forehead pressing harshly into yours, “It’s always been us. You hear me?”

“Steve..” 

“I love you, Y/n, you’re my best friend, and I am helplessly, unequivocally in love with you.” 

“That’s a real big word for you.” You laughed through the tears, making him beam. 

“It is a huge word for me, only I even know it because of you.” He sighed, “There are no words to explain just how much I love you. 

“I think I’ve loved you my whole life.” You whispered, your noses brushing. “It’s the only thing that’s ever come easy to me.” 

Steve’s smile could rival that of a thousand suns, his lips brushing yours. “Can I?” His voice was meek, unsure. 

You didn’t even have a chance to nod, closing the gap between you. Your lips pressing softly to his. He kissed you like he was coming home, and you kissed him back as you needed him to survive. The two of you are drowning in the kiss, hands clenching each other tightly as if both of you would wake up from a dream. 

When you pulled apart for air, his cheeks were flushed, his eyes dark. What a mess the two of you looked, tear-stained and blushing in the middle of his driveway. 

“I love you.” You said, just to say it. Just because you could. 

“And I love you.” He pressed a longing kiss to your forehead, pulling back to look at you. 

“This has been so embarrassing. Can’t believe I ruined movie night.” You sniffled.

“Those kids are fine. Robins probably distracted them by now with some ridiculous scheme.” Steve said, kissing away the tears running down your face. You both had a lot to talk about, you needed time to think, and grieve. But the crushing weight of your feelings was finally off your shoulders, and Steve didn’t run away. He ran towards you, holding your hand just like he always had. 

You were thankful for the kids who acted oblivious, throwing popcorn at you the moment you walked back in the door. Making you pay for having to listen to Robin monologue about Gremlins, before even pressing play on the tape. 

Steve simply shrugged, pulling you down against him on the couch. His arms are around your chest. It wasn’t anything different from how he’d held you before, but it was also so different. New intentions, a new feeling sparking every time you two touched. 

That night, neither of you was able to sleep, content to tiptoe over the sleeping children. Steve nearly slips on Mike’s blanket, making you have to cover your mouth to stop the laugh from slipping out. The sliding glass door creaked as you two descended into the night. Steve practically pulling you into his backyard like a man on a mission. 

“What are you doing?” You giggled, watching the old trampoline come into view. Your heart ached; it must have been in his garage collecting dust. 

“Made the kids pull it out.” He answered you before you even asked, his hand coming up to rub the back of his neck. “Robin asked if we wanted candles and rose petals, but I told her this was perfect.” 

“It is.” You whispered, your hands running over the rusted springs. 

Steve helped hoist you up, the two of you plopping down on the worn-out plastic. Both of you bouncing into each other. 

In a rushed fit of giggles, you pulled him down next to you, your head nuzzling into his chest. With his arm around your waist, he held you close. The stars were bright tonight, a rare, clear night this time of year. 

“I never thought this would happen,” He admitted, “Always thought you were too good for me. That I’d never deserve you. I still don’t think I do.” 

“I didn’t think you’d ever choose me. I mean, out of all the girls in Hawkin’s you’ve been with, and there’s been a lot,” You teased, “I didn’t think I had a shot in the dark.” 

“Honey, you are my girl. Everyone knew.” He smiled, thinking back to all the times everyone said you two were practically dating anyway. Looking back, it was painfully obvious; the only oblivious ones were you two. 

“Guess I just thought you were fulfilling some pinky promise we made as kids. Like out of some weird obligation to the weird girl who started following you around one day and never stopped.” You admitted sheepishly. 

“That’s ridiculous, honey.” That was all he could say, humor lacing his words. 

“I mean, looking back, it was kinda obvious,s huh?” You laughed, your mind giving you a highlight reel of the past few years. All the girlfriends of his you hated, the boyfriends of yours he wouldn’t even give a chance. Everyone’s whispers, both of your parents, calling it from a young age. It was always inevitably going to end here, no matter how bumpy the ride. 

“Dude, our moms are gonna flip.” 

“Ugh, they’ve probably already planned the tackiest wedding imaginable.” You groaned. 

“You wanna marry me, honey?” He teased, poking your side. 

“Shut up.” You grumbled, your cheeks warming. 

“I think,” He said, eyes going back up to the stars, “I think I'd marry you right now if you said yes.” 

“I’d say yes.” You admitted, “I’ve never been so sure about something my whole life.” 

Suddenly, he was jolting up from the trampoline, leaving you bouncing in his absence. 

“What are you doing?” You laughed, watching him stumble around in the dark, hands brushing through the grass. If you knew any better, you’d have thought he finally lost his mind.  

“Wait, wait. No! Yes, fuck yes okay.” He muttered, ripping something out of the ground, running back up the trampoline. He was illuminated by the moonlight, his eyes sparkling as he looked up at you. He was on one knee, holding up a dandelion he’d folded into a ring. 

“Are you proposing?” You laughed, unable to keep a straight face. 

“Yes, not for real, but also kinda?” He chuckled nervously, “Will you, Y/n Y/l/n, take me, Steve Harrington’s hand in marriage? In probably about a year or so from now??” 

“You are ridiculous.” 

He tsked, “That’s not an answer.” 

“What are my options?” 

“Yes, and uh.. Oh yeah, yes.” 

“God, lots of decisions to think over.” 

You smiled down at him, holding out your left hand. “Steve Harrington, yes, I will marry you.” 

“Fuck yeah.” He cheered, slipping the weed onto your finger. With the yellow flower against your skin, all you could think about was his bouquet of dandelions he brought you when you were a kid. 

“Come here.” You whispered, dragging him back up with you. Your lips meet his. This kiss was different than the first; this was hot and heavy. Your mouth opened, letting his tongue explore. You straddled his hips, pinning him down as best you could while the two of you bounced with every movement. 

“Baby.” He groaned, your lips trailing down the side of his neck. 

“Hmm?” You hummed, your hand crawling under his shirt. Finally touching the rough patch of hair you dreamed about. His soft stomach underneath your palm. 

“Don’t think there’s anyone in the woods with a camera, do you?” He asked, making you fall off of him in a fit of giggles. 

“Oh, that’s fucked up.” 

“Sorry, I had to.” He threw his hands up, “I mean, weirdly, he’s a cool guy. He and Nancy make a good couple.” 

“I think we make a better couple.” You cheesed, pressing another kiss to his lips. Then another, and another. You’d never get sick of it. 

“I agree.” He laughed in between kisses. “I also think we should take this upstairs.” 

You met his hungry eyes, taking his hand in yours, letting him lead the way. This was one of those times you were thankful for Steve’s rich parents. His room was upstairs on the other end of the house from everyone else. 

You had been in Steve’s rooms countless times, even slept in his bed more times than your own. But suddenly it was real; none of this was some dream you found yourself lost in. He was right here in front of you, his hands leading you to his bed. 

“We don’t have to do anything you don’t want to.” He spoke calmly, nerves radiating off of you. You looked up at him, the hunger in his eyes matching your own. 

“I want this,” You whispered, “I want you.” With every fiber of being, this was all you wanted. 

The rest was a blur, messy kisses, hushed moans, and trembling hands as clothes floated to the floor. He hesitated against your bra strap, staring deep into your eyes when the clasp came undone. Pulling it off your body as he was unwrapping a delicate vase. 

“You,” His mouth went dry, his eyes still on yours. “Are the most beautiful women I’ve ever seen.” 

You were burning alive for him. His hands touched you gently, his thumbs rubbing over your peaked buds. With each gasp that left your lips, Steve watched, memorizing every single touch that left you reeling. 

“This okay?” He whispered, his face leaning down into your ribcage. 

“Yes, Please.” 

This was all he needed, his lips trailing wet kisses down your sternum. His tongue flicked over the sensitive bud, flattening before he took it into his mouth, Sucking ever so softly, while his other hand gripped your other tit, massaging the flesh. 

“Oh my god.” 

You could barely breathe, the pressure between your legs growing with each wet trail of his tongue. He pulled off with a lewd pop, his lips glossy. He didn’t stop there, his kisses trailing down your stomach, until he was perfectly settled between your hips. Arms caging your body in. 

“How are you feeling?” Ever the worrier, Steve was going to stop every few seconds, asking if you were okay. Your body was trembling underneath his, in anticipation and nerves. 

“Good. I love you.” You panted, his fingers curling in the sides of your underwear. 

“Gonna take these off now, that okay?” 

You frantically nodded, lifting your hips for him. When he threw them alongside the pile of your other clothes, your legs fell shut on impulse. 

He looked up at you, a silent question in his eyes. 

“C-can you take your shirt off?” You asked, feeling underdressed. He flung the shirt off quicker than you’ve ever seen before, smiling wildly at you. His bare skin was warm against your legs as he settled himself back in position, hands gripping your thighs. 

“Open up for me, honey.” 

You let out an embarrassed squeal, “Wait.” 

Steve paused, watching your face scrunch with nerves. “S’what wrong?” 

“I’ve never…” You trailed off, choking on your embarrassment. 

“What?” He asked, taking a minute to put two and two together. He looked down at your clamped legs, and back up to you like he’d seen a ghost. 

“Are you serious?” His voice had lowered an octave, hands clenching. “No one’s ever gone down on you.” 

“They all said it was g-gross. So I didn’t bother you, know?” You flushed, “You don’t have to.” 

He stopped you, unclenching his jaw. “Gross? Baby, I have every right mind to go track them down and beat their ass.” 

A squeak escaped your lips, “You’re hot when you’re mad.” 

“I am mad, mad because there’s no reason any of those men deserved you. I’ve been wanting to get my mouth on you for years, and they just-” He cut himself off, hand rubbing small circles on your calf. “Baby, do you want me to go down on you?” 

You nodded sheepishly, “Just nervous.” 

“Don’t be. You just talk to me, okay? If there’s anything you don’t like, anything you want. Need you to promise you’ll tell me.” 

“Okay, yeah. Promise.” You leaned back, bracing yourself on his pillows. 

“Good.” He grabbed your tights gently, “Open up for me, pretty girl.” 

You obliged, letting your legs fall open for him. A shock went through you at the sensation of your wet cunt hitting the cold air. Steve’s eyes were locked on you. Practically drooling at the sight of you. 

“Gorgeous.” He babbled, pressing kisses up and down your inner thighs. “You’re so fucking gorgeous. Gonna put my mouth on you, okay?” 

You nodded, your body jerking the moment his wet mouth came down on your clit. He took it slow, letting his tongue draw circles over you. You were over the moon, letting out choked moans of his name. You didn’t know it would feel this good. 

His tongue flattened, teasing your entrance before suckling your clit into his mouth. He ate you out like a man starved, moaning against you. The sensations had your legs shaking, overwhelmed by new feelings that licked up your spine. 

“Steve..” 

“How’s it feel, baby?” He panted, your wetness covering the bottom half of his mouth when he came up for air. His hand curled around to your entrance.  

“S’good. Bab,y it feels so good.” You basically sobbed, your cunt welcoming in his thick fingers. Stretching you out with each curl of his fingertips. His mouth wrapped around you, and that was all it took; your back arched off the bed. Grinding into his mouth messily as you came. He held your hips still, stroking out each morsel of your orgasm. Sweat clung to your forehead, your chest rising and falling quickly. 

“I don’t think I’ve ever come that hard.” You sighed dreamily. Steve had a shit-eating grin on his face, wiping his face on his discarded shirt before crawling back up your body. His lips met yours, kissing you deeply. You could taste yourself on his tongue, moaning weakly when he pulled apart. 

“I will do that all day, every single day.” He swore between kisses. His hips pressed against yours; the only thing separating you two was the thin fabric of his boxers. You could feel his hard length pressed against you. 

“Can I return the favor?” Your teeth came down to bite your bottom lip, wanting nothing more than to run your tongue down his happy trail straight to his cock. 

“Another time?” He smiled, speaking before you frowned, “I need to feel you.” 

“Just for a second?” You pleased, giving him your best doe eyes. He knew he could never say no to you. His boxers were pulled off, his cock slapping against his stomach. He was huge; your mouth salivated at the idea of wrapping your mouth around his pulsating tip. He fumbled around in his drawer, holding up a condom in his hand like it was a winning lottery ticket. He lay next to you on the bed, letting you switch positions. 

Your hand wrapped around him slowly, barely fitting. He gritted his teeth before you could fully pump him. The length twitching in your hand. 

“O-okay, baby-” He winced, his head hitting the headboard when your lips wrapped around him. Licking the precum off of him, savoring the salty taste of him. His hips jerked up, his cock sliding into your mouth deeper. 

“Fuck, okay, nope. Nope.” He hissed, gently pulling you off of him. This time, it was your turn to have a shit-eating grin on your face. 

“What? Can’t handle it?” You teased, squealing when he gripped your hips. Flipping you back onto your back with a thump. 

“Nope, my girl has a perfect fucking mouth,” He smirked, “But I wanna feel this pretty pussy more.” 

Your core throbbed at his words, hips rutting against the air for relief. He sat up between your legs, sliding the condom over his length. 

“Ready?” He asked, to which you nodded frantically. 

“Yeah, baby.” 

His tip circled your entrance a few times, spreading your wetness around for him. Before he braced himself, sliding himself in slowly. Your hands found his shoulders, fingers creating half-moon indentations as you welcomed the stretch. 

“Doing so well.” He praised, pressing kisses up and down your neck and chest. “Taking me so well. So fucking tight for me.” 

When his hips bottomed out against yours, tears sprang in your eyes. You were so full, emotions overwhelming you.

He noticed your eyes fluttering shut, his hand moving to cradle your cheek. “Eyes on me. Eyes on me.” He cooed. 

You were scared, so scared you’d open them, and it was just another dream. “I’m real. I’m here.” He reassured, pressing soft kisses to your cheeks. They fluttered open again, and you stared at your brown-eyed lover. Drinking him in, every freckle, every imperfection. You wanted to count his eyelashes and memorize the patterns in his irises. 

“I love you.” Your voice was raw, the words spilling out heavier than ever before. Despite the countless times the two of you said those three words to each other over the years, this was the one that meant the most. That held the most weight. It carried every emotion you’ve pushed down over the past decade. Now it poured out of you, oozing from your very being. 

His smile was infectious: “I love you so much.” Another kiss on your lips. Something you’d never get sick of, his plump lips against yours. Moving with a passion that can only be built from years of secret glances and repressed feelings. 

You both moved as if the other was going to slip through your hands like water. Hands frantic, but focused. Memorizing every bit of each other’s bodies as your body welcomed him in. 

“You can move.” You sighed, the discomfort turning into pleasure. He did an experimental rock of his hips, hitting a spot deep inside you that had you mewling. 

“Oh, already, baby?” He cooed, using the hand that wasn’t propped up to rub circles on your cheek with his thumb. 

“S’deep.” You slurred, with each expert movement, your body was on fire. The wet sounds of him dragging in and out of your cunt only fueled the burning. The bed creaked when he sped his movements up. 

“I love you. I love you.” Steve grunted, his fair falling meassily on his forehead. His eyebrows scrunched up, staring down at you, watching you come apart underneath him. Committing every second to memory. 

Your legs wrapped around his hips, pulling him even closer if that was possible. His thick patch of hair sits above his cock, rubbing deliciously against your clit, his tip hitting your cervix as he fucked into you. 

“I’m gonna cum. Baby gonna cum.” You whined, feeling the tension coil deep in your gut. Steve nodded with a grunt, grabbing your legs and spreading them wide. The new angle had you screaming his name, his fingers rubbed your clit messily while you spasmed around him. Coming so hard your ears began to ring, legs shaking in his hold. 

He fucked you through it, keeping you spread wide for him. “That’s it. Take this cock, baby. Feels good? Feels so good.” He muttered, his hips stuttering. 

“Come inside me,” You babbled mindlessly, paying no mind to the condom between you two. 

“Oh fuck.” Steve gasped, emptying his load into the condom with a gasp. Falling slack against your body with each twitch of his cock inside you. 

Your hands curled in his hair, his panting breaths hitting your chest as the two of you came down. Relishing in the sounds of each other’s breathing, and his skin on yours. 

After a while, he pulled out of you with a hiss, disposing of the condom and cleaning the two of you up. He crawled back into bed, beckoning you to lie on his chest. 

You didn’t hesitate, curling yourself up against him. Letting his hands find your scalp, massaging your head. You cooed into him.

“Penny for your thoughts?” You sighed dreamily, Steve’s fingers expertly combing through your hair. 

“My thoughts are worth more than a penny.” He teased, making you roll your eyes at him. 

“I have a kiss, take it or leave it.” 

“Oh, I’m taking it alright.” He leaned down, pecking your lips gently. 

“Okay, pay up.” You ordered, letting his hands go back to caressing your scalp. 

“Just thinking about you. Our future.” He hummed, like it was the simplest thing in the world. 

You sat up a little, “Oh yeah?”

“Oh yeah, big house. You’ll have a garden out back. We’ll have a pool. So I can watch you lounge outside while I grill. A couple of dogs running around, maybe ten kids?” 

“You’re out of your mind, Stevie.” You gasped. 

“Okay, what about six?” He compromised, pulling his face down to yours once again. 

“Maybe let’s slow down, become real adults first. Then… yeah, maybe I’ll give you a couple kids.” 

He smirked. “I knew it.” 

Your mind conjured up images of little versions of you and Steve running around. Growing up alongside the battalion of aunts and uncles downstairs. 

“You’re gonna have to buy a minivan if you want that many kids. Can you imagine us taking home a baby in the beamer?” 

“Our first two babies are definitely coming home in the beamer, babe. It’s when we get to 3, then we need to start looking into minivan territory.” 

“If you’re doing the heavy lifting...” You shrugged, imagining Steve in dad jeans. Pulling carseats out of his car. Your children running around the two of you. Family dinners, vacations, and the stable parents that neither of you were afforded growing up. 

“Of course.” He scoffed, not believing you’d think otherwise. 

“Guess we gotta find better jobs to support this million-dollar idea, huh?” You laughed, Steve pausing for a minute. 

“God, I guess you’re right.” He slumped, trying not to think too hard about the stress of that lingering on top of his shoulders. 

“Hey,” You whispered, “It’s all gonna work out, we have each other. That’s all that really matters.” 

“Yeah.” He smiled wistfully, “You haven’t been able to get rid of me this long, don’t even try now, babe.” 

“Wouldn’t dream of it.” 

“Speaking of dreams….”

He corresponded with you via raven weeks before your wedding day. In your letters, he found you were friendly, a little erratic in your sentence structure, but prompt in your replies. He wrote to assure you that he intended to give you a good life as Lady Hightower. You would be well cared for in Oldtown; the Reach would offer a climate that you would find very enjoyable. He promised that he would not rush you into marriage consummation, or sharing a marital bed, since you were only meeting for the first time on your wedding day. He wanted to make sure you were comfortable in your new life, as he could hardly imagine being in your shoes. He hoped you were pretty, or at least kind, but did not let himself hope for much. Marriage was duty, nothing more.

Standing at the alter in the Starry Sept, Gwayne mentally cursed and kicked himself a thousand times over. When he lifted your veil, he was met with the most dazzling girl he'd ever seen. Your bright eyes shone under the candlelight, the air around you seemed to sparkle, aided by the twinkling jewels pinned in your hair. Your mouth quipped into a half, nervous smile, that made is knees turn to jelly. He could tell you were accessing him back, brow furrowed in concentration. The crinkle that formed between your eyebrows was downright adorable. And with your wide eyes blinking up at him, you reminded him of a deer wandering a forest. When the Septon asked Gwayne to repeat the sacred words And I take you for my lady and wife, his mouth felt impossibly dry and disconnected from his body. He tore his eyes away from you, to look at the Septon instead, so he could concentrate. "And I t-take you for my lady and w-wife" Maybe he had been wrong about marriage before.

Honor? Duty? Where did it get him? Now, it seemed like those things, once upheld in his family's name, had doomed him. Gwayne had already put you at an arm's length by telling you that he did not expect you to share his bed. So all he could do was be a kind, doting husband, hoping that eventually you would feel comfortable enough to desire him the way he already did.

Gwayne observed you and helped you as you settled into life at the Oldtown. You were acclimating well, greeting everyone you met with a warm smile. You made an effort to learn each servant's name, offering genuine compliments on their work. Gwayne decided that he adored your smile, and you were as beautiful as the Mother, herself. Before he met you, he had faintly hoped that you were beautiful. But now, he wasn't sure if your beauty was a blessing to his eyes, or a curse that he had suffer to look upon you at a respectful distance. You were practically skipping through the corridors. Gwyane noticed you always moved so quickly, never simply walking, always seeming to be in a hurry to get to the next place. Suddenly, the ribbon tying your hair back slipped free and onto the floor. You bent down to pick up the ribbon, the fabric of your dress straining against the swell of your breasts. He’d always thought that a woman’s thighs were the asset he favored the most. But when he noticed the curve of your breasts, he wanted nothing more than to squeeze them, knead them, commit the softness to memory. Your nimble fingers twirled the ribbon, hands so petite and pretty. Perhaps one day they would intertwine with his? He could hold your hand and guide it along his cock, showing you how to stroke it and-

Then you were gone. Scurrying away and out of sight. Only the aroma of your rose scented soap was left for him to bask in, and replay over and over the time he had written that you were not expected to share his bed, and hate himself for it.

The day you came into his solar to show him your new dress, a part of him died inside. He was scribbling a letter to his father when you entered. When he looked up at the disturbance and saw it was you, he stood up so fast he almost sent his chair falling backwards. "My dear wife. What do I owe this pleasure?"

"So formal" you tease, your twinkling laugh lighting up the dim room "I just came to show you this!" You hold out your arms to display your attire, causing Gwayne's breath to hitch in his throat. You were wearing a rich green gown, with gold beading and embroidery all down the length. The design curled around your hips and torso, clinging to all your curves. The candlelight reflected off the gold shimmer, making you look like an angel dripping in Hightower colors.

"Do you like it?" You step closer to Gwayne, always on tip toe, and quickly, like a graceful doe. “Do I look comely?”

Your husband chokes on the words, watching you move closer to him- closer to his grasp. You are so near, he can count each if your eyelashes. “Come-? Comely?” Gwayne’s ears burn red at his misunderstanding. A feeble cough, then he manages to speak. “Yes. Very.”

"The seamstresses fastened the dress itself, but I did most of the embroidery work. See?"

Tentatively, he reaches out to graze his fingers over your hard work. He brushes the gold embroidery at your hip. You're babbling about the time that it look, and the technique you practiced, but Gwayne is zoning out. Only focusing on the warmth of your skin he can feel under the velvet. Your backside, that he had admittedly gawked at whenever you walked in front of him, was under his hand, splayed over your hip.

Your voice fades into the background as his hand, on it's own accord, moves up to your elbow, your shoulder, then brushes against the ends of your hair ever so slightly. It was so much softer than he thought possible. And when he brushes the tips of your hair, the smell of your rose soap wafts up to his nostrils. He watches in anticipation as his hand, seemingly pulled by an invisible force, moves to rest on the small of your back. You do not falter or pull away. In fact, you don't react at all. You just continue smiling, talking about your dress. Then you hold up the fabric of your skirt.

"Here, feel." You instruct, and Gwayne tentatively runs his hand over the gold beads. "I stayed up half the night to finish it. But I think it's worth the trouble." You laugh softly. "What do you think?"

"It's beautiful." He swallows, and meets your eye. "Like you."

Playfully, you roll your huge, doe eyes and there it is again - that laugh that makes his heart flip inside his chest cavity. Your lips brush his cheek so quickly, he thought he might have imagined it. But it was real. You kissed him. The dampness of your lips leave the irrefutable proof on his skin. Just as soon as you entered, you are moving away, towards the door, and out of his reach. "I think I will lay down to rest now. I am weary after staying up so late."

Gwayne must be unwell. He must see a maester. He feels unsteady on his feet and his heartbeat pounds mercilessly in his ears. Because after you leave his solar, his legs jerkily pull his body towards the door. You're fast. Much more agile than a young lady should be. Because you're leagues ahead of him, already out of sight down the castle corridors. He walks in a trance, following the trail of rose, stumbling after you. His cock jerks in his pants, half hard simply from touching you and the green fabric of your damned dress. Feverishly, his skin burns hot under his clothes. You're ill, you're reverting back to being a green boy, he tells himself. He wills himself to gain some sense, and stop following you like a lunatic, but his legs still carry him the way to your bed chambers.

When he arrives at your chambers, he enters without ceremony. He falls against the door and stumbles inside. It looks like you are getting ready to leave, having changed into a simple grey dress, and clutching your prayer book with a startled look on your face.

“Gwayne? Are you alright?” You ask, concerned for your husband’s current state- looking dazed in the middle of your bedchambers.

He does not answer your question. “I thought you were going to lie down and rest.” He blurts.

You were supposed to be getting ready to rest, he thinks, wearing your soft nightgown that I know you own because I've seen the servants filling your closet with clothes before you moved here. And you're supposed to be rubbing your eyes, sleepy and soft. I know you get like that when you're tired because once we dined together early in the morning. And I adored how you looked, one foot still in slumber, the other in wakefulness.

You smile, helpful, but so infuriatingly oblivious to his torment. “I was, yes, but then I remembered I am meeting the Septons this afternoon. We are discussing aid for the poor.” A pause. “Are you alright?” you ask again.

A broken sound emanates from your husband. A mixture of a groan and whine. He falls to his knees in front of you, hands clambering, pulling at your skirt. Gwayne knows he is a knight of the realm, but in this moment he does not care. He is a beggar at your feet. “Sweet girl. My sweet wife, please. Please do not leave.” His fingers fist tighter on your skirt.

Oof. You grunt, tugged off balance by your imploring husband. “I must go. I am new to my duties as Lady Hightower. And I can’t be seen shirking them so soon.” You rake your fingers through his auburn hair, as he presses his face firmly into the junction of your thighs. Gwayne’s hands have lost all restraint, pawing at your arse, tugging your cunt even closer into his face. With every trace of your fingers through his hair, his cock grows stiffer, straining uncomfortably into his pants. This surprises him, the reaction to your touch in his hair. All these new discoveries, particularly the unlimited bounds of his yearning, has his mind reeling.

You sigh. "By the seven, I really am late." You thread your fingers at the top of his head, and pull his gaze up to meet yours. "Oh Gwayne, what am I going to do with you?"

He strains, gazing up at you with watery eyes, "Oh dove, I-"

Surprisingly, it was your cousin, Daeron, who offered you the most kindness. He was the only person you could yield to in the entire Hightower base. You could only pray he wasn’t relaying every conversation you’d had back to the Lord Ormund Hightower.

Everyone else treated you like you were common. Specifically Ser Gwayne Hightower.

He was rude—and vain—and arrogant. He was irritating. When he would try to make conversation, you would always end up in a fight. And it was just your luck for him to be the one instructed to take you on a multiple-week-long journey from the Reach and back to your rightful home in the Red Keep.

He was the one to tell you that your mother had taken King’s Landing back. You assume your mother saw it fit to have the Queen Dowager’s brother be the one to accompany you, because maybe she has something in store for him when you make it there. Perhaps a beheading? He could do without the ability to speak.

Then he was the one to tell you that you would join her in King’s Landing. That you were finally going home. It was the only thing to come from his mouth that made you joyful.

You overheard chatter that by you departing the Reach as soon as the letter was received, and by you making it back unharmed, House Hightower would be granted something close to immunity for their role in the war. You knew it was something a lie. Your mother and stepfather would never let the Green beasts live with what they had done—not only to you, but to her son too. To your mother herself.

The thought of what your mother might be doing to the Dowager Queen now gave you anxiety from being excluded. You should expect that they’ll be calling for Daeron’s capture too, though perhaps you will be able to put in a good word for him—get him sent to the Wall instead of hanged.

Speaking of Daeron, he was already somewhere distant when you had finished gathering your belongings, even though the things you owned in the encampment were scarce. You had said your goodbyes to each other not long ago—he claimed he had to prepare for something with Lord Ormund, and that he would not be available the next morning, for your departure.

You were, as expected, ready to leave. You had wanted to lie down and rest so that the next morning would come sooner, but Ser Gwayne had called you into his tent for one final word.

“There was something else written in the letter. Something I believe should have been saved for a calm moment, such as this,” he begun, and held up the refolded parchment which illustrated the clemency that would be provided to House Hightower upon your safe return to King’s Landing. “Would you prefer to read it, or shall I?”

The glint in his eye was one of compassion. You did not like it.

You shifted uncomfortably under his gaze. “Proceed.”

He raised his brows, pressing his lips together before giving a heavy sigh and opening the parchment back again. The fingers that gripped either side of it seemed to waver. His eyes quickly found the line he had so desperately wanted to read.

He inhaled a heavy breath. “The Prince of Dragonstone and heir to the Iron Throne Jacaerys Velaryon was slain in battle against the Triarchy Fleet. He was struck down by crossbow fire alongside his dragon, Vermax, in the waters off the Gullet.”

Gwayne let his hands drop slowly, and he sealed the parchment back. He looked back up at you.

Your head was shaking back and forth. Denying his words, maybe. The movement had come naturally, and you could not stop it.

“Is this a jest?” you exhaled a small laugh, hoping it would work to quell the distress already coursing through your veins.

You knew it was not a jest.

You knew if the war did not end soon then he would die in some violent, gruesome way, but to hear it confirmed was something entirely different. To hear it confirmed by a Hightower was something worse. The primal need for the man before you dead, perhaps in such a way your own brother was killed, washed over you in an instant.

He remained silent at your question. "It pains me, though your brother's death does not alter our course,” he said instead. “We shall depart at first light.”

It pains him?

You will show him something that pains him.

There was a lengthy distance between the two of you already, but you quickly closed it as you rushed across to smack him across his cheek.

Your hand stung, yet you did not wait for his reaction. Instead, you turned on your heel and left the tent.

Jace did not hit you until the fresh air did, and you let yourself shed the tears that you had pushed back into your sockets. The tears that you could not—would not—let fall in front of the enemy.

day one

You never liked Gwayne. He was arrogant, and he would treat you as if you weren’t the daughter of the Queen—or more importantly to them, the granddaughter of King Viserys, and the niece of their usurper.

The ride up the roseroad so far had been silent. He had tried, but you did not speak a word in response. It pains me, he had said, and then he practically told you to get over it and go home! He is moronic, and conceited. It pains you that you have to make this journey with him.

If need be, you could be doing this by yourself. You’re fierce enough to ride alone—gods, you’re essentially already riding alone, Gwayne’s useless self.

Your brothers taught you to be fierce, in spite of their age. Jace had always insisted on letting you spar with them in the yard of the Red Keep, and you learned quite well from it. You certainly couldn’t beat a knight with your skills, but it had helped you gain a certain confidence that princesses tend not to have.

Aegon had never liked you practicing with them. Neither did Ser Criston. You did beat the usurper once—caught him off guard and swept him out from under his feet—which must have bruised his ego in the process, as he felt it just to push you to the ground when your back was turned right after. That earned him a clout in the ear from Ser Harwin.

You chuckle to yourself recalling the memory—specifically Aegon’s stupid face when he realized who had hit him, and more specifically when Ser Harwin did not get in trouble for it—and you notice Gwayne looking at you in your peripheral. The smile is wiped clean off of your face.

“Does something amuse you?” he mutters.

When you look over to see him, he is glowering at you, his upper lip lifted with judgment.

“I understand you may not have many fond memories to look back on when times are tiresome, but I do.” You look forward at the road ahead.

He scoffs out a laugh. “I have many fond memories.”

“Tell me one,” you counter.

All you can hear is the wind blowing through the trees. Ser Gwayne Hightower, the parentless knight, no recollections to look back on fondly.

Gwayne sucks in a breath. “I do not have to.”

“That is what I thought.” You smirk to yourself, and lightly kick the side of your horse, forcing it forward and ahead of him.

day two

You were unsure if you should speak the words you did, but they had just slipped out at a certain point.

“I take it you did not care much for Jace.” Your gaze had already been trained on the head of your horse. It seemed hard to look anywhere else.

You and Gwayne had been mindlessly trekking forward all morning, both of your eyes still heavy with the slumber that you had lacked, sleeping in an inn on top of stiff beds.

“What makes you say that, princess?” he asks.

“You are a Hightower. Your sister is the Dowager Queen. Your nephew is the usurper. You kill for them—” you look over to him. He has been staring at you the whole time, and he looks quite furious.

“I believe you will find I do not have much of a choice in the matter,” he interjects sharply.

Your head shakes. “Everyone has a choice.”

He huffs. “What do you reckon I do? Desert my army? Get caught and hanged for treason?”

“I would.” You look back at the road ahead. “I should.”

Gwayne sighs, and returns his attention to the road as well. “We both have duties, my princess. Duties one cannot simply run from once they get to be too demanding.”

“Essos is said to be nice this time of year.”

A short laugh escapes him. “Essos is said to be nice all times of the year.”

You let out a heavy, deflated sigh. “Would it not be nice? I’m sure they don’t care about who we are there. We could be free. You could be a sellsword, and I…” your thought trails off. You cannot think of what you would be somewhere like Essos.

“You could be a scribe,” Gwayne says sincerely.

You nod. “I could.”

The idea of a life in Essos, perhaps with Gwayne, seems appealing at the very moment. The lack of sleep much be getting to you.

It does seem nice. Abandoning your name, as much as you are loyal to it, could be the best decision that you have made. He seems to want the same, if you convince yourself his words weren’t just tactical, some way to earn your empathy so that you will convince your mother to spare him once you reach the Red Keep.

If the war would not come to an end with her taking of the throne, you would have to escape there yourself. And if Gwayne wanted to come with you, if he was still alive by the time you left, you might just be willing to take him with you. Silverwing—who had surely made it back to Dragonstone—was large enough to saddle two.

day three

The inn you would stay in tonight would be much worse than the last. Not only because of the stiff beds, but because of the lack of them too.

Gwayne knew of the ones that would not ask any questions while not costing all the coins in his possession. So far they had been shit, but they had been true to their history of keeping quiet with matters that did not concern them, as far as you both knew.

You would remain outside with your cloak hood pulled tight over your head and your body facing a wall until Gwayne would come fetch you to take you to the room.

He would refer to you as his squire to the innkeepers and guests who questioned your presence. If they had questioned your demeanor, he would call you reserved and paranoid. Nobody had asked anything past that, but if they did, he was prepared to tell them that you had been tormented by some childhood event.

When Gwayne had taken you to your room that night, you had not expected to be faced with a singular bed.

“Have you gotten your own room?” you had asked, not realizing until you had drawn off the cloak from your head that there was only one mattress before you.

Gwayne only shrugged. “It was all that remained. The innkeeper told me that puppeteers are traveling in town, and all seem to be staying here.”

You could not contain your fury at the thought of sharing a bed with him. Or making him sleep on the floor. “How many fucking puppeteers are there?” you demanded, body tense with unreasonable anger.

He scoffed out a laugh. “My princess, it isn’t exactly the largest inn.” He had already begun shucking off his armor, as well as ridding himself of his gambeson and chausses. “You will live. I will sleep on the floor.”

“Are you sure? Can’t you speak with the innkeeper?”

“There is no need to draw any more attention to us. And what, princess, will you be sleeping on the floor in place of me?” he mocked, already in knowledge of the answer. “Do not fret over it. I have slept in worse places.”

You were silenced at that, and had called him for help with undoing your dress. The whole ordeal was strangely impersonal. He had done it the night before, and you felt nothing. Perhaps it be the exhaustion both of you had carried.

The two of you had retired to your respective sleeping areas shortly afterward, both clad in just your smallclothes.

Later that night, you found yourself wide awake, shivering in the relentless cold that seemed to break in past the shut windows.

Gwayne had been sleeping on the floor furthest from where you were lying on the bed. You assumed he was sleeping as well, but it was strangely silent. You had expected to hear the soft breathing of someone consumed by their slumber, though all you heard was the whistling of wind outside.

And your heart still held unpleasant sympathy for where he had been forced to rest. If your thoughts were true, he was not sleeping at all.

“Ser?” you whisper.

“Is something wrong?” you hear from below.

You smile at his voice. No, at being right. You do not smile at his presence, you smile because you like being right. You rolled over then, the mattress groaning beneath you, to stare at the dim expanse of the side where he lay.

“Are you comfortable there, on the floor?” you question, smile piercing through your words.

He scoffs. “You jest, princess, but I have no doubt that this floor is just as soft as the mattress you lay on.”

You were hit with a flurry of breathless laughter at his words. It must be your lack of sleep. You could hear him chuckle too after some point, but both of you had been slowly silenced as the seconds passed until you could only hear the commotion outside again.

Perhaps you should invite him to sleep alongside you. You are not without mercy. Of course, it would be strictly unromantic, not like how a wife and her husband might find one another on restless nights such as this one.

“Would you like to put that to the test?” you say without a second thought.

Gwayne clears his throat. “I would not want to invade on your solace, princess.”

“There is plenty of room for you.” You crawl across the bed to see him.

Your eyes find him as he thoughtlessly fiddles with the edge of his chemise, and as he freezes once he meets your gaze.

You beam down at him again. “And it would bring me solace, knowing you were sleeping the slightest bit easier.”

“Are you sure of it?”

“I am.” You think it is the sleep deprivation deluding you. You would never act like this normally. He can sense it too.

He slowly rises from his position on the ground, and multiple bones crackle once he stands.

You roll back over to your side of the bed, watching as he joins you. He seems tense, especially as you join him under the covers.

The two of you lie in bridled silence, neither one of you able to fall asleep. A chill runs through you from the temperature, and Gwayne’s head swivels to look at you.

You turn over on your side to meet his gaze, expecting him to say something. He does not, and looks back up at the ceiling instead.

Your brain, clouded by the fact that you are simultaneously freezing cold and devastatingly fatigued, opens, then pauses as you search for the words.

“Are you cold as well?” you mumble.

Gwayne shrugs nonchalantly. “Slightly.”

You chuckle mirthlessly. “I am.” The sheets suddenly feel rough against your skin. “More than slightly.”

“I can ask the innkeeper for another quilt.”

His earlier words flash back to you. “There is no need to draw any more attention to us,” you repeat.

You see the corner of his lip turn upward. “What do you reckon I do, then, princess?” he asks, and you reach out to touch his arm.

The muscle quickly tightens under your hold.

“You’re warm.” You move closer to him. “If we lie close together, we might just make it through the night.”

That is how you ended up huddled next to Ser Gwayne Hightower for the rest of the night.

You were unaware of the fact that he was lying frozen next to you, and that he did not get a wink of sleep, especially as you mindlessly slung an arm around his middle in your slumber. And as your nipples, solid from the cool breeze that had seeped in through the windows, brushed up against him as you shifted throughout the night.

day four

Gwayne had stopped to relieve himself when you heard them.

The myriad of chirps from some kind of birds had caught your attention, and you had jumped from your horse in an instant, following the sound.

You found yourself on the edge of an open field, behind some bushes, as you looked down to some small yellow birds that weren’t flying away. You deduce that they must like your presence.

It wasn’t long before Gwayne anxious voice interrupted your calm, calling your name just moments before stumbling upon you.

“What are they?” you whisper.

“Chicks,” he responds, in a normal tone. At your silence, he continues, “baby chickens.”

“Truly?” you question, head cocked to the side, watching them.

Gwayne stares at you. “Have you… never seen chicks before?”

“No, only…” you turn your head to him, “chickens.” You shrug.

He shakes his head with a theatrical sort of despair. It would have seemed real if the corners of his lips were not upturned.

“You truly are a princess,” he mutters, and crouches down to the ground.

You stoop down alongside him, watching as the chicks run past one another, chirping quietly.

“Can I touch one?” you mumble.

He gestures with a chin toward the chirping bunch. “Go on, then.”

You reach down to one of the animals, but you can’t quite seem to get a good grip on it. You don’t really try to grip it. You do not find the chance to. Instead, your hand just lingers hesitantly above the crowd of them.

Gwayne’s hands come down to meet yours. He grabs one of them, effortlessly and gently, cradling it in his hands.

Your hand is still lingering beside his, still in a motion as if you were going to grab one, as he did, so he brings the chicken in his hands to yours. You bring your free hand to join the other and cup them together.

He lets one hand release the chick into yours, and it comes down below the two of your hands as if to hold it steady. The other covers the chick to prevent it from jumping out of your hold.

The hand that is under yours touches it, and urges it to close. “Gently,” he murmurs, and you’re holding the chick on your own now, gently and effortlessly, just like he was.

His hands withdraw from yours. He watches as your lips curl up, a pure joy that he had yet to ever witness fill your face, do exactly that. His own mouth mirrors something similar.

You shudder nervously as the chick twitches around in your grip. It comes out half in the form of small chuckles and half in struggled exhales.

Your brows draw together. It seems impossible to relax them, and you feel a panic settle in at nothing in particular. Perhaps it be that your brothers are dead, maybe because you are with a man that you have such complicated and mind-boggling feelings for, or that you were just held as a prisoner for the Greens, and that man is a Green, he is the Green, the Hightower Green you have been conditioned to hate—

Gwayne has stopped smiling. You feel tears running down your face. The chick flies out of your grip once you try to see it closer, and you try your hardest to catch onto your breath, to catch it as it runs from you, but you cannot. You are sobbing before you get any sense to stop it.

“My princess?” he leans closer to you, a wavering hand inching dangerously close, and you push yourself from off the ground. He follows.

“I’m sorry,” you manage through heaving breaths, smoothing down your now wrinkled dress. Why are you apologizing? You do not know why you are apologizing. He is a Green. He should be apologizing to you, for being on the side of the war that killed your brothers—oh, gods, your sweet brothers. Your sweet, young, desperate, dead brothers.

“It’s all right,” he mumbles. His hands, still, are reaching toward your arms, yet not touching. Never touching. Just hovering near yours, always, like he wants to touch you, but he doesn’t.

You wipe your eyes, but the tears keep falling. You mutter something again. Sorry, you hear yourself say again, and then your body moves for you. You wrap your arms around his neck in an embrace so tight you might be strangling him.

He stumbles back slightly, arms still hesitating beside you, and then finally you feel it. He folds them gently around your waist. As gentle as he held the chick.

“Don’t cry,” he comforts.

You do not obey. You would if you could, but for now, you remain in his hold. You, regrettably, enjoy it.

day five

Gwayne did not like to see you cry.

He had first seen it the moment you realized you were captured by the Hightowers. You hadn’t been conscious enough when they found you to care about where you were being taken. He hadn’t enjoyed the sight then, not as his belligerents did, and he does not like to see it now.

He was the one to convince his fellow commanders to spare your life and to instead take you as a hostage. He was the one to have you held in a tent next to his own in the encampments with his two most upstanding soldiers posted outside, and not in those grimy cages fit for animals. He was the one to have you ride your horse directly next to his when on the road with the rest of the army—much to your dismay—as to prevent any dishonorable conduct from occurring. He would never tell you these things, of course, but they live with him.

Gwayne would tell himself that he did all of these things because it was right, that he would do it to any other female prisoner-of-war, given the shocking lack of honor among his knights who vowed to defend it. He had done a good job separating the wheat from the chaff when he became a commander, but there were only few he truly trusted to never harm the young, an innocent—and those who cannot protect themselves. Like you.

You liked to put on a front. And it somewhat worked with others, but not with him. He wishes it would, for some odd reason. Maybe he would not see you the way he does, if it did. He would still treat you with mercy, but it would not be to the level it is. He would never have accepted your hug. He thinks he would have pushed you away.

He wouldn’t have, but he believes he would have.

Since he had finally felt your touch the afternoon previous, the road to the Red Keep had been as quiet as the first day of your journey together. He suspected you had been embarrassed after letting him see your emotions, as you had been combative toward him every day since you had woken up from your comatose state.

He had expected it to come at some point, the unveiling of your feelings, but not in that way. He had expected to hear you sniffle from beside him while on your horses. He would have stayed silent, and he would have let you cry. He believes he would have let you cry on your own if you hadn’t come to him for comfort first.

The fact that you did had brought him joy. It made him hopeful, in some strange way he did not feel himself familiar with.

“You are betrothed to Lord Samwell Blackwood, are you not?”

You look at him, puzzled. “He has been with the Stranger since the war begun.”

Gwayne nods curtly. “So I’ve heard.”

“Then why have you asked?”

He inhales a heavy breath. “I feel it my duty to tell you of this.” He clears his throat. “Before your mother took the throne, there was word among our commanders to betroth you to your cousin, Prince Aemond.”

“You jest.”

“I do not.”

You cock your head to the side, wetting your lips. “And what did you have to say in the matter?”

“That is unneeded for you to know.”

“Why? Because you encouraged them to?”

His voice picks up immediately where you left off. “No, because I fought against it.” He scoffs a laugh. “The One-Eyed Prince is… he is mad.” At your gawking laugh, he turns his head to you. “You must know it too. He is simply and utterly mad.”

“You are his uncle.” You would never tell of his treasonous words to any other, but you feel you must remind him.

“Are you going to betray me and inform my army of the fact?”

“I do not have loyalty to you, though I will not speak of the words to another.”

“Good. Now you tell me something in confidence,” he presses.

You shake your head at the sheer audacity of him. “Why would I do that, ser?”

“What else will we converse about? It is a long and arduous road ahead of us.” His eyes peer into yours, and you feel a sudden urge to tell him everything you have ever kept from him.

“Alright then,” you look to the sky in mock ponder. “When I was young, I would pray to the gods each and every night for a gallant and true knight to take me away from the Red Keep and off to some distant land. There was this one knight, he had belonged to our Kingsguard, who I absolutely adored.” You sigh on the memory, oblivious to the fact that a true and gallant knight was riding right alongside you. “I was just a girl then. It was a silly dream. And the gods do not always play in my favor.”

Were you jesting? Or were you truly so oblivious?

“Do you remember his name?” he asks.

“It has lost me. But I remember his face. He was gorgeous, that one, and very gentle, too. Back then he was the same age as my brother is now.”

He does not let you sit with the fact that you mentioned your brother as if he were alive. “That’s quite young, isn’t it?”

You nod. “Indeed. He was the youngest of every knight in the Keep. Perhaps the youngest in history.”

“What happened to him?”

You exhale a breath, and look down to your horse’s head. “He was in the fire that killed Ser Harwin. I do not know why he had been called to Harrenhal, and I suppose I shall never know. Are you yourself betrothed, or married, ser?”

He huffs. “Gods, no. I was, and remain, of little use as a political pawn for House Hightower, my father being the second son.”

“Therefore if you were to wed, you would do so for love,” you state.

“I suppose so.”

day six

The hood of your cloak was pulled tightly over the upper half of your face, seemingly ritual for whenever you made it to inns, and you felt a tap on your shoulder.

You turn, expecting to see Gwayne, but in his place stood a knight in armor, donning a Hightower sigil on his gambeson.

It is your luck to see Gwayne rushing up from behind him to fetch you.

“Squire, let us retire to our room, yes?” he says, and you nod eagerly, pulling the hood further over your face. The two of you attempt to move forward, and you make it past the knight—

“That is no squire,” the man interjects, grabbing onto your wrist, stopping you. “That is a girl.”

Gwayne steps in between you and the knight, forcing him to release your joint from his hold. His gaze flicks down to the man’s gambeson.

He takes a step closer to him and lowers his voice. “If it pleases you, she’s my distraction for the night, ser. Not worth your notice.”

The knight clears his throat, and Gwayne steps back.

“Blessings upon King Aegon.” He smiles, turning back to the inn entrance.

His hand guides you forward, lingering on the small of your back, surely for the sight of the knight behind you. And then it trails down, over the curve of your back end, and you feel the slightest grip onto it before the door behind you closes, and his hand immediately falls away.

The walk to your room is silent.

Gwayne swallows painfully once you make it to your room.

“I’m sorry—” he begins.

“How may I distract you tonight, ser?” you interrupt, smiling stupidly at his lie, and he sighs one of relief at your lack of offense.

He breathes out a laugh, and swiftly moves to shed himself of his armor. He has been struggling on his own each time he has done so. You only noticed it the last night, and offered help, but had been rejected.

You would not ask this time, you would simply do. Your fingers were desperate and untrained in their efforts, but they did the trick in time for him not to deny you, and he was rid of the metal captivity.

You turn as he does, ridding yourself of your heavy cloak and pushing your hair out of the way of the laces of your dress. He pulls them loose without a word, and the warmth of his body behind yours would surely prove the most effective thing of the night, you decide as you gaze at the thin quilt on your bed.

As your gown slides down your body, you can hear the shuffling of Gwayne removing all but his linens behind you. If you took just a step backward, you would be touching him.

“It is a terrible coincidence, the Hightower army resting here,” you mumble, your hands fiddling with the light cloth around the your wrists.

“It is,” he agrees solemnly.

You retreat from his warmth and sit on the edge of your bed, your back up straight and your fingers clasped together in your lap. You weren’t particularly tired this night. Maybe it be from the surge of adrenaline at the knight outside, and it had already raged through your limbs, rendering them restless the moment the door to the inn had shut behind you.

Gwayne’s hand was close to you then, to an area you regarded as most private among you, a maiden. The memory of it twinged deep in your stomach. It was an unfamiliar feeling.

He had joined you in sitting on the edge of a bed, albeit his own. His own stature had mirrored yours. All tense and surged with the possibility of a fight.

“It is rather cold this night,” you mutter.

Gwayne nods curtly. “It is.”

Your gaze lowers to watch your fingers be relentlessly picked on by those of the other hand. “I fear one of those knights will bust through the doorway, and take me away with little fight, you being so far from me,” you whisper. The night was silent enough for him to hear it.

“I fear the same.”

You look up at him. “If he were to do so, it would certainly raise suspicion if your whore was sleeping in a bed adjacent to yours.”

He takes a turn to meet your eyes. “If you wish to sleep in the same bed as I, you need only ask.”

Your tongue darts out to wet your lips. “May I sleep in your bed tonight, Gwayne?” you muster.

“As you wish, my princess.”

day seven

Your horse stops before you instruct it to.

In the distance lies a field of flowers, pink and purple, some yellow, and all illuminated by sunlight. It was nearly time for it to set.

You cannot still be in the Reach, you think. It has been much too long, but thank the gods if you are. What a sight to see.

You want to see it closer. Gwayne will be okay with it, you declare, and you hop off of your horse and begin walking in the direction of the field.

“No, princess,” he says, exasperated. “We cannot go off trail again.”

“The flowers,” you breathe. “It is beautiful.”

The scent in the air is intoxicating. It is rather pungent, the closer you get to it, and the air seems more sultry than just moments before.

You remove your cloak from your shoulders, letting it drop behind you as you continue forward. It is the slightest bit relieving from the heat, but your body quickly acclimates to it again, and the sweat begins beading. It is no wonder. The sleeves under your dress are long. It makes you question why you decided to wear such a stupid thing, in this climate.

Once you make it to the field, it envelopes you. The fever. It starts in your lower abdomen in a heavy thrum and travels up the rest of your body.

Where is Gwayne?

You turn around. He is just a few steps behind. He has been trailing behind you the entire time. It was hard to notice, with the pull of the meadow, but now that you are here, he is all you can think about. All you can focus on. You do not like that.

His hair illuminates in the sunlight, much like the flowers. Your skin tingles.

He froze in his movements the moment you did. You continue further into the field. His feet fall in step with yours, and you think you can hear his breathing, all shaky and uncertain.

You make it to an empty patch of the meadow, and stop once again.

“Ser?” you turn back to face him. The scorch of the sun worsens with each passing second. Sweat gathers on your brow. “My dress... please… help me get it off.” You raise a timid arm to your back, accepting defeat once you find yourself unable to reach the laces.

Gwayne’s thumb twitches toward you. His forehead glistens. He must be burning too.

You spot the clench of his jaw, and take a wary step toward him.

“Stop—” he holds a hand out, body turning away from you. “Do not move. Please. Just stay there.” He avoids your gaze.

“What is it?” you ask. You know what it is.

You know what he is feeling, because you feel it too. It presses hard and deep in your abdomen, and it just wants to be relieved. You want to be relieved. And Ser Gwayne Hightower looks rather handsome in this light, surrounded by the pink and purple—and was it red?—flowers. He seems close to pouncing on you like a wild dog. Gods, may he?

He had always been alluring. May it be your frustration that you could never have him in the way you wanted that made you so combative, or the fact that he is a Green—it is probably both, but neither seem so important now. Not when you feel the heat of a thousand suns burn through you, all the way to your core, and then all over again.

The man himself looks close to releasing in his braies just by looking at your face. It brings you some ease, yet also further discomfort, to know that he feels the same as you. You had blocked out the idea, seeing yourself as delusional and unrealistic for thinking he would ever show any form of attraction toward you.

“Gwayne—” you exhale, though it releases itself in the form of a groan. “It is sweltering.” You bend over to clutch the end of your dress, and you are close to pulling it off yourself, if fate was willing. Something halts you.

“Please, don’t.” His voice sounds pitiful. It is all low and whiny. “I do not know if I can handle that. Not now. Not when… fuck.”

You want to keel over and die.

You release the cloth from your grip and let the dress fall back down. You rise back up, slowly, and flatten down the wrinkled fabric of your middle with your hands.

Your lips tremble. “What do you want to do?”

“I am unsure.” He still cannot look you in the eye. “It is impure, and unchivalrous for me to be thinking of you this way.”

“I am all right with it.” It is then that you realize how you sound. Desperate for a Green, as if you were a common whore, which is probably what he thinks of you as. At least he tries to fight it. You should fight it too. You are fierce enough to fight whatever it is that is welling up inside of you.

Your eyes are squeezed shut, and the shame tries to conquer the hunger—but the hunger wins in the blink of an eye. The blink of your eye, in fact, as you look back at Gwayne.

“We cannot,” you mumble. “We should not. I am a maiden. You are the opposition. We cannot.” You repeat the words to yourself, over and over, like a mantra. If the shame did not prevail, perhaps distraction will. Your eyes shut tight again, and you repeat the words. We cannot. We should not. You are a maiden. He is the opposition.

We cannot, we should not, you are a maiden, Ser Gwayne Hightower is hard by simply standing in your presence—

Your eyes snap open, and you find that you are standing directly in front of him. You must have been inching closer to him with each sentence you repeated.

Your gaze flicks down to his crotch. Sure enough, your thoughts did not lie to you. Perhaps your dragon blood has given you the gift of prophecy.

He finds it appropriate to look at you, finally, and you realize how close you are to one another.

In specific—how close your lips are to one another. So, so close, yet so far. You almost want to give in, and you lean just a little closer. He stays still, though when you stop moving, his head moves closer too, close enough that you can almost feel his breath fanning into your own mouth.

Your noses are touching, that is how close you are. You could just slot your lips right onto his. It would be so easy, so incredibly simple, if you would just move forward, just a little—

His hands reach up to cradle your face in his hands, thumbs on either side grazing your cheekbones. They move down your face, down to your lips, and one of the thumbs strokes over the bottom lip. And he closes the gap.

You feel his lips envelope yours first, and then you feel his tongue inch into your mouth. Your lips close over one another’s, and he moans. Ser Gwayne Hightower is moaning into your mouth, and it feels like you have been sent to each of the seven heavens and back again. Your head is pushed backwards with the force of his kiss.

Your hand reaches around to brush over his nape. His hands travel further down your body, one finding itself wrapped around your waist, the other petting your breast over your dress. It seems that the true touch of it pacifies him, as it allows you to push deeper into the kiss, letting your tongue slide into his mouth.

You only break away to lower yourself to the ground. He follows, as though the answers to every challenge in his life were held on your lips. He hikes your dress up your legs, your smallclothes with it, until they both pool at your waist.

He lifts two fingers to his mouth, coating them in spit before reaching down to your bare cunt and thrusting them inside. You let out a shrieking moan, letting your head press into the dirt below you and thrashing back and forth in pleasure.

“Look at me,” Gwayne instructs. You let your eyes lock onto his, you try, but the deep press of his fingers inside of you makes it hard to focus. His lips, hanging open, hover just above yours, and he moves forward to bring you and he together again.

It is breathing moans into each other’s mouths and pathetic, desperate mashing before you finally get the hold onto his lips, or perhaps him onto yours. His fingers cease, and slip out swift enough for it to go unnoticed for a single moment.

He breaks apart from your mouth, and wastes no time in sliding himself down your body. The disappointment at the loss of his fingers does not last long, as his lips lock onto your cunt.

Gwayne snakes his arms under your legs and he yanks your body closer to him. Your fingers curl in his hair, and he only laps harder at you.

“Y—yes, ser—” you cry, your thighs squeezing his head, clit pulsating under the assault of his tongue.

He breaks away for just a moment, big blue eyes locking onto your weak ones. “Not ser. Gwayne. My name is Gwayne.”

And he dives back into you, gathering your wetness on his tongue in a torturous swipe from bottom to top, one that earns a sweet little whine from the depths of your throat. It reminds him, in that moment, of the sounds you would make when you did not get your way back in Oldtown—the sounds he would shamefully think of as he fucked his fist late at night, the sounds that he would repent about for thinking and acting on with such humiliating vitality, and more importantly, for not regretting any of it in the slightest.

The sheer relief you get from his mouth onto yours is unlike anything you have felt before, because you have not felt it before. You had heard word of the act in song, and in gossip spread around by your ladies-in-waiting, but to experience it was the greatest decision you ever made. A true, gallant knight between your legs, satiating the hunger that spread in your loins and his alike, yet he is only focused on your release now, latching his tongue on your clit and sucking hard.

His fingers graze your folds and glide around the edges, already slick with your wet. One finger probes, just the slightest bit, and you shudder at the contact.

You let out a loud cry as it presses itself fully inside, without warning. Perfection, you think you hear him say. The words vibrate on your clit, agonizingly so.

His finger pumps in and out of you, and his mouth works on your cunt all the same. The fire in your veins only grows stronger as your climax approaches.

Your fingers tug and pull on his hair, and somewhere in the middle of your gratification a second slim finger of his joins the first, pressing deep into your cunt as they allow him.

The sounds coming from your mouth you do not think you have ever made before. They approach from deep in your lungs and are hoarsely ripped from your throat.

It creeps closer, that unfamiliar thing called release, and your walls tighten around his fingers. Gwayne only sucks harder, and pushes his fingers further into your cunt, his knuckles pressing into your folds.

The feeling floods your body in an instant. It feels prickly, for some odd reason, and it nips your limbs, but blissfully so. Your brain feels fuzzy, and you cannot think of anything but him. It is a way that makes you crave for it immediately once it ebbs.

You let out a little sob once his fingers slip out from inside you. You didn’t know you were crying, and a few stray tears fall from your eyes before you realize.

Gwayne licks a stripe up your cunt, collecting whatever fluids he procured down there into his mouth and swallowing them with the gulp of a man who might just be dying of thirst.

He is up your body and has his wet lips on yours by the time you tear yourself away from the sight. It is then that you feel how truly hard he is under his linens. His cock presses against your spent core, and he nearly jerks back at the contact.

“Gwayne,” you breathe, and his head shoots up to look at you.

“What is it, sweet girl?” he mumbles, suddenly winded by the sweet sound of his name on your tongue.

“I want you to fuck me.”

He is frozen solid at your ask. Your arousal on his mouth glistens with each slight twitch upward. “You’re sure of it?”

You nod, but it is not enough.

“Tell me,” he commands.

“I want you to fuck me, Gwayne, how else must I tell you?” you reply impatiently, and grind your hips up to feel his hardened cock brush against you once more.

Both of your hands come up and intertwine themselves behind his neck, preventing him from straying any further—pulling him down to you, in fact, so you can grind up on him some more.

You lift your head from the ground to try and capture his lips into a somewhat calculating kiss, but his strength prevails, and his head softly twitches back before your mouth can get hold on his.

You fall back, defeated, but his hand comes to hold your wrist, and he comes down to close the gap. He chuckles into your mouth at your desperation, and you only kiss him harder, as if you were trying to become one with him.

His hand rubs up and down your wrist for a moment, before he reaches down to release his lower half from his linens.

You take a hand from off his neck and reach down to meet his own, searching around for his cock. You get a firm grip on it, stroking it up once. He lets out a shuddery moan, and his hand finds your wrist once again—not stopping you, but guiding you, perhaps.

He pumps himself with your hand, and you let him for only a moment, before overpowering his gentleness and guiding his length to your cunt. The tip of it glides on your folds. You could die right here, and it would be okay.

Gwayne pushes into you with a wounded groan, his jaw hanging wide open. You, on the other hand, nearly shriek.

He rocks himself out of you slowly, then back into you almost sluggishly.

“Is this all right?” he manages through strangled breaths, and you nod fervently, using the hand still on his neck to push his head closer to yours.

You mean to kiss him, but his forehead lies on yours instead. You’ll take what you can get.

He presses swift pecks on your cheeks, on your nose, and on your lips as he gains momentum. Your eyes flutter shut, but his hand comes up to press a few light smacks to your cheek.

“I said to look at me,” he grunts. “I want to see your eyes—“

You open them back up at that. They’re glossed over again, with tears, and you’re glad that Gwayne does not take it as pain. There was pain, but it is long gone. He kisses the droplets as they fall from the corners of your eyes.

It is utterly intoxicating, the drag of his hips. He seems to lose himself in the feeling too. Wave after wave of constant pleasure washes over you with the somehow gentle slam of him into you.

You babble incomprehensible speech, just as lost as he is as he, slack-jawed as he fucks you. His eyes are focused on your face, your face saturated with sweat, for a single twitch of anything at all, yet he finds nothing. Nothing but rapture, as he believes it should be. He brings his hand back down to your clit and strokes it so delicately, but it brings you sweet relief all the more.

You feel it cresting again. Up your spine, down your legs, dumbing your brain into mush, prickling at the back of your neck. “Gods, Gwayne—Oh, gods, I’m gonna—“

You don’t finish the sentence. It hits you, you cum again, so hard around his cock, and it isn’t long into your perfect bliss before he is pulls out, spilling his seed onto the bunched-up cotton of your dress.

You feel as though you are one with him. It is like your flesh melts into his. Your sweat certainly does, especially as he joins his forehead with yours again, all sticky and damp.

“I am deeply sorry—” he says in between quick kisses, “to have taken your maidenhood.”

You shake your head softly. “If it shames you so, I can raise a proposition of marriage to my mother once we get back to the Keep.” He laughs at that, unknowing you were not telling a joke.

Still, you breathe out a chuckle.

day nine

The communal bath that you had found yourself in was satisfyingly empty. Since Gwayne had taken your maidenhood two moons previous, you had been desperate for it to happen again, and again, and perhaps a thousand times more, though you resisted the urge to ask outright while in the inns.

Now, though, seemed like the perfect moment to do so. You could clean yourself properly for the first time in weeks, and then dirty yourself all over again with the satisfaction of your mutual sin.

He had already undone the laces of your dress for you, and you stepped out of the gown that dropped to your feet, eager to feel the warmth of the water envelop your skin. And for him to join you. So that you could see—and feel—his bare body, properly. You had already shed your linens by the time you made it to the water.

You had retreated to the further side of the bath, so that you could watch as Gwayne undressed himself. It was nicer like this, being able to take in his body for the first time, as he stripped off his gambeson, then his chausses, and then, finally, his smallclothes.

His figure was very unsurprisingly robust. The light of the countless candles surrounding the baths set for quite the intimate atmosphere.

You bit back a smile as he inched closer to the bath, stepping inside with a heavy sigh of relief. The Hightowers did seem to prioritize cleanliness. Perhaps they place it next to godliness. Gwayne certainly does not seem to mind, given how keen he was to eat your cunt until you came undone on his tongue.

He threw his head back with a shuddering sigh once he finally sunk into the water. You watch as the grime expels from the surface of his body in one fell swoop, becoming one with the rest of the stream.

“Have you something to say?” he questions, a brow darted upward at your uncharacteristically blissful expression.

Your cheeks flushed, a harder, content smile crossing over your face. “Just observing.”

“Must you observe so far?” he mutters.

“I must,” you sneer, giving a firm nod.

His eyes flick down to your bare breasts, sat warped on your chest under the soft wave of the water.

He quickly averts his gaze to the center of the bath once you perk them forward with your arms.

“I am truly apologetic,” he starts. “For taking your maidenhood. ‘specially in such an unclean place, where anyone could have seen us if they had simply come to probe into the noise.”

You scoff. “Would you have preferred it happen inside the walls of some dull inn?”

“I’d have preferred you comfortable.”

“I was comfortable. I am comfortable.”

At his silence, you push yourself off of the wall and glide over to him. He sits frozen as your chest brushes against his arm.

“Are you a maid, ser? Well—were you a maid?” you question, feigning a look of innocence.

“I haven’t been a maid for a long time, princess.” His head hangs low.

He lets you grip his arm and guide it between your legs. “Are you ashamed of the fact?”

“I am ashamed that I am not,” he mutters, seemingly unfazed as you grind your cunt against his wrist. You let out a low moan, your breath wavering before you realize his lament.

So you release his arm from your hold and straddle his hips, placing your hands on each of his shoulders. Your chest is eye level with his face. It seems to be the only thing that can bring his head back up.

You can feel his cock hardening below you as you rock back and forth against him. He watches your face that stares down back at him—both of your jaws are slack, and you breathe heavy pants into each others mouths, gaining some semblance of pleasure from the act.

But it is not enough, no. It is never enough.

You take a hand from his shoulder and reach down to grip his length, guiding it into your walls at once. You push down unto him with a sweet little cry, one quickly silenced by his lips on your own.

His kiss is just as tender as you remember it being, amorous flowers aside, and you hum into him. A hand cups your cheek and he tilts his head, his tongue breaching the plush of your lips, just exploring.

Your fingers curl around his nape as you thrust, up and down, up and down, and he concurrently rolls his hips back and forth.

“Fuck—sweet princess—” he moans once he breaks apart from your mouth.

You gasp and shudder, and he reaches his head up to kiss all over your face. Your eye, the brow bone above it, down to the highest point of your cheek on the side of your face, then to the corner of your lip, and then he cranes his head down to kiss you on your neck. You throw your head back to allow him access.

Once he reaches your sternum, he darts his tongue out first when attaching his lips to it. “Oh, gods,” you whimper into his hair.

“Ser? Gwayne—” you can't quite speak, the words near dying on your tongue. “Are you mine, Gwayne? Tell me—” your hips slow, and his only speed up. He begins fucking up into you, and another moan rips through your throat.

He nods fervently against your neck, lifting his head back up to see you. “I am yours, princess. Fuck—” his hips stutter, though he relents.

It does not give you solace. If he is yours, how long shall he remain so? Until the gods rip him from your grasp—which would be soon now, with each tread of your horses closer to the Red Keep.

His hand slides up to your ribs as if to stabilize you, and he wraps it around your middle. His forehead drops to your shoulder, raising with each jolt of your body upward, the constant slam of his cock up into your cunt and then out again.

You know few things now, except for him. Your walls clench around him, and he nearly ceases at that. You continue in his ministrations, rocking back and forth onto him, savoring in the way his length hits you in the spot that makes you feel near the brink of climax.

“I love you.” You think you hear yourself say. And he just watches you, as you chase your peak, so blissfully unaware of the words that just came from your mouth. Your sweet mouth.

Gwayne reaches a hand to cradle your head, and push it closer to his, so that he can take your sweet mouth into his. It is less of a kiss and more of two mouths pressing against each other, but you accept it either way. The two of you pant raggedly against each other, and you feel your core tighten with each deep press of his cock inside of you.

He can feel it too. It is more of threat than satisfying, the idea of spilling his seed inside of you, but you seem to not care. You might just not know. If you were true to your word of your maidenhood—he does not care if you were or not—you must be pitifully unknowledgeable on the subject.

He remembers word of you being betrothed to some high lord widow who had died on the frontlines of battle when the war first broke out, fighting for the side of your mother. Then, once you were captured, there was word of you marrying one of his two younger Targaryen nephews. The thought of you being kept as a prisoner for Aemond sends a shudder through his body, and he rids himself free of the idea as his orgasm approaches closer.

“My princess—” he tries. You do not notice. You persist in your pursuit of release, and he grips your jaw gently, catching your attention. “Look at me.”

You nod at nothing in particular, mouth hanging open and mewling needy whimpers as you oscillate on his cock.

“I cannot—I cannot cum inside.” He lets out a strangled moan as you begin grinding faster than just moments before, as if encouraging him to do so.

“Why not?” you breathe.

His head nearly lulls back as he staves off his own release. “You could get with child.”

You grip his hand and lead it to your breast, and he lets himself fall for your entrancement, kneading it between his fingers. Your nipple is caught between two of them, and he presses them together just the slightest bit too hard, earning a wince from above him. It makes him realize he has been regrettably neglecting them this entire time.

“My breasts are sore.” You inhale sharply. “I shall bleed soon.”

Ah. In that case—

Gwayne dips his hands back into the water, finding your hips to guide them, delighting in the way your moans grow more and more fervent as his cock drags against your walls.

It approaches swift, and you do not have any time nor stamina to warn him of it. You wonder if he can sense it.

Just as quick as it came, it washes over you in an instant. Your muscles clamp down around him, and he moans loud into your shoulder—you soon feel a warmth deep in your womb, the warmth of his seed. A minuscule part of you hopes it will take.

Shortly afterward, he lifts your bodies from the water, carrying you with your legs wrapped around him. His cock has slipped out of you, but the kiss he places on your lips distracts you from the loss.

You push his chest, separating your mouths, and wrap your arms around his neck. “Let us leave together, Gwayne. Silverwing is large enough to saddle two. You could be a sellsword, and I a scribe—I your wife. I shall give you children, if it is what you desire. We can spend our days in rest and tranquility, like this.” Your breath still hasn’t caught.

It is a moment of silence before Gwayne finds the words. The dubious words, though the ones that provide enough hope to settle you. “Perhaps, my princess. Do not worry yourself with eventuality.” And he sets you down on the marble just above the bath. Your calves dip back into the water, and it is then you realize that they are aching.

He kneels down into the water and takes your legs over his shoulders. You feel the stretch in your thighs, equal parts from their growing soreness and the length of his shoulders. His release begins seeping out of your cunt from the pressure of it all.

He presses a kiss to the inside of your knee, then to the inside of your thigh, and then finally to your clit. His head dips down to your opening, and he sucks.

It becomes more like he is kissing, or eating you, at some point. You cannot tell. The pleasure has already gotten to be too much, and you are writhing under him.

His arms wrap around your thighs and he pulls you closer to his mouth, and you loudly and embarrassingly moan, your fingers rake through his hair, gripping it tight when his nose brushes against your clit.

You haven’t discovered his objective, but thank the gods for him. It is somewhat relaxing and simultaneously frustrating for him to be lapping away mindlessly at your cunt.

“Please, Gwayne, let me cum—” you beg, all breathless and crestfallen, and his eyes flick up to you. He finds you are the most spoiled thing he has ever met, yet also the most beautiful. He thinks, in that moment, that he truly should consider being taken as your husband.

He nods once. “As you wish.”

And his mouth is replaced by his fingers. He pumps them into you, a relentless pace, and his lips find themselves back onto you, but now on your clit.

He laps at you and rocks his fingers further inside, getting your folds all slick and glossy with both your own and his own arousal, as well as his own saliva.

He curls his fingers deep in your cunt, in that spongy spot that once sheathed his cock, and it is enough to bring you to climax before you realize it.

You swear your vision goes black for a moment as you cum, and the bliss fills your body over the irritation. It was embarrassingly fast how quickly he brought you to absolution, but you did not have enough might to let it wash over you the way your orgasm had.

Gwayne looks up at you with those big blue eyes of his, now glossed over. The lower half of his face is sheen with your cum—his cum—and he pants and lifts himself up to join you on the marble, his strong body glistening with the damp of the bath.

You think you might faint.

day fourteen

Tonight’s inn had been the nicest of all fourteen. You and Gwayne had jointly decided for it to be the last of your stops, and that you would make the journey the rest of the way there without sleeping.

It was not long to King’s Landing. As much as you had longed to see your mother, and to be home again, the thought of what would happen to Gwayne in the coming days was a thought too harrowing to bear.

But it had lingered in your mind since the field. Certainly he could not leave you, having taken your maidenhood. Your mother would find a way. She knows what it is like to be infatuated with someone you should not be infatuated with. She knows Gwayne. As a soldier for the opposition, yes, but she knows him all the more.

If she has held mercy for his sister, she would certainly hold mercy for him, especially given the situation at hand. The situation of you being in love with a Hightower, and him having bedded you—well, fucked you in a field, then in a bath, a few scattered moments along the road of him lapping at your cunt, or sticking his fingers there to cull your nerves the nights you were too tense to sleep. Your mother coddled you enough before you were taken hostage, and she would certainly do more once you are back with her.

Gwayne seems to sense your restlessness. You have resorted to single bed rooms in the inns, given the underestimated lack of coin he decided to bring with him. He has been able to pick up on your behavior for the last few days—noting to himself how much you lack sleep the closer you get to King’s Landing—and he has always been able to get you to talk about it. Tonight, you seem not wanting of his perception.

He turns over to face you. “Are you feeling well?” he asks.

You look to him for a moment. “I feel fine.”

Propping himself up on one arm, he maneuvers himself closer until he is hovering above you, as he stares down at where you lie. “You mustn’t need to lie.” His voice is soft.

Your lungs expand with a heavy breath of air. “I do not wish for you to leave when we return to the Red Keep. You told me that we would talk about it, and we never have.”

He brushes your hair behind your ear with his free hand. “What would you like to talk about?”

“I want us to wed.”

Gwayne stares into you. And then hangs his head low with laughter.

“I am serious, Gwayne. If you swore fealty to my mother, the rightful queen, she would show you mercy. I have no doubt she has shown it to your sister, and to your niece and her daughter too.” His smile was wiped from his face sometime as you spoke.

“You cannot be certain of that, though, can you princess?” he mumbles, raising his head back up to cock it to the side.

“I cannot.” You begin picking at the skin around your fingernails.

Gwayne places a hand over them, stopping you. “The agreement was for me to bring you, unharmed, to the Red Keep. And then I would leave, or they would have my head.” His hand envelops one of yours.

“My mother would not let them have it, if I simply tell her.”

“You speak lightly of a heavy thing, my princess.” He squeezes your hand a bit tighter. “If you so much as suggest that the Hightowers are anything less than treasonous vipers, your mother’s council will smell a captive who has learned to love her cage. You are her only daughter, yes, and she adores you. Therefore, if she discovers how thoroughly I have failed to keep my distance, amnesty will be the last thing she grants my house. It will be fire and blood, starting with my head on a pike.”

“She knows what it is like to love someone forbidden to her.”

Gwayne grins at your words. “She also knows she must satisfy her council,” he says softly.

As much as it pains you, you realize he is right. Yet he still remains as handsome as ever in the dark, and his lips are glossed over, looking so plump and lonely.

“Will you kiss me?” you mutter, and kiss you he does. His mouth is just as soft as you had imagined, and he is still so tender and hesitant in his ministrations you almost feel a want to take over.

Your lips are pliable, though, and part for him almost instantly. The hand that held yours comes up to cradle your cheek, and your legs open up a spot for him to slot himself into.

You are grateful for the loss of layers in spite of the outdoor elements—which have been terribly cold nearly the entire journey—as they give you easy access to the growing length in Gwayne’s linens.

He breathes a low groan into your mouth when you reach a hand under the fabric cuff of his waist to grip his cock. You pump him in a slow rhythm, and he nearly falters completely, the arm propping him up above you buckling and lowering him to his elbow.

The hand cradling your face moves to your own core, and he hastily hikes your shift up your thighs. His fingers find your cunt, pressing his thumb to your clit and stroking it.

The two of you breath and pant into one another’s mouth, the speed of both of your caresses increasing as your moans do.

“Would you—” Gwayne pants, “like me inside?”

You nod eagerly, and pull your hand from his cock. His own hand ceases motion on you, and he uses both arms to gather your body and flip you onto your stomach. The featherbed mattress bounces with the movement, and you reach your hands behind you to pull your shift up entirely to your middle, perking your ass up toward him.

Gwayne has already rid himself of his smallclothes in the meantime. He places a hand right above your backend, stabilizing both you and himself, and lines himself up with your cunt.

He leans his body over yours and presses soft kisses along your spine, pushing himself inside of you with a long groan. You let out a needy one all the same.

“Keep moving—” you beg, letting the top of your head fall to the pillow below you. He hums in response, and begins thrusting slowly, still hesitant.

It is a stretch, but a welcome one nonetheless. It is easy to lose trail of your thoughts with the drag of his cock in and out and the press of his chest to your back, the song of his pretty little grunts and groans singing in your ear.

He wraps his arms around your middle, one hand gripping a breast through the soft cotton of your shift. You flick your hair away from your neck, and his lips quickly find the spot, tipping you into absolute bliss.

One of his arms, the one not clutching your chest, sneaks down to your core, and he begins rubbing your clit with a seemingly endless vitality.

The other pushes the two of you up so that you are both standing on your knees. Your hands extend to his head behind you, pushing it closer as you awkwardly crane your neck so that you can join your lips with his in what may be the sloppiest way they have ever met each other.

His fingers continue their assault on your pearl, and his hips rock into you, and it all feels so much. So good, yet so much. Your chest rises and falls rapidly with each slam of his cock into your cunt, the strength of which also makes his head bob slightly into your kiss, coating the area above and below and beside your lips with his own spit.

There is little surprisingly little build-up to your release. It comes quick, like the tide coming in to take away a shell from the shore. It seems to tear through you, lighting up every nerve in your body, pulled straight from your breathless lungs and your racing heart and illuminating your frenzied brain with nothing other than euphoria.

He is still pumping in and out of you, seemingly chasing his own release. You feel a warmth deep in your overwhelmed cunt, and you know he has come, his body slowing entirely. He breaks away from your lips with a soft little cry, and you simply look at each other for a moment as your breath returns to the both of you.

In this moment, you think Ser Gwayne Hightower is the most beautiful creature in the world.

“You are more than a beauty,” he says in turn. You grin at him, still breathless, and join your lips together once more.

day sixteen

When you arrive at the gates of the Red Keep, Syrax and Caraxes are posted on the battlements.

You look over, and Gwayne seems as if he might just curl up and die. You scoff out a laugh at the sight, and he immediately straightens his back.

Open the gates, yells some guard from behind the wall, and the gate begin to part, grounding into the gravel below.

You will see your mother today. For the first time in months, you will see your mother. Will she be different? Is she a different person now that she is on the throne? More importantly, will she be a different person now that her eldest son is dead? You wonder if they have burned the body yet, or perhaps even set it out to sea. He could not become a Targaryen, as he would never become King—the gods would not allow it, so history will remember him as a Velaryon. It would only be fitting for his body to be released into the water.

You should tell her about this. She must be so overwhelmed with all of her recent duties, she may have forgotten about the fact. Is little Joffrey still in the Vale? Surely, mother must have sent for his return by now. He is too vulnerable there on his own, no matter who he is with.

When you blink hard in an attempt to settle yourself, you realize your horse has been guided inside the walls of the Keep, and Gwayne is helping you off of your horse. His hands are on your waist, and you jump down with a grip on his wrists to stabilize you. Yet your eyes are not on him—they are on any entrance, every door where your mother could come out of.

He sighs, and you finally glance at him. His hands hesitate to leave their spot on your middle. “You are home, and you are safe, my princess.” And then his arms drop back to his side, as if ashamed he let them linger for a moment too long.

“Must you go?” you breathe out a chuckle, trying to lighten the mood that seems to deepen with each passing moment.

His hand reaches for yours, and his voice is lower now. “It is the deal.”

For some reason, your heart seems to shatter. It feels odd and disheartening, knowing that he in this moment has a harsher effect on you than anything before.

Your expression has dropped, and Gwayne must be able to see it. His hand grips yours tighter, and he sucks in a breath, his head dropping to avoid your gaze. Your gaze, which quickly wells with tears. You are confused as to how this would have been the outcome of your journey together—and you are unsure if you are glad of it, or instead disappointed in yourself for not realizing that this is what would always happen.

You lower your voice too. “I do not want you to go,” you say, and your hand finally reciprocates Gwayne’s affection. You clutch it, tight, hoping it may get through to him.

It does not. His head does not lift, not even a single bit. You think you can see his brows furrow.

“I have done my duty, my princess,” he mumbles.

Hundreds of solutions flow through your mind in an instant. He could stay, swear fealty to your mother, and he could be yours. He could be your sworn shield and protector. He could be yours, if he would only say yes.

You open your mouth to say it, but nothing comes out. The words die on your tongue.

“Stay,” is what you can manage. “Please, Gwayne.”

His head tilts up, but he still averts his gaze from yours. Something else, something in the distance, catches his attention. It catches yours too. Two heads of familiar lengthy silver hair—your mother and her husband—inch closer to you and Gwayne.

The hand that held onto his was already back at your side. You must have done it without thought.

“Mummy,” you mumble. And she smiles.

She inches closer to you, seemingly dumbfounded that the sight before her is real. “Sweet girl,” she says, and you feel close to crumbling.

You want to step closer, to close the gap between the two of you, but you cannot bring yourself to leave his side.

But Gwayne is by your side one moment, and gone the next. He is pulled away by the gold cloaks, and it is with little struggle. He lets himself be pulled away. He lets himself be pushed out of the walls of the Keep, and he watches as you stand and stammer all bewildered and reaching to plead his forgiveness to the queen.

The gate closes on him once his horse is by his side.

day thirty five

You have not found much use for yourself since you have returned to the Red Keep. Neither has anyone else.

The war still rages on. It reminds you of the promise you had made to yourself, to leave if it did not end, to leave with Gwayne to Essos. He would be a sellsword, and you a scribe, under the protection of Silverwing.

It seemed a better life, a freer life, you and he on the road together. Being locked away in your chambers of your own volition, anything seemed better.

But Gwayne had abandoned you that day. He had let himself be carried away, and your mother had ignored your pleas of his fealty. It seemed nobody was on your side.

You had only wished for peace. Whatever had grown in place of it had taken your brothers away from you, and Gwayne, too, in some way.

If the war had not gone on, perhaps you could have met him another way. Perhaps he would have been your betrothed. And you could love him the way you wanted to, the way you should have since you woke up in the encampment with him by your side.

He had protected you all those months ago, you had come to realize. The violence of the men who fought under his command would have harmed you more than the words that came from his mouth when defending himself in your stupid fights, the ones you would feed into when he forced you to ride alongside him as the soldiers would march further into the Reach. The words that you replied with when he would anger you, when he would attempt to get close to you.

You should have let him get close to you when he tried. Your need for survival had prevailed then and you took every attempt as some sort of tactic to manipulate you to his side.

But Gwayne had no side, as you swiftly figured out. He wanted out of his cage seemingly as badly as you did, but he did the intelligent thing—the thing he warned you he would always do—and returned to his people, to those he swore loyalty to.

These days, it feels you have no people. Your mother is always off attending to her royal duties, your stepfather and cousins assisting her. And you have no brothers left to bond to. Joffrey is still too little, and too shy, to converse with. The others, your half-siblings, are just a few years young.

If the Hightowers had left you for dead that day, you think you would be more comfortable in the arms of the Stranger than you do in this seemingly haunted home. Your maidenhood would be untainted, and your memory would live on as tragic and loyal. You had left to fight for your mother’s cause after all and you would have died for it then, gods willing.

A piece of you wants to hurl yourself from a window for the treasonous thoughts you have had, but you just want peace. You want peace and freedom. Most of all, though, you want Gwayne.

You can only hope he wants you too, wherever he is. You will wait, and you will bide your time until the war is over—if you live until then. And you will take Silverwing and fly to him, and you will be with him, and you will exile yourselves to Essos. You will dream of that outcome until it happens.

Something deep inside you says it will.