call you back

You don’t belong in his world.

Half the night had been spent listening to Carol Perkins and Tommy Hagan gleefully dismantle half the student body, laughing themselves breathless as they picked classmates apart one by one.

And every time another name came up, your eyes had drifted to Steve.

Watching.

Waiting.

Trying to understand which version of him was real.

Because the boy sitting beside you—smirking into the neck of his beer while Tommy launched into another cruel impression of Betty Callahan's lisp—couldn't possibly be the same boy who waited outside your English classroom every Tuesday.

Leaning against the lockers with his hands tucked into his jacket pockets, smiling the moment he spotted you.

The Steve who kisses you on the cheek before walking you over to Chemistry.

The Steve who always peels the foil off your pudding cup without asking so you won’t get chocolate under your nails.

The Steve who drops to one knee in the middle of a crowded hallway to retie your shoelace, completely unfazed by the stares while your face burns hot enough to melt through the floor.

The Steve who insists on driving you home every afternoon, even though your neighborhood is twenty minutes in the opposite direction from Loch Nora.

Your Steve.

It makes your heart squeeze, watching it happen.

Watching him slip so effortlessly between the version of him that belonged to you, and the one that belonged to everyone else.

Always something a little distant, though, in those eyes, when the laughter fades and his gaze inevitably wanders back to find yours.

A flicker of something tired.  

Maybe you were imagining it.

Maybe wanting someone to be better than they were had a way of filling in all the empty spaces.

Or maybe...

Maybe being Steve Harrington was lonelier than it looked.

Maybe the boy who waited outside English every Tuesday was still in there somewhere, buried under the weight of being King.

Your worry the tab of your beer can with your thumb, spinning the little strip of metal around and around.

Beside you, Steve stretches out in the lounge chair with a quiet groan, long legs crossing at the ankles.

Against your better judgment, your eyes drift to him.

They always seem to.

It's infuriating, how inevitable it feels to be near Steve Harrington. 

You'd spent half the evening questioning whether you even liked him anymore, and the other half unable to stop looking.

From the corner of your eye, you catch him reaching into the back pocket of his jeans, fishing out a familiar red-and-white pack. He thumbs it open with practiced ease, taps the bottom against his palm until a cigarette slides neatly into waiting fingers.

The filter disappears between his plush lips, and your nose wrinkles before you can stop it.

"What?"

The word comes out muffled around the cigarette, low and amused.

You jerk your gaze upward, heat flooding your face.

Had he been watching you this whole time, too? 

He's smiling.

Not quite the easy, self-satisfied grin he'd worn all evening for the rest of his friends—this one’s a little softer, loosened by one too many beers and, maybe, just maybe, you think it’s the familiar comfort of finally being alone with you.  

Pool lights ripples across his face in shifting ribbons of blue and green. His hair’s still damp from earlier, when he’d cannonballed into the deep end without warning, resurfacing only to reach for your ankles while you squealed and scrambled away, laughing so hard you could barely keep your balance.

His lashes look darker when they're wet, clumping together at the tips, casting delicate shadows against his cheeks every time he blinks.

And those warm hazel eyes—they always lose a little of their swagger whenever they settle on you.

It's profoundly unfair that someone can be this beautiful.

Even now. Even with a cigarette hanging from the corner of his mouth, the lazy curve of his smile stretching his cupid's bow in a way that makes your stomach flutter.

It isn’t fair.

None of it is fair.

You lift a hand, gesturing vaguely toward his face. “Those.”

“Hm?”

“The cigarettes.”

He arches a brow. “What about ‘em?”

“You know those’ll kill you, right?”

Steve lets out the longest, most theatric groan you'd heard in your life, rolling his eyes toward the stars and letting his head thunk against the plastic lounge chair.

“God,” he sighs. “You are such a goody two-shoes.”

Your brows knit together as you sit up straighter, instinctively tugging your cardigan tighter around yourself against the chill of the night air—which, okay, maybe only proved his point a little.

“I am not.”

“Uh-huh,” he mumbles around the cigarette, patting at his pockets for a lighter.

“Seriously.”

“Mhm.”

He isn't even looking at you anymore.

Just turning his lighter over in his hands, fighting another smile around that stupid cigarette.

“I'm not!”

That finally earns you his attention.

His head rolls lazily toward you, cheek still resting against the back of the lounge chair. 

The silver Zippo spins effortlessly between his fingers, his thumb flicking the lid open and shut, open and shut.

Click. Click.

His eyes glitter with quiet amusement, warm enough to make your stomach flutter again.  

“You’re not?” he asks, almost gently.

“No,” you huff, though the conviction you'd started with has somewhat evaporated.

His smile grows wider. “Could've fooled me.”

Click. Click.

He never lights the cigarette.

He's too busy looking at you.

Gaze slowly dipping from your eyes down to your mouth, lingering there for the briefest heartbeat before drifting lower.

Over the neckline of your dress peeking out beneath your cardigan, one shoulder slipping free of the knit.

Down the curve of your waist, where the fabric cinches before flaring into the plaid skirt that fans over your thighs.

Lower still.

To where your hands rest, folded carefully in your lap.

Your cream knee-high socks.

The freshly polished black Mary Janes you'd changed into three different times before finally deciding they looked nicest.

Because, despite everything, some foolish, embarrassingly hopeful part of you had stood in front of your bedroom mirror wondering whether Steve Harrington would notice.

And when his gaze makes the slow climb back to your face, you don't miss the way it pauses at your mouth—the way his tongue darts out to catch the corner of his bottom lip, wetting it absently before the cigarette settles back into place.

“Prove it, then.”

Your breath catches.

“What?”

“Prove you're not a goody two-shoes.”

“I...”

It's difficult to string together a coherent thought when he's looking at you like that.

Most people look at you.

Steve looks into you.

He doesn't glance away the moment you catch him staring, doesn't flush or pretend he'd been looking somewhere else. 

Something so openly and unapologetically wanting in the way he looks at you, like he's forgotten that staring any longer ought to make him self-conscious.

Heat settles low in your stomach, climbing up your neck and spilling across your cheeks until you're certain he can feel it too. The condensation from your beer slicks your fingertips where they tighten around the aluminum can.

And you really don't know what it is that possesses you.

Maybe it's the warmth burning beneath your skin. Or maybe the sudden, irrational urge to wipe that smug look off his ridiculously handsome face.

“Fine,” you murmur.

Before common sense has the chance to intervene, you're leaning across the patio table, plucking a fresh beer from the cooler.

Your hand hesitates over the silver Swiss Army knife Tommy had abandoned after opening the last six-pack.

Steve watches the whole thing unfold, a smile tugging at his lips. 

“What’re you doing?” he asks.

You ignore him, turning the knife over in your hand, trying to remember exactly what he had done earlier.

It looked easy enough, one quick jab and a twist of the wrist.

Where had he stabbed it?

Near the rim?

No....

Lower?

“You okay, baby?”

The nickname lands with infuriating precision, exactly where he intends it to.

You pretend it doesn't.

“Need some help?” he teases, cigarette still balanced between his lips.

“No,” you mumble, brows furrowed in stubborn concentration, bracing yourself as you angle the blade against the side of the can.

One quick jab, and the aluminum gives with a satisfying pop.

Triumph flashes through you for exactly half a second, immediately replaced by regret. 

The knife slips. 

It's hardly more than a sting, more surprising than painful.

You hiss through your teeth, blinking down just as a bright bead of crimson wells against the pad of your thumb.

Steve's lounge chair screeches across the concrete so violently it almost tips backward. 

“Jesus—”

Cigarette abandoned without so much as a glance, tossed onto the damp patio where it rolls forgotten toward the pool.

He's in front of you in an instant, dropped to one knee, already reaching for your wrist before the beer has even started hissing.

“You okay?”

The teasing has vanished from his voice, the change so complete and sudden it’s like he’s transformed into another person.

“Shit, gimme that...” he mutters, taking the beer from you and setting it on the ground, cradling your hand in both of his. “C’mere, lemme see.”

His brows knit together as he carefully turns your palm over.

The injury is laughably small—just a paper-thin slice across the pad of your thumb, one bead of blood slowly gathering along the edge.

Judging by the deep furrow between Steve's brows, though, you'd think you'd severed the whole thing.

“Steve,” you laugh softly. “I'm fine. It's just a little cut.”

It's like he doesn't even hear you.

His entire world has narrowed to your hand.

Hazel eyes fixed on your thumb beneath the wavering blue glow of the pool lights, lips pinched in concentration as he tilts it this way and that, checking how deep the cut is.

It’s so... endearing.

So unmistakably Steve.

Your Steve.

The same boy who insists you wear his jacket if it’s the tiniest bit windy outside. Who carries Band-Aids in his glove compartment because you were forever nicking yourself on notebook paper. 

A little bossy when he’s worried, his stubborn streak a mile long when it comes to the people he cares about.

“Steve,” you murmur again, softer this time. “Really, I'm oka—”

The rest of the sentence catches in your throat.

It's so quick.

So instinctive, you don't think he even realizes he's doing it. 

One moment he's studying the tiny cut.

The next, your thumb is cradled between his lips.

Your entire body goes rigid.

You can't do anything except stare.

At the top of his head, where he’s bent over your hand.

The ring of warmth where his mouth seals around your thumb, swallowing the sting whole.

His lips are soft against your skin, his breath warm, and then comes the gentle, rhythmic pressure as he instinctively sucks away the tiny bead of blood welling from the cut.

Your mind goes frighteningly blank.

All you can feel is the way he’s cradling your hand in his palm, the delicate pull against your thumb and the soft cushion of his lips. The subtle shifts in pressure every time he breathes. 

Then comes the faintest brush.

The barest sweep of his tongue against the pad of your thumb—a thoughtless instinct, nothing more than an unconscious attempt to clean away the blood—but it sends goosebumps ripping through your skin, a shiver so violent it turns the glittering pool into liquid stars, turquoise shimmer blurring into streaks of fractured light.

You don't think you've taken a breath since the moment he touched you.

What can't be more than a second or two stretches impossibly thin, every heartbeat unfolding into its own lifetime. The chirping cicadas dissolve into silence until all that's left is the impossible awareness of where his mouth is.

Of where he's licking you.  

Then, just as suddenly as it began, it's over.

His lips part, breaking the seal with a faint pop.                     

Cool air kisses the damp warmth he'd left behind, the cut glistening faintly beneath the patio lights, a thin sheen of saliva that’s slowly soaking into your skin.

Steve sits back on his heels, absently dragging his tongue across his lower lip before pressing his lips together in a quiet, unconscious smack.

Something strikes you, then, with mortifying clarity:

He’s tasting something.

Smacking his lips, savoring the flavor, chasing it off his skin—

And it’s you.

Your blood.   

You aren't sure you're capable of movement, anymore.

Or speech.

Or breathing.

You simply sit there, staring at him with burning lungs and a heart that seems to have forgotten any rhythm beyond him.

You’re still gaping when he lets go of your hand with a sheepish laugh, gently setting it back in your lap. 

“Sorry,” he mumbles, rubbing the back of his neck. “Bad habit.”

A faint flush dusts his cheeks as he clears his throat, suddenly fascinated by the sliding glass door.

“Uh... I'm gonna go grab a first aid kit, okay? Just stay here.”

As he pushes himself to his feet, his thumb brushes lightly across your knee—another fleeting, absent touch, so automatic you doubt he’s even noticed it.

Then he's gone.

And only after the door slides behind him do you finally remember to breathe.

· · ·

Aside from the whole sucking-on-an-open-wound thing, Steve Harrington is surprisingly good at first aid.

The kit itself seems ancient—white plastic scuffed and yellowed with age, stocked with mismatched supplies accumulated over the years. Steve doesn't have to search for any of it. His hands move with certainty, flipping open bottles, tearing foil packets, finding exactly what he needs with the ease of someone who's done this dozens of times before.

You watch the practiced way he twists open the little bottle of antiseptic one-handed, balancing the cap against his knee while soaking a cotton pad, and curiosity gets the better of you.

“How are you so good at that?”

Steve glances up, lifting his shoulder in a shrug.

“Practice, I guess,” he says, wetting the cotton until it’s damp but not dripping. “Been playing baseball since I was a kid. Lots of sliding. Tore up my knees all the time. Hands, too.”

You don't ask why a little boy who scraped himself often had learned to clean and bandage his own cuts so well.

He couldn't have been older than six or seven, back then.

You press your lips together, bracing against the sting of the antiseptic as he brings the pad up to your skin.

Steve winces at the exact same moment you do, his own face pinching like he can somehow feel it too. He mumbles an apology, his free thumb rubbing absent circles against the side of your hand while he waits for the sting to ease.

“Almost done. Promise.”

He’s impossibly gentle, smoothing a thin layer of antibiotic ointment over the cut with the tip of his finger.

Then he reaches into the kit.

Comes back with a strip of pastel blue.

And you realize, with no small amount of disbelief, that it’s a Care Bear Band-Aid—Bedtime Bear smiles up at you beneath a crescent moon, tiny silver sparkles scattered across the backing paper.

You bite the inside of your cheek to keep from smiling.

You don't ask about that one, either.

He’s patient and careful, smoothing the edges of the Band-Aid down so it won't peel away. Satisfied, he turns your hand over in his own, inspecting his work.

Then, before you can ask what he's doing, he brings your thumb to his lips once more.

Only this time, it's just a kiss, light as a whisper, pressed directly over the little blue bear.

“There. All better.”

And it's in that moment the blurry outline you've carried of him suddenly comes into perfect focus.

Certainty in the endless contradiction that is the boy sitting in front of you.

Steve finally lets your hand slip from his, settling back into the faded lounge chair across from  yours. He reaches for his beer, takes a grimace-worthy sip of what has to be warm and flat by now, and exhales like he's just completed a twelve-hour operation instead of patching up a small cut.

You stay exactly where you are, hands in your lap, tracing the tiny blue bear wrapped around your thumb.

And you watch him.

You watch the boy who keeps children's Band-Aids in his first-aid kit.

The boy whose face crumbles like your smallest hurts belongs to him, too.

The boy who spent the whole evening pretending to be King, only to become your Steve the second you needed him.

The boy whose first instinct is always gentleness, no matter how hard he buries it beneath easy smiles and careless laughter.

Maybe the rest of it is just armor, then.

“You’re so weird, Steve Harrington.”

The words slip free before you can stop them, quiet with wonder.

He blinks at that. 

Those wide hazel eyes lift to yours, catching the pool lights until little flecks of amber and green shimmer beneath his lashes. You don't think you've ever seen anything prettier.

A crooked smile tugs at one corner of his mouth.

He lets out a small, breathy huff of laughter, his head tipping to the side in that hopelessly puppy-like way he has whenever he's confused.

“I'm weird?”

“Yeah.” You can't help smiling back, something warm and impossibly fond blooming beneath your ribs.

His smile softens, gaze flicking down between the two of you.

“You know...” he murmurs, rubbing the label on his beer bottle with his thumb. “You don't have to sit so far away from me.”

He nods toward the gap between your chairs, eyeing the empty stretch of patio separating the two of you.

Three feet of sun-faded concrete, and he looks at it like it's an ocean.

Then his gaze slowly drifts lower, to the space between his spread knees.

Dark denim stretched over strong thighs, his hand lands there with two lazy pats—an unmistakable invitation, casual as anything—and suddenly your entire neck feels like it's on fire.

“C’mere.”

You blink hard, dragging your attention back to his face before it can linger anywhere entirely inappropriate.

Folding your arms across your chest with all the dignity you can still muster, you narrow your eyes at him, lips pursed in suspicion, determined not to fall for whatever unfairly charming stunt Steve Harrington thinks he's pulling.

“Why?”

Steve answers with another theatrical sigh and a fond little roll of his eyes.

“Because—”

He cuts himself off.

Having decided, apparently, that explaining is too much work.

Instead, he leans forward.

Wraps one hand around the leg of your lounge chair.

“...Steve.”

He gives you a completely innocent look.

“What?”

Before you can answer, he drags it forward, the chair letting out a horrible screech as it scrapes across the wet concrete.

“Wha—Steve!”

Another yank, and your chair slides straight into his with a hollow clack.

Satisfied, he dusts his hands together.

“See?” He sits back, completely pleased with himself. “Better.”

You stare at him, too flustered to actually be upset.

“I can’t believe you.”

“What?” he shrugs, a small frown tugging at his brows. “You were too far away.”

Then he smiles.

You swear Steve Harrington could talk himself out of murder with that goddamn smile.

Nothing but boyish charm and that unique brand of hopeless, lovesick devotion, so obvious you wonder how he can be so unaware of it.

And before you can come up with a clever enough response, he reaches for you. His hand gently closing around your wrist, thumb brushing over your pulse before his fingers slip lower, pushing into the spaces between yours until your hands are laced together.

“Didn't get to kiss you all night,” he murmurs, voice gone quiet.

And it's so easy, then, to remember why you fell for this stupid boy.

The way he looks at you and just says things sometimes—things so completely unexpected they make your heart stutter, your stomach twist, your face feel like it’s been set on fire.

You let out a quiet breath through your nose, fighting your own smile.

You don’t pull away, but you don’t lean in either.

Instead, you straighten just enough to make him close the distance himself, letting your eyes flutter shut.

Make him come to you.

You feel his smile before you feel the kiss.

The familiar curve of his lips, then the soft nudge of his nose against your cheek. The way his hand comes up to your jaw, gentle fingers pushing into your hair, pulling you closer.

He kisses you until you feel dizzy with it, light with air and heavy with him, until you’re gasping against his mouth and pressing lightly against his shoulders to pull back.

When he blinks his eyes open again, his pupils are dazed, dark and blown wide. He swipes his tongue over his swollen lips, chest heaving as he tries to catch his breath.

“You, uh...” His voice comes out noticeably rougher, a couple pitches lower than usual. “You still think I’m weird?”

You can’t help the smile that tugs at your mouth as you lean in, pressing a quick kiss to his cheek. Another threatens to break through when you immediately feel the warmth there, the faint flush beneath your lips that betrays him completely, no matter how hard he tries to keep up the act.

Before he can recover, you’re standing up.

“C’mon,” you say, holding out your hand. Then, with the most innocent expression you can manage: “Let’s go wash off the chlorine.”

Steve pauses.

He cocks his head at you in confusion, eyes narrowing as he studies the smile you’re very obviously trying to hide.

“...What?”

“You know. Like Carol and Tommy are doing?”

It takes him a second, but then you see it click.

And for once, Steve Harrington—king of effortless charm and perfectly timed one-liners—doesn’t have a single thing to say.