Peony Always

it’s nice at first, being taken care of like this — but soon it feels a little condescending and sometimes even chauvinistic. there are boundaries you try to set with him, stressing that you’re not stupid. and steve does know that! you’re the smartest prettiest angel he’s ever seen! but a little thing like you shouldn’t have to carry the world on your shoulders. he sweet talks you, calms you down, telling you that he simply loves spoiling you and could very happily do so for the rest of his life.

but it doesn’t really feel like he’s spoiling you when he’s sizing up a guy who you were making small talk with while waiting for your drink at the bar. you watch your sweet steve turn from a puppy into a watch dog, his fingers digging into your waist and ushering you away from the presence of whatever “sleaze” was just “trying to fuck you.” that’s how steve sees the interaction, at least. as a threat. someone who wants to take you away from him.

you blow up at him when the cool outside air hits you. breaking out of his grip to shove your pointer finger into his chest and scolding him, words vicious, things you don’t really mean but you’re just so sick of him acting like you’re incapable of existing without him.

“i’m a big girl, steve, i can fucking handle myself!”

this is where steve disagrees with you. but he lets you rant at him until your throat hurts, and he lets you poke at his chest until it turns red. he lets you seethe in the car on the way home. most shocking of all, he doesn’t argue with you when you tell him you need a little space, a few days to just breathe without him watching you as if you might choke on air at any given moment.

he gives you a few days. it’s agonizing torture for him, and he sort of hopes it’s the same for you, too. though you do actually seem a lot happier when he watches you from the parking lot of the hawkins public pool, dressed in a goddamn bikini, one that he bought you, one that you’re only supposed to wear at his place. surrounded by friends with your tits barely concealed, where the lowliest trash in town can have an eyeful of your body.

he has half the mind to get out of his car and drag you away, but he knows better than to blow his cover now. so he waits until you’re tucked in bed that night to knock on your window and sweetly ask if you’d let him in. just to talk. nothing else. promise!

but would steve really be a loving boyfriend if he let you get away with that shit? no! he’s gotta fight for you, doesn’t he? even if that means tying you to your headboard haphazardly with a silk scarf when you get all combative again. even if that means slapping his hand over your mouth so that you’d just listen to him instead of arguing. until he finally shoves your underwear into your mouth with a regrettable sigh because you’re acting like someone you’re not.

“where’d my good girl go?” he asks softly, hands tracing down your body, cloaked in one of his oversized hawkins basketball shirts and nothing more. “what happened, baby? hm?”

you try to argue with him, but nothing quite makes sense past the cotton in your mouth.

a hand lingers at the base of your neck, steve’s finger gently tracing over the golden s that hangs on an expensive chain he got you. he’s at least pleased that you haven’t removed it, but it seems that, perhaps, it’s not doing such a good job at reminding you of who you belong to.

“i know you’re mad at me,” he says, sounding absentminded as his fingers continue to stroke his initial. it looks so pretty on you. “let me make it up to you, okay?”

you let him push your legs apart. you let him push his old t-shirt up over your breasts. you let him kiss down your neck while your chest rapidly rises and falls, clearly worked up — pissed at him and so wildly turned on that your sheets are darkening under you, wet with your arousal.

he fucks the look right out of you. spreads your legs wide and hitches them up on his shoulders, bending you in half. pushes in with one brutal thrust, a perverse sense of pride overtaking him while he watches your eyes widen and your fists clench above you.

“said you were a big girl,” he groans. “now you’re lookin’ at me like you can’t take it. need me to help you, huh?”

you clench hard around him, hips bucking, trying to get away from the stretch.

steve laughs. “yeah. just like i fuckin’ thought.”

every thrust is rough, but there’s intention behind it. each push of his hips is slow and deep, tilted just right, the tip of him sweeping over your g-spot over and over. you couldn’t even find it with your dumb little fingers before him. each press is a kiss to the deepest part of you — i love you. i love you. i love you. let me.

“i can be better,” he groans in your ear. “fuck, honey, let me show you.”

that doesn’t mean he’ll take a step back — instead, he means that he’ll help you get used to him. to his hand on the small of your back, to his overwhelming need to take care of you, to the rest of your lives together where you don’t lift a fucking finger except for him to put a ring on it and for you to take care of his kids.

You didn’t bother to elaborate beyond that, eyes going back to being glued between his legs.

His teeth grind together. “You’re what?”

Katsuki knew you had gone to lengths before to get on his nerves, but this unabashed leering was a new low. Even for you.

He could feel you tracing every curve, each fold of the fabric as you scrutinized the outline of what was right under.

“Catching. Print.” you repeated it back to him slowly, talking down to him like it was his fault for not knowing whatever bullshit you were on about now.

“The fuck does that mean?”

Your eyes finally peeled away from him, seemingly satisfied, now focusing on your pen gliding across your paper.

He didn’t miss the small smile that tugged at the corners of your mouth as you answered.

“It’s this method to guesstimate dick size. Foolproof.”

For a moment, he felt warm. He swallowed, feeling his heart stutter in his chest. For a moment, he was weak. Because that’s what you did to him— you found a way to worm under his skin, you leeched off of him acting like an idiot.

He slumped down onto his chair and dug his pen into the paper in front of him, signing to the bottom with enough pressure to nearly tear through the parchment.

He grabbed the next document harshly, shooting you a glare through furrowed brows.

“You really are a pervert.”

“Well, never said I wasn’t.”

Something about the unbothered acceptance in your voice made his jaw tic. “You don’t see me starin’ at your—”

He made a vague gesture towards your chest, that spontaneous need to one-up you leaving his body the very second he actually looked; the very tips of his ears dusted pink. The corner of his mouth twitched as though itching to say the word, but he couldn’t quite get it out.

You cocked your head to the side, leaning in by pushing closer into the desk between the two of you, your chest pressing against the edge of it. “My boobs?”

He didn’t know how to respond, stuck with his eyes darting from down there back to your slowly curving lips.

You forced that smile back as quickly as it came, feigning consideration while tapping your chin, looking off to the side. “I mean, you can.”

You said it so casually. Like that was something he could really do, like that wouldn’t mean anything. You were already going back to your paperwork, unaffected while his stomach was flipping at even just the thought.

He hated it, hated how stupid you got him.

“You’re so fucking shameless.” he bit out.

“Hey," your lower lip jutted a little. "Only honest.”

He forced his attention back to the same document he had been on for the past fifteen minutes before letting himself speak again.

“What’s your stupid method say ‘bout me, huh?”

“Definitely an A.”

“What?”

You offered him a grin. “You’re an A!”

“I heard you the first time, dipshit.” he practically seethed. “Doesn’t explain what the hell that’s supposed to mean.”

You sighed, as if whatever you said was meant to make sense. It was when you moved to stand up that he noticed you had finished signing your final document.

He spared a quick glance at his own pile; barely halfway through.

“So, you can either be an A, a B, or a D.” you explained, counting out the three options on your fingers after you finished straightening out your pile of paper.

An A, you said. The first letter of the alphabet. That had to be a good thing, right?

Katsuki had the initial instinct to feel proud before he noticed that gleam in your eye: all smug, testing.

You always did get something out of pushing his buttons. His eyes narrowed as you gathered up your completed paperwork in one hand.

“That’s smallest to biggest.” you continued, matter of fact, a small frown on your face as if sorry for him. You circled around the desk, coming behind him.

“S’okay, though.” You gave him a small pat on the shoulder. “Your ego almost makes up for it.”

Just like that, you were stepping out of the office room, leaving him behind to process what the fuck you just implied.

You were already in the elevator down the hall when you heard the crackle of a small explosion, followed by a door slamming open.

You watched Katsuki’s enraged stomping figure getting closer and closer as you pressed the close door button calmly and gave him a small smile, waving with your free hand as the double doors shut right in his livid face.

The slamming of his furious fists against the door grew quieter as the elevator moved down, and you let yourself laugh.

Of course, you had lied, just to get a rise out of him. Because, what you really caught?

An undeniable D.

DIVIDER CREDS — cafekitsune !

may blabs: catching print is in fact revolutionary btw.

ty to briar ( @cupidkats ) for beta reading ilu twin ❤️‍🩹❤️‍🩹

“dizzy?” leon repeats, the word flattening as he studies you. his gaze drops almost automatically to your hands, and that’s when he notices the shine along your fingers. deep, red wet. the flashlight lifts slightly, the beam catching the dark stain spreading through fabric and dripping from where you’re trying to hold it in.

“jesus christ,” he mutters under his breath.

there was blood that had already begun to dry, tacky along the edges where it’s been there long enough to thicken. it isn’t fresh. it’s been bleeding for a while.

which means you’ve been hiding it.

leon crosses the distance between you in two quick strides, crouching immediately as the flashlight slips from his hand and rolls across the floor. his movements are fast but he knows what he's doing, its efficiency—much better than your reaction to him getting hurt on a mission one time and you cried like a baby dressing his wound. life of an empath.

leon grabs your arm and pulls it away from your side, exposing the torn fabric underneath. the second the pressure lifts, fresh blood wells up through the opening. he looks at you dead in your face and you know you can’t look him in the eye—so he forces your to with a turn of your jaw.

“why would you do something so stupid, huh?” he mutters, though the tension in his voice isn’t anger so much as something tighter, something so close to panic. “why didn’t you say anything?”

your head tips back slightly against the wall, vision swimming as the flickering fluorescent lights above you smear together. “i didn’t wanna disappoint you..” you admit quietly, the words sounding almost apologetic. “you said i did so good.”

for a second leon goes completely still then he exhales sharply through his nose and tears open a sterile gauze packet with his teeth, pressing the thick padding hard against the wound. pain flares instantly, sharp enough to drag a quiet gasp out of you as your body jerks.

“i did,” he mutters, voice rougher now as he guides your shaking hand down over the gauze. “i did say that.” he presses your palm firmly into place, making sure you keep the pressure there. “hold onto this, alright? keep pressure on it and keep talking to me.”

your fingers barely cooperate, trembling as they press weakly against the bandage. “leon..” your voice wavers slightly, the edges of your vision beginning to blur. “i really don’t feel good..”

he’s already pulling a compression wrap from his kit, hands moving quickly as he begins securing the gauze around your side. “yeah,” he mutters dryly, trying to keep his tone steady despite the way his jaw has tightened. “i figured. you know, i’d be worried if you said bleeding out was a good time.”

the weak joke pulls a small, breathy giggle from you, the sound almost delirious as your head tilts slightly to the side. “funny guy..”

your smile fades slowly as your eyes drift back toward his face, studying him with a hazy focus. “leon.. you’re so handsome..” you murmur again, voice softer now. “if i die.. will you be sad..? don’t—don’t replace me with someone prettier than me.. get some old guy who’s a little mean to you, like chris..”

his head snaps up immediately. “don’t say that,” he scolds, the words cutting through the air as he tightens the wrap around your side. “we’re getting out of here. you’re gonna get stitched up, and then you’re gonna explain why you thought hiding this was a good idea.”

you blink slowly, eyelids growing heavy. “can i ask you something..?” you mumble.

leon sighs faintly as he finishes securing the bandage, though he doesn’t stop working. “anything, but i need you to keep your eyes open.” he gives your cheek two soft (but firm) pats that make you a little more alert and you whisper an apology.

your voice comes out quieter now, drifting somewhere between consciousness and exhaustion. “would you ever see me as anything more than your coworker..?”

his hands pause for half a second before continuing their work. “in what way are you asking, sugar?” he asks.

your gaze drifts back to him, unfocused but earnest. “in a… boyfriend-girlfriend way..”

leon lets out a quiet breath that almost sounds like a tired laugh, of course. of course you decide now is the time to ask that as he’s pressing his hand firmly over yours, reinforcing the pressure against the bandage so you don’t bleed out.

“survive this,” he says, voice low and steady despite the tension running through him. “and you’ll get my answer.”

You paused before you opened the door, still feeling anxious about greeting him despite spending most of your time around him. When you did, you could smell the alcohol on him, and then how he desperately tried to cover the smell with cologne. Your nostrils were too sharp to be fooled.

You never called him out on his alcoholic tendencies, you felt like that wasn’t your place. He always drank a little more than everyone else at work parties and he refilled his flask more often the week before a mission.

“You really didn’t have to come over early in the morning to do this,” you sighed, watching Leon fix your shower as you applied your makeup in your bathroom mirror. “I could’ve called someone.”

“You hate calling people. Also, I’d rather not have a smelly assistant. We share the same office. If you stink, it’ll affect me too,” he mumbled as he fiddled around with a new shower head. “Plus. I’ve saved you a bit of money.”

“I’m not broke, Leon,” you rolled your eyes and continued humming to the music that was playing through your phone. Was it really normal to have your boss fix your shower before the two of you went to work? Probably not. But you didn’t care, you liked spending time with him before his missions.

Leon was going on a mission today, hence the smell of alcohol. You were on comms. You had done this several times before, and all had gone accordingly. So why did you feel so nervous?

“Did you sleep tonight?” he asked, seeing how puffy and red your eyes were, and the dark bags that were run over by concealer. He reached over to the bacon and egg sandwich you made him, the yolk spilling out of the sandwich onto his lap, hoping you didn’t notice.

“Yeah…yeah. Of course I did.”

“Don’t fall asleep on comms,” he muttered, his eyes now focused on the shower.

“Tsk, when has comms ever gone wrong between the two of us?” you spoke. He was going to say something like ‘don’t jinx it’ but your phone began to ring. “Hold on, my mom is calling me.”

“You don’t have to answer, you know."

“Leon, it’s fine,” you assured him, leaving the bathroom to answer the phone.

“Whatever you say.”

He only wanted to snatch the phone out of your hand and tell you that everything you did in his office was the best he had ever seen, and that he doesn’t think he could ever find an assistant that was better than you. Seeing your demeanour crumple after calls with your parents made something boil within him. But it wasn’t his place to dictate your relationship with them.

He settled on getting you cake instead.

“Happy now?” He asked, watching you eat the cake in his car as he drove you to the DSO building.

“Extremely,” you smiled, trying not to get crumbs and frosting everywhere. “So, if you keep note of the alternative route around the left side of the building…”

He wasn’t listening. He already had your notes memorised. Every reroute, every exit, every blind spot. Sometimes he thought that you were just reading them out loud for yourself, just to be certain that he was going to be safe. His hand rested loosely on the steering wheel, the other drumming on his lap.

You always did this, you smoothed out every crinkle in every plan, threaded exit routes in every step and tied up any blind spots.

“And then if you go into the server room there should be…”

After Raccoon City, he needed it - to listen to every instruction, every report, every detail because he knew one small mistake could lead to hundreds of thousands dying. Back then it was screaming, fire, radios and broken signals, people who didn’t understand what was happening, people who never got to finish their sentences. People who never made it out.

He glanced at you, your eyebrows were tightly knit, your tablet in your hands. Sometimes you stumbled through your words as you read off your notes. You never did that.

Seeing your determination to keep everyone safe and ensure no one was in distress reminded him of himself and he admired you for it. So why couldn’t he like himself when he shared the same quality?

Bright headlights flashed by, and he blinked, refocusing on the road.

“If the east exit is blocked then you can go around the…”

He exhaled through his nose. Were you concerned or was it your perfectionism taking over? Maybe it was the concern that drove the perfectionism.

The only thing running through his mind was your face after his mission, and the pleasant relief that shined on it despite you trying to remain professional. The clicking of your heels as you basically ran up to him, and then the celebratory meal you guys would get afterwards. Just think about that Kennedy.

“Leon, are you even listening?” you cut him from his thoughts.

“Every word,” he said, a slight truth within his words.

The buzz of the office continued around you as you set up your headset. Co-workers walked around the maze of desks, passing files and handing each other mugs of coffee.

“Okay. Are you there, Leon?” You asked, the bright screen illuminating your face- making your eyes sting more than they already were.

A few seconds of static.

“Yeah.” His voice low and steady like it always was.

Your fingers moved across the keyboard, pulling up maps and images.

“Perfect.” You chirped, swinging your leg over the other. “Comms check.”

You could hear him let out a small laugh, “loud and clear, ma’am.”

Your eyes were red and puffy with exhaustion, and when you looked around things were blurry at first until you blinked it away. Everything was running smoothly, just according to plan – well that’s what you told yourself.

A heat signature flickered briefly and then disappeared. You weren’t sure if it was you or the camera. This exhaustion had been plaguing you for a while now, but you saw this as weakness.

“Hold on,” you said, squinting your eyes and leaning closer to the screen.

“What’s wrong, boss?” Did he always have to make such stupid jokes in the middle of something so dire?

Nothing. “Clear.”

“You sure?” He asked.

“Certain,” you confirmed, eyes darting across the screen.

“Alright then.”

The camera caught movement. Gunshots. A string of them.

“Leon!”

He groaned and staggered back, throwing himself behind a wall. His body slammed against the wall and he coughed.

“Leon,” you repeated yourself, heart pounding.

“It’s fine.”

“I thought- I thought it was clear-“ you stuttered, your fingers trembling against the keyboard.

“y/n. It happens.” He hissed through his teeth.

It does not happen. He lowered his guard because of you. You said that with confidence and certainty. You almost got him killed. You were incompetent.

The medical room was quiet. You sat in the waiting room with your leg bouncing up and down and nausea torturing your stomach. The gunshot kept playing in your head over and over again. The flicker of a heat signature. Your mistake. He trusted you. You got him hurt. He had done nothing but make you feel comfortable at the DSO, and you hurt him.

The nurse told you that you could go in now.

His dark hair laid against the white of the pillow, his arm bandaged and in a sling. He was sat up in a bed, a thin blanket pooling around his legs.

“Hey, you.”

“Hi,” you squeaked. You pressed your lips together as your eyes wandered along the floor.

“Sit,” he commanded, flickering his eyes to the seat next to him and then you.

You sat down next to him, placing your hands on his bed. His free hand grabbed your hand, rubbing small circles into your palm with his thumb.

“You got shot because of me.” you broke the silence.

“I’m pretty sure the guy with the gun did that.”

“Not funny.”

“A little funny.”

“I shouldn’t be doing comms-“

“No.” Leon said firmly, his hand tightening around yours. “That’s not happening.”

“Leon, you got hurt because of me.”

“That’s a part of the job description – getting hurt. You were just doing your job and it was a slip up. I’m still here.” he stated, watching you refuse eye contact with him.

“But what if-“

“You’re working for me because you catch things other people don’t. You made one mistake and that’s okay. You’ve saved me hundreds of times before. One mistake doesn’t undo that.” he said, as if he had planned what he was going to say a million times. Like he knew you were going to react this way.

“We can’t afford mistakes. Not if it gets you hurt.” You said coldly, standing up. “I have reports to finish.”

“y/n-“ he started, but you opened the door and left the room.

The sling stared at you, a physical manifestation of the guilt that had been dragging you down for the past week, a reminder of your mistake as if it hadn’t been buried in your brain. You hated it, because it told you that you failed, you failed the one person that had never failed you. The sling made your mistake real, the type of real that you didn’t want to face. It was ugly and sickening and he had to wear it around his neck like a public announcement.

“Wanna get lunch together? On me?” he would ask, attempting to find a smile on your face.

“It’s okay, I already made my own lunch.” you would reply coldly. There was no pre-made lunch in your bag.

The plants were dying and shrivelling under the heat. Your new workload made you forget about them.

You began repenting for your mistakes by staying at your desk until midnight. Words were restrained with you, greeting people and waving became small nods of acknowledgement. Stepping foot outside of the office wasn’t a thing that you did anymore.

“I’m worried about you. What is this about, y/n? What’s wrong?” he asked once.

“I’m fine, I’m just a bit tired.”

“Well, get some rest tonight. You can take tomorrow morning off, it’s fine by me.”

“It’s fine, I’ll just go to bed earlier tonight. You need me tomorrow anyway.”

The white sling stared back at you.

“You need to redo this report; there are plenty of typos and sentences that aren’t finished.” A supervisor said, handing back your report to you, humiliating you in front of Leon.

“Yes sir,” you mumbled, your eyes refusing to meet his.

One afternoon, you couldn’t handle it anymore. It took one look at the sling. It made you sick, the way you hurt him, the way he groaned when he got shot, the way his end was silent for a second.

You hid yourself in a toilet stall, your head in your hands.

You never made mistakes; you had never been the mistake-making person. And now all of a sudden, you make one mistake and it sets off a whole chain of them.

For your entire life, being good enough was never a thing. Constantly chasing after perfectionism was something you did throughout childhood, and it had long been running through adulthood. It ruined you, being constantly unsatisfied with your work and now you could finally feel yourself drowning and suffocating.

You worked so hard all week ensuring there was not a fault in your plan, yet someone got hurt anyway. Leon got hurt due to your mistake. He trusted you and now you blew it.

Your chest tightened, sharp pains every time you breathed.

Your brother was handling operations at your age, yet here you were, having a panic attack in the toilets because you messed up once.

Your brother died over a mistake. Mistakes were not allowed after that.

The rule was unspoken, but it was seen in your mother’s disappointment when your report card wasn’t perfect, or when you tried piano for the first time and you weren’t immediately a prodigy at it. You only wanted to make them proud, to be the perfect daughter. Troubled nights became the norm, obsessively running over every error you had ever made and perfecting it in your brain.

Accepting anything other than perfect was impossible. Dying was preferable to handing in an unperfected report. You would have rather not tried at all than try and it not being perfect and if made you a coward, that was fine with you.

Your fingers twisted into your hair, trying to hold back a sob, like you were trying to pull these thoughts out of your head before your breathing became any harder to control.

The shot. The silence. His pained hiss.

What if the bullet landed somewhere else? What if it was a repeat of your brother all over again?

The image of your mother crying at the kitchen counter, the funeral that came too soon. You were forced to come to terms with death before you even really knew what life was.

You breathed in slowly, and out. Your breath was still shaking and fast. In and out. Slowly, you brought yourself up out of the lake you were drowning in.

The bathroom stall was left empty, and you returned to your desk like nothing happened.

It was the evening. You had just left, pens scattered across your desk and piles of reports that needed to be re-written. It was another successful day of avoiding Leon as much as humanly possible in the confined space of his office.

Leon needed a file, but your top drawer was slightly open. He couldn’t help himself. Something caught his eye - a piece of paper.

‘Formal Notice of Resignation’

You idiot.

“You gotta be kidding me,” he muttered and left the office with only one thing on his mind: finding you.

Grey clouds swirled around the city and you were half-way through the car park until a deep voice called your name. Feeling like a deer caught in headlights, you stared at the man in the leather jacket who was practically running over to you.

“What is this?” He asked, his eyebrows furrowed, holding up the piece of paper. You cringed, as if he found your diary.

“I was going to tell you soon,” you mumbled, staring at his shoes because his eyes would pierce right through you. “I didn’t want to be dramatic about it.”

“So what? You were going to tell me after you had disappeared?!” he said, jaw tight. “You are not leaving.”

“That is not your decision to make,” you hissed, your hand clenching around your bag strap.

“You’ve been with me on every operation this year. You’ve prepped every mission, every-“

“That’s exactly why I’m leaving,” you interrupted him, “I can’t keep sitting behind a screen watching you almost die.”

“That’s the job you signed up for.”

“Yeah, and I didn’t think it would feel this way,” you admitted.

“Feel what way?”

“I- You think I, I enjoy doing that?” you avoided the question, feeling rain begin to spit in your face.

“You make one mistake and you decide to run away. That’s your solution?” He questioned, a short laugh fell from his lips.

“I’m not running away! I’m protecting you!”

The rain hit harder against the ground, puddles beginning to form.

He huffed, water droplets sliding down his jacket. “Protecting me? You’re the best assistant I’ve ever had. The best analyst we’ve had in field operations for a long time!”

“That doesn’t matter.”

“Yes, it does, you’ve saved me hundreds of times, more than I can count. One mistake doesn’t undo everything.”

“I’m not making the same mistake twice. I refuse to be the reason you get hurt again.”

“This isn’t about the mission, is it?”

You walked away from him.

“Walking away isn’t protecting me! You’re punishing yourself!” he called after you.

Something in you snapped, because if he was going to prod around at your personal life then he can shove a stick up his nosy ass-

“Leave me alone, Leon, you think I don’t notice the copious amounts of alcohol you drink every day?” you yelled, “Why are you begging me to come back to a job that is already destroying you? Because you want someone else in your- in your fucking nightmare?”

His paused and his expression changed.

“I’m asking you to not walk away from something you’re good at because you’re scared,” he said, a sadness lacing through his words. His hair was soaked in the rain, sticking to his face.

“I’m not scared. I’m removing myself from being the reason that another mistake happens.”

“You know what? If one mistake is enough to make you quit, then I truly think you weren’t cut out for the job in the first place,” he bit back, his words slapping you in the face before he could stop them.

“At least I’m not roping someone to stay in a job that has destroyed them,” you fumed.

You walked away before you continued bickering with this stubborn, middle-aged man any longer.

“At least I still have the balls to do the job,” he muttered, watching you grow smaller and smaller until you disappeared out of the car park as his chest rapidly moved up and down, his hands in tight fists.

edit: part 4 is here

Note: next chapter is even more angsty LMFAO, but it ends with leon taking us back to his apartment. and I regret to inform but I am closing my taglist cause holy shit... the amount of love is LITERALLY overwhelming, thank you guys so much <3

But he wasn’t, he couldn’t. Because sleep brought back the memories he tried to forget. The ones he wanted nothing more than to forget. The look on your face as the light left your eyes and your body grew cold in his arms. No matter what he did, no matter how much alcohol he drank, no matter how little he slept, no matter how much he tried to forget, it seemed nothing would ever be able to wipe that image from his brain. 

Every time he closed his eyes, every time he saw a framed picture of the two of you lying somewhere in his house, he would see it. You, dying, because he couldn’t protect you. Because he was just one second too late. One measly second too late before the demo bats got to you. Steve Harrington, the babysitter, the protector, couldn’t even protect the one person that mattered the most to him. What a joke. 

Steve had just gotten out of the shower when Robin told him she was going to sleep, but to not be afraid to wake her if he needed her. It was always the same spiel, but Steve never really listened to it, choosing to suffer in silence rather than wake his best friend because of a nightmare. She shouldn’t have to deal with his grieving more than she already did, even if she did promise she wouldn’t mind. Robin had her own mourning to do as well, after all. The two of you became close friends after Steve got his job at Scoops, and introduced you to his coworker, and you were all trapped in a Russian elevator together. 

Steve wished her a goodnight with a smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes as the girl retreated to the guest bedroom that had now become hers (it even already had Bowie and Madonna posters hung up on its walls), and as he worked on drying his hair and getting dressed. 

He waited for the sound of the door shutting closed, followed by a lull of silence and eventually the sound of Robin’s snores drifting into the hallway. Then, he made his way downstairs to the kitchen, opened the fridge, and got out the first can of beer he could find, leaning against the kitchen island and sinking to the floor as he slowly nursed the beer in his hand. 

Steve wasn’t the biggest fan of drinking anymore, too many bad memories associated with it. Still, he occasionally allowed himself this because sometimes, when he was lucky, he would drink just enough alcohol to convince himself to see you, or some version of you.

Tonight was a lucky one. 

It only took two discarded cans on the floor and one in his hand for you to appear. That same twinkle in your eye when you looked at him. That same smile that could give him a heart attack. That same worried crease in your eyebrows that Steve wishes he could smooth out with his thumb. 

Worry for him.

His stomach churns at the thought. 

“Hi, honey,” he greets, words slightly slurred as he gives you a lazy smile that still doesn’t quite reach his eyes. 

“Hi, Stevie,” you greet in return, voice soft as your hand grazes his arm. He wishes he could feel it. He misses when he could hold you in his arms, feel you breathing against him, feel your touch. “How are you holding up?”

He only shrugs as he takes another swig from his beer. “I miss you,” he mumbles, so quietly he doesn’t think you’d be able to hear it if you were really here. God, does he wish you were really here.

You frown, and it makes Steve’s heart hurt just a little more. “I miss you too,” you say, pressing a kiss to his forehead. 

Steve could say every little thing he missed about you until he was blue in the face, and even then, he’d still have more to say. Your voice, your laugh, your kisses, your smile, your touch. 

“I’m sorry,” he whispers, ducking his head to avoid your gaze. He already knows how your face would look, he’s seen it every night he apologizes for not being able to save you. Sorrow, forgiveness, love. You truly were too good for this world. 

“I’ve told you to stop apologizing,” you murmur with a small roll of your eyes. It’s enough to crack the tiniest of smiles from him. 

“It should’ve been me,” he counters quietly. 

“Steve–“ you start, but he’s quick to cut you off.

“It should’ve,” he repeats, voice softer, sadder. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to do without you. How I’m supposed to live without you… I should’ve done more to keep you safe.”

Your hand raises to brush his hair back from his face, and Steve wishes he could feel your hands in his hair again. He wishes he could take your hand in his and press a kiss to the back of it. 

“You can’t keep blaming yourself, honey,” you murmur, voice soft as your eyes search his. “There was nothing you could’ve done.”

Steve thinks he’ll spend the rest of his life thinking about the ways he could’ve prevented this. He could’ve made you stay on shore with the kids. He could’ve not gone and dived in the water and started searching for the watergate. He could’ve been glued to your side. He could’ve–

“I can see the gears turning in your head,” you murmur teasingly, pulling a small sigh out of Steve. 

“I could’ve done something different. I should’ve tried harder.”

“There was nothing you could have done,” you repeat, reaching for Steve’s hand. He takes it, holding onto the air there tightly with a weak smile. “I don’t blame you.”

Instead of fighting more or trying to prove a point, he just squeezes the air where your hand would be, murmuring a small “I love you.”

“I love you too,” you whisper back with that same smile that is still able to, somehow, make him the tiniest bit weak in the knees. 

“I wish you were here,” he whispers with a small sigh, placing the can in his hand on the ground as he leans his head back against the wall. I wish you were here, in my arms, he thinks, breathing, alive. I wish I could still feel your heartbeat. 

You don’t say anything in response, you just move to sit next to him, resting your head against his shoulders with a small sigh as you close your eyes. And maybe it’s the beer, maybe it’s the grief, maybe it’s the lack of sleep finally catching up to him, but for a moment, Steve swears he can really feel you rest your weight against him, hear the sound of you breathing by his ear. And selfishly, he soaks it all in, not wanting to take the moment for granted as he tries to remember every little thing and try to match his breathing to yours. Soft and heavy. 

“Promise you’ll still be here when I wake up?” He asks through a yawn. 

He thinks he feels you nod, followed by a kiss to his jaw as he lets out a small sigh. “I’ll always be here,” you murmur as Steve finally lets his eyes close and lets sleep take over. 

He loves being sweet for you. To you. Opening all your doors and kissing your hands and sharing his smoothie in the mornings. Steve doesn’t do this to get brownie points, or to posture in front of your friend group, or even to show you off- he does these things because you deserve them. Just by nature of being you. 

You also deserve someone who will watch out for you, who will make fucking sure trouble doesn’t touch your doorstep. Who will travel beyond a shadow of a doubt to know that you’re safe. 

Maybe you don’t deserve all the specific ways in which Steve feels he maintains this order, but- you could do a lot worse. 

Sure, he got a little intense after the earthquakes. Broke down in front of you and begged you to never leave his sight. Crawled into your lap and wept in your arms and let himself be comforted and cooed at by you and your hands.

He was going crazy after almost losing you to the bloody red underbelly of the wrecked and dangerous worlds that he couldn’t control, but- he was more careful after that night. Better with his own grip on himself.

Better at hiding it, anyways. 

The first time Steve followed you to work, he didn’t even realize he was doing it.

You’d left for your shift at the diner like usual, a kiss to his cheek and a tight squeeze before the sound of your car humming to life, the low purr as it backed out of the Harrington driveway and beyond.

It’s the beyond part that really got under Steve’s collar.

For whatever reason- maybe it was the fresh feeling of your thighs around his ears, of the slick, hot noises you’d made for him in the shower just an hour previous- that was the morning that set him off.

Steve had pushed up from the breakfast table without clearing his cereal bowl. Left the half-drunk milk and Cheerios to bloat as he slipped smooth and silent out the front door.

Keys in the Beemer’s handle, in the well of the ignition, turned over with a twisted wrist. Steve was on autopilot. There was only one thought, pulling the rest of his body into taught forward movement, sending him into cold motion- 

get to you.

See you. 

Know, beyond that shadowy doubt, that you’re okay.

He followed you to work. It was actually pretty simple, since he knew your route and could predict when he’d be most visible, when to back off and when to creep the nose of the Beemer a little closer.

You pulled into the parking lot and Steve parked across the street, behind the run-down butcher shop with an alleyway that tunnels to the front door of the diner. Steve watched you with his engine off, barely blinking to be able to see every minute movement of yours in the front seat. 

You used the flip down mirror to fix your makeup and fuss with your hair. Steve wanted to shout- it’s no use, you’re already too pretty to look at- but then that would sort of defeat his whole undercover thing. 

Steve kept watching as you ascended the outdoor steps, as you swung into work with your shoulderbag tapping at your hip, as the building door closed behind you. The street-facing windows of the place were too lit up by the sunrise’s glare to give him any insight as to where you went next, but that’s okay. 

Steve had already made plans to come back on his lunchbreak when the sun is positioned better.

He breathed out long and slow. Knuckles leaching white over the steering wheel as he loosened his grip. He felt miles better, being able to see the evidence of your arrival and the deliverance of you into the safe, menial hands of a predictable job.

Then Steve glanced at his watch, swore a blue streak, and high-tailed it across town to his own job. 

The most surprising thing to realize is that even afterwards, Steve doesn’t feel sick over his actions. He’s not repulsed by what he did, doesn’t consider himself a creep or a stalker.

No, Steve feels normal. For the first time in a long while. 

He shows up twenty minutes late to The Squawk and bickers with Robin and sources new sound effect tapes and drinks the shitty, burnt coffee out of his specially reserved Snoopy mug. Same as always.

The secret lunchbreak trip to your workplace is a new addition to his routine. He was sloppy with his lying today, said something about a toothache to Robin as an excuse for why he wouldn’t just be eating with her, like always. 

That’s okay. Steve will find better excuses. He’ll just have to get sharper and smarter, which he is more than willing to do for you. 

If it means he can eat the ham and cheese sandwich you packed him in the comfort of his front seat, watching an unsuspecting you eat the same thing across the street, then Steve will make it happen.

It’s been a few weeks of this- learning your patterns more intimately, where you’ll go during the hours you’re not with Steve or at work, where you’re most likely to take a detour- and Steve’s gotten good. 

He’s been careful and methodical and his reward is ensuring your safety. In another life he must have been your sworn knight, or acolyte, or dog, maybe- something honest and loyal and true, but always with a sword or sharp teeth to jump to your defense. 

Steve loves getting to see these little pockets of your life that he normally wouldn’t. You’re so generous, so kind- hugging Mrs. Byers when you drop off some fresh cookies, linking your arm through Robin’s on your way into the thrift store, giving Lucas a lift to the hospital and parking so you can walk him indoors- the epitome of care.

Steve watches it all through the window of his Beemer. Marvels at you, wonders how a person can be exactly who they say they are. Thanks every thread of the universe that you’ve chosen his chest, of all places, to come home to every night. 

These last few weeks on this new routine has caused the buzzing under Steve’s skin to melt into the background. Along with his morals, probably. But he’s grateful all the same, feels that it’s an overall positive thing, this need to protect. 

To see you.

He’s looking at you now with an intensity he only reserves for when you can't see him- your eyes have slipped shut, in the hazy afterglow of sex, and Steve is pressed to you still. Caging you in with his arms, taking his time to let his eyes rove over your face.

Steve loves looking at you. Especially like this. The damp baby hairs at your temple, the sheen of sweat on your skin- he can practically smell the hormones rolling off you in waves.

He could stare at you all day, all night. Has, before, actually- with minimal blinking. 

Steve is looking close enough to see a stray eyelash on the apple of your cheek. He ducks to kiss you, pressing over the lash, trailing more kisses even after the tiny thing is pocketed behind his lips.

His tongue moves to press the sliver of hair against the roof of his mouth, sharp end prickling at his gums. He wonders if it would be strong enough to puncture. If it could find a home in his flesh that will knit back together and keep this small piece of you calcified, forever. 

You murmur something and Steve shifts so his ear is closer to your lips. 

“I gotta pee.”

He chuckles. Kisses you again, and again, and then helps you sit up. Hands soft and worshipful along the bare length of your torso as you work to get your feet on the carpet. 

Steve settles back against the headboard with the sheets gathered around his waist. Engaged in his favorite activity. Watching. 

You seem slightly dazed and a bit ditzy after four orgasms, casting around your room for the oversized sleep shirt that Steve had torn from you and tossed mindlessly away. You crouch to look under the bedside table, knees wobbling. 

“I seem to be missing my undies,” you say. Sleepily. Dragging the wrinkled shirt from the floor to start maneuvering your arms into. 

Steve hooks an elbow behind his head, resting into the curve of it. He should get up and help you look but he’s been making an honest effort to let you do things for yourself, recently. To sort of offset the whole watching thing. 

He’s not sure how successful he’s been in this endeavor.

“Why don’t you check your dresser, honey?” Steve suggests.

Your head pops free of the shirt collar and you frown, legs bent and akimbo on the carpet as you try to settle the shirt with clumsy fingers. “No, I mean- I mean even before. I’m missing some pairs.”

Steve feels the tips of his ears go cold. Color draining fast.

You’re blinking up at him now, head tilted, the picture of guilelessness and befuddlement. “You don’t know where they went- right, Stevie?”

He feels caught in your crosshairs. Something behind his navel flips at being on the other side of the scope.

“Sure don’t, sugar.” Steve shakes his head, then yawns. Hopes it looks convincingly casual. “I’ll take you city shopping next weekend, if you want.”

Steve had been careful. He only took what he thought you wouldn’t miss- a sock with no match, a paperback from your give-away pile, a single vitamin from the bottle of a hundred others. 

The undies in question were old, a faded floral pattern with holes on either side of the elastic. They’d been sitting at the bottom of your hamper for over a month, calling to him. 

He’d pocketed them last week and after getting home from another round of You Watching, had laid out flat on his mattress and shoved his thumbs into the worn holes and spanned the width of the cotton crotch across his nose. 

He’d breathed in the faint, lingering scent of your pussy and practically choked himself on it, calling to mind the ghost of you sitting on his face. He came completely untouched. Heaving himself over the edge with just the pressure and smell. 

Steve swallows the memory away. You’re still looking at him in this very disarming, lamblike way, and he gives you a gentle smile- “Go pee.”

You sigh. Vague humor and suspicion in your voice as you kneel, working your way to standing- “Okay. But you owe me a whole new pack. The nice, silky kind.”

Steve uses his free hand to do Robin’s two-finger salute, which can mean either fuck off or I vow wholeheartedly, depending. 

It makes you giggle. Your legs are fawning and shaky but you manage to get up, pulling a fresh pair of underwear from the top dresser drawer before disappearing behind the attached bathroom door.

Steve counts to thirty then rolls to his shoulder, on his side, face plunking straight into your pillow. There’s the floral smell of your shampoo, and underneath it, earthy scalp. 

He blinks against the fabric and breathes deeply and wonders.

Do you know? If so- how? That undies comment felt so pointed. But then again, maybe not.

Of course not. Steve tells himself he’s being paranoid. He’s been good, he’s been careful, and he won’t fuck this up. He can’t.

You return from the bathroom and Steve snuggles you into the bed, tucking the sheets around your form and giving your neck a kiss before slipping into the bathroom himself.

One of the lightbulbs above the mirror is out, everything cast in a dim yellow glow. Steve makes a mental note to bring a new bulb next time he’s over. 

The bristles of your toothbrush are wet still, the purple plastic nudging against the black bristles of his own dry one. He takes the handle of yours and pops the head into his mouth.

It tastes overwhelmingly, disappointingly, like mint and nothing else, but it’s still good enough to have his eyes rolling to the back of his skull. Feeling the sog squeeze out as he crushes the bristles between his back molars, more of that toothpaste residue bursting across his tongue. 

Steve’s nostrils flare. He breathes out heavily, jaw working hard to extract the last of the wetness- then he slips it from his mouth and replaces it into the holder. Picks up his own toothbrush, runs the tap water for a minute, and wets the bristles so it looks like he was being normal. Just brushing his teeth, that’s all. 

Steve pees, too, absently looking around the small, cluttered space to catalogue what’s changed since he was here last. Not much difference, in less than a day- although the shower curtain is partially open, droplets clinging to the clear liner. You must have showered after work, before he came over. 

Then he sees the hair stuck to the shower wall and nearly groans. There’s a sparse circle of strands, still slightly damp, about halfway up the smooth white tiles. 

Steve pulls his sweats back on and is mindful of the crinkling curtain but wedges his arm past the gap, just to put his whole palm over the patch of stray hairs. Just to feel the tickle of them against his skin. 

He won’t take them. Not now, at least. It’s too obvious, too weird, too likely to get him caught. Steve is already planning to come back tomorrow after he ensures you get to work safely. Maybe by then they’ll be sitting at the top of your bathroom wastebasket for him, a perfect little gift. 

He flushes the toilet and washes his hands and counts, again, to thirty before flicking off the light and returning to bed.

The lamp on your bedside table gets clicked off, plunging you both into darkness. Steve feels for you in the absence of light, finding the curve of your shoulder faced away from him towards the wall. 

He kisses you there, then stretches out under the covers. Thigh pressing into the side of yours. Listening to your steady breaths. 

And just when he thinks you’ve fallen asleep, you speak. 

“How long have you been following me?”

It’s like a river of ice has been dumped over his head. Steve freezes, his heart leaping into his throat, slamming through him like the heavy beat of a drum.

“What do you mean?” He asks, staring wide-eyed and unseeing up at the ceiling. Plausible deniability is either a lifeline or a hanging rope, at this point. 

“In your car. You’ve been following me to work and the library. Saw you in my rearview a few times.”

Your words aren’t angry- they’re blurry at the edges, wondrous and heavy with sleep.

Steve is quiet. And wildly afraid. A step taken too far out from the precipice that threatens to drop him dead onto the rocks below.

Say something, his brain screams, and he stumbles into speech- “It’s not- I’m not- it’s not because I don’t trust you…”

Above all, even more than being caught, he’s worried you’ll think him jealous. Overbearing. Staking his claim. And that’s a deep mischaracterization of the truth.

Truth is? He does it because he loves you. And for many other fucked-up reasons. But the main drive is love, not mistrust. 

It’s not like it was with Nancy, he doesn’t get lethally jealous in that way anymore; it’s not even the same as when he used to tail Robin, although that dynamic probably hits a bit closer to the mark. 

Steve is silently spiraling. Blood juttering. Wondering how the hell he’s going to pull off a convincing excuse, because honestly, he hasn’t thought this far ahead yet. He has no contingency plan.

His heart is thunking out of rhythm until you give this dreamy little sigh, sheets rustling as you turn. The length of your arm drapes over his ribs, your leg hitching to lay across his hips. 

And then the side of your face presses into the thicket of hair at his chest, your ear fitting directly over the spot where his heart is pounding. Like you’re trying to subdue it back to a normal speed. 

“I know,” you murmur, consoling, fingers running along the notches of his ribs. Lashes fluttering shut against his skin. “I just wish you had told me.”

Steve is breathing a bit easier with the weight of you and your words. His muscles had prepared for a fight but now, stunned into silence, the adrenaline is easing out of his limbs with every pass of your fingers. 

“I like that you watch me.” Your hand tracks a path up his torso, to his collarbone, to the hollow of his throat, seeking out that clustered constellation of moles at the side of his neck. As if you’re memorizing him in the same way he memorizes you. “Makes me feel safe. Wanted. Bet it makes you feel good, too.”

More than you know, Steve wants to say. But then the pads of your fingers are pressing into the raised pattern of his beauty marks and the thought dissipates completely.

His hand sweeps over your shoulder blades, the other coming up to cradle your head. Thumb skating back and forth beneath your brow.

“Sounds like we’re two peas in a pod,” is what he settles on replying. Hoarse with revelation.

He feels the curl of your smile against him, and then your lips split into a yawn, genuine. Sleep shuddering up your spine as Steve’s hand moves with it.

“Let’s talk about this in the morning, sweetheart. Get some rest now.” It’s his most calming, lulling voice. Reserved for children under the age of two, and you. 

You’re apparently tired enough for pliancy and obedience. One final, deep breath before you begin dozing, surrendering yourself to the channel of dreamland. 

Steve stays awake for a long time. Holding you, aligning his breaths with yours, and still open-eyed staring at nothing. 

You like being watched. 

Hmm. 

Steve isn’t sure what this changes, yet. 

But it kind of feels like it might be everything. 

“Underwear?” 

“Something to go…” Steve parses with the reality that you’re actually only wearing boxers right now and hurries his searching, though he does make sure to give your hand a few soft squeezes on the way. 

When he finds the panties all pink and white and blue with little bows and thongs, he feels your hand like a coal. He’s buying you underwear. Peripherally, Steve was aware that this is a thing that gets some guys going, taking their girl to the store and picking out what they’re gonna wear. Even paying can be a kink. But he knows, looking at the panties, that he’s going to have to help you choose a pack, that you’ll be wearing them, and that he’s going to have to wash them, and his stomach starts to go heavy and hot as lead. 

You are none the wiser to his mild perversion, pointing very subtly at the boxers you're wearing. 

Steve nods. “Yeah, exactly. But for you.” He leans into your space. “You can choose.” 

“Hm?”

“You,” he says, gesturing at all of them, “pick. What do you need?” ‘Want’ would be a great word to have practised with you right now. 

You shrug. “Um. Steve good?”

Are you asking which ones he thinks are nice? 

Steve would find his face red at the sides if he could see himself, he knows. The tips of his ears are burning too, but Steve doesn’t rush. He looks at the packs of panties and considers what a girl who hasn’t had to wear them before might like. Some girls say thongs are the most comfortable, but you… haven’t had a butt for very long, and Steve thinks that’s a lie, regardless. Or, a circumstantial case. He disregards small cuts and sets his eyes on some high legs, then the plain french, of which there aren’t very many. The high legs are about as common as a full brief, but they come in more interesting colours, and you favour your busier bikinis, so. 

“How about these ones?” he asks, surprisingly calm as he takes a pack from the rack to show you. He points at the second pair, pale pink with little white flowers. “Pretty?”

“Okay.”

“Yeah, okay? Promise?”

You lean into his arm. Steve takes a steadying breath. He grabs the french cut too, then another size. He’ll just have to bite the bullet and pay for anything you try on? He doesn’t know how underwear returns work. Steve went up a brief size last year on account of all of his clothes being marginally too small for years and then suddenly massively too small. He has not bought new underwear since. 

Your footsteps aren’t necessarily confident, but you don’t trip. You’re slow, but Steve can’t say he minds, more time to hold your hand and all, especially now there’s no old ladies peering at you both every ten seconds wondering why you’re dressed for a last-minute day at the river. 

Steve figures you won’t waste much time looking at bras —he’ll buy you a couple of sports bras the same size as your bikinis— but you pause in front of them, lips parting in quiet awe. 

There are admittedly some very beautiful bras to choose from. Not just bras…

Steve lets your hand slip out of his as you approach a mannequin wearing a pretty babydoll. “Why?” you ask, touching the mannequin's hand.

“To show the clothes,” he says. “So you can see if you like it. See if good.”

You turn back to the babydoll, running the fabric through your fingers. It’s simple, a sweet, light blue with frills and fuzz and two little pom-poms hanging from the bow at the apex of the neckline. “Good,” you say. “Can have?”

“Uh…”

“Please, if okay?”

Steve doesn’t know how to explain it, so he buckles, like, immediately. Robin will cry laughing at his pain. “Yeah, baby. Of course it’s okay.”

You try to take it off the mannequin and gasp happily when Steve magicks one from the table right next to it, in your approximate size. This is torture. You are teasing his mortal soul. 

“You need, like, normal bras. You can’t wear that one all the time, so…” Steve plucks a plain grey bra from the rack. Cup sizes are not gonna work. Has he seen your boobs enough times to guess your cup size? Sure, but being friends with Robin means he has vague knowledge of womanly experiences he hadn’t before, so Steve knows what a band size is now, and that makes the cup size not the same? He isn’t sure the rest of the male population are aware of this. Eugh. At least your babydoll was in dress sizes.

“You’re gonna have to try it on,” he says. 

“On?” you ask, your eyes lit with excitement.

“Oh my god,” he says, mostly because you can’t understand, “you’re the prettiest girl alive. I’m gonna die. You’re gonna kill me. Do you even feel guilty?”

You laugh at his grave tone. “Me?”

“Yeah, you.”

“Me what?” you ask. 

Steve sighs, but it’s not sad. He’s riding high on the elation of your new mobility, and gives in to what we wants shamefully fast. “You are pretty,” he says, brushing your cheek with the side of his hand, knuckles, then index finger, a roll of his wrist that you wrinkle your nose at. Doesn’t matter, you can’t hide your smile. “That’s what this means. Pretty,” he strokes your cheek again, “face good. You look pretty, good.”

“Oh. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

Steve tells the fitting room assistant that you have nerve damage in your hand, and whether she believes him or just wants you to get some real clothes on, she ushers you down the hall. Steve opens the first cubicle he finds and offers you in. You glance around the tiny room with avid confusion. 

“This is where we’re gonna try your clothes on,” he says. “Can I help you take these off?”

You shrug out of the jacket yourself. It’s strange. You don’t move with the clumsiness of a child, because the brain pathways are all there and sharp, but you’re unused to removing layers like this. You do much better with flat sheets and towels. 

Steve helps you out of the rash guard first, presented with soft skin and softer fat. He touches your shoulder quick and turns to grab the bra, slipping it off of the hanger. You’re used to this song and dance, standing still and unbothered as Steve sews your arms through the straps and leans over your shoulder to hook the back closed. It takes a little longer than the bikini, and Steve is overly aware of your breasts pressing into his chest as he helps, but he– kind of loves it? Like, it’s not sex. He could probably find dressing you hot, and this is hot, arguably, if only because he likes you and he likes thinking about you undressed when he’s alone after long days, but it’s also normal. He pulls away from you and hooks his finger under the band, trying to check the fit. “I think it has to be tight enough that you don’t chafe, but you don’t wanna fall out of it?” He glances at you both in the mirror. The bra cups you nicely. “Can you turn around? I’ll fix the straps.”

“Hm?”

He takes your shoulders into his hands. “Turn around,” he says softly, encouraging your back to him. 

Tightening the straps is a total mindfuck, but he does it. The fit is better when you turn back, so Steve figures this is a win and pulls the tag off of the bra, careful not to have it snap against your skin. 

Steve tries not to get into his head as he takes your hips into the slightest of holds. It is scary to feel like you don’t know enough about your privacy to consider it, but Steve believes that you should still have it. “Okay, I think you can do this by yourself. You managed the boxers, right?” 

Steve breaks open a pack of panties and shakes out a pair. “Can you put these on?” He gestures to your hips.

You smile at him. Steve closes his eyes as you hook your thumbs in the boxers and is perfectly unaware of you as you take them off. Your hand shoots out to grab him at one point and he steadies you, listening to the shush of fabric being pulled up your legs and snapped into place. 

He peeks. The panties are on. 

“Okay, awesome. Thank you, smart girl,” he says, doubly pleased when you recognise ‘smart’ and whack his arm lightly. 

You look goofy in your cons and your underwear. Steve snorts, grabbing the skit he’d chosen and holding it open for you to step into. Again, you steady yourself heavily on him as you do. Steve’s thumbs brush up your thighs as he pulls it up. 

Thankfully, the skirt fits nicely. Sits pretty on your hips and kisses at your calves in waves. “That suits you,” he says, clearing his throat. 

“On, please,” you say, pointing at the delicate blouse he’d chosen earlier. 

You raise your arm. Steve is a fool for this, knowing absolutely that you need no help with sleeves and helping you into it anyhow. He smooths it down, taking the two steps back the cubicle allows, and feels his face split with a smile. 

Your mermaid form is beautiful. Without human touch, your stretches of skin, your beautiful dark scales, the shine that he catches on your eyes, and chin, and your roughed up elbows. He can’t see the shine as much now you’ve left your scales behind, but you’re still beautiful. In different ways, but still so pretty. And this outfit—

Maybe Steve has that thing about dressing women. 

“You look amazing,” he says. 

It’s so you. Something airy and sweet to match your teasing, your playfulness, your languidity. 

You might be clumsy on land, but you’re lovely. The kind that doesn’t go away. 

Your eyes track your figure in the mirror. You turn back and forth, watching your skirt swish against your skin, your arms held out. “Pretty,” you say, nodding proudly. “Thank you. Need you.”

Steve doesn’t know what that’s supposed to mean, and he just can’t help himself clearly, toying uselessly with the short sleeve on your blouse to have an excuse to prolong the moment. 

He collects all the tags, your discarded clothes, and piles your new collection of panties in his arms to take to the checkout. “We’ll get you some stuff for your hair next, I promise.”

“Hold me?” you ask. 

Steve laughs aloud, “With what arms?”

You pout, leaning heavily into his side. “Tired now.”

“You’re tired now?”

“I’m tired,” you confirm.

He hums sympathetically. “Okay. No hair stuff. All we have to do is pay for your clothes and we’ll go home, and you can sleep. Is that good?”

“Home and sleep?” you confirm.

Steve wants to drag you in to plant a kiss against your temple, but he shouldn’t. “Promise.”

Like you can hear what he’s thinking, you pull his hand to your mouth and kiss it, jostling his arm, and sending half of the things he’d been carrying through the gap. It all hits the floor with a smack. 

He needs to call Hopper and fess up and he needs his friends to help him find you, before you’re too far away to save. He should have told them all weeks ago. Should’ve woken up in the night to check on you. 

“Steve?”

Steve nearly rips his head off of his neck turning back to the patio door. He’s squeezing your scale so hard his hand is begging him to let it go, and you’re in the doorway with wide, wide eyes. 

“Okay?” you ask hesitantly.

You’re standing in the doorway, on two legs, human legs, naked thigh. His eyes get stuck on the thigh muscle just above your knee, the soft fat at the top, slides down to your feet. You’re wearing socks. One woollen sock pulled up your calf and an ankle sock for sneakers, the dark heel at the top of your foot. You’ve put it on upside down. 

“Baby?” he asks, weak, scared to speak and break the picture. 

You’re in a pair of his ill-fitting boxers, also on backwards, and your bemoaned rash guard. He can’t pick up his jaw. 

You take a careful step down on the patio, like your leg’s dead. Your leg. Your skin, the same perfect shade as your tummy, stretched over amazingly human knees with stupid baby-face creases. You have knees, have calves, all the complicated ankle bones. You’re walking.

“What are you eating?” he asks suddenly. 

You show him the pear in your hand with sorry eyes. “No okay?”

Steve lunges back up the steps and grabs you. You squeal as he wraps his arms around you and your feet leave the ground, but nothing has ever filled his body with this much adrenaline, not even the hundred foot elevator drop or the Molotov cocktails or finding a mythological creature in his swimming pool. Steve spins you around with his face pressed to your cheek, the sticky smell of pear clinging to your mouth. “I thought you were hurt!” he says, squeezing you so hard you actually groan in pain. “Sorry. Sorry, honey, but you have legs. Legs! No tail!”

You laugh and squirm away from him, leaning back as you do, hands behind your back like you’re saying, Oh, these old things? 

“How did you do this?” he asks. “What, why! Jesus Christ, you can walk!”

“What, why, um… me and Steve?” You gesture at your leg. “Pool later and later. Steve always?” 

“What?” he asks, nearly breathless now. 

You pull at his arm. Steve goes willingly, gaze down at your hand and tripping over your legs again, your legs. You push a fingertip under the threads of the bracelet you made him and say, “Why.”

“Oh,” he says. 

You nod a few times before bringing your pear up to your mouth for another bite. Then you turn it and offer it to Steve. He genuinely wouldn’t mind sharing, but it’s too early to eat and the whiplash of the last five minutes is making him feel sick. “No thank you, baby,” he says, pushing it away gently as he wraps his arm behind your head, encouraging it to his mouth. He talks into your forehead. “Why didn’t you tell me you could do this? Is it– did it hurt?” He moves back to catch your eyes. Eddie summed up that Little Mermaid book for him eventually, and the mermaid in question suffered every step she took. “Ow? Hurt you?”

You shrug shyly. “Little hurt,” you confess, showing him a centimetre with your finger and thumb.

“And you’re dressed? Not that you can’t get dressed, but you did not tell me you knew how to put that rash guard on.” He pulls at the vest with eyebrows raised. “How’d you do that?”

You refuse to answer him. In fact, you turn away and make to go back in the house, but Steve’s not done with you. He couldn’t be less done. 

“Steve!” you yelp, startled as he grabs you from behind and forces another sideways hug. You’re not mad, though, sinking into his touch the moment you realise what he’s doing. “Hold, hold,” you murmur. “You are warm.”

“What’s with the socks?”

“Socks?”

Steve steps on your toes until you get it. 

“Oh, socks!” You meet his gaze head on, then cover your chest, rubbing your arms theatrically. “Brrrr.”

Steve laughs so loud it has birds flying out of the trees by the house. “Shit, your toes were cold? Is that why you got dressed?”

You point seriously at your chest. “Dustin.”

Steve pulls you in for another hug. He’s smothering you and you can’t even tell him to stop and your arms are wrapping around him again, sticky pear pressed hard to the small of his back as he sways you side to side. This means you don’t have to leave. You can have so much here, on land. Even if it’s just for now. No more sleeping lonely in the pool, and having to shout for dinner, or leaning on your elbows at the steps while everyone else messes around on dry land. You can be you. 

Steve takes a deep breath. “Okay. We need to go in the house and find you something to wear, because seeing you in my stuff is messing with my head, and you need clothes. And then we can–” He grins at you, sure his ears and cheeks are red. “What do you wanna do? We can do anything.”

You step into his front, wait for him to wrap his arm behind your back, and begin to list backwards off of your new feet, nearly falling. “Hold me, Steve. Tired,” you say, in a tone of voice that tells Steve you aren’t tired at all. 

“Liar.”

“Tired. No little tired. Hold me in house,” you say, peeking through one eye to check that he’s listening. 

“Oh, so you made yourself legs and you’re not gonna use them?”

You did your best to adjust your expression and be empathetic. “Okay, well that didn’t happen with Sheryl, did it?” He shook his head. “Maybe you’re still stuck on Sheryl.”

He shrugged, letting himself relax a little. “Eh, not really. She was fun, but clingy.”

You sighed, leaning forward like a scientist observing him under a microscope. “Other than like… the finale, was the sex good?”

“Yes! And the date was perfectly fine too.” He sat up straighter, crossing his arms across his chest. He was telling the truth… mostly. It wasn’t bad, it wasn’t amazing. It was just… fine. He gave you a half-smile. “Thanks for letting me talk to you about this. Robin would be all weird about it.”

You smiled teasingly. “Oh, Robin would’ve bailed the moment you said the word cum.” You altered your voice into a shockingly accurate impression of your friend. “‘Ew, Steve! I don’t want to hear about the details of hetero sex. I faked mono during sex-ed for a reason.”

“She would’ve agreed about Katie’s tits, though,” Steve insisted. “She’d pretend to be mortified that I’m objecting women or whatever, but she’d agree.”

You laughed and shook your head at his words, and he felt a tiny tug in his chest— some sort of like, stirring, big feeling.

He didn’t get it. The two of you had been friends since Freshman year, when you moved next door to Carol and she dragged you to every hangout, big and small. He always sort of figured that Carol was trying to set you up with him, but neither of you ever made a move.

He wasn’t sure why he felt that uncomfortable ache in his chest when you smiled lately. There had never been any feelings there in all the time he’d known you, right? Sure, he thought you were hot— that’s why he had to give you dating advice all the time—but that was different.

"Maybe you just need to find the right girl, or something,” you said earnestly. “Like… maybe your dream girl is right in front of you, and even if your brain doesn’t know it, your body does.”

You tucked your permed hair behind your ear and it made his stomach drop like he was on a roller coaster. And he was confused about how such a tiny sensation could feel so overwhelming when he heard the bells above the door ring.

The girl approached the counter with big brown eyes and hair that looked a little fried by bleach and perm solution. He did love curls, though.

“I called this morning,” she said, her voice low and sultry. He liked sultry. “Some guy named Keith set aside Footloose for me? Should be under Rebecca Martin, or Becky, maybe.”

Steve smiled and turned on the charm.

Becky wasn’t the hottest thing to moan during sex, but Steve Harrington wasn’t a quitter. He’d just… avoid names in general.

Steve was a gentleman. They’d gone to dinner a few nights prior, and he’d been polite and kissed her at the front door. It had gone well enough to tell Robin about, which was saying something. He liked her sense of humor, she was sweet, and her perfume was so nice that it was practically addicting.

The second date wasn’t as formal. Movie at his place, stealing his parents’ fancy wine out of the cabinet like a high schooler. It started innocently enough that he wasn’t even sure if he should go any further, keep things cool, really see this one through this time.

But, Jesus Christ, did she have other plans. Pretty, pink manicured nails traced along his thigh, dimpling the fabric of his jeans, which were already tight enough. She played coy— eyes on the movie, a satisfied smirk on her lips as her hand paused just below where he wanted it. He squirmed, just slightly, feeling his dick stir with interest. She batted big doe-eyes at him and furrowed her brows in a very practiced manner.

“Something wrong?” She asked, and he could see the amusement in her gaze as her hand wandered up, cupping the bulge that was swelling in the front of his jeans. She sprung into action after he captured her lips in a hungry kiss, making quick work of the button and zipper so she could wiggle her hand beneath his boxers.

Her hand was deliciously soft, and he liked the soft gasp of surprise that escaped her when she took him into her hand and gave a testing stroke. It was dry, and a little uncomfortable until she spat into her hand and started over. It felt good. She felt good.

“Do you wanna go to your room?” Her words were damp against the column of his throat, no doubt leaving pink stains from her lipstick.

“Yeah,” he said softly. “Yeah. I want to.”

——

His cheeks were burning as he watched Becky redress, hurriedly tugging her panties up her legs. Her annoyance and disappointment was blatant in her features, and it made his chest ache with mortification.

“That doesn’t—“ He shook his head. That doesn’t usually happen sounded like a stupid excuse, especially considering that his last hookup had ended similarly. This time had been worse. “I don’t know why that happened.”

She shrugged, shimmying into her denim skirt. “It’s whatever, Steve.”

“No, no I mean it,” he said, trying to fight the frown on his lips, trying to seem at least a little… casual about it all. He’d gone down on her until she came apart right on his tongue, then he took his time to get her stretched out and ready for him until she couldn’t take anymore and begged for him.

He wanted to fuck her, he wanted to feel her around him, warm and tight and pliant, blinking prettily up at him while she moaned and gasped. So why wouldn’t his body let him do it?

What the fuck?

“It’s fine, really. Don’t worry about it.” As soon as he heard the pity in her voice, he nearly wanted to die. “I’m only in town to visit my aunt anyway.”

“This really never happens to me,” he insisted. The look on her face— the subtle mix of disbelief and scorn— made him feel like he was a bug under her shoe.

He didn’t bother redressing more than just tugging on his boxers as she left, and he was grateful she at least let him walk her to the door after the world’s most disastrous hookup attempt.

He groaned in annoyance as he closed the door behind him, running his hands through his mussed-up hair. He was at the phone before he even realized where he was walking, dialing the number through sheer muscle memory.

“Hello?” Your voice crackled along the line, sounding sleepy. What time was it?

“Hey,” Steve said, leaning against the wall where the phone was mounted. He didn’t need to worry about calling directly from his personal line when his parents weren’t home. Besides, he was sweating, smelled like sex, and there was something comfortable about the cool, empty room downstairs. “Am I bothering you?”

“Nuh-uh,” you hummed, and he heard something shuffle on your side of the phone. “Just painting my nails. What’s up? I thought you were busy with Becky tonight?”

His heart thumped uncomfortably and he wished he hadn’t called. “Yeah, uh, she left.”

“Oh,” you replied, and he could picture the look of soft concern you would be wearing. “You sound disappointed. Did it not go well?”

Steve scratched at his chest, the hair there still a bit tacky with sweat. “Permission to overshare?”

You paused. “Hm…” Another beat. “Uh, I guess so. Why not?”

You were quiet as Steve recounted the experience with you, right down to the horrific realization that he couldn’t stay hard and their night had to be cut short. He waited as soon as he explained Becky's departure, waiting for you to laugh or tease him.

“That’s tough, but it happens, Steve,” you said softly. “Maybe your heart wasn’t in it.”

He groaned again, pressing the heel of his hand into his forehead. “I don’t care if my heart was in it. I wanted my dick to be in it.” He paused. “That wasn’t on purpose, but you know what I mean. My heart has never been a problem before.”

“Well, stress can impact performance,” you explained. “Especially if you’re psyching yourself out about whether or not you’re going to get off. Permission for me to overshare?”

He sighed and ran a hand through his mussed hair. “Yeah, yeah, whatever. Permission granted.”

“Last year when they hired me at The Gap at the mall and made me a manager for no reason, I was so fucking stressed out that I couldn’t get myself off for weeks. Like, I tried everything. You know what finally helped?”

Steve swallowed. Hard. “W-what?”

“I turned off my brain for a few hours. I just let my hands wander a bit, figured out what felt good, and explored that for a while before moving on to the next spot. Eventually, I made myself cum without even realizing what I was doing.” You paused, and he heard a nervous laugh slip past your lips. “Um, that's just, like, a suggestion.”

The mental image was enough to make his cock twitch beneath the thin material of his boxers. He swallowed, trying to block out the images of you; naked, hand between your thighs, writhing in pleasure. His length throbbed again, because despite his best efforts, the image didn’t go away.

“I’m just trying to explain that it’s super common to have issues getting off, and it’s not weird!” You said, the silence clearly making you antsy. “Did that help at all?”

“Mhmm,” he hummed. “Robin would say this is a sign from the universe that I should just be single for a while.”

“Maybe.” You paused. “Give yourself some time, alright? You’ve been through a lot, Steve. Stuff like that is bound to catch up sooner or later.”

You were waiting for him by your next shift, sneaking past Robin to pull him aside. “Did you try it?” You asked, blinking up at him.

“What?” He furrowed his brows until you mimed jerking off and his cheeks fucking burned. “Oh, no. I wasn’t up for it.” He groaned. “I didn’t mean it like that either.”

“I know, I know,” you assured, a pretty smile on your lips. “So, do you think that Becky’s not…”

“Yeah, I don’t think I’ll be seeing her again, which blows.”

You shrugged. “Screw that. You can find someone way better, alright?” He wanted to roll his eyes as you grabbed his shoulders in your hands, making him look right at you. When he tried to look away, you repeated yourself. “Alright?”

He sighed. “Yeah, yeah, alright.” He wriggled out of your grip. “Can you just hand me the returns cart so I can shelve them?” You shrugged and passed him the cart, eager to offload your tasks if he was willing to take them.

He needed a distraction. Because you were wearing a black miniskirt with your dumb family video vest, and a fucking Star Wars shirt he would’ve found dorky if you weren’t perfectly endearing.

You were giggling and smiling, fighting with Robin over a copy of some movie you both were dying to see before the other. He sighed as he shelved a copy of A Christmas Story, wondering why someone would’ve rented that in August.

He got the cart shelved, helped a nice old lady find a Hitchcock movie she’d liked when her late husband showed her, and even reorganized the snack counter before he finally came upon a hitch in his day.

“Steve!” Your voice was barely a whisper, coming from Keith’s office. He looked around at the store, where Robin was sitting unfazed at the main counter, and slipped past the door.

Oh fuck. You were bent over Keith’s desk, legs sprawled awkwardly, tugging hopelessly at where your shirt was caught on a screw pinning it and you to the wall. He couldn’t even fathom how you’d gotten into that position— maybe reaching for something that had fallen behind the bulky desk?

Worst of all, that stupid mini skirt. Bent over the desk, he saw the baby blue cotton of your panties. His mouth went dry. He’d forgotten why he’d walked into the room in the first place.

“Steve! My shirt is stuck on one of the screws,” you explained, squirming slightly with impatience. “I got this when Empire came out, it’s irreplaceable. Just pull the desk out so I can move.”

It took a few seconds for his brain to comprehend what was asked of him. “Yeah. Yeah, I can do that. Easy-peasy.” He grimaced. Why the fuck did he say that?

“Steve, hurry.” He tried not to look back at your ass as he approached the desk, giving it a slight tug so you were no longer pinned. You stumbled a bit before standing and tugging your skirt down, giving him a sheepish smile. “Jesus, that was so stupid. I dropped my time card clocking in from my break. Thanks Steve.”

With the desk pulled out, you grabbed it easily and waved it in front of his face. He gave a weak heh as you patted his shoulder and sauntered back out.

He leaned against the wall, relishing in how cold it was against his weirdly hot body. He wasn’t dumb. He knew you were attractive. He thought you were fucking stunning. But you were his friend, not someone he was trying to fuck around with.

Imagine his surprise when he found himself already half-hard just from barely even a glimpse of your panties when he couldn’t even get it up for the girls he was actually trying to sleep with.

“God fucking damn it,” he muttered, adjusting himself as best as he could before stepping out of the office. As soon as he hit the floor, Robin grabbed his arm and tugged him towards a box of new releases.

“Hey, Stevie, do you mind putting out the pornos? I would but… you know. I don’t really want to.”

Better and better. “Yeah, what would Gloria Steinem think if she knew you saw a VHS sleeve that showed tits?” He raised a brow and took the new box, boasting salacious titles like— Slutty Slumber Party and Cock Fight III.

She pinched his cheek with a grin and patted his back. “You’re the best, Steve.” He rolled his eyes. He knew that already.

You caught up to him before he could pass the privacy curtain that partitioned the triple X section from the rest of the store, peering down into the box.

“Let me help you put these out,” you offered, already scooping up as many titles as you could carry from the box. It was his worst nightmare come to life— an inconvenient boner, his cute friend, and a million sets of tits and dicks everywhere the eye could see.

It was blissfully quiet as he focused intensely on alphabetizing the titles. You helped him do stuff all the time, no need for him to make it weird just because you were shelving movies like Hot Groupie Fuckfest 2.

“Maybe you should sneak one of these home,” you finally said, turning the title in your hand towards him. “It could help.”

“I don’t need tapes to get off,” he insisted, maybe a little too defensively. “I like magazines better anyway. Classier.” He swore internally, realizing he had revealed something extremely private that he hadn’t shared with anyone.

You shrugged and continued shelving. “Magazines are cool,” you replied, rather awkwardly, like you were walking on eggshells. “Very classy.”

“Nothing is wrong with me,” he finally said. His mortification had gotten the best of him and the words just came out. “I’m fine.”

“Okay…” you replied, a furrow between your brows. “I never said you weren’t, Steve. I’m just—“

“Trying to help— I know but…” he groaned, raking a hand through his hair. “Let’s drop it, alright?” You nodded in agreement and he sighed, feeling like a weight had been lifted from his shoulders.

The two of you stood there for a moment before you nodded back to the crate. “Okay, we’ve got, like, three dozen more to stock, so let’s just get it done.”

He hated that he’d upset you, or offended you, or made you feel any way towards him other than perfectly happy. But what was he supposed to do? The entire ordeal was utterly humiliating.

And you seemed totally unbothered as you read the back cover of some girl on girl flick, interest in your eyes. Were you into that stuff? Was that what you liked thinking about? Why was he even concerned about what you think about?

You shelved the movie and moved on— grabbing your next pile, one that took you across the room to the shelf of more taboo, kinky stuff. He stared as you got onto your knees, bending over to stock the bottom shelf. And there he was— greeted by another tiny flash of your panties under the fluorescent lights just before you tugged your skirt down.

His cock stirred with interest, toeing the line between half-hard and impossible to ignore. Jesus. Were you doing it on purpose?

“Hm? Doing what?“ you asked, glancing over your shoulder. “Because if you mean stocking the weird shit on the bottom shelf, that’s a yes. No one wants to walk in and be eye-level with Fist Fest II.”

There was something about your smile then— sweet, like you had no idea the torment you were putting him through. He wanted to cry. “I’ll be right back.”

Robin ignored him as he practically darted past her and into the back rooms. He didn’t even bother clocking out for his break before he ducked into the employee’s only bathroom and locked the door behind himself.

He wasn’t an animal. Typically, he had self control. But a week of being unable to get off combined with your obliviousness as to what you were doing to him had him ready to jump out of his skin.

He fumbled with his belt, the metal clinking echoed off of the tile walls as he practically ripped it off. He made quick work of the button and zipper of his fly, practically moaning with relief at the lack of restriction. He spat into his hand before he shoved it into his briefs, crying out in relief before he thought better of it and bit onto his fist to keep quiet.

This, he realized as he grew frustrated with the lack of mobility and pulled his dick out at work, was a new low for him. Teeth cut into the meat of his palm as he fucked his hand in earnest, muffled moans coming out strangled and desperate. There wasn’t time for teasing, for drawing it out like he usually did when he was alone. It felt like his body was a rubber band, stretched and poised to snap.

And, god help him, he was thinking about you. Of you bent over Keith’s desk, legs gangly and awkward, ass in the air, wriggling to try to free yourself before caving and asking him for help. Steve was a gentleman. He only spared one look of shock before averting his eyes. But fantasies didn’t hurt anyone.

Fantasies about you doing it on purpose— arching your back and wiggling your hips invitingly because you wanted him to see you like that. In another world, where you wanted him and he wanted you, he would’ve relished in that scenario. Of you teasing and entrapping him in some game of cat and mouse. Of fucking you over the stupid squeaky desk and covering your mouth so Robin didn’t hear. Biting into your shoulder to keep himself quiet.

He came thinking about you, a guttural, desperate moan cutting into the air despite his best efforts to stay quiet. He hadn’t realized how much he’d needed a release until he was coming down, his hand sticky and warm, cum painting the tile in front of him.

“Jesus fucking— goddamn it.” His voice wavered, most of his energy sapped. He felt pathetic as he stuffed his softening length back in his briefs and tugged his pants up, wincing at the sensitivity. And he felt even more pathetic as he grabbed paper towels from the dispenser and cleaned up his spend from the bathroom wall at his fucking workplace.

A sudden loud knock sounded on the door, nearly making him yelp. “Are you okay in there, dingus?” Robin asked, her genuine concern masked by the sarcasm that dripped from her tone. “You ran past like you needed to shit, or something, so I wanted to check.”

He sunk onto the gross bathroom floor and banged his head against the wall. Dying, he decided, would have been less painful than whatever this was.

It had been days, and he had yet to cum unless you were at the top of mind. It had to be a coincidence, like he’d Pavlov-ed himself into only getting hard if he thought about you.

No. That wasn’t exactly true. He could get hard, he just couldn’t cum unless he thought about you. There was a big difference, and it meant he wasn’t totally broken after all. It meant he could fix it.

The most inconvenient thing about it was the fact that he had to jerk off before any shifts with you or he’d have to repeat that first bathroom session, which was something he really, really wanted to leave in the past.

There was a possibility that there was something to the situation at hand— that the reason for his body’s reaction to you was beyond just physical. But that was dumb, and every time that tiny voice in his brain told him to consider it, Steve just shook it off.

His phone rang at his bedside and he sighed, tossing the book he’d been trying to read for the past hour with no avail.

“Yeah?” He sighed, rubbing the bridge of his nose. He really needed some glasses, huh?

“Hey, Steve, it’s me.” Your voice was like music over the phone, and he sat up quickly, like you were there to witness his lazy, slouchy morning. “I was just calling to ask if you could cover my shift this afternoon. I know it’s a big ask since it’s so last minute, but I can totally pay you back double sometime.”

He scratched the back of his neck. Fucking Keith was on the schedule tonight, and they hated each other. Then again, it wasn’t like he had any plans. He couldn't risk another failed hookup, or word might get around that he was a limp dick loser. “Mhmm. Shouldn’t be too bad,” he lied.

You sighed with relief on the other end. “You’re a lifesaver, Steve. I thought I was gonna have to cancel my date.”

His heart stuttered for a few moments before he recovered and tried to act casual about it. “Date? I didn’t even know you were…” He trailed off, unsure of how to even finish that sentence. His voice was higher than usual, so he cleared his throat to brush it off.

You laughed. “Yeah, I know it’s been a while. I figured I should stop waiting around for something to fall into my lap and just put myself out there, or something. You know, just… casually, nothing too serious.”

Oh. He didn’t have the right to feel disappointed, and yet… He wanted to tell you not to go, to stay home like normal, and keep things like they were already. He didn’t want to imagine you with some random Hawkins asshole right now, especially when he couldn’t think of a single person in city limits who might be worthy of your time.

It was crazy. He’d set you up on plenty of dates and coached you through even more. He didn’t have any reason to feel weird about it now.

“Steve? Did I lose you?” You asked softly. “I know you’re still dealing with… you know, everything. I don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want me to. God, hearing you talk about getting laid while I was having a dry spell used to make me want to rip my hair out.”

“It’s fine,” he insisted. “Go have a good date, and don’t let him have all the fun, alright?”

You laughed, and he could picture you wrinkling your nose the way you always did when he said something dumb. “I would never. Thanks again, Steve.”

You were giddy at work the next morning, a pretty glow about you, an unusual chipper attitude that you shared with every single guest. You weren’t even being particularly snarky with him or Robin.

“Good night?” He asked, despite not really wanting to know. God, it was like there were two halves of himself constantly working against the other.

You smiled brightly, and he almost winced. “It was so good. I think you know him— Andy from Varsity baseball in ‘84. He graduated a year earlier than us and goes to Purdue. He’s living at home while he’s doing an internship for some financial firm.”

“What happened to just being casual?” Steve asked, brows furrowing as he looked at you.

You laughed in lieu of a response and grabbed the box of merchandise for the latest new releases. He stood there dumbly until Keith knocked into his shoulder.

“Back to work, Harrington,” he said in that stupid, asshole voice of his. “These returns aren’t going to shelve themselves.”

——

“You’re glowering.” Robin whispered into his ear a few days later, so close it made him jump out of his frustrated stupor and back into reality.

“I’m not, I'm just focused,” he insisted, even though his eyes were burning holes into the back of Andy’s head. He hit stop on the tape he had successfully rewound and put it back into the case, then back into the cart for shelving.

It was the sort of monotonous task that gave him time to ruminate. And to glower.

Why was Andy even there? Just to distract you from work and charm his way into your pants? Again? You’d been shelving the same tape of The Outsiders for twenty minutes, at least.

God, he sounded like Keith. Wasn’t that terrifying?

“Do you remember him from high school?” Steve finally asked, sparing a glance back at Robin. She shrugged, and he whipped his gaze back to the two of you. His hand was on your hip, dangerously close to grabbing your ass. Classless, asshole college guy. “Yeah, I figured. He graduated in ‘84. Third baseman.”

Robin snorted. “I bet.”

“Cute. Very charming, Robin,” Steve sighed, shaking his head. He stopped the tape and slipped the cover back on. “Whatever. He just doesn’t seem her type, that’s all.”

Robin rolled her eyes and grabbed his hand before he could reach for the next tape. “Steve. Andy is exactly her type. Sweet guy, athletic, charming…” She raised her brows, like she was trying to make a point. But to Steve, the only point she seemed to be making was that Andy was the total package and he was a loser.

“I’m not glowering,” he repeated, if only to prove it to himself. “I’m just trying to finish up the rewinds since we’re down an employee.” He gave a lazy gesture towards the front of the store, where you and Andy were making eyes at each other.

Not jealous. Not jealous at all. Just… sexually frustrated. That was an easy fix.

His Rolodex was filled with girls who he’d fooled around with. When he got home, he flipped through the remaining names, each eliciting vague memories.

Deanna was hot… she had a weird laugh though. Not like you. Your laugh was a nice, warm sound. He liked your laugh more than anything. As a friend. Of course.

Maybe Kelly? She was sweet, pretty. Not as pretty as you were, obviously, but who was?

He tried calling a few, but most of them wanted nothing to do with a guy who’d forgotten to call for a few months. After his third rejection, he gave up entirely. He didn’t really have it in him to lead another girl on, anyway.

Maybe there was something there he should acknowledge. That itching, stirring feeling of want that had started to fester months ago. Gnawing at the edges of each interaction he had with you. Maybe it had always been there and his dumb body was making him do something about it, just like you’d said.

He was in a mood for the next week. He hadn’t felt this pent up since after graduation, when he had to wear a sailor uniform and perform a public humiliation ritual for minimum wage.

You sidled up to him at the register at closing, where he was getting a sick sort of satisfaction in checking on all of the late charges about to hit the overdue rentals.

You were dressed like you were going to go on a date later— with one of your favorite tops and that goddamn mini skirt. Even worse, you were smiling a pretty smile like you wanted something, which made the itch of irritation claw at his tongue. “I’m not taking another one of your shifts so that you can go out with Andy,” he said sternly, with a narrowed glance at you.

Your brows raised and you gave him a look that told him he was being an asshole, which he already knew. “Okay, one, I wasn’t going to ask you to take one of my shifts, and two, who pissed in your cereal this morning?”

He just huffed. “Sorry, long day.” Long month. “I’m being a dick.”

You smiled and nodded. “Yeah, you are… but I forgive you.” You brushed your hair back and leaned imperceptibly closer. It probably wasn’t on purpose, but your arm pushed against his and you were so warm, and you smelled like the Avon perfume your mom always bought you. ”Let’s hang out tonight. I feel like I only ever see you at work lately. I’ll rent us a movie, grab some dinner on the way… it’ll be just like old times.”

The realistic part of his brain told him it was a bad idea. He’d been plagued with graphic, explicit images of you playing in his head at the worst of times. He wasn’t sure he could trust himself to be normal about hanging out at your place.

Which was absolutely ridiculous. It would be the thousandth time he’d been over, but the odds of him getting an inconvenient, persistent boner around you were frustratingly high.

But his alternative was going home to sulk alone and sink deeper into his funk, so he nodded. “Yeah, sounds fun.” It would be fine. He could persevere.

——

Your basement had always been his favorite place to hang out. Unlike his own parents who wanted input into every facet of his young life, your parents let you do whatever the hell you wanted to the space, as long as they could store their treadmill and your mom’s Tupperware stock.

It was lit with old Christmas lights and covered in tchotchkes that you had found in garage sales. Old quilts, your grandma’s macrame, needlepoint throw pillows. It was like an estate sale had crawled inside to die, and he loved it.

The couch had an uncomfortable spring that always dug into his thighs, you picked a really dumb movie, and you had slightly burned the popcorn on the stove, but he couldn’t complain. Maybe he did need this.

”So… are you still seeing Andy?” He asked when the movie hit a lull. It wasn’t that he wasn’t paying attention, it was just hard to focus.

You laughed, shaking your head. You were sprawled across the ugly floral couch, legs in his lap, curled up facing the TV. “Ew, no,” you said with an eye roll. “He was fun at first, but I was just kind of using him, you know?”

Did he know? Probably not, but he nodded like he understood anyway. He took another handful of the mildly-burnt popcorn and watched you out of his periphery (which was, admittedly, not what it used to be).

He tried to focus on the movie some more, but it was you that broke the silence next. You shifted your legs a bit to get comfortable before he felt your gaze on him. “So, how’s your problem?” You asked.

His cheeks felt hot, like his entire head had been shoved under the heat lamp in Dustin’s turtle’s tank. “Oh,“ he cleared his throat. “Fine, I guess. I don’t know, actually. I haven’t been on any dates since Becky, so…”

“Really? Why not?” You asked, brows knit.

His expression was incredulous. Why not? Oh, nothing too bad— just that I can’t get hard lately unless I’m fantasizing about you. “Why do you think? This is totally reputation killing stuff here. I’ll be lucky if the entire female population of Hawkins doesn’t think my dick doesn’t work.”

You shifted closer, but your legs were still heavy in his lap, which he was growing increasingly conscious of. “What about when you’re alone?”

His heart started to hammer as thoughts flooded his brain of the session he’d had in the shower that morning, which had been, in part, fueled by a quick perusal of his photo album from last summer and the handful of pictures of you in a remarkably high cut swimsuit.

“Uh…” His voice was higher than usual, and he tried to bring it back down to Earth before continuing. His throat bobbed as he swallowed, glancing only briefly at your lips before forcing himself to look back up at your eyes. “Normal. It’s normal.”

“So, if that's normal, what do you think about when you’re alone?”

His throat feels tight as he tries to think of something to say other than you, you, you, you. You in your stupid granny pajamas, you in the backseat of his car, you bending over to shelve DVDs… you had burrowed into his mind and totally corrupted it. He squints, like he’s considering anything else. “Um… normal things. Just… normal stuff, you know?”

You sighed out a soft huh, and there was something in your gaze that made his stomach flip. It was an expression he’d never seen you wear so plainly, especially not towards him. Pure, hungry desire, so obvious that he had to have been imagining it. “Steve,” you whispered.

He closed his eyes, swallowing. “Mhmm? Yeah?”

“You’re hard right now.”

He glanced down as you shifted your legs again and had to swallow a pathetic moan at the tiniest amount of friction. And, well, he was obviously, undeniably hard in his jeans.

“Oh, that’s just… y’know, from me remembering all of the totally normal stuff that I—“

The rest of his lame excuse was swallowed by the warm press of your lips against his. Lapped away as your tongue slipped into his mouth and took every rational thought away with it. It was slow and sweet, like you were trying your best to savor every second of it. Jesus, had you always been that good of a kisser?

When you pulled back, with spit-glossed lips and met his gaze, he felt so turned on that his head started to swim. He couldn’t find words for how he was feeling, for how he’d been feeling, so he offered a meager, “You’re really good at that.”

You rolled your eyes and laughed, and his heart did that thing again, which felt more embarrassing than the obvious bulge straining in his Levi's. For once, his body’s ability (or lack thereof) to function was the least of his worries.

“I don’t know how much more obvious I can possibly make it,” you said softly. “I’m really into you.”

His brows furrowed. For a second, he thought he might have slipped in the shower, died, and woken up in a very forgiving afterlife. “What? Since when?”

You swallowed and chewed your lip sheepishly for a moment. “Um, on and off since I’ve known you, but, like, very much on since graduation.”

It was like a fog had lifted over his memories. The lingering touches and flirty eyes across the rooms. The late nights on the phone, where it felt like talking to Steve was the only place you wanted to be. And, frankly, it had been all he wanted to do too.

Maybe he had been a total idiot this whole time. A dense, oblivious dumb ass who had been ignoring his dream girl because she was one of his best friends first.

Then his brows knit deeper, forming two parallel furrows between your brows. “But you were just dating Andy.”

You groaned and rolled your eyes. “I was trying to make you jealous, which obviously worked since Robin told me that she caught you pouting.”

Robin. “I didn’t pout,” he insisted, but he knew that lying was futile. He had just… glared in Andy’s general direction. “Okay, fine. If that was on purpose, I’m guessing your panty flashing was too.”

That seemed to make you pause. Your head tilted, brows furrowing. “I’m sorry, my what?”

He blanched, embarrassed. “You know, the time you wore this same skirt, and you got stuck on Keith’s desk. You were messing with me, obviously.”

He could see the gears turning in your mind as you thought back to when you’d gotten stuck on the desk. As soon as the grin split across your features, he wanted to melt right into the shitty couch cushions and die next to the fucked-up spring. “You think I’d risk my Empire shirt just to turn you on?” You questioned, frankly offended at the insinuation. When his face went pink with embarrassment, you looked positively giddy. “Oh my god, Harrington you perv—“

He had you pinned on your back before you could fully form the insult, planting kisses to your neck. “You’re so evil,” he mumbled into your throat, lips grazing, soft and wet against your fluttering pulse. Each kiss made you squirm beneath him, which wasn’t doing much to help him cool down. “You’ve been driving me crazy, like you’ve got some sort of witchy spell on me.”

You giggled, and the sound went straight into the warm, gooey center of himself. “Did it turn you on?” You gasped softly. He groaned as you hooked one of your legs around his thigh and pulled him closer against you, so he was grinding directly against your core.

Did it turn him on? It had led to one of the most humiliating moments of his life, of which there had been many. It was embarrassing, but the sound of your laughter was like a drug to him, so he’d throw himself into the fire for your amusement. “It turned me on so much that I had to jerk off in the employee bathrooms,” he mumbled against your throat.

That was a dumb thing to admit. A dumb, gross, creepy thing to tell one of your best friends. Your oldest friend! Stupid, stupid Steve—

“That’s the sweetest thing I’ve ever heard,” you said finally. One of your hands came up and he shivered as he felt your nails combing through his hair. “But you could have just told me, dummy. We could’ve run out to my car so I could take care of it for you.”

Just the thought made his hips buck against yours, seeking sweet, sweet friction between your thighs. “Don’t say things like that,” he groaned. “If you talk like that it’ll fucking kill me, I swear.”

He pulled back, just to see the sharp, wet glint of your teeth as you smiled up at him. You drove him crazy. Before, it was just in the normal ways, like when you made him give you a ride into the city and didn’t give him gas money, or when you drank too much at a party and puked on his new sneakers.

This was new. He felt stricken by some new form of hysteria, where something as tiny as the smallest twitch in your brows made him feel overcome with intense need. Jesus, he’d never been so pent up in his life. He felt the soft pressure of your leg tugging him close again, then the slow roll of your hips against his.

"Fuck," he panted. It was embarrassing, frankly, how gone he already was. He leaned down, capturing your lips with his again, and relished in the slow drag of your tongue against his.

He'd never loved a kiss so much in his life. With you beneath him, grinding up against him and moaning against his lips. The way your tongue felt tangling with his. He got too lost in it— in the kiss, in your bodies pressing together. After a while, the kissing got lost and it was just the two of you, panting into each others mouths as you slowly ground against each other.

You pulled back first— lips kiss-swollen and slick. It took everything in him not to kiss you again.

“So…” You murmured, peering up at him. When you bit your lip sheepishly, he wanted to bury his face in your throat and groan. He watched, hypnotized, as your tongue slipped out and wet your lips. “Everything definitely feels like it's working like normal.”

He nearly whined as your other hand moved down and palmed him through his jeans. Your fingers pressed against his button, working it undone. He groaned as your hand wriggled past his waistband to grope him through his briefs.

It all felt so good, too good. Your thumb brushed over the damp fabric clinging to his weeping tip and he swore he saw stars. "Ah, just… just wait—" He choked out.

You froze, brow quirked. He could feel his cock twitching in your palm, and tried to think about horrible, disgusting things to keep from coming too soon. Demodogs, Russian torture, Tommy Hagan's gym locker, mopping random kids' puke off of the Scoops Ahoy tile. "What? Is it happening again?"

"No, no, the opposite," he panted. His eyes squeezed shut and he tried to control himself as best as he could, given the circumstances. You showed him a little bit of mercy and slipped you hand free, which he was immensely grateful for.

"So I beat the curse, huh?" You asked with a coy smile. "Becky Martin and Katie Frey can totally suck it."

Steve laughed, despite everything. "Jesus, you are the curse," he said, meeting your gaze. "For the past month, I could only get off if I was thinking about you." He swallowed, feeling vulnerable with you looking up at him. "Like I said… witchy spell."

He sat back as you pushed at his shoulders, encouraging him to sit back against the cushions. His eyes widened as you shifted into his lap, the weight of you warm and comfortable there. When he glanced down at where you sat on his lap, where your skirt rode up your thighs, he got a head rush. "You know…" You trailed off, looping your arms around his neck. "Usually, I'd never sleep with a guy who said I'm a curse."

He groaned as you tugged at the hair at the base of his neck, forcing him to tilt his head back and expose his throat. He laughed weakly, eyes half lidded as he looked at you. "Usually," he echoed.

You nodded and leaned closer, so he could feel the warm buzz of your proximity. Like every cell in his body was vibrating with the desire to just press against you. "Well, someone needs to fix that attitude of yours. You've been really bitchy for the past few weeks." He scoffed at your words, but couldn't fight the smile on his lips.

You sat back on his knees and pulled his shirt over his head, revealing the toned expanse of his torso. He hummed contentedly as your fingers combed through his chest hair, just exploring the newly exposed skin.

Your hands trailed down, following the trail of dark hair on his tummy that disappeared into his briefs. He swallowed hard as you wrapped your hand around his cock, warm and tight. He wanted to see though. He wanted to look at the way your manicured hand fit around him, so he tugged his pants down and moaned at the sight.

"You must really want this," you murmured, lips twitching up in what he could only recognize as pure triumph. "You're dripping." The pad of your thumb swept over his tip, gathering slick precum to make the glide of your hand smooth.

It didn't take much. Actually, it took a mortifyingly small amount of attention. Your hand just felt so good wrapped around him, and it was the very thing he'd been fantasizing about for the past month. You, in his lap, with your hand around his pulsing cock and your lips on his throat. It couldn't have been more than three pumps of your hand, not even enough time to get a good rhythm, and he was crying out with pretty moans and shooting thick ropes of cum all over his abdomen.

His chest was heaving like he'd just run a marathon as you worked him through it. "Fuck," he panted. "Nngh— You've gotta— Ah, fuck— 's too much." You relented, like a benevolent god, and released him from your grip, so his dick twitched and softened against his stomach.

"Is that how you sounded when you faked it for Katie?" You teased.

"Oh, fuck off," he panted, a smile splitting his features.

When his mind cleared enough to have a little bit of shame, he realized how embarrassing it was that he'd finished so fast. Maybe you were into him for other things, but he didn't want to risk losing you now. So as he hastily tugged his pants back up, he stumbled through an explanation. "I'm not usually, like… I mean… I do have stamina, typically."

"I actually think it's really sweet, Steve. It's like a compliment." He was going to argue more, then you licked the cum from your fingers to clean it up and he nearly blacked out at the sight. He couldn't wait a second more, he had to have his hands on you.

"Alright, your turn," he said, and before you could say anything, he had you pinned beneath him on the couch again. He worked the buttons of your shirt quickly, until it fell open at your sides. He sat up, just to take in the sight.

"You're so goddamn pretty," he practically groaned. With your shirt undone, he relished in the sight of your tits cupped by white lace. "I don't even wanna take it off."

"Steve," you gasped as his mouth moved down your throat and sternum, until he was planting wet, hot kisses onto the plush of your breasts. He moaned against your chest, propping himself with one arm so he could grope at your tit with his free hand. You keened, arching into the attention, and he relished in your neediness. "I think you should take it off."

Your wish was his command. Not that it was such a difficult ask. He made quick work of the clasp and let you shrug it off and onto the floor. He sat back and really had to fight the urge to whistle at the sight. "Goddamn," he murmured, letting his hands roam up your body and cup your breasts.

You rolled your eyes, but he could see the tiniest bit of bashfulness in your eyes. In the back of his mind, it was kind of weird. Not bad weird, just… different. You were the person he went with to the hair salon and watched the Bulls with. It felt odd to have you pinned beneath him, moaning softly as he squeezed the plush of your tits and teased your nipples.

To your credit, you let him take his time. You let his hands wander and explore at his own pace. Your breath hitched as his hands dipped lower, until he was hiking up the fabric of your mini skirt to reveal your panties. Baby blue.

"Oh, fuck you," he groaned, meeting your gaze. "It was on purpose, you liar."

You grinned, and the smug expression you wore made him feel like his chest was going to implode. "I don't know what you're talking about, Steve. Do you really think I'd play mind games to torment you when you're pent up and needy?"

Yes, actually. He huffed and shifted down your body. He felt right at home with your thighs bracketing his head. He pressed a kiss to the soft skin of your inner thigh.

The pastel of your panties betrayed just how affected you were, much to his amusement. He ran a thumb over the damp patch at your center and felt your thighs tense on either side of him. "You must really want this," he said with a grin, echoing your previous teasing.

"Jesus, of course I do," you said, breath shuddering as he thumbed at your clit through the sodden fabric. "You're, like, my dream guy, and you're about to go down on me."

Your dream guy. Steve's pulse thrummed as he took it in. You were incredible, way too good for a Hawkins loser who spent his shifts renting video tapes. To be fair, you were also spending your days shelving video tapes, but he always felt like that was a brief stop in your life that you'd move on from.

But if you thought he was good enough to be your dream guy, maybe there was something worthwhile left in him after all.

He kissed your clit through your panties almost reverently. His tongue laved over the fabric and he groaned at the taste of you saturating the cotton. God, you were like heaven. He could have stayed like that for hours— just tasting you through your panties. Each lap over your center just soaking the fabric more, until it clung to the shape of your lips like a second skin.

It wasn't enough though, and he was too lost in his desire to be particularly patient. He wanted his tongue on you, in you, licking up every drop of your juices until he made you spill more onto his tongue. He sat up and tugged your panties down, then quickly repositioned himself between your legs with your thighs over his shoulders.

Steve's tongue darted out, wetting his lips as he took in the sight of your pussy. Slick with arousal, twitching with anticipation. He ran his thumb up the seam of you, spreading you open. He relished in the cute twitch of your clit as blew a puff of cool air over your heated, sensitive skin.

"You're really pretty," he murmured. "So wet for me. And so goddamn responsive." He grinned up at you from between your thighs, relishing in the way your tits heaved with each shuddery breath.

His tongue lapped at your center, tasting just how badly you've wanted him. You writhed beneath him, thighs tensing to clamp around his head before he finally just held them apart. He started to taste you in earnest then, lapping up your juices, stroking the bud of your clit with the flat of his tongue.

You tasted so good, practically gushing onto his tongue as he feasted on you. His tongue pressed against your entrance, just barely dipping in so he could feel the way you clenched around the intrusion.

"Fuck, Steve," you panted. Your hips bucked, practically grinding against his mouth. He moaned against you, nuzzling his nose against your clit. "That's— ah, fuck— that's really good."

He smiled against your pussy, giving a few more slow, wet kisses before he sat up. In the dim light of the basement, you could see where his face was slick and shiny with your spit and juices. "Gonna stretch you out a little for me, okay?"

You nodded, propping yourself on your elbows to see him better. He pressed another sweet kiss to your clit before he eased his middle finger into you. If he hadn't already fully recovered from his first orgasm, just the feeling of your walls clenching around his finger would have done it for him.

It took a minute for him to learn your body. Where to touch, what spots inside made your legs shake. You took two fingers easily, squirming as he pressed his fingers against a sensitive, spongy spot. Your eyes rolled back and his head thumped against the arm of the sofa, which made him grin.

"Right there, huh?" He teased. He applied a little more pressure and felt you gush around his fingers. Yeah, right there. He wrapped his lips around your your sensitive clit and sucked until your thighs trembled on either side of him.

"Steve!" You gasped, back arching. Your voice was high and breathy, he'd never heard you so desperate before. He knew you were close— he could feel your walls clenching and fluttering around his fingers. "Oh, fuck. Jesus christ, like that— Just like that—"

When you finally came around his fingers and on his tongue, he had never heard such a perfect sound before. Soft, keening moans and pretty cries of his name. Your clit twitched against his tongue, and when your sweet moans finally turned into overstimulated whimpers, he relented.

You panted, chest heaving breathlessly as you came down from your high. You propped yourself up on your elbows and giggled as he wiped his mouth on the back of his hand. "Holy shit," you gasped.

He grinned, crawling up your body to plant a slow, sweet kiss on your lips. He could feel you smiling into the kiss, until his teeth knocked with yours and he had to pull back with a sheepish laugh. "Think you can give me another one?"

You raised a brow. "I can, but do you think you can?"

He laughed. Jesus, he'd been hard since he'd gotten his hands on your tits. "I definitely can."

Your gaze was on him as he stripped the rest of his clothes off— kicking his socks, jeans and briefs into a messy pile on the floor. For the first time in a long string of hookups, Steve Harrington felt self-conscious under your scrutiny.

"You're staring," he said weakly, feeling heat flood his cheeks. Usually, the second he was undressed he had a partner ready to jump his bones, but you just took in the sight of him.

"Only because you're really hot. You're forgetting that this is the culmination of every teenage fantasy I've ever had," you finally said, shifting to sit up. He hummed contentedly as you ran your hands up his chest then traced over his broad shoulders

"How did this next part go in those fantasies, huh?" He asked.

With a tiny grin, you pushed him back onto the couch, which creaked under his weight. "Well, usually," you began, straddling his hips. "They start like this."

Oh. Steve swallowed, peering up at you with wide eyes. Your hands splayed over his chest, fingers dimpling the muscle of his pecs. He groaned as you gave a slow rock of your hips, gliding your cunt along his length.

You were so wet and warm on top of him, and the precum dribbling from his tip only added to the sticky mess. All he could do was watch, totally slack-jawed as you ground your hips against his.

Well, he could also reach up and play with your tits. So he did. His heart thrummed at the soft and pretty sound that fell past your lips as he tugged and pinched your nipples.

You didn't wait any longer, not that he would have made you. There was something so sexy about the way you took control— taking his cock in your hand so you could line him up with your entrance and begin to slowly sink onto him. His hands quickly moved down to your hips, squeezing tight as you took inch after inch.

Jesus, you were taking it like a champ. With your head tossed back and your pussy clenching around his cock, he knew you really fucking loved it. He wanted you to love every bit of it.

"That's it," Steve goaded, the tiniest hint of a smirk on his lips. "Just a little more, honey. You've got it."

You moaned, lips parted as you sunk down. Warm, wet, tight until you were fully seated. A furrow formed between your brows as you stilled, accommodating to the size of him. "Fuck," you breathed, fingers tensing on his chest.

He wanted to squirm, to buck his hips deeper, to force you to finally move. But he could behave, he could let you have this. You gave a slow roll of your hips and he groaned, squeezing your hips tighter. "You doing okay?"

A cocky smile broke across your lips, and when you laughed he felt your walls squeeze around him. "I'm doing great," you said, punctuation your words with another slow grind. "I'm just trying to make sure you can last long enough to enjoy it."

His cheeks went hot with embarrassment and arousal, the smirk faded into mild offense. "Don't be cute. I'm fine."

"Yeah?" You began to move faster, your thighs colliding with his with each bounce onto him. You took him as deep as you could, then rose up until he was just about to slip out of you, only to slam back down. In, out, in, out, in, out. "Is this what you've been thinking about every time you jerked off?"

Had he thought of this? And then some. Steve had learned that he could be very creative when he needed to be. "Something like it," He managed, eyes squeezing shut as you gave a particularly sinful swivel of your hips.

He groaned, head falling back, neck bared as you rode him within an inch of his life. At least, that's what it felt like. Pretty moans and soft ah, ah, ahs slipped past your lips like his cock was punching them out of you. He moved his hands, grabbing your ass like he had any semblance of control over what you were doing to him.

Who the fuck taught you to ride dick like this? And should he thank them or murder them?

"Fuck, Steve," you panted. "Should've known you'd feel this good. No wonder you have a fucking harem around you."

He didn't want to think about that. He didn't want to think about another girl ever again. In one steady motion, he had you pinned to the couch. From beneath him, he relished in the way your eyes went wide with surprise. He didn't just feel good, he was good. He wanted you to know how good he was for you, how good he could make you feel.

"You feel goddamn perfect," he groaned. As soon as the compliment passed his lips, he felt you squeeze around him, pussy fluttering as he drove into you again and again. "So wet and tight, so pretty. Can't believe I've wasted my time when you've been right here."

Steve moved his mouth to your throat, licking and sucking and biting at all of the soft skin there. He wanted to leave a mark. He wanted Andy to show up to Family Video the next day so he could beg for a second chance, only to see you'd already moved on.

But he couldn't focus too much on vindictive pettiness when you were so beautiful beneath him, with your eyes wide and full of so much want. Had he ever felt so wanted before? So needed? Your legs wrapped around him, heels digging in to drive him deeper.

His thrusts slowed, until he was buried deep inside of you and grinding nice and slow, rubbing against the soft, sensitive spots inside of you that made you drip around his cock.

It was then that he pulled back, meeting your gaze as he ground into you. Your eyes fluttered, rolling until he saw the whites of them. "Jesus Christ," you gasped. "Fuck, Steve, just like that. Feels s'good."

He grinned, preening at your praise. He propped himself up on one arm, then snaked the other between your bodies, so he could rub at your clit. The second his thumb rubbed over the slick bundle of nerves, your walls squeezed around him so tight he could hardly move.

You cried out prettily, nails cutting into the meat of his back. "Just a little more, yeah?" He cooed. He moved his thumb a little faster, feeling the way your clit twitched against the pressure.

"Fuck—" You gasped. "Steve, god, don't stop, please—"

He could feel that the band was going to snap. Your gasping breaths and whiny moans were as much of an indicator as the fluttery way your walls clamped down on him.

Steve wasn't much better off. He could sense his impending orgasm like the buzz of lightning about to strike. A tightly wound spring, a dam about to burst. But, god, he wanted to feel you cum first. "C'mon, I've got you, sweetheart. Just give it to me."

It was a goddamn miracle that you came when you did— crying out nice and pretty as you clenched around him like a vise. The sound of his name falling from your lips, with your body enveloping him like you were made to… it was everything he'd been craving for the past month. Probably longer, if he was honest with himself.

He barely managed to work you through your orgasm before it all became too much. He pulled out and spilled onto your tummy with a guttural moan.

"Fuck," he panted, collapsing onto you. He should have been disgusted about the warm slickness of his cum sandwiched between your bodies, but he was so sated that he couldn't bring himself to care. "Was it okay for you?"

Steve propped himself up on his elbow so he could look at you. God, you were pretty. You'd always been pretty, but right now you looked so perfect.

You bit your lip and nodded. "Yeah, it was great," you replied. "Really great, actually. I guess it was okay for you too, considering I'm glazed with your cum right now."

He laughed sheepishly and rolled his eyes. "Shut up."

The two of you dressed in comfortable silence, mopping yourselves clean of fluids and sweat with a few towels sitting on top of the washing machine… that promptly went right back in for another clean.

You hopped on top of the machine when it was running, peering over at where Steve stood. "Penny for your thoughts?" You asked. He glanced over and his heart thrummed. Even in shitty lounge wear with your hair pulled back in a banana clip, you looked like a supermodel.

"Just thinking about work tomorrow," he confessed. Your brows knit in confusion as you looked at him. Work? Now? "I don't know how we're going to share a shift without me going absolutely crazy and wanting to get my hands on you. Especially now that I know that I can."

You grinned, and Jesus, he wanted to just jump your bones again. "Well, it's just you and me on the schedule tomorrow," you reminded him. "Maybe we close at lunch so you can help me with restocks? Just to make sure your problem is completely solved. I don't want you relapsing."

He knew there wasn't a chance in hell that he'd ever have a problem getting hard again. Not with you around, looking like the finest goddamn thing to ever set foot in Hawkins, Indiana. "Might as well," he said. "Just to be sure."

A light comes on and the window flies open. “What’s wrong?” Steve asks, his voice coming before his head. He sticks it out and stares down at you, soft hair flying in every direction a contrast to his shocked mouth. 

“Hold me now!” you cry, just as the angry animal noise begins again by the fence.

Steve’s head disappears. It can’t be fifteen seconds and then he’s at the patio door pulling it open, feet fast as he rushes to you by the steps. 

“Steve, hold me fast!”

“No, I– I got you, I have you, grab my neck–” He forces your arms over his shoulder and pulls you into his arms. “It’s okay, it’s just a dog, it’s okay. In the house, let’s get you–”

Steve has you to the patio before you can say it is most certainly not okay. He carries you into the living room, leaving wet spots dripping in a trail from your dragging tail across the floor and onto the couch, where he deposits you gently. He’s huffing for breath as he bends over you, searching in the dark for your face. “Are you okay?” he asks, your cheek in his hand. “Baby, you scared me. Did it scare you?” 

“Scare?”

He gestures to you gently. All you can see of him is the barest light on his hand and his eyes, coming in from the yard. “This feeling. Your heart.” He puts his hand on your heart and taps quickly, a fast pulse. 

You breathe out in shame. “Scare,” you admit in a whisper. 

“You don’t have to be scared. Nothing's gonna get you, okay, I won’t let anything touch you. I promise. Don’t be scared,” he lowers his voice, kneeling in front of you on one leg, “nothing’s gonna hurt you. I,” —he hits his chest, then points at the door and shakes his head— “won’t let it.” 

“Steve, you…” 

“I’ll keep you safe. I promise.”

“Safe.”

“Safe,” he says, nodding briefly, then shaking his head, the mermaid-gesture for yes. An emphatic yes. 

It makes you laugh. There are tears in your eyes again, all you do lately is cry, and your back hurts more than it did an hour ago, and Steve is gonna keep you safe. No more bad scares. 

He gets up and you grab him, scared again, but he says. “Fast. I’m gonna lock the door fast, back now. Okay?” 

He waits. He waits for you to say okay. You’re tempted to make him stay, too scared of the noise, but he said he’s gonna keep you safe. There’s been no reason to doubt him. “Okay,” you whisper.

He strokes your cheek, a brief press of his lips in your hair, and then he goes. You struggle for breath on the sofa, glaring at your obscured reflection in the TV screen. 

“Stupid TV,” you mutter. 

Steve returns, hair still a mess, shirt still wet, smiling at you with his eyebrows pinched together tightly. “Hey, honey,” he says, that word again, quiet as a breath. “Ready to go to bed?”

You hold out your arms. Steve is far kinder picking you up the second time around, no grabbing or yanking, just hands intertwined beneath your waist as you hold onto his neck, your cheek to his collar. 

He carries you up to the bedroom and through to the en-suite, where he grabs a couple of towels and wraps one around your shoulders to catch the water still dripping heavily from your hair, then he lays you out in his bed. The sheets are on the floor like he’d jumped to answer your call. The pillow couldn’t smell more of him as you lay down, a hand still on your aching heart. 

“Steve?” you ask. 

He picks up the sheets, long, thin weavings that keep humans warm when they sleep, and shakes it out over your body. When it falls skewiff, he comes to your bedside and neatens it over your chest, tucking it carefully under your chest. “What?”

“Wet?”

“It’s okay. You’re not that wet, I sweat more in the summer.” He raises his eyebrows. “Unless you mean you want the spray bottle.”

You probably won’t need it tonight. 

In your quiet, he asks, “Are you tired?”

“What honey?”

Steve climbs onto the bed, reaching underneath you for the pillow. He slips his hand under your head and pulls it up some for a better angle. “Honey?”

“You me ‘honey’.”

“I call you honey. Can you prove it?”

He sits back, his knuckles brushing against your upper arm. Every time he touches you, you want more. 

“Call me honey,” you insist. 

“It means… It's a pet name, it’s…” With the light coming in from outside, his lips are noticeably bitten. “You’re honey. You’re baby. It means I care about you.” He takes your hands into his, holding them over your stomach. If the blanket wasn’t between his hands and your skin, he’d feel the heat emanating from your abdomen. The change in process, a fever now that it’s close. 

“It’s because I feel like this,” he says, rubbing your hands. “Understand?”

“Feel soft?” you ask. 

“Feel happy,” Steve says, smiling, a mixture of sudden and shy and fond, he’s beautiful. “I feel safe, and warm.”

“Thank you. Scared,” you say, nodding at the window. 

“That’s okay. I’ll come and rescue you whenever you want.”

“Rescue? When, now, later?” You tug at his fingers, squeezing them all together. They’re bigger than yours, but he has all the same bones and skin. 

“Rescue means… I come to you because you’re scared. Does that explain it? You and me, because you’re scared. So you don’t have to be anymore.”

“Rescue later?”

“Rescue always. Later and later and later.”

You think you know what he’s saying. It makes you feel worse than when he accepted your gift, like a tingle in your tummy to replace the awful pain. 

Steve’s smile is tired. He sits at the top of the bed and moves the sheets down to be next to you, a half inch of space you decide you need to cross. 

“Hold you, okay?” 

Steve squeezes his eyes shut. “Okay. C’mere.”

You shuffle into his chest. He wraps an arm around you, catching at the tie of your ‘bikini’. 

“Take it off?” he asks. “Forgot again, sorry.”

“Okay. Off.”

Steve unties your bikini and tosses it onto the ground. You lay into him, soft of your chest to his, your cheek rubbing greedily against his shoulder. Your arm goes over his tummy, your hand to the hem of it. You slip your fingers under it and feel his stomach, the hair there tickling your palm. 

“Sorry rescue me,” you whisper. “Tired, Steve. Sleep.”

“Don’t be sorry. I don’t mind.” He digs his nose into the top of your head and breathes out, like he’s just lain down on the poolside after you made him swim laps. Like he’s relieved to be touching you, really. “You can sleep now, honey.”

It’s funny. As soon as Steve was there, you weren’t scared anymore. Panting and shaken, heart racing, the panic was real, but the fear had gone. You hear the animal crying weakly through the window and curl up closer to Steve’s chest, wishing every night could be like this. Wondering if he’ll let you. 

“Go on and sleep,” he whispers.

You fall asleep with his hand rubbing circles in your back, over and over, like he knew where the pain was. 

Steve had laughed. “Holy shit, you can draw?”

You’d said something in your language with a tone that Steve felt meant, “Don’t act so surprised!” 

“See,” he’d said, reaching over to give your shoulder a shake, “I told you that you’re smart.”

Steve wrapped duct tape around a pen to give you something easier to grip and got you a sketchbook from Melvad’s with plain paper. 

Talking is so much easier, suddenly. Yet you’re still so sad. 

Steve flinches as a hand waves in front of his face aggressively. “Dude, hello? Earth to Steve?”

He swats Dustin’s hand away like a bug. This time, there’s a smack of skin on skin. “Dude!” he bites. 

“What! I’m just trying to ask if you want a coke or something? You’ve been totally zoned out for hours and you never take care of yourself.”

Steve licks his lips. “Shit. Sorry.”

“It’s okay.” Dustin puts a can of coke down in front of him. It might be a nicer gesture if Steve didn’t pay for the soda himself, but still. Little brother audacity prevails. 

He cracks open the coke and takes a sip. The carbonation fills his nose. 

He spends another ten minutes like that, drinking sips of fizz and wishing he knew how to help you, staring down at the bracelet you made him wrapped around his wrist a week ago. There have been photo-cards and your drawings and successful attempts at teaching you a couple of verbs, where Dustin and Steve acted things out for your viewing pleasure. Walk and go and eat and smile and sit and push and wet. Just yesterday you got to ‘taste’ and ‘smell’. There are new avenues opening each day for you to talk to him and each day you’re talking less and less.

Eddie ducks inside. “Hey, Dust, you ready to go?” he asks. 

“Any luck with her?” Steve interjects.

“She’s not that miserable,” Eddie says, grabbing his jacket from the kitchen table. “Maybe she needs more time to rest than we do? It must be hard to sleep, you know, not in her own bed. Waterbed. Clamshell?” 

“Big clam,” Dustin says. 

“I can always come back?” Eddie offers. 

Steve gazes out at the yard. The sun hurts his eyes from his seat as it descends, a yolky line kissing the tops of the fence. It’ll be dark in an hour, late. “No, that’s okay, man. Thanks for trying.”

“Sure. Thanks for dinner, big boy,” he says with a grin, patting Dustin like a drum on his smaller shoulders “say bye to your mommy.”

“Bye, mom,” Dustin grumbles, following Eddie out. 

Steve doesn’t waste much time admitting defeat. He abandons his coke and his socks in the kitchen and pads out of the house and down the steps onto the stone poolside. You lift your head where you’re lying in the water, a small smile tipping at your lips. “Hi, Steve,” you says. 

“Hi,” he says. He would’ve tried your name out if it hadn’t made you giggle like a little hyena the last time. “You okay?”

“I am swimming,” you say. 

You’re laying very still in the water, your tummy a hill, your tail sinking into the depths. 

Robin snorts into her knee, all curled up by the shallows in a pair of shorts and a t-shirt. 

“Are you tired?”

It takes you a little while to answer. “Yes.”

“Do you want to sleep? It’s okay if you want to go to bed now.”

You close your eyes. “Okay.”

It surprises him. Are you gonna sleep on the surface? You probably shouldn’t. If even one person sees you in the pool at night, that’ll be it. Steve will have to kill someone or run away and hide you. He doesn’t trust Hawkins, or the government, or anyone to look after you. 

He brushes the top of Robin’s hair as he walks around her, walking slowly into the pool one step at a time. The water is cold, but it’s been warm enough today that it’s nice. Still, he makes his way to you in the middle of the pool and wraps an arm around your tail, just below your tummy. “I can make the pool warm, if you want?”

He’s offered a couple of times, each with zero success, but he offers because he worries you’ll get cold and won’t say. 

“Pool warm?” you ask quietly. You haven’t opened your eyes. 

“Yeah, baby,” he says, really hoping Robin can’t hear him talking low by your head, “would that be good? I can make it cold again whenever you want.” Note to self: define ‘when’ and ‘now’ and ‘later’.

“Steve hold me, pool warm.” 

Hug me first. 

He tries not to feel Robin’s eyes on him as he bends at the waist and slips his arms around either side of you. Your eyes are finally open at half slits, your arms going over his shoulders, unbalanced, clinging to him so you don’t end up submerged. He pulls you up toward him, listening to the soft rush of water sluicing down your back. 

“Steve… in house today. No swim?” you ask gently.

“Steve bad for you?” 

You squeeze him, like you can’t help yourself. “No. Steve, I… need Steve and me,” you say, still gentle, getting smaller.

“I’m sorry.”

“Steve…” you drift off. It had sounded like you wanted to ask a question. 

“What, baby?” he asks near your ear, only half caring now if Robin does hear him being pathetic. 

“Sleep pool and me?” 

He laughs quietly and encourages your head back to meet your eyes. “I’m too dry for sleeping in the pool. How about you come sleep in the house?” 

You shudder quietly. “No, house.”

“Why not? You don’t wanna sleep in bed?” He looks down at you, hair spread around your face in the water, your pearlescence and all your soft skin, your dark eyes with the too-big pupil like a dime. “Come on, let’s swim. Don’t be sad. Please, can we swim?” 

“I want to swim, too,” Robin says. 

“Like you could, Buckley.” Steve’s arms settle behind your back as you force yourself up on your tail. “She can’t swim. She can not walk.”

You lean back in his arms, shaking your head. “Robin swim. I see.”

“You’ve never seen Robin swim. You just like to lie. Lie all the time!”

You laugh, sort of shouting, startled into it by his accusation. “No lie!” Followed by something heated in your native tongue, as giggly as you are. There are threads of fatigue running through your voice, still, and your smile isn’t full as he’s seen it before, but you aren’t laying like the lady of the lake in the pool, alone, and Steve counts that as a victory. 

Robin hip checks Steve away. “She doesn’t lie!” Robin agrees. “I swim all the time. What’s that one game we did last time?”

You grin, “Oh, oh, m– m-–?” 

“Money in the middle?” Steve asks. 

You clap your hands once and move back to make room. “Le’s play.”

Steve gives Robin's hand a squeeze under the water. She pretends to throw up in her mouth, but he knows how much she hates getting water splashed in her face. “Do you guys do a lot of holding each other?” she asks. 

He also brought you canned peaches, a candy bar, and some cake for dessert, but you haven’t tried them before and don’t touch them. Instead, you craft yourself a bagel with a bit of everything in it and lay yourself up against his knees as you eat. 

Steve wipes his hands in his shorts. 

“Ah?” you ask, nodding at the box. 

“What’s this? This is how I’m gonna teach you. Dustin’s great, he’s a genius, but he’s trying to teach you how to read and you’ve never seen words, so. How’s that gonna help?” He gives you an encouraging, barely cheeky smile, ‘cos he’d wanted to chuck you under the chin. 

Steve gets the cardboard box open and unveils the contraption within: a Polaroid Sun600 camera. It ejects photos, no need for Jonathan Byers’ help or a print shop. Not that he’s changed his mind about things, he’s gonna tell Nancy and Jonathan about you. He’s gonna tell everyone. Uh, soon. Not today. He doesn’t wanna cause a panic. He doesn’t want to share. 

El might not be able to do her telekinetic stuff anymore, but she also couldn’t speak fluent English for a long time. It might be nice for you to have a friend who knows how frustrating this is. 

Steve has to convince Hopper that you’re safe to be around, first, but he figures that’ll be easy once everyone meets you. You’re the nicest thing to ever happen to Loch Nora. 

You hold your bagel up to Steve’s mouth. 

He figures it’s a mermaid thing to share food like this with friends and takes a bite. “Photographs,” he says through a mouthful of cream cheese and salmon. “I’m gonna take photos and we are gonna get this shit in motion.”

Dustin swore it would be faster if you learned how to read too, so Steve’s not giving up on that. He’s redirecting his efforts. He’s trying harder, doesn’t ever wanna see you crying again. 

It takes him a while to figure out how to open the camera and insert the film, but the flat battery is charged and the camera is ready for action once he's found the shutter button. 

“I’m gonna take a photograph of you.” 

“What?”

“Photograph,” he says, shaking the camera. “Photograph you. Okay? Can you smile?” He smiles widely, pointing at his face, then you. 

You smile with your head down a touch, bagel in both hands, vaguely flummoxed until the flash goes off. 

You blink over and over, melding from flummoxed to agitated as you finish your bagel. “Ow!” you claim without much urgency. 

“Sorry. Hurt your eyes,” he says, pointing at your eyes. 

“Hurt eyes,” you agree. 

The camera whirs, the sound like a quick chug as the photo ejects out. Steve catches it and gives it a shake. 

There’s something off about you as Steve waits for the photo to develop. You’re shifting around like you're uncomfortable on your tail, even as you pick at the food on the plate he made up. It’s like you need to pee, but Steve isn’t sure if that’s something you do? He tries not to judge you as you layer five pieces of salmon in your mouth, enough fish to have you chewing slowly. 

“Don’t make yourself sick,” he says, laughing. 

“Salmon,” you say through it. 

“Good?”

“More?”

“You are gonna make yourself sick.” 

“Hungry,” you say defensively. “More fast?”

“Okay! Okay, I’ll do it. Jesus.”

Steve takes the camera and your photo with him. There’s a bit of yesterday's salmon and rice left in the fridge, so he grabs it, but then he gets caught in the mirror hallway mirror. He should take a photo of himself, right? It could function as ‘Steve’ and ‘you’? He bends a bunch of ways, not sure how to take a photo of himself without help. He doesn’t think your wet grasp will be good for the camera’s internal workings. 

Eventually, he decides his hair is too flat and his eyes are too puffy from a night checking the pool every other hour from the window in case you’re night-singing again to take one of himself. He’ll ask Robin when she comes over tonight. 

He’s been inside for long enough to find you gone when he comes back out to the yard. Steve jogs to the pool and peers down into the bottom, where he can see your long shape. You aren’t moving much? It’s hard to tell. You must’ve eaten enough to need a nap, there’s no shame in that, Steve doesn’t feel disappointed or anything, how could he? He wasted his morning in the tech store looking at cameras and dreaming up his grand plan to absolve your loneliness when he could’ve been here after breakfast playing water basketball with you. That’s his fault. 

Steve gathers the mess he’s made and heads inside, laying your leftovers out cleanly on a new plate in case you want them later, though for dinner most nights he tries to make you something warm and agreeable with your choicy tastes. (Steve has learnt his lesson. You will not eat chicken anymore. In fact, you seem offended he’d offer it, and the same goes for red meat, which you hadn’t bothered to try the first time. Clearly, you’re getting used to the finer things, salmon most of all.) 

About an hour later, Steve’s in the kitchen reading the textbook Dustin brought called ‘Teaching Children to Read’ when he hears the water moving outside.

“Steve?” you ask quietly. 

He glances out of the patio doors. 

“Steve, need Steve!” you call. 

Your arms are shaking where you’re holding yourself up at the deep end nearest the patio doors. Steve kneels in front of you. 

“What’s wrong?”

“For you,” you say, like a question, holding out your hand. 

He can’t help his whiplash smile. “What’s for me?” 

In the palm of your hand is a twine and shell bracelet. It’s beautiful, Steve thinks, reaching for it slowly, almost hesitantly, the twine dark with water. He’d wonder where you got it from if he didn’t spend ten minutes in the craft store on the way home trying to pick out the colours he thought you’d like; blues, greens, and pinks, like your favoured bikini tops. The threads of twine are weaved in convoluted bumps and lines, uniform and intertwined but simultaneously wild. You’ve made a square wave symbol with blue twine along the bottom. It’s less than two inches in height but it looks like it’ll fit around his wrist snugly.

“On my wrist?” he asks, offering his arm. 

“Yes, please. Okay?”

“Please,” he says, grinning, settling into the kneeling position he’s in so you can reach better. “Have at it.”

You grin back, ever so slightly shy about it as you pull on the threads and widen the bracelet. You slip it over his wrist, then pull two bits of thread that have been left out of the weave, tightening it over his skin. You tie them around your pinky finger in a bow. 

Steve stretches his arm out to look at the bracelet in the sun. 

“That’s beautiful,” he says, his grin too soft, now. “Thank you.” 

You slide like taffy into his lap, your cheek resting on one of his thighs, your arms going around his waist. Giggly and breathless. 

Steve cannot work out what he did, but fuck, if he doesn’t wanna keep you like this forever. He lays a bemused hand over your back, feeling the stretch of your cool skin, voice a hushed mumble, “Hey, what’s gotten into you?”

“That’s a horse. Horse.” Steve glances at you sideways. “They’re an animal. Like a fish. Dry fish.”

They certainly don’t look like fish. You glare at the TV. Nothing on here makes any sense, and all the humans talk too quickly for you to understand what they’re saying, to even guess at it. Steve seems like he’s waiting for you to ask, but you’re sick of saying what what what? What is that thing? You wonder often if Steve gets sick of swimming with you, mostly because you’re getting a little sick of it yourself, the same wall wrapped around you, your monotony broken only by his company, or Dustin’s morning lessons, but you feel so stupid. Learning their language feels impossible. These ‘words’ they show you on the whiteboard mean nothing to you —mermaids speak, and they use their hands when the waters rushing too quickly to understand low-pitched sound— and the TV… is it a play? Mermaids pretend in stories, sometimes, but not like this, with different skies and— 

“Are you okay?” Steve asks, turning to you now. 

He’s holding your spray bottle. Every few minutes he’s been refreshing your skin all the way to the tail. Your butt’s kinda dry, but he can’t be blamed for that. 

“Hey,” he says, his fingertips running up to your elbow lightly, “are you alright? Are you– do I need to hold you back to the pool?”

You shake your head, pouting. Your face feels warm, now he’s asked. 

“What’s hurting?” he asks, squeezing the crook of your arm kindly. “It’s okay, you can tell me. I can fix it.”

“TV.”

His eyebrows jump. “Huh?”

“TV.” You take on an exaggerated affect, acting it out for him. “Ah, what, what? TV… I no…” 

“You don’t understand.”

You shrug, looking away from him, staring at all the weird things he has in this room, the land flowers in big glasses and the photographs on the wall. 

Steve turns your cheek with a careful hand briefly. A one and done touch you wish you could feel again the second he’s moved away. “I’m sorry. I know it’s hard, it’s still hard, and it’s not getting easier. Eddie convinced me the TV would help you learn but maybe… maybe it’s too much?”

“Eddie?” you ask. 

Steve smiles weakly. “You don’t understand.”

You glare at him without meaning to and drop your gaze, hanging your head, vision filled by the dark colour of your scales and your soft tummy, the violent line of your scar getting paler each day. It’s healed, far as you can tell, but you haven’t been able to change. 

Your eyes fill with tears. You don’t move, don’t sniffle or cry, but the tears are there and warm as they blur your vision. 

“It’s okay,” Steve says, rubbing your elbow softly with his thumb. “You don’t have to know about the TV. You don’t have to feel bad for asking me what stuff is. ‘What’ is okay. ‘Ah’ is okay.”

“No okay.” 

“Yes okay.” Steve takes a sharp breath, which makes you flinch your head back up. “Oh, no, why are you crying?” he asks, almost whispering. “Please don’t cry.” 

You nod uselessly. 

A careful thumb brushes away your tears. “No tears,” he says, still so soft as he draws a line down your cheek. “Why?” 

You push your hand out away from your chest, fingers spread wide. “No, no, no,” you say, a few more weary tears filling your eyes. You hadn’t realised how frustrated you were getting and now you’re crying in front of Steve, who’s already completely burdened by you, who’s had to take care of you because of your own brash naivety. 

“Please, honey,” he says, wrapping his arm behind your neck. 

He pulls you into his chest, somehow tentative and all-encompassing at once. You can tell he’s not sure he’s allowed to touch you, read it in most of his holding, but he’s such a warmth, such a good soul, his hug could never be anything besides sweet. You thrust your wet nose into his neck and shake with a sob.

“It’s okay,” he says, stroking your arm. “I promise, it’s gonna be okay. Things aren’t gonna be this confusing forever. You’ll learn, you’re so smart, you’re nothing like me.” 

“I don’t,” you say, sniffing pathetically. His murmurings haven’t made a lick of sense. 

“I’m sorry.”

“No sorry.” It’s not helping. It’s not his fault, it’s yours. 

Steve leans away. He takes your upper arms into his hands, and he looks you in the eye. “You,” he says, squeezing you gently, “are smart. You make me happy. I know you don’t know what I’m saying, so– so…” Steve licks his lips. 

His fingers drift down to your hand. He pulls it toward his chest, laying it over his heart. 

“We have fun!” he whispers emphatically. “We swim! You’re a good swimmer. Me, and Dustin, Eddie and Robin, we’re gonna work this out…” He lets out a breath. “Maybe we need more help. But you?” He clutches your hand against his heart. “You can be with me, and you don’t have to like the TV.” Steve springs up from the couch and shuts the TV off, leaving your hand warm and empty, your cheeks cooling with leftover tears, but a little smile forming on your lips. 

He doesn’t mind that you don’t like the TV. 

“Fuck it, let’s go swim.”

Your smile goes wobbly. “Rain,” you say, touched he’d even suggest it when he took all this care to get you inside. You know humans aren’t built for the stormy weather.

“It’s not gonna kill me, right? Okay, rain. Okay, swim. Let’s go out and swim. Just please stop crying, honey. It’ll be okay.”

“Fast, uh, hold?” you ask meekly. 

Steve bends over you to hold you, laying one of those dainty presses of his mouth to your forehead as he does. He smells like his skin, like something vaguely sour mixed with the roll on soap you’ve seen him rubbing under his arms. Steve smells like warm bread from the morning and a muskier scent lingering on the threads of his shirt, holding you tight. You feel safer than you thought possible with your mouth jammed against his shoulder.

“What do you need?” he asks. You hug him around the waist. Need you, you think. 

What comes out is very different. “Salmon,” you say decidedly. You’ve had enough of this. You need to get better.

Steve laughs loudly, tugging your arm to bring your face back into his view. Your tail whacks the coffee table before curling underneath it, flicking against the backs of Steve’s legs. 

“Ow!” you complain. 

“You’re such a liar, dude. I know I didn’t hurt you.”

“You ow me,” you argue. 

“I did not!”

“You ow me,” you say again, smiling now you’ve been caught lying. 

Steve can’t stand you. “Idiot. You can dry yourself off if you want or stay soggy, I guess? Maybe you can spend more time in here if you don’t towel off.” He tips his head back, struck with a sudden idea. “Hm.”

Steve gathers some things from the kitchen and makes a quick trip to the extension through the patio and the exterior, then locks up behind himself. You’re waiting patiently on the couch where he’d left you when he returns, a towel now wrapped around your shoulders to shield you from your dripping hair. 

“Good,” you say, pointing underneath you. 

“It’s comfy, right? Guess my mom got sick of the showcase living rooms.” Steve sits down next to you, ignoring your wet patches to offer you a bowl of salted pretzels. “These are my favourite ever, in the world. Savoury and salty. You’ll like ‘em. And for lunch I thought we’d have those parsley fish cakes again, you liked them. Warm fish?” 

You nod enthusiastically, tipping the bowl of pretzels slightly to one side. “Hungry?” you say. 

“Are they food, is that what you’re asking? Can you eat those? Absolutely.” Steve nabs a few and chucks them back. “Good!”

You pull a funny face when you eat one, crunching, your eyelid twitching slightly. 

“What?” he laughs, and thankfully you laugh with him, somewhere between your breathy laugh and the deeper one you have when you’re ’evilly excited’, as he’s penned it fondly. 

“Home,” you say. 

“What?”

You lick one of the pretzels and laugh again. “Home.”

“Oh, the salt? Do you not like it?”

You don’t answer, but you take another handful of pretzels, giggling. Steve lets himself sag back into the couch, the towels he’d chosen out for you soft where they brush his inner knees and the back of his neck. 

You follow his movement, not chewing anymore. He hasn’t shown you the TV yet, or offered you any form of entertainment or education, but you smile at him. You lick a little crumb off of your lip and sink further back, Steve’s mirror, his hair falling away from his face. 

A small laugh catches. You meet his eyes, can’t choose which one to look at before settling, staring right into him without hesitation. He watches as your hand comes to rest just over your heart, but beyond that you don’t move. Your lashes lay in wet triangles and that lovely mother-of-pearl shine kisses your skin at the corners of your eyes and the tip of your chin, like the sun shining across water. All Steve can see is you. 

Steve stops avoiding your gaze to meet your stare. Suddenly, he can’t think. Holds his breath, waiting for the moment to turn, to meld into something warmer or to shatter completely. 

“You’re so pretty,” he says quietly.

You stare a little longer. 

“Pretty?” you ask finally, your voice similarly subdued. 

He goes hot. “I plead the fifth on that one,” he says, flustering upward and wielding the last spoil he’d brought you. “This is for you.”

“Me?” 

He doesn’t let you take it. He’s holding a water bottle meant for spraying down garden plants. His mom had once used it for the windowbeds, but he washed it out with dish soap and filled it with clean water first. Steve turns it to his hand and presses the trigger, expelling a healthy mist of water against his palm.

He turns it to you. 

“Can I?” 

You nod. 

Steve reaches for you, gently placing his hand over your eyes. You let him do it without flinching. He sprays you with water, three quick pumps. 

You blink as he pulls away his hand. “How’s that?” he asks. 

You take the bottle from him with piqued interest, turning it to the side, your finger catching clumsily around the trigger. “Steve?” you ask when it doesn’t spray. 

He puts his hand over yours and presses down with your fingers, forcing mist out of the nozzle. Pleased, you turn the bottle toward you and spray yourself, flinching as it hits you, but unbothered as you do it again, and again, down your arms and over your tummy. 

“Is that good?” he asks.

You turn it on him and spray him dead in the face. He closes his eyes too late, and offers a sardonic smile. 

“Yep, thanks for that.” 

You clutch at his arms. “Ah?”

Steve jerks his head at the black pile of fabric. It’ll have to be washed now. “Why not?”

You go sorry and it’s just– Steve cannot do this, he can’t do this, it’s all your fault for holding his hand to your chest and telling him how warm and happy and okay you felt, it filled his head with a future you can’t have with him. “Ow,” you say tentatively, clutching your hand into a fist a couple of times, then rubbing your sternum. “No ow, ow.”

“Uncomfortable,” he says. “Yeah, I don’t think they’re meant for wearing all the time, it’s okay. It’s not your fault. It’s okay.” Steve picks up the rash guard and gives it a little throw toward the house. “Don’t worry about it, okay? You can be comfortable.”

“Dustin,” you say. 

Right. Steve doesn’t know if you know why you have to wear it around Dustin, but you do know that Dustin doesn’t come down to the pool until you have it on. 

“I’ll find you something else, something less,” —he scrunches his hand up like you did— “restrictive. We’ll get you a bikini, or a t-shirt or something. You don’t have to wear it if it hurts, I wouldn't have asked you to if I knew.”

“Steve,” you say. 

His fingers spread across your sides and a little of your back, his thumbs under your breasts. It knocks the wind out of him, but it’s not salacious, either. You’re just beautiful. You don’t look like anyone he’s ever met, your big, dark eyes or your pearly chin. It’s so sweet. 

“Why don’t you go back to sleep and I’ll work something out?” He nods at the pool again. “Sleep more. Steve, I’ll go out. Fast, you won’t even know I was gone.”

And like usual, you probably don’t know what he’s saying, but you know ‘sleep’ so you hug one of his arms quickly and then descend back to the bottom of the pool. 

An hour later, Steve finds himself in a women’s clothing store with Robin and Eddie. 

“It’s a good thing bikinis are stretchy and like, adjustable, we can eyeball it,” Robin says. “And it’s a good thing I’m a girl, so you guys don’t look as weird as you could. I mean, it’s still kinda weird.”

“Don’t blame me, Steve didn’t say we were going bikini shopping,” Eddie says with a shrug. He looks like he just rolled out of bed in jeans and a t-shirt with a weak collar, his hair unbrushed and still wet in streaks where he must’ve ran water through it before he left the house.

Steve shrugs back. “I thought he’d wanna come.”

“And he said we’d go back to the grand palace and have breakfast, Robin, who am I to turn down free breakfast? I was just gonna eat a hot pocket.” Eddie grins. “Plus, I get to see my favourite mythical creature. That’s always a plus.”

Robin holds up a black bikini with beach flowers on the left cup. “She liked the flowers?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay, then there’s one.” Robin picks up another one that’s plain in a nice shade of pink. “Two.”

“Woah, wait, we need to think about it!” Steve says. 

“No we don’t. We can show her and she can decide if she likes them and you can return the ones she doesn’t. Plus, the clerk’s giving me a weird look.”

Steve peers behind him, where the clerk is indeed staring in a combination of suspicion and disgust. 

“Okay, fine,” Steve agrees. 

They pick out a couple and avoid anything that comes with matching bottoms. Steve hands Robin the money behind their backs and she pays for the bikinis as Eddie pretends to be invested in a showcase of bras and painting himself as more of a creep than he would’ve looked if he came to the checkout with them. 

They roll on home. You emerge at the sound of their clatter in the kitchen, and Steve ditches their stuff to make sure you’re okay. 

“Hi, okay? Less tired?” he asks, kneeling down at the edge, water immediately soaking his jeans. 

“No tired. Good,” you say, smiling. “Happy. Go, back?” 

“Yeah, I went out and got you some things. Robin and Eddie are here, in the house.”

Robin comes to the patio door and waves. “Uh, hi, miss mermaid.”

“Hi, Robin.” You beam, despite not knowing Robin as well as the others. Robin has made a diligent effort to get to know you now her upside down related heebie jeebies have abated, but Eddie and Dustin had a head start. “Happy.”

Robin smiles awkwardly, but lovingly. “Yeah, of course I am. I’m happy to see you, but– like, I didn’t bring you anything this time, sorry.”

“Sorry,” you repeat, tipping your head to the side. “Why?” you ask Steve.

“Nothing, she’s just worrying for no reason. Rob, can you throw the–” Robin tosses him your bag of new things across the patio. Steve catches it with ease. “Thank you. Can you make sure Eddie doesn’t blow up the coffee maker?” 

You reach for the bag, but Steve can’t return them all if they get wet. He puts it on the side and cracks it open, grabs the black one with the beach flowers to show you. 

“This is a bikini. It’s like the rash guard, but not all over.” 

Your brows pinch together. “What?”

“I can show you? Uh, oh, shit, not by here, though. Think you can come over to the steps with me, just a bit? Thank you, sorry. Thanks.”

After some shuffling, you curl what Steve assumes to be your butt under you with your tail to one side, stable on the steps. It’s cute. Steve knows it’s all that moment with his hand over your heart, he knows he’s not– This is leftover, from then, but he– 

“Steve?” you ask, tapping his knee. 

“Sorry.”

“Steve?”

“Look, this one has flowers, like you liked,” he says, showing you the flowers.

You reach for his knee. “Steve, what?” you ask again, softer now, but maybe agitated, too. 

This one’s made up of two triangles as they tend to be, but the connecting fabric between them is a thicker than a string, and there’s support on the sides so you aren’t falling out of it. He holds the topmost strings toward you. “Can I?” 

You blink many times but angle yourself forward. Steve leans in, and you say, “Hold?” in a tone that makes it clear you don’t actually think it’s a hug. 

“I can hold you, in a sec.” He ties the strings in a bow and pulls back to catch the cups. His lip prickles with mysterious sweat as he lays them over your chest. You might need to adjust some, and he’s not sure you’ll know how, but he pulls the fabric down to hug the shape of you to try and alleviate the need for it, then slips his hands along to the ties, wider than the ones behind your neck. He double knots. 

You look down at yourself curiously. Without hesitation, you bring your hands up to feel the fabric, tracing over the flowers. 

“Is that gonna be okay?” he asks.

“Thank you, Steve.”

“You like it?” He clasps your elbow. “And, listen, we can still take it off before bed. I should’ve been doing that for you. I don’t want you to think you have to wear or do anything because I told you to do it, you know?”

You point at the bag. “Me?” you ask. 

Steve pulls out a handful of bikini tops, the pink one, the blue one with little fish stitched at the hem, the plain black, and the red one with skinny blue stripes that looks more like a sports bra than the others. 

You laugh excitedly. “Me?” you ask again. 

“Yeah, of course they’re for you.” 

“Me,” you say, reaching out to touch the blue one with little fish. “Thank you. Thank you.”

“No, you’re welcome. Don’t say thanks. You can have anything.”

You smile at him with teeth, before turning toward the water and diving slowly into the depths of it. Steve watches you take your small, quick laps, bubbles emerging from your mouth, like you’re laughing underwater. Your hand slips to your chest, feeling at yourself assessingly as you pop back up. 

“Yes,” you say, out of breath with rivulets racing down your shoulders, your scales glimmering under the climbing sun. “Good. No ow.”

You wiggle your way back to Steve and take his hands. 

“Swim today?” you ask. 

Steve says yeah, of course he will, he just has to make breakfast first for everyone. He explains Robin-Eddie-hungry and works out through naming what you want for breakfast, ignoring the feeling of your hands still clasped around his, though this becomes impossible when he says, “Need?” and you lean down to kiss the back of his hand. 

“Happy,” you say. 

He can make some sound with his tongue, but it means nothing more than a human hum. There’s no language there beyond music for music's sake, which isn’t worthless. You wish Steve knew how to play the guitar like his friend Eddie. He’s the most mermaid-like of the humans you’ve met, not his clothes —he wears a lot of them, and the colours range from coal pitch black to deepest-void grey— but his hair. He is pale like some of the deep ocean creatures where Steve is more tan, like lakers and sea-swimmers. The music that he plays you is far removed from anything you’ve ever heard before. Even lingering at the surface of the shoreline hadn’t reaped anything like what he plays you. There’s variety, tenor and shape and aggression, sometimes. There’s a lot of emotion compared to the bopping, repetitiveness you’d heard at the great lake. 

Steve likes to sing, though. There’s a certain euphony to his voice when he talks, always, but when he sings it comes out as he’s not paying attention. Humans don’t seem to carry weight in song as often, but when Steve sings you always stop to listen in case there’s something to be understood. 

“What about you?” he asks.

You don’t know this human word, ‘about’. What, yes. You’ve established that one early, though their ‘what’ seems to have a firm boundary with another word, ‘why’, where your word is far less pronounced. ‘You’ is you, your body, and ‘you’ can be his body when you say it. 

“About?” you ask carefully.

“Pass. I’m sorry, I can’t… I don’t know.” He shrugs at you. “But Dustin, tomorrow. I’ll write it down. We’ll ask Dustin.”

Many of these words are useless. You summon a brief guess at what he’s said. He’s sorry, he can’t answer your question, and Dustin’s coming tomorrow. You assume Dustin, the sweet-cheeked boy, will explain ‘about’.

Steve shows you the book. It’s a strange picture inside of a circle with multicoloured patches. It’s mostly blue. 

“You?” he asks. 

You don’t get it. This photo means nothing to you. Though, upon closer inspection, it’s less of a photograph and more of a rock-drawing with hard-wearing colours. 

“What?” you ask, drawing a circle around the image. 

“This?” He leans toward the water. “This is… Earth?” He spreads an arm. “Everything.” 

It is not fun to not know what someone is saying. The lessons with Dustin aren't miracles. None of the words he said have a definition and you don’t want to look at the book anymore, you’d rather Steve put it down and give his attention to you, but he doesn’t give up. He does put down the book, actually, but his mouth works before you can celebrate, clearly ready to speak the words he has planned before they come out. 

“Steve’s house,” he says, pointing at the home behind him. “Steve, house. You, pool. But you, what? You, uh…” He rubs his head. You worry he’s hurting. “Shit, I’m sorry. I’m so bad at this. Stupid.”

You hum. Clean water laps at your chest and arms. It has a strange taste, never as stale as you worry it’ll be, perhaps due to the vent/tube thing you have no comparison to at home. It keeps fresh water coming in, with little salt, not dirt, or clay. “Steve, no sorry. Okay.”

“You–” Steve gestures everywhere, all around, filling his expression with curiosity. “You?” He points one way. “You?” he points another. 

Is he asking where you came from?

Your chest aches. You never planned on being this long from home. 

You wish you could tell him what the world is like. The humans spend all their time here, where it’s dry, rarely experiencing the wonder and vastness of the deep ocean. There’s simply so much of it. 

You want to tell him that your home isn’t what he might think it is. You want to tell him what it meant to come here. You can’t find the language. You can’t read the black lines on his book or decipher his photograph. 

“Swim,” you say, a word in his language that sounds like the action. “Swim,” —you gesture a half circle— “me, ah…” 

You hold your hands up and show your fingers. Then you tap each one for the different members of your pod. Finally, you intertwine your fingers, and let them fall down into the water. 

Steve nods a few times, which was the most fucked up thing to relearn. You use quick motions in the water rarely. You have far more use for sound than water, and why shake your head when you can simply say yes? Robin had confused you trying to explain it. Nodding, saying yes, shaking her head and saying no. These humans. Shaking your head should obviously mean yes because it represents motion, moving forward through water, they’re all so dumb with their big machines that make horrible noise and their offal that never dissolves crowding the floor. 

“Sorry,” he says, “not okay? You look mad.” He glares quickly as an example, you hope. “Mad. Are you mad?”

“No.” You banish your thoughts. You’ve been thinking too much, because there’s soooo much to do here. Sights to see, people to meet,

You will confess to thinking yourself lucky you found Steve. Or he found you? He happened upon you in his ‘pool’, not naturally occurring. Hadn’t that been a kick in the head?

(‘Kick’, Eddie showed you, digging his foot into Steve’s thigh with enough pointed force to make Steve squeal.)

You take Steve’s hand and put it over your heart. He can’t feel your skin through the weaving he gave you, so you use his hand to pull the neck of it down, trapping his fingers against the heat your heart makes. Your very first home was warm like your heart. 

“Home,” you say, the sun above you and all through the sea. 

He starts to get that pink tinge. Steve is pretty. Far more beautiful than you. And this pink colour drifting over him like ink as it disperses fills you with a feeling you don’t understand, your pulse tripped and tangled by the flushed kiss that’s fallen over him. 

You’re tempted to ask for him to hold you. He never lets you drift away. 

He’s looking at you so closely. 

You look back at him. Pink mouth and tongue. He must be soft, to touch. His teeth aren’t sharp. His lips look plush. 

“It’s warm,” Steve says finally. He cups a handful of water and lets it slip out of his palm, rubbing the remaining wet into your elbow. “Cold. Cold water.” He shifts his hand further under the weaving, his most outward fingers melded gently against the soft skin of your breast, mere inches from sensitivity. You don’t know much of human touch, but you’ve learned Steve’s pressures and needs. “Warm skin,” he murmurs, rubbing his thumb into your heart. 

“Warm,” you agree. 

“So you came from somewhere warm. The Atlantic, maybe?” His voice is silken as tilled sand. “There are warmer waters in the south… The Mediterranean?” Unintelligible, but his tone won’t leave you alone. “You must have come from so far away, to be here. I don’t understand it. I mean, what are the chances?” You curl your hand around his. He brings his second hand to your elbow. “I mean, Jesus Christ, what happened to you?”

His sadness throws you for a loop. 

“I’m sorry, honey,” he says. 

You’re too afraid to break the moment to ask why he means. Why ‘honey’ sounds like a private confession. Why he would ever be sorry for looking after you. 

“Steve,” you say, reaching for the words you don’t have. When you speak now, it’s in your language, and he doesn’t understand any of it. “I– I have the strangest feeling when I’m with you. I don’t want it to go. It’s like I’m waiting for you and- and you’re there.” You switch back to his language. “Warm, okay, happy,” you explain, letting your head fall and sandwiching his wrist and arm against your face, “warm,” you say again, a mumble, your lips tickled by the fine hairs of his arm. He has such lovely arms, turning golden from days out here with you, strong but lithe. They’re masterful, when he swims. 

He leans down and presses something soft to your forehead, the briefest of touches on the very side of your head, practically in your hair, but that catch on your skin lingers. A peck. 

“I wish I could keep you,” he says softly, “but I know that I can’t.”