🪬Tallulah-Bell🪬

ONE-SHOTS:

Diner-girl 14K ❤️‍🔥🩵💚

Duffy 8.5K ❤️‍🔥🩵💚

Not as planned 21K 🩵 UNDER EDITING

PROMPTS:

“Jealousy, jealousy.” 5.3K ❤️‍🔥💗🩵

“Say please.” 2.2K ❤️‍🔥

“Don’t worry, I’ll take care of you.” 2K ❤️‍🔥

“I hate you.” 9K / “I hate you 2” 7K💗🩵💚❤️‍🔥

“Your eyes are pretty up close.” 4.7K🩵❤️‍🔥💗

“Please, just play along.” 2.1K 💗

“We shouldn’t be doing this.” 5K 🩵❤️‍🔥💗

“Let them hear.” 1.8K ❤️‍🔥

“You called.” 1.3K 💗

‘Home’ 1.5K 💗🩵💚

SERIES:

Facade- 1985 7.7K❤️‍🔥🩵💗

1986 6K ❤️‍🔥🩵💗

I won’t tell, if you don’t- Part One 4.8K ❤️‍🔥🩵💚

Part Two 8.5K 💗❤️‍🔥🩵

Part Three 5K 💗❤️‍🔥🩵

Part Four 8.3K 💗❤️‍🔥🩵

Selfish Series 42.5K total/Five parts 🩵💗❤️‍🔥

MULTI-PART:

Flight of the swallows 10.5K / Eventually 9.3K 🩵💗💚❤️‍🔥

Rachel is the only person you’d trudge across the centre of London at night for. The only person you would abandon the warmth of a clean duvet for. She is as constant to you as the existence of your right hand. As predictable as the way your pointer finger clicks when flexed.

That is why allowances are made for her recklessness. For the way you accept that no one ever knows for sure where she is. Or who’s bed she flees from each night. It’s also how you know that when she calls at midnight, wailing and spitting over tears the vague address of a stranger, that you don’t question it. You go.

The city is still busy. London doesn’t sleep. It swells around its own excess well into the wee hours of the morning. The Uber allows you to watch it without being swallowed in its liveliness. If you weren’t on route to a stranger's flat to collect Rachel’s presumably drunken mass, the blinking of the city lights would be a welcome comfort. Instead, they act as a reminder that you don’t know who or what is out there.

“Pretty late to be out in pajamas.” The mostly stoic Uber driver announced. He’d been virtually silent for the past fifteen minutes. If you’d calculated it right, there was less than a few kilometers between the car and the steadily blinking dot of her location.

You try not to be sullen in response. When you look up to catch his eyes in the rearview mirror, he seems tranquil in curiosity- not creepy as feared. “I’m picking up my friend.” You mumble, forcibly vague. “She’s drunk.”

The man’s chin flexes in what might be amusement or respect- it’s hard to discern. “Must be a good friend.” He ponders.

You smile sardonically back at him. “The best.”

The conversation with the nosey driver plays on your mind even once you’ve made out the car. It’s delivered you to a nice end of town. It’s not a Surrey southern end. But at least a working professional corner of central London. The high rise ahead of you is comprised of entirely glass- sparkling clean, evidently well maintained. It’s not the worst place you’ve carried Rachel out of. You find it hard to imagine the boys she hangs around with living here though.

The last guy she dated was a part-time joiner, full-time bum that enjoyed spending her money on pints and weed. He lived in an old tenement block on an estate, somewhere you felt more comfortable than this flashy lobby.

Cleaning up after Rachel had become second nature now. The friendship had persevered through many messy break-ups and post comedown meltdowns. You gave her allowances on account of the love shared and the understanding of the childhood she had. But tonight she was pushing it.

Tonight, she was pulling you away when you had work in the morning. Dragging you into a situation blind. She didn’t sound like she was at a party on the phone- but she wasn’t coherent beyond saying that the boy she was with had abandoned her in a sketchy flat. From the outside looking in, you find it hard to believe anything sketchy went on in this complex. Other than maybe white collar crime.

You ignore the way staff stare at the padding of your slipper clad feet. You had the floor and door numbers, wedged between misspelled words in her text. Aside from that you have no earthly idea of who or what would be on the other side of the door you knock at. There’s no music or yells of intimate violence discernable from the long hallway you stand in. It’s as average as the rest of the building seems to be. Even the shuffling of feet closing in on the door seems unremarkable and calm.

Still, to be safe, you puff yourself outward. Attempting to masquerade as something sterner than you were. When the door pulls open, you feel silly at the thoughts you had of seeming tough.

The slump of confusion settles in your shoulders and brows to find a perfectly average man staring back at you. He’s handsome- that’s sure enough- but neither threatening nor ‘sketchy.’ The man had dark hair, just long enough to lie a bit shaggy on the front of his forehead. Not particularly tall or wide, but eyes a distinct shade of blue.

It isn’t until he gives you a head to feet down sweep that you realise what might make him dangerous. The sides of his mouth pull outward in a curling grin. You try hard not to shiver at the nerves you appear to feel almost suddenly. He was incredibly good-looking. But with a clear air of destruction.

All you want to do is speak but when you open your mouth, you find you’ve forgotten what it is that you’re even trying to do. He beats you to it anyway.

He leans back against the door in a lazy lean, arms crossed at his chest- displaying a couple tattoos curling around the swell of his bicep. “Can I help you, darlin’?” His eyes twitch in quiet amusement.

He’s northern. And charming. He’s also exactly the kind of trouble Rachel would find herself in. You shake all other thoughts from your head at once.

“I believe you have my friend.” You mirror his stance, jutting a hip out to punctuate your impatience. “And my name is not darlin.”

“How about bunny?” He smirks, nodding down at your slippers- that you suddenly feel are too pink. Still, you attempt to cover your flush with a sneer. He only chuckles under his breath. “Your friend a redhead? Enjoys getting shitfaced in other peoples homes and locking ‘erself in their bathroom?”

The sigh ricochets off your throat before you mean it to. “That’d be her.”

“By all means, come on in then.” He turns to the side and sweeps his arm in a welcoming wave.

Tentatively, you enter. He doesn’t move much so you practically brush against the guy. Pointedly trying to ignore the way you enjoy his boyish scent. The flat is as nice as the rest of the building would suggest. You feel underdressed in it. The larger window cut into an L-shape, exposing the columns of yellow squares that make up the landscape of highrises dotted around the city. It must burn a hole in his pocket each month. You don’t need to wonder why he can afford it when you see the collection of baggies and scales cluttering the coffee table in the centre of his open plan living room.

You stiffen upon the realization that he was a drug dealer. And by sight alone, a professional at it. The urgency to get both you and Rachel out only intensifies, even though he doesn’t appear to be an immediate threat. Spinning round, you try to avoid letting him see how uncomfortable you are with the proximity to the drugs. If he notices, you can’t tell. He just knocks the door closed with the pad of his bare foot.

The silence is deafening. He’s pretty stoic in the way he dresses you down with his eyes. He doesn’t seem bothered by your intrusion as he steps around to sit on his sofa. His fingers set to work at bagging powders on the coffee table, not looking up at you.

You clear your throat. “So…she’s in the bathroom?”

The smile he gives you back is sardonic. “It’s down the hall- bottom left. While you’re there, you should tell her not to hold herself hostage in future.”

You don’t wait around to ponder more on his advice. You were finding the whole thing deeply unnerving. The casualness of his tone while handling thousands of pounds worth of drugs. And the way you can’t work out what had happened to lead any of you here. The door he directed you to was locked but the light jamming from below the gap of it tells you she’s in there.

“Rachel, it’s me.” You call through. You’re praying she makes it easy for you. It’s not in her nature though.

There’s a clatter from behind but no snapping of a lock. “I’m not coming out until Dan comes back.” She’s slurring but intelligible which pleases you. It wasn’t a category five disaster. But she’s in one of her moods.

Pressing the flesh of your forehead into the cold wood, you curse under your breath. You don’t know who or where Dan is. What you wanted was to drag her out of this building by the shell of her ear for being petulant toward your care for her.

“You called me.” You hiss, jiggling the handle violently- as if it’ll give way with sheer willpower. It does not. “Dude, I have work tomorrow. And in case you hadn’t noticed there’s a bunch of drugs in this guy's living room. Get your shit and let's go.”

She says nothing back for a few baited moments before there's a thud against the door. “I want Dan.”

This is just like her to do this. More often than not, she’ll forget that she’s called. Or worse, doesn’t care. It’s aggravating, but nothing as demeaning as having to trudge back to the man in the lounge- no longer hunched over his table. Now, he’s leant back against the blue sofa, arms lazily thrown behind his head. It’s evident he’s heard the whole thing. You try to conceal the embarrassment of the best friend you chose.

“No luck, bunny?” He smirks. He’d obviously spent some time trying to coax her out. It becomes clear to you why he seemed to be amused by the confidence you’d charged in with. “Your friends a wild one, eh?”

The nickname he’d given you was unappreciated. It felt demeaning in a way that you can’t put your finger on yet. It’s there though. Like he perceives you as a meek character.

“Does it seem like I’ve had luck?” You snap. “How long has she been in there?”

The man raises a brow at you in some kind of quiet surprise at the tone. “Couple hours. However long Dan’s been away.” He corrects almost immediately.

You sigh and press the pad of your thumb into your eye. There was no telling if this guy would come back- whoever he was. “Can we get him back here?”

“Phones off.” He shrugs. “At least it was when I called an hour ago.”

“Okay, let's play a new game: I’ll be the problem, you be the solution.” You mutter offhandedly. “Listen, I’ve seen her shut down a bar and fight three bouncers before leaving. Unless you want to bash the door in, he’s gonna need to come back here.”

The stranger sighs and leans forward to swipe his phone off the table. He doesn’t take his eyes off you, even once he presses the phone to his ear. You’re willing higher powers at work to get this guy back before the break of dawn. There was no more PTO to be taken. You don’t think these circumstances count as extenuating in the traditional sense. Even though Rachel is as unpredictable an affliction as an act of God. At least God works in mysterious ways. This was just plain bizarre.

You busy yourself peeking around the flat. It’s boy-ish. Clean but almost as though he paid for it to be like that. You scrunch your nose at the Megan Fox poster hanging in a frame above the tv.

“Alright, mate.” You finally hear him mumble around the butt of a cigarette. He evidently didn’t mind smoke in his house. There’s a beat, punctuated by the flick of his lighter.

“Yeah man, she’s still ‘ere. Locked herself in my bathroom.” He’s chuckling around the exhale. It’s almost attractive, in a way you don’t wish to examine. “Nah, won’t come out. Her friends ‘ere.”

You shift uncomfortably at the intimation he makes to you. You doubt this Dan character has heard anything about you. Blue eyes drift up to find your twitchy standing, they’re swimming in an emotion you can’t make out.

“Didn’t say. Bunny slippers, kinda hot in a school teacher way.” He smirks, tapping ash off the butt.

The heat rises up past your cheeks and into your ears. You want to flinch away to hide the shame but then he’d only win. You were starting to find an urge to prove that try as he might, you’re not intimidated or amused by his forward nature. It’s hard to tell if it’s believable or if it was just spurring him on.

“Can you just ask him when he’ll be back?” You snap.

He raises his hand in a surrender- or to instruct you to quieten down. It’s hard to tell with him. His energy was uncertain. There was an element of unpredictability with this man. One that you struggle with. It’s not easy for you to relinquish control like that. But like with many things, for Rachel, you’d put up with it. For now.

He’s humming down the line. “She said she won’t go till you come back.” His eyes draw down in concentration. “Twenty minutes? Sound, man.”

Twenty minutes? You peek at your phone, confirming you’d be lucky to get home before one. You could go down and thrash the bathroom door in, but it’ll yield no results. It’s better to give in to her whims. Preserve your energy for getting her home and into bed. It meant that you were stuck with the random until then. He didn’t seem the type for small talk. Not the kind you're accustomed to.

The phone clatters back down on the table with a punitive slam. He doesn’t bother to address what the guy said. Just unpauses whatever reality tv show had been playing before you arrived. It’s at an almost mute setting. You make no moves to sit, or explore your surroundings. It doesn’t even occur to you that you should. Not until he says something.

“It’ll be twenty minutes yet.” He points out, not even looking at you.

“I heard.”

He groans dramatically. “Just sit down, will ya? Making me antsy.”

Any instinct for cognitive dissonance has gone out of you. You’re certain you’re not in danger now, but it would be nice to make the long minutes pass peacefully. So you perch on the edge of the sofa next to him, demurely clasping your hands in your lap. It was actually more comfortable to stand.

“Your friends fuckin’ mental.” He announces. “I barely even tolerate her lad, and she locks ‘erself in my bathroom. She make you come save her often?”

You side-eye the sudden casualty with which he speaks to you. As if you’re old friends. He’s not wrong in his assessment of the situation. It gives you pause to know this Dan guy isn’t even close to him. Who even are these people?

The sigh that escapes is clipped. You want to steal it back, like it’s an omission. “Rachel’s not crazy. She’s…adventurous?” You try. “And yeah, I do this a lot. Look, I’m sorry for the disruption. I’ve not even met Dan.”

You turn slightly to watch the information be digested. Maybe you could smooth over whatever offense has been taken. This isn’t the first time you’ve apologised for her. Won’t be the last, you’re certain. The smile he gives back is easy. Not accepting but like he isn’t surprised to hear your excuses for her. You only just notice the sharpness of his teeth. It’s endearing- but surprising. You figure he has the money for veneers or whatever cosmetic dentistry would fix that. Not that you imagine it’d be an improvement or anything.

“You ought to let her to get out of trouble on her own, you know? How’ll she ever learn?” He advises, stubbing out the fag. The smell won’t be missed. “My name’s Cook.”

Cook leans a hand over to you, palm up. You raise your brows at the absurdity of that name. It must be a nickname but still. The shake of his hand is slow and tentative. You feel yourself wanting to pull away as soon as you grip it. It feels too…just too much of everything really. It’s telling that he seems surprised when you reciprocate the touch.

“Cook?” You snort incredulously. “That your government name?”

The smile you get back is wry. “What’s it to you, bunny?”

The way your eyes roll back is almost painful. This guy doesn’t know what he wants to be. It feels like flirting. But the type that leads you to believe it’s not because you’re special. Like he’d do this to just about any girl that had stumbled upon his flat. It cheapens the slight flutter you feel without permission.

“Okay…Cook, you have people you don’t like much in your house often?”

“My line of work,” he nods at the bags still laid out. “More often than you’d think. But your girls boy works for me.”

You shut your eyes in frustration that you hadn’t worked that out before. “Of course, he does.” You whisper. Rachel would fall in line with a random drug dealer who takes her to his job. Why wouldn’t she?

There doesn’t seem to be much that need be said after that. The silence that you fall into is easier than it should be. But it doesn’t stop him from grabbing your hand on your way out the door after Dan returns- getting Rachel out the bathroom finally.

“You should keep what I said about her in mind.” Cook mumbles. You look at the hand of his that’s clasped around your wrist, then to the back of your friend being half carried out the flat door. “I’ll see you around.”

It had felt mostly a fact to you now, as true as water being wet, that since Sophomore Year you found the strange boy in your photography class fascinating. So much so that when his kid brother went missing one fall in 1983, you interjected your way into the search for him. Ingratiating yourself into his quiet company. Unwittingly wrapping yourself up into the mystery of the world that lived below Hawkins.

Any notion of the possibility of being with him was quashed fairly quickly when you realised that, even despite her being with Steve Harrington, Jonathan and Nancy had a connection. It was only then you had realised two things. One, that you could maybe rise above to be his friend just to have him near and two, that you were one jealous bitch.

You never fully got over it. Even once Nancy and Jon started up for real. You always in some ways held it over your head- a lesson in poised self restraint. A constant reminder when forced in such close quarters with the couple that there was always something more pressing at hand than your emotions. 

That couldn’t be more true than now. With Hawkins in complete lockdown, policed by corrupt militant soldiers and devoid of all real path forward. You needed to learn how to co-exist with tempered feelings to be a useful member of the team, trying to save the world from complete and total annihilation. Not that it was always easy. 

No, some days it was downright hard.

Today was a bad day. Today was the day that your friend, the sweet boy you’d cared for so deeply these years, had told you that he was going to ask Murray to get him a ring. 

The feelings for him were watered down these days, especially the longer the years dripped by watching him and Nancy remain strong. But it didn’t stop you from toying with secret hope when you saw how much Steve was pursuing her in the spring. There had been a part of you that hoped against hope that maybe she’d feel the same back. 

But there Jonathon was today, smiling shyly when he whispered to you in the quiet of the Squawk basement that he wanted to marry her. 

Your usual resilience was tested past its bounds and you found yourself pushing out into the vast grass clearings at the front of the radio station to find a moment of solace once you thought everyone had dispersed for the evening. 

You guys had all been spending an obscene amount of time here- so much so you’d had to find a place for quiet sometimes. In the depths of exploring a couple weeks ago- already a month  or so into lockdown- you’d found five yards out from the clearing a gate that led to a grassy alcove. It had felt like gold-dust. On nights where it was smothering to have to be there all the time, you could steal quiet moments alone. 

Up until today you were under the impression it was a secret, but like a vision in blue sweatshirt, Steve Harrington is pushing past the chainlink gate toward where you’ve sat curled around yourself. 

You guys weren’t close. Not even in the way that you don’t like him, just more that it never occurred to you to get to know him outside of all this. In spring during the first wave of Vecna, you’d spent day in, day out with the boy- but his attention was squarely on his ex. Not that you could blame him. You guys were in a similar spot so to speak.

He’s quiet on approach. It’s odd because it feels almost as though he knew exactly what you were out here for. You want to ask, but it would be dismantling to find out you were that obvious.

When he drops down beside you on the grass, there’s an ease with his smile. You forget how charming he’s known to be.

“Come here often?” He smirks. 

Without your say so, the giggle you wheeze out is tilted forward- strained, like you didn’t want to be cheered up but can’t help it. 

“Did you just use a pick up line on me, Harrington?” You jab weakly. 

He’s lazy in the way he shrugs back. It’s pleasant speaking to someone with whom there’s no stakes. It didn’t matter what he thought of you because he wasn’t your friend really. He wasn’t the girlfriend of the man you covet, or someone you want desperately to like you. He’s just simple Steve, who for some reason you’ve found yourself twined with through the strange hands of fate. 

If you thought about it more, you’d realise how much in common you have with him. Neither of you were tethered to this rag-tag team through blood or decades of friendship. You’d found yourselves enmeshed through a longing to be tied to different sides of the same couple. 

“Well, you looked sad- thought I’d give you some of my best work.” He breathes lightly, pulling his knees up to balance his arms upon. “Besides you’re in my spot.”

You steal a look of confusion to him. “You come here too?”

He nods curtly, eyes distantly misty, as if this place was a needed escape for him also. You suppose it must. It ought to be harder for him watching Nancy with someone else. It was no secret she broke up with him for Jon- at least tangentially.

You whistle slowly in surprise. “Sorry, I thought this place was a secret. I come here every other day and you’re never around.”

“Who’s to say I don’t forfeit it to you when I arrive and you’re already here?” He poses, with a flex of the brow. 

Your breath catches slightly. It would be kind of him to do that for you. Not that you could imagine why. He owed you little in the way of favors. 

“Well, if that’s the case it would seem I owe you one.” You challenge with a smile.

The grin that pulls to his face isn’t for you, it’s directed downward at his legs. “Nah, there’s room for both of us. You seem like you might need the contemplation space.”

Your heart feels suddenly heavy in your chest. You’re hyper-aware of the way it thuds in your chest. He’s trying to be coy but you know exactly what he means.

“And how would you know that?” The question needn’t be answered but it would feel remiss to ignore the way he presses you.

The look he gives you is knowing, a hue of sympathy for your troubles. 

“I know.” He tests. “What surprises me though is that I didn’t take you for the jealous type.”

Defenses build like slamming bricks. You want to encase yourself around walls of concrete to avoid talking about this entirely. It was mortifying enough to admit it to yourself- unbearable to admit it Steve. 

“I’m not jealous.” You argue, waving a hand away like you were swotting the thought from thin-air. “I just got some bad news, is all.”

Steve snorts indignantly, but not mean. In fact none of this interaction felt like an exercise in cruelty from the man who once used to be nasty for sport. It felt like comradery.

“I’m the last person you need to lie to about this. I’m intimate with the green eyed monster.” He muses, pulling strands of grass with his hands like a kid in a play park. 

You sigh in defeat, letting the rigidity in your muscles loose in acceptance to the fact he saw right through you. 

“God, it’s humiliating.” You mumble, wishing you could bury the feeling in the dirt beneath you. 

“Intimate with that feeling too.” Steve chuckles, throwing an arm around your shoulder to pull you into an awkward side hug. “If it helps you’re much more subtle than me.”

The tears are pooling slightly in your waterline but you laugh through them at the surprising kindness Steve was offering you. The hug isn’t necessarily fluid but you accept it anyway because it’s nice to be held for once.

You let yourself shuffle into the comfort, head buried into the warmth of his hoodie. He’s receptive to you seeking to be closer and encases both arms around you. 

A peaceful lull falls over the hidden acre, allowing the distant cicada hum to create sweet harmony between you and the man that wasn’t really a friend. Perhaps there was terseness with which you’ve judged Steve with. A finality in the judgement you’d made about you guys being almost co-workers. 

It was hard to ignore the fact that you feel for the first time in years somewhat calm. The town you grew up in has always been full of surprises and none more than Steve who was almost like an entirely different person to who he was in high school. 

The guy you remember goading Jon would never have held you through minutes of ruminative sadness. But this man does. This man strokes the arch of your shoulder in soothing sweeps. 

It’s interesting. Confusing? It’s too dense for you to analyse in this heightened state. For now it was good enough accepting that maybe you had a good friend all along and not realised it. 

When you pull back to look up at him you intend to be nothing more than appreciative for his kind nature, but there’s a sort of static hum that wills you to be silent with the stare you hold. He’s looking upon you but it’s not like he’s seeing you for the first time. It’s more like he’s been aware of you the whole time but is only now comprehending the possibilities.

You would be lying if you said you weren’t thinking the same thing. It wasn’t affection, or any kind of deeper meaning. It was simply at that exact moment you wanted to kiss him.

You wanted to pour all of the hurt and all of the sad into him. You wanted to do a hell of a lot more than make-out. 

Steve drags his eyes from yours, down the lips and back up again as if transfixed by something. You can feel your mouth part slowly, just a smidge- you can’t work out if it’s an invitation or a warning. A plea to let him know there still time to stop this before it was taken too far. 

He clears his throat roughly without taking his eyes off you. “I’m going to kiss you now.”

“I think you’d better.” You say instantly, not even really considering the ramifications. 

You don’t care what the optics are. Not when you can feel the distant hum crawling down your spine and settling into the swell of your abdomen. It’s been so long since you felt like being with someone on this level that it almost feels like a foreign passenger. A creature possessing your better nature, who demands to be fed.

Steve lunges forward to grip into the back of your head before connecting your awaiting mouth to his. You moan on impact, uncaring of the aggressive way he paws at you. Not all kisses require politeness. This one demanded urgency. It cracked the sky to rain hellfire onto your desires. You had to have him. 

You push yourself forward to cage your thighs around his hips, straddling the width of his lap. He’s receptive to the immediate deepening. He seems to encourage it. His hands envelope each form of your hip, planting you right above what you can recognise as a hardening mass below you. 

You wonder into the impassioned kiss if it’d been a while for Steve too. You barely even have time to think these days, let alone play the field. He was usually a serial dater but it was clear he’d had a lot of fight taken out of him since Jonathon arrived back- capturing the attention of Nancy entirely.

When you drag your hips forward in a testing grind, the hands that grip you tighten bruisingly. You had escalated this past a point of being able to stop it. You’d passed the threshold of simple curiosity. You now believe with complete certainty that he’ll be the perfect medicine to take your mind away for half an hour at least. 

You can feel the fabric of your underwear now clinging to the wetness of your core. You were ready to fuck him in the grass outside of the radio station. Had you not been dampening more with each caged grind you’d take a minute to regroup, or at least get inside but both of you were gone on that.

He seems to understand that too. Even as he sneaks a hand under the cup of your bra, he’s not playing from beneath the fabric for modesty- he’s pushing the outer garment up over the mound of your boob, twisting and flicking at the now hard nipples. All it does is signal down at your hips to jerk with harsher force- to find something to fill you with.

You arch out at the contact, whining forwardly into his mouth. As if being moved by an unseeable force, urged with encouragement of your whine, he’s flipping your form from over to flat against the earth. You keep a grip of your eyes on his flustered face before he slides lithe against your body. There seems to be something unspoken in the way you interact. 

There’s no need to make sense of what it means because you guys understand at that moment that it doesn’t mean anything. It’s an exercise in independence- an emancipation from the grip of unrequited love. 

Steve sheds his sweater before he reconnects to your lips, hand dancing back to where your chest remains exposed. You’re thankful that it’s summer and that evening has come. It was bold for you to be so untethered to the bounds of being outside. Sure, it was concealed from any prying eyes, but you were still public, making out with Steve, shedding layer by layer of clothing. 

Steve’s hands are winding down the button of your shorts, releasing the zipper of its prison. Once he’s nestled at your centre, you won’t be able to take it back. You’ve had sex before but not with someone who’s so closely connected with your life. 

You think about sex ed classes when your teacher tried to caution you from sex by saying that some cultures believed that when you have sex with someone, they take a small piece of your soul with them. You don’t buy it. You’d never slept with Jonathon and you’d carried him everywhere you went for years. That is the first and last time you think of him before Steve steals under the fabric of your underwear. 

The drag of the pad of his finger spreads wet from your opening up to the throb of your clit, sending the spike of shivers down the expanse of your thighs. He seems to be devoid of focus on shedding himself of his clothes- or any seeming quest to meet his own needs. Instead he’s circling at your nerves watching intently as you cry out at first sensation.

You grip the earth from below you trying to ground yourself in the feeling of his fingers working over the shake of your centre. Each eager movement contorts your body upward into a curling arch, forcing wordless whimpers to fall out of your mouth.

Whatever determination is etched on his face to please you is settled on the hazel of his eyes. What are usually light, free of levity, are darkened to points- analysing each cry that escapes you.

He pulls back without explanation to yank at the waist of your shorts. You’re shaken at the sudden loss of contact. 

“Lift your hips.” He instructs firmly.

You plant yourself upward to help him succeed in getting the shorts over the swell of your ass, taking your ruined underwear with them. The cold air against the mess of you causes a hiss to bite at your throat. It doesn’t last long because he's back crowding you again, whispering his fingers up the inside of your thigh, threatening to finally plant them inside of you. 

It feels almost like he wants to see how far he can push it before you wail and beg for contact. 

He finally grazes over the entrance, eyes trained down at the way your legs shake in anticipation. Just when you think he’ll give into your silent pleading, he inches back over to the other thigh. If it wouldn’t call unwanted attention, you’d scream in frustration.

“Are you going to do something?” You huff.

Steve’s eyes shift up to find you, a smirk pulled to the edges of his mouth. It's a departure for the tender attitude he’d come over with in the first instance. It's surprising the way that it alights your centre to contract. You hadn’t spent a lot of time appreciating the way he looked- even when everyone around you spoke about it often.

“I didn’t take you for impatient either.” He mumbles before pushing down to capture you in a deep kiss. 

You’re receptive but almost as soon as you’re kissing back, his fingers have wound forward and into the depths of your warmth. Your chest hitches and without intention your nails dig into the top of his biceps. There’s no resistance, even as he pushes a second finger to continuously curl up within you- you’re beyond the point of desperateness. You were aching from top to toe.

His beat isn’t soft or tender, it's a barrage of coiling thrusts. Each one hits whatever spot causes your toes to curl down in euphoric precision. You’re sure you’ll finish before he gets anywhere near being properly inside you but he doesn’t seem concerned. 

The longer he thrusts with precision against you, the less you think he has any intention of having sex with you today. Not with the way he watches you fall apart with fascination. 

The heat in your abdomen is reaching boiling points unheard of for you. You’ve never had the brink of an orgasm feel like this. Like hanging onto the edge of the earth. And when you finally let go, you’re blinded almost. Bucking your hips up into hand, biting forward to sink yourself into his shoulder to fend off all urges of a scream.

He doesn’t stop, not through all tightenings or violent wriggling. Not until you push his hand away for the shakes of over-stimulation burning your lower half. 

Each breath you take is laboured, wracking through your chest in violent earthquakes. 

He pecks you once before he pushes back to sit on his shins, wiping the excess juices off of his fingers onto his jeans. It should be rank- knowing that you’re all over his clothes, but if anything it makes you want to please him more. 

“Good?” He asks with a smile, like he needs to know he’d done well. 

You’re pulling at your clothes for fear of being seen, suddenly sobered to the reality of your situation. Still, you want to offer him something in return. Especially since he’d taken your mind off your problems for a minute. 

You ignore his question stiffly. “What about you?” You motion to the obvious straining in his crotch. “Do you want me to…”

He waves you off dismissively. “That was about you. Just do the same for me if it ever comes up.”

You smile weakly, and you know it’ll happen again. You’re certain of it.

–

It doesn’t happen again for a while. Maybe a week or two. But there’s small hints of the dynamics having been changed between the two of you. He opens the door for you at the squawk when the opportunity arises. Looks are more lingering- almost amused because there’s something only the two of you know. 

It also helps the thoughts about Jon and Nance from haunting you with every turn. Now they only pop up when they’re unavoidable. Maybe after a long night of plotting, stuck watching them so obviously in love. But it’s not quite as debilitating.

It’s confusing to attempt to make sense of why it’s helped so much. Maybe it’s the twisted idea that  you were getting some kind of one up on them- which you’re not proud of. Especially when they're still your friends. You’re complicitly taking some kind of perverse joy in what you did with Steve because you think it would be bothersome to them if they found out.

Nevertheless, you and Steve don’t take it upon yourselves to talk more. It seems needless. But still you’re not surprised to find him leant against your car one night leaving the station. You’re often the last to go home, ever the clean freak trying to keep the space somewhat clear. 

And when he pulls you forward into him to kiss you with force you don’t pretend to be surprised. Instead you welcome the pulling hands directing you to the backseat of your car. 

After that it was ritual. It’s not as though there’s any verbal reasoning that you were doing it to attempt to forget. It’s obvious. And you don’t have sex. Not ever. Everything but. 

It’s not that you wouldn’t. You’ve wanted to since the first time in the grass. But there was always some kind of stall. A bridge that can’t be crossed. It’s months of clandestine meetings. Making out in cars, romping in the grass, secret kisses in the squawk. 

You guys sometimes talk about what it was that pushed you there that day. Nancy speaking to Steve for too long one day, Jon talking about the engagement, an old photo falling out of a book. But if you were completely honest with yourself, it’s not about that to you anymore. 

You barely think about Jonathon like that anymore. You’re too busy wondering when the next time you’d find Steve somewhere would be. Or what it would feel like to have sex with him for real. Maybe it was a crush- or maybe you were thankful for the peace of your own thoughts. You weren’t willing to face it down yet. All you know is that you count down the hours till you get to hang out with Steve, and that seems good enough for now.

Sleepovers are few and far between but when you get them, you hold them close to your chest. It’s the closest to a relationship you’d ever had. Steve wasn’t sparing with affection outside of sex stuff. Forehead kisses, hugs in the dark. It makes the lack of strings seem less cheapening to you. 

Tonight was one of those nights. One of the nights that feel so good you could cry. 

You’re folded around him, twined by the legs in his bed, waiting out the darkness for when you’ll fall asleep. But below the skin is a burning desire to ask a million questions that you shouldn’t. 

“Steve?” You mumble, head pressed into the bareness of his back. You’d drawn the short straw on spooning tonight, but you don’t really care. 

He hums sleepily back like it would be too much to verbally respond. 

You gulp back the nerves it takes to speak. “Do you think it’s weird we’re doing this?”

The silence that follows is a cavern of dark. It’s long enough that you worry he’s fallen asleep in the seconds it took to get them out. But you know he’s not. You can tell from the way his back clenched slightly.

“Cuddling?” He replies jovially, voice shrouded in a joking fashion. 

You sigh and flick him in the ear. “Forget it.”

He sighs slightly and rolls over to drag you into him. “Don’t be grumpy. I know what you mean, but honestly? No, I don’t think it’s weird.”

You nod statically- mute- trying to assess the words. He must read your quiet as rejection of some kind because he shifts up slightly to get a look at your face. 

“Do you?” He probes. 

You shift nervously, trying to think of how to answer it without seeming too eager. You didn’t think it was weird when you were doing it for a purpose but now without that? You were entrapping yourself in a circumstance that threatens to pull you apart from the inside. The more time you spend with him, the more you feel attached to him. It seemed futile if he was only here to forget about her.

You had inadvertently put yourself right back in direct competition with Nancy. It was like running a mile just to wind up circling back to where you started. 

“Do you still love Nancy? Is that why you’re doing this?” You ask gently. 

He’d never outright said this to you. Just as you had never directly admitted to ever having had feelings for Jonathon. It was humiliating without verbal confessions but you needed to hear it. There was a glimmer of sneaky hope that he might say that he had but no longer did. It seemed unlikely.

Steve looks hollow at your line of questioning. As if you’d broken some kind unspoken vow never to be so prying, even when you guys knew each other inside and out now- for lack of a better analogy. You don’t think it’s rational to be able to lay with each other in this manner but can’t be forthright with your words. 

Still he shifts uncomfortably before he answers. “Isn’t that why you’re doing this too?” 

The lack of an answer is all you need to know. He skillfully avoided the question. He didn’t want to say because it was exactly as you’d thought. You don’t get angry or distraught- because you hadn’t expected it to go any differently. Still when you eventually drop the conversation and roll over to sleep you’ve decided that it can’t go on.

You didn’t have it in you to follow the path that led you here in the first place. What were you going to do? Throw yourself head first into situations like this until eventually you drive yourself dizzy.

You avoid Steve like the plague for a week. At the rate you guys had been seeing each other, you were leaving with him from the squawk every other day- hanging back so that you guys could leave at the same time. 

This week you had made a concerted effort to be the first one gone at the end of the day. Fleeing so fast you were almost leaving your skin behind you. 

Steve’s noticed. He asks you subtly on Monday where you’d been going so fast at night but you’re so sickly avoidant that you don’t give him that inch. 

Instead of analysing every interaction between Jonathan and Nancy like you used to- you watch to see if Steve looks over them. If he keeps an eye on the way they hold hands or kiss ever so often.

The break comes ten days after the late night conversation you’d had. You’d had about all you could take of the way him and Jon would snip at each other. It doesn’t take a genius to know that it was over her. They were posturing against each other to vie for her attentions. And now it wasn’t just the fact it was Jon, now it was that the man you were involved with does it too.

You don’t make way for your car when you go. You pace into the same place where Steve had found you two months ago. You hadn’t been back since. There had been little need to, now that you’d found a better way to cope. You didn’t expect anyone to follow you. You should know better than to expect anything with Steve. He surprises you enough. 

Just as he had then, he’s pushing past the fence toward you- seemingly determined in the way he walks over. He doesn’t seem mad. Maybe agitated.

You don’t really want to talk. Not with the way you were feeling right now, but he can read the way you stand immediately. You want to get away without disagreeing with him. 

“I don’t want to talk right now.” You mutter, trying to walk past him the way he’d just come from. 

You’re stopped by the grasping of his hand on your wrist. 

“Not gonna happen. You’ve been ignoring me.” He says, trying to centre you in front of him. You downcast your eyes to avoid his stare. “What’s going on?”

You pull yourself back to shed his hold on you, trying to think of what way you want to go with this. 

“I just don’t want to do this anymore.” You croak. “I don’t think it’s healthy. I don’t even like Jonathon anymore.”

Steve registers everything but he only seems to grip onto one thing.

“You don’t like him anymore?” He asks with a pull of his brows. “Since when?”

You throw your arms in exasperation. You don’t see why it matters. You’re trying to put a full stop on this whole thing and that’s what he focuses on.

“Since when? Steve, I don’t even know why that matters.” You sigh.

He pushes forward to grab your arms, holding you firm in front of him, kneeling slightly to look in your eyes. 

“It matters. When?” He states.

Your heart stutters a bit at his intensity. “About two weeks after that day here.”

The admittance feels vulnerable, like you were laying yourself bare for him to judge or reject. 

“Then why have you been doing this?” He pushes, like he’s trying to get you to the point.

You’ve completely relented to it. You’ve little to no energy left to offer. 

“Why do you think?” You whisper, holding his stare almost like a challenge.

You expect him to drop your arms- turn away like you’d damaged the tacit understanding. But he doesn’t. 

The laugh erupts from him like a nervous tick. Your heart squeezes in a fiery rage. You’re sure that he’s laughing at you. 

You whack his arm. “Don’t laugh at me, Steve. I know it’s ridiculous.”

His laugh ceased with a clipped, forced manner. And only sentiment remains. He pushes forward to grab at your cheeks, pulling you into a light peck. You’re shell-shocked. You don’t even react to the surprising act of affection.

“I’m not laughing at you, idiot.” He whispers, pushing hair behind your ear. “I’m laughing because I’ve been thinking I can’t ask you out for real because you were in love with him.”

The smile that pulls up to you is creeping- slight embarrassment at the certainty you’d felt about it being impossible for him to feel the same. How dramatic you’d been with reacting on impulse and ignoring him. 

“You want to ask me out?” You press coyly.

“Shut up.” He mumbles fondly and drags you back into the kiss.