the pumpkin whore

She jumps out of bed, runs to her window and opens it. Looking out, she sees Steve. He’s wearing a beanie, his facial hair is overgrown, like he hasn’t shaved in a while. He sees her, his face lights up. Her stomach turns. 

“Let me in,” Steve calls up and it’s clear how angry he is. Cute. Very cute but angry. 

“Are you crazy?” Olive yells down to him.

“Damn right,” Steve tells her, “you won’t let me in? I’ll just sit and press the buzzers until someone does.”

“Steve, no,” Olive scolds, “Just go home.”

Steve walks towards the door and Olive’s buzzer goes off, repeatedly. She buzzes him in because she really doesn’t want him waking her neighbors. She swings her door open, hearing Steve coming in the lobby and walking up the stairs. The closer he gets the more her stomach erupts in butterflies. God, she’s missed him. She’s missed him so much. And this scruff he has… patchy, sure, but god it looks sexy on him. She looks up at him as he walks past her into her apartment. 

“Hi,” she chokes out, closing her door and leaning against it. 

Fuck, he looks gorgeous, she thinks. As he whips around and says, “Hi? That’s what you have to say to me? Hi?!”

And yeah, Olive’s kind of speechless. His hair is shorter, like he cut it. Where it used to practically reach his shoulders, now the bit sticking out of his beanie looks about three inches shorter. He’s wearing his wire frame glasses, a black and white striped t-shirt that’s obviously well loved, it’s covered in holes. She just keeps staring at him. 

“Well, I… I think you owe me, like a real explanation. That’s why I’m here,” he exhales, looking down at her. “Your pajamas are cute.”

“Thanks,” she looks down at her pink striped satin set and looks back up at him.

“Can you just tell me why?” Steve asks, “I can’t fucking take it anymore, Olive. I’ve been a fucking mess and it’s because the way you fucking did it. You didn’t explain shit to me and you ran off like a coward and that’s not fucking fair to me! You know, that’s not fair!”

Olive watches as Steve gets more heated, the way his eyes move and his cheeks flush as his lips move around his words, rising in volume. And there’s something sick about her, she knows that, but she likes when Steve raises his voice at her. Maybe she likes him standing up for himself. 

“I did run off. If I didn’t, you would’ve talked me out of ending it,” she says, softly. 

Steve laughs, that cruel one he does when he’s upset, “Do you even have a reason? Did you just want to hurt me? Were you fucking bored of me?”

Olive crosses her arms, part of her wants to make Steve leave but a bigger part of her can’t let him leave. That part wants to jump on him, tell him she takes it back and she needs him. She’s stubborn, though. 

“Yeah. You hurt me, so I hurt you,” she says, finally admitting that this was because he slept with someone else.

Steve rubs his hand against his mouth and chin and Olive can’t help but take note of how big his hands are. It’s one of her favorite things about him physically. He shakes his head before he speaks again, “Biggest mistake of my fucking life.” 

“Yeah,” Olive mumbles, “I told you that you could, but I didn’t really want you to.”

“I shouldn’t have, even if you said it was okay. I wish I didn’t,” he whispers back, “but I guess part of me… felt like I was getting back at you. Because I’m your second choice, I’m the—“

“Are you joking? Second choice, Steve, you were—,” she swallows because that’s not true and she knows it. 

“I was what?” Steve says, “I was a secret. Kind of a horribly kept secret but a secret.”

Olive can’t say anything, she just shakes her head as her stomach turns. 

“So like one time, I fucked up yes, but like you’ve been with someone else this whole time and I never gave you an ultimatum or anything. I’m like a fucking obedient dog for you, Olive. I just do whatever the fuck you want, I put up with being treated like shit just to be with you,” Steve laments, “That’s not fair. Do you think that’s what I deserve? That’s how much I mean to you?”

She has tears welling in her eyes, she can’t look at Steve because it just makes it all worse. She just stares at his shoes. It’s not true, she thinks Steve deserves better. That’s part of why she did this. But then having him right here in front of her, she’s completely regretting breaking up with him. She wants to touch him, but she’s scared he’ll push her away. 

“You can’t even look at me,” Steve exhales, “Do you feel bad? Is that why you can’t look at me?”

Olive shakes her head, “Of course I feel bad.”

“You should,” he says, “you should feel bad. You told me you loved me. And I fucking believed it, maybe because I’m an idiot.”

She can’t say anything, she just stares down at his feet. She thinks about the state he’s been in, what Amelia has told her. But he seems to be clean. Then again, he’s wearing a beanie. The point is, she knows she broke him. And she feels awful. Because she does love him.

“I do,” she whispers softly. 

Steve steps closer, puts his fingers under her chin and pulls her face up to look at him. “Look at me, then,” he whispers. 

Their eyes meet and Olive feels herself melt. His eyes are glassy, they’re both on the verge of tears and Olive’s first instinct is to pull away, run from this intensity. But she holds still, eyes scanning over his face. His mustache is thicker than she’s seen before. And the rest of his facial hair is grown out, it’s patchy. Olive reaches up and grazes her fingers against it. A small smile plays on her lips, Steve mirrors it. 

“Still feel bad?” he asks. 

“Yeah,” she whispers, strokes his face gently, “I like all this hair, though.”

“Glad to know me neglecting self care is attractive to you,” he replies with a raised brow. 

Olive sighs, “No, no, I— Amelia told me how you’ve been and I, I’m sorry…”

“Yeah, huge pity party over at my place. But hey, I showered for you,” he says, with a smile. “Couldn’t be bothered to shave.”

“You look hot,” Olive admits. “Like really, really hot…”

Steve puts his hands on her hips, Olive loves how it feels. The familiarity of his hands on her. She wants to kiss him so bad. It doesn’t matter that she broke up with him. She doesn’t care about it right now. She missed him. She missed his touch. Steve pulls her into him, so their hips touch. And then they’re both leaning in. 

When their lips touch, Olive swears there’s fireworks and she feels like a fucking idiot for not listening to those natural tells. She feels incredible when Steve’s around. He never makes her feel insecure or bored. His arms wrap around her waist as he pulls her closer. Olive’s hands push his beanie off his head and her fingers card through his hair. It’s so much shorter, and she mumbles against his lips, “You cut your hair.”

Steve laughs into her mouth and fuck, did she miss that sound. He mumbles back, “Had to. It was bad.”

Olive kisses him again, keeps feeling through his hair as she licks against his lower lip. Steve licks her back and it ignites something in her, feeling true actual arousal for the first time in weeks. Steve’s hands move down to her ass, squeezing momentarily before he’s lifting her up. She wraps her legs around his waist and keeps playing with his hair as he carries her to her bedroom. Lays her back on her mattress and crawls onto her, between her legs. She grabs his shirt and pulls him close, connecting their lips again. Steve moans against her lips, grinding down against her and Olive giggles because she can feel his erection in his jeans. And she’s so flattered that he gets that turned on just by kissing her. 

She drags her hands down his back, grabbing hold of his shirt and pulling it up and over his head. Steve starts unbuttoning Olive’s top, kissing her tenderly. His hands find Olive’s breasts, squeezing her gently. Olive whines, “Steve…”

He smiles, pulling back and looking down at her. Then Olive realizes how he’s cut his hair and she giggles, “You have bangs.”

Steve raises his brows, still smiling as he moves his thumbs against Olive’s nipples. “Is that what it’s called?”

She nods, smiling at him, “I guess it’s like a mod cut. It’s cute. I like it a lot. You look good.”

“Thanks,” he says, leans down and kisses her neck. Olive moans, hand moving to the back of his neck as she tilts her head, exposing her neck more for him. She feels so needy, so desperate for Steve. He sucks against her skin, surely marking her up and before, Olive would’ve stopped him. She doesn’t care, those seven weeks away were brutal and she can’t be without Steve ever again. 

So Olive lets Steve cover her neck in bruises, writhes up against him as he does it. She revels in the sounds he makes against her skin whenever his strained cock manages to catch on Olive’s clothed pussy. He goes lower, kissing across her clavicle and leaving marks there. Then her breasts. He spends his sweet time but Olive is getting eager and she wants to look at his face again, so she tugs him back by his hair and Steve sits up. 

“Sorry,” he chokes out when he looks down at her bruised skin. “Kinda went a little overboard with that, huh?” 

Olive sits up too, reaching for Steve’s pants and starts unbuttoning them. He helps her get them down, leaving him in his briefs and she says, “I don’t care, but I’m gonna have to give you some to make it fair.”

He grins, so wide and so pretty. With his briefs tented. And Olive missed his cock. There’s nothing like it, she thinks. She reaches for it, purely because she can’t help herself. Steve huffs, that gorgeous grin still on his face. So Olive just says it, “Missed him.”

“Are you referring to my penis?” Steve asks with a giggle. 

“I am,” she nods, and Steve purses his lips then. 

“Have you been thinking about it?”

Olive flushes, because of course she has been. She nods slowly, “And other things too. Like the way you smell when you’re asleep, and the way you hum and whistle while you cook, and how you take care of me when I’m sick.” 

Steve leans close to kiss Olive, full of passion and love. Like he’s been waiting to hear her say those words. Like he needs to be told she missed him. And she really, really did. Life went back to boring and mundane without him. She’d forgotten what it felt like to wake up unhappy. To feel like everything she did was dull and pointless. 

His hands find the elastic of her satin shorts and he pulls them down. She wasn’t wearing underwear, and she can feel Steve smile against her when he notices. Olive giggles and goes for his briefs, tugging them down. Gets her hand wrapped around his cock and she sighs, a happy relieved sigh and it makes Steve laugh. 

“I told you I missed him,” she says.

He reaches between her legs and tells her, “I missed her too.”

Olive gasps, feeling his big hand cup her pussy and says, “Fuck, she missed you.”

Steve’s middle finger slips inside Olive’s core, she inhales sharply and squeezes the base of Steve’s cock. His hips stutter and she strokes him slowly, as he fingers her. Their eyes meet, the pair of them breathing heavily as they work each other over. Olive’s heart pounds, she’s gazing at his pretty face and she’s never felt more stupid in her whole life. She can’t believe she almost let him go. She swears she’s never going to do it again. This is the man for her, she’s letting herself realize and accept that. She deserves someone like Steve, she deserves Steve and she swears she’s going to be better for him. She’s going to let him in, she’s going to give him everything. 

Then Steve moves, scoots down the bed like he’s going to eat Olive out. And that’s all fine and dandy but…

“Wait… I want you, I want to suck your cock,” she says and Steve smiles at her.

He wiggles his brows, “69?”

And Olive laughs, nods enthusiastically and lays back down. Steve moves over her. This is a nice view she thinks, looking right up at Steve’s dick and balls. An excited giggle bubbles up from her chest, her hand wrapping around his cock. She strokes him as she tilts her head up and licks against his balls. Steve moans softly, Olive feels his breath fan against her swollen lips. Then she feels his tongue, she cries out. She missed this, he’s so incredibly talented. She remembers that she doesn’t even ask Pilot to eat her out because he’s so bad at it.

But Steve’s so good. He works hard at it, teasing through her folds, focusing on her clit for just a beat before moving back down. Then, he sucks against each of her lips before gliding his tongue down to dip into her core. Olive moans out, so lost in the pleasure that she’s completely forgotten about pleasuring Steve. Though he doesn’t seem to mind. He licks against her hole, moaning like he’s deriving pleasure from it. Then his cock sways from his movements, right in front of Olive’s face and she’s reminded. 

She wraps her lips around his tip and sucks, then circles her tongue around it. Her legs spread a little wider, Steve’s hips jerk forward just a tiny bit but it pushes his balls against Olive’s face. She giggles softly, but Steve’s thrusting again, sinking into her mouth another inch. So she sucks harder, takes him as deep as she can. And he’s just as enthusiastic, works back up to her clit and wraps his lips around it. Sucks and licks until Olive can barely breathe. She’s moaning around him, trying to focus on giving him an incredible blow job that he absolutely deserves. But he’s too good at eating her out, she gets distracted. 

And Steve can tell, he reaches down to hold his cock as he pulls it out of her mouth. Then he sits on the bed and softly laughs, “It’s fun in theory, but ya know…”

“It’s your fault,” Olive turns to him. “You’re so good, I forget what I’m doing.”

He shakes his head, lays next to her and puts his hand on her hip. He nudges his nose against hers and kisses her soft and slow. She puts her hand on his jaw as she kisses back, matching his pace though she wants more. Steve’s unlike anyone. He really takes his time, offers more than enough foreplay, but more than anything… he’s never in a rush. Even when they should be. Their bodies inch closer, his erection grazing against her navel as they make out. But there’s no urgency. He moans softly, could be from the stimulation on his cock but Olive thinks it’s just from the kiss. 

And she’s certain she’s more eager than he is. She tries to tell him as much, sucking on his tongue, making the kiss a little sloppier, grinding against him. Steve takes the hint, smiling as he reaches down and pulls Olive’s leg over his middle before moving his hand to guide his cock to her entrance.

Then she stops him, “Wait—“ she swallows because she’s not trying to ruin the mood, she just has concerns. “With Willow, did you….?”

Steve sighs softly, not like he’s upset with Olive and more like he’s upset with himself but he assures her, “I used protection. Hell, Olive, you’re the only person I haven’t used it with.”

And well, “Me too.” It’s the truth. She makes Pilot wear condoms. 

“Can I? Or we can use one, I.. I don’t have one on me but—“

“No, it’s good. I just had to ask,” she whispers, hand on his cheek. 

Steve nods then, dipping back down to kiss her as he slips his cock inside. She gasps, against his lips as the sensation of him stretching her out fills her with ecstasy. She can’t believe she almost gave this up. She grips onto his shoulder as he sinks in deeper and deeper. 

“Steve!” she moans, “Oh.”

He nuzzles against her face, rolling his hips as she mewls and whines. His hand wraps around her thigh, squeezing the flesh as he pumps into her. Slowly dragging against her walls and Olive is on an entirely different plane of existence. Mouth agape, drawn out moans and cries falling free. 

The tip of his cock rubs against that sensitive spot deep inside, in such a way that has her close to crying. This reconnection is what she’d been longing for, even if she wouldn’t admit it. And Steve mumbling repeatedly how much he loves and missed her against her cheek isn’t helping. 

His voice is so soft, a little raspy and so incredibly needy, “I love you so fucking much… I missed you so bad. Was making me fucking sick, baby. I need you, I need you, I love you, I love you…”

She squeezes his shoulder as she whines back, “Missed… oh, fuck, missed you, too… love you, too… Stevie, oh, God.” 

“Not fucking letting you go again,” he groans, his hand moving to her hip and squeezing rough. Like he’s got to keep her here. 

And well, he never did. She’s the one who let him go. Pushed him out, actually. But she’s absolutely certain she’s never doing that again. So she kisses him, sloppy and messy. Lips not exactly meeting, kisses on his cheek and his chin. Tongue darting out to taste his sweaty skin. Tastes herself on it, too. 

His thrusts get a little rougher then, deeper. Until the position they’re in gets a little too awkward, so he’s pushing her onto her back and moving between her legs. And like this, he’s only that much deeper and Olive’s head tilts back as she gasps out. Her hands find his back, scratching down it as he pounds into her. Then she looks at him, their eyes meet and Olive absolutely fucking melts. The adoration, the lust, the desperation in his hazel eyes makes that knot in her stomach tighten. She’s on the verge of an orgasm, while also being on the verge of tears. And she can’t imagine sharing this kind of experience or emotion with anyone other than Steve. He’s made from her. Olive never quite believed in soulmates. But Steve has Olive believing in the world. 

It creeps up quickly, the rubber band snapping as her orgasm rushes through her. Mouth hanging open as she gasps, eyes trained on Steve’s gorgeous face as she cums. He looks so focused yet so in awe as he watches. His face is flushed. He gives her a moment to come down before he grabs her hands, pins them above her head and crashes his lips into her. His hips quicken, the force of his thrusts increasing as he moans against her lips. They still as he reaches his peak, before offering two more involuntary thrusts. 

The pair of them stay like that for a moment, catching their breath, staring into each other's eyes. Before it gets too uncomfortable and Steve’s pulling off. He offers a quick smooch before he’s off the bed and retrieves a wet towel. 

Steve lays back on the bed after he’s cleaned them up and he turns to her, takes a deep shaky breath and says, “Okay, we gotta really talk about that.”

“About how good that was?” Olive asks with a lifted brow, giggling softly. 

He shakes his head, looks visibly nervous so Olive sits up and turns to him. Her stomach drops with the idea that he might be regretting all of that. She rubs her lips together, patiently waiting for him to talk again. But he doesn’t. Looks like he keeps mulling over what he’s gonna say in his head so Olive has to speak first.

“What do you want to say?” she asks in a quiet, shaking voice. 

Steve looks a little bit like he might cry when he finally opens his mouth, “I have to give you that ultimatum. I probably should have a long time ago. But, fuck, Olive. I’m not doing that again with you. It’s me or him. And that was really fun and amazing and I feel so deeply connected to you when we have sex but… I can’t do it again unless you break up with Pilot and commit to me.”

And she saw this coming. The idea of breaking up with Pilot is deeply terrifying for some reason, yet the thought of losing Steve again is much more daunting. So she nods, looks at him earnestly. 

She must be silent for too long because Steve sighs, “Alright, well… I’m not gonna stay any longer if–”

“Wait, Steve. I’ll do it. I’ll break up with Pilot,” she tells him, hand moving to his arm as he tries to get up. “I can’t spend that long without you again.”

“This time would be longer if you don’t pick me, Olive. Like, forever,” Steve tells her.

“I know,” Olive whispers, “I want you.”

Steve holds her hand, intertwines their fingers, “If it helps, I’ll be a much better boyfriend.” 

Olive giggles then, squeezing his hand as she tells him, “I know you will be. You’re not gonna keep me a prisoner in this city.”

“As long as you come back home to me sometime.”

“Or you could… come with me,” Olive offers with a purse of her lips.

Steve grins, “If that’s a possibility. I’d follow you anywhere.”

Then he grabs her phone and hands it to her, “Better go ahead and text him that it’s over.”

“Steve! I can’t do that!” Olive exclaims. 

His face falls, then turns pensive as he sits up and tilts his head, “I thought we literally just had this conversation about you picking me?”

“We did,” she insists, “but I can’t dump him over text. I have to do it in person. We’ve been together for way too long to break up over a text.” 

“So, when are you gonna do it, then? I don’t want to wake up tomorrow and you changed your mind,” his voice is so stern and it’s kind of turning her on. She pushes him on his back, straddling his waist and lacing their fingers together. Can’t help but grind a little bit on him.

“Promise I’ll do it tomorrow,” she tells him before leaning down and connecting their lips.

Steve can’t argue, his arms wrap around her middle and pulls her closer. He opens his mouth, like he wants her tongue. So she gives it to him, licks into his mouth as she pushes her fingers through his hair. And like magic, she feels his cock start to fill out against her thigh. She wonders why she let him go, because Steve can always keep going. 

But he pulls back from the kiss and says, “I mean it, Olive. If you change your mind tomorrow, I’m done. I really can’t do it anymore. And who knows, I might tell him myself—“

“Steve! I said I will. I really will. I promise,” she says, furrowing her eyebrows. “I don’t think you should tell him. That would be bad.”

“Well, I will,” Steve threatens, “If you don’t, I will tell him myself.”

Olive shakes her head, then rolls her eyes, “You wanna start a whole bunch of drama, don’t you?”

“If I don’t get what I want,” he replies with a playful shrug.

“Oh, wow, you’re such a brat, Steve. I might have to fuck it out of you,” Olive says, seductively. 

Steve’s expression changes. He swallows hard, his cock twitches against her ass. His hands move to his sides as he looks up at her. “I’m going to be an even bigger brat if you change your mind tomorrow.”

“Well, if you’re gonna be such a brat, maybe you need a spanking,” Olive counters.

And Steve scoffs, a laugh falls from his lips as he sits up, holding onto Olive’s hips, “I think actually, if any of us need a spanking, it’s you.”

Olive’s never been more excited in her entire life. She deserves it for sure, but is it really a punishment if she’s going to be enjoying it so much? She pouts, tilts her head and says, “You think I need a spanking?”

Steve nods, “After all that shit you put me through, yeah, absolutely.”

“Well… if you say so…” she says and moves off of him. She stands and looks at him expectantly. He loves to sit on the edge of her bed, looks up at Olive with his brows raised. 

“Bend over my lap,” Steve tells her. The tone of his voice is incredibly arousing, calm yet domineering. Something she hasn’t exactly heard from him. And she thinks how quickly they can make that switch, how she trusts that he won’t push it further than she wants and that it won’t change how they feel about each other has Olive certain of one thing, this is the man she was meant to be with. Forever. 

She easily obeys, bending over his lap. She glances back at him, seeing how his eyes skate over her back and behind. His hand is gentle, rubs against her ass carefully. And the anticipation is killing her. Olive inhales sharply and holds it, eyes dropping to her hardwood floor as she waits. Steve takes his time here too. Fingers tapping along the flesh as he moves his hand, edging close to her soaking entrance. He teases with a ghosting touch, has Olive clenching her fists and curling her toes because she’s not sure what his next move is. Then he tsks, and her head turns to look up at him. 

“Dripping wet… just at the thought of me spanking you…” he sucks against his teeth before continuing, “That’s pretty naughty, Olive.”

“Can’t help it,” she gasps out. His eyes meet hers momentarily. 

“Head down,” he instructs and she listens. 

Fuck, she loves him. He’ll give her everything she’s ever wanted. Even if she doesn’t think she deserves it. 

His fingers move up, light touches against her cheek. And then a particularly sharp smack. The sound of it reverberates through her room. A yelp falls from Olive and Steve’s hand soothes over the sore, hot skin. Between her legs is uncomfortably wet, dripping down her thighs as Steve delivers another harsh slap. Another yelp and this time as Steve rubs the skin, he asks,  “You okay?” 

And maybe it breaks the illusion but she’s thrilled he’s concerned. He’s just so attentive. She mumbles a sound of agreement. Wiggles her ass for him to continue. Instead of spanking, his hand dips between her legs and he laughs, deep and soft.

“Yeah, you’re definitely okay.”

Another slap. And another. Surely enough to make her pale skin bright red. Steve makes sure to soothe her skin each time. Then, he moves his hand up her spine. Slides his fingers into the hair at the back of her scalp and pulls her up. Pulls her into his lap and kisses her intensely. She whines into it, falling with him as he lays on his back. Straddling him, she grabs his jaw and kisses him back with fervor. 

His hands are still in her hair, tugging as he writhes against her. 

“I love you,” she babbles out, “I love you so much.”

“We really need to have a talk about why that shit turns you on so much,” he laughs and Olive pulls back to raise her brow. 

“Like that didn’t turn you on?” 

He rolls his eyes and tells her, “I’ll do whatever you want me to. Even if it’s to be mean to you.”  

“It’s not about being mean,” Olive admits, “It’s about trust.”

That seems to intrigue him, his brow lifting, “That turns you on because you trust me?”

She nods, “I trust that you’ll take care of me. You’ll never push it too far. You’ll listen.” 

“Huh,” he says, seeming like he’s realizing something. “You really do love me.”

“I’m sorry I made you question it,” Olive tells him sincerely. 

He moves his hand up, caressing her face and smiles somberly, “I always knew deep down. Think I knew it before you did.”

“I’m scared, a lot of the time… you scared me because I didn’t… I couldn’t like, control it. I was falling and I didn’t have a say. I was—“ Olive stops because she feels the urge to cry crawling up her throat. 

“Hey, hey, it’s okay… you’re worth all the effort I have to put in. So if you fucking, if you go back on all this tomorrow, like that’s it… I can’t… I need you to be mine completely, or I can’t have you. For my own good, ya know?” Steve tells her.

“You’ve been talking with Robin about this a lot, huh?” Olive teases. 

Steve rolls his eyes, “If I was listening to her, I wouldn’t even be here. I had a lot of time to think. And I was thinking that… if we happened to not be able to control ourselves, I deserve one last time but if you couldn’t commit to me fully, I don’t deserve to be dragged around. I’m not gonna spend my life being a secret, or second best to some fucking asshole who doesn’t appreciate the woman I love.”

Olive puts her hand on his cheek, tells him earnestly, “You’re the right one for me, Steve. And I’m so sorry I ever made you feel like that wasn’t true—“

“Oh, I knew that,” Steve snorts, “Been waiting for you to realize.”

“And I have,” she smiles. “I promise you, I’m not going to lose you again. I’m going to end things with Pilot and I’m going to commit to you one hundred percent. So much that Robin’s gonna have to find a roommate.”

He smiles at that, big and goofy. “You want me to move in?”

“What? Like you’re not gonna spend every night here?” Olive giggles. “You only ever left my place because I made you. And I only did that because you weren’t my boyfriend. If you’re gonna be my boyfriend, you might as well move in.”

Steve kisses her, smiling as he does. His arms circle her waist. And his erection comes springing back to life, present against her ass. And Olive thinks, what better time than now. She reaches behind her, grabbing his cock as she lifts herself up so she can guide it inside her easily. They moan in unison as she sits, sheathing him inside to the hilt. 

Slowly, she begins grinding down on Steve. His eyes focus on Olive and she swears she sees hearts in them. She puts her hands on his hairy chest, using the leverage to speed up her movements. Steve’s hands hold onto Olive’s hips, squeezing her as he moans out shakily. And she loves how whiny Steve gets whenever she rides him, it makes her feel sexy and powerful. In general that’s how Steve makes her feel. 

Gazing down at him like this, she really gets to appreciate his new haircut. It’s all messed up from her fingers being in it but she really likes how his hair falls on his forehead. And god, the way he’s looking up at her with those big eyes. Olive reaches for his hands, brings them up to her chest and Steve cups her breasts in his hands. Squeezes softly. Grazes his thumbs against her nipples. Olive’s mouth hangs open, she arches her back as she picks up the pace. 

Then Steve blurts out suddenly, “I’m gonna fucking marry you.” 

And Olive laughs, “I was just thinking that.”

He grins, “You were?”

“Amongst other things,” she giggles, motioning down to where their bodies meet. 

Steve licks his lips as he watches, Olive rising up and sinking down, “Why do you think I’m gonna marry you?”

“Just for the sex?” Olive gasps dramatically.

He rolls his eyes, “Yep.”

She grins, leaning down and kissing Steve. Purely to get them to shut up. His hands smooth up Olive’s back, into her hair and he tugs as their tongues meet. They work in tandem for a beat before Steve’s flipping them over. On her back, Olive rises her hands above her head and moans. Steve nuzzles his face against her neck, kissing along the bruises he’s left. 

“You feel so fucking good,” he mumbles.

“Stevie…” she moans out, spreading her legs wide for him. His fingers run along the undersides of her thighs and the sensation makes Olive gasp. She grabs the sheets, her back arching. Steve licks against her neck, then sucks. 

Steve’s pumps get a little quicker and deeper, her eyes roll back as the tip of Steve’s cock hits against her g-spot. Steve squeezes her thighs, pushing them up. Every thrust he presses into her just right. She grabs his face and pulls him into a kiss, but it’s sloppy, uncoordinated. It’s heady, Olive can’t help but giggle and Steve mirrors it. 

“You like that?” he asks, smile in his voice. 

“Yeah,” Olive moans, “feels so good, Steve… just like that, fuck me… you’re so big, fuck!”

His eyes rolls back at that, “Fuck, you’re gonna kill me.”

And Olive laughs, smugly. “I love watching you fall apart for me,” she tells him as she wraps her arms around his neck, giggling. 

“I’m fucking obsessed with you,” he mumbles, kissing her softly. 

“I want you to cum for me, Stevie. Can you do that? Need you to fill me up,” Olive begs, holding the back of his neck. 

“Only if you cum with me,” he chokes out, then licks his fingers before reaching his hand between them and rubbing circles against Olive’s clit. Steve has a gift, truly. Olive’s in awe, he knows exactly how to touch her and she can’t believe she ever let this go. She’s the luckiest woman in the world. 

She gasps and moans, nodding at him before pleading, “Fuck me harder.” 

Steve thrusts harder, working his fingers quick and experienced. He kisses Olive as his orgasm hits him, Olive following suit. They cling to one another, moaning as they ride the waves together. Steve kisses her, “I love you.”

“I love you, Stevie.”

—

The sun peeks in through the curtains, waking Olive slowly. She rolls over, stretching as she looks over to Steve’s side of the bed and finds it empty. She panics momentarily, heart sinking to her stomach. Until she hears Steve’s voice in the kitchen, singing along to music playing from the TV. She slides out of bed, slipping into a nightgown before walking into the kitchen. Steve’s in his briefs, bouncing around and wiggling his hips with a spatula in his hand and the smell of bacon in the air. 

Her heart beats a little faster as her lips spread up into a smile. She watches him in awe, before he notices her standing there. Steve flips an egg, swaying his hips from side to side. Olive giggles and Steve’s head snaps back, a wide open mouthed smile on his face. 

“You’re finally up!” he cheers, “Let me make you some coffee.” 

Steve moves towards the coffee pot and Olive goes to get water from the fridge. She watches him make her coffee exactly how she likes as she takes her morning pills. Then Steve hands her the coffee, kissing her lips softly before then handing over her pack of cigarettes. He returns to cooking and Olive sits at the island counter, lighting up a cigarette and watching him cook. Bacon, eggs, home fries and sourdough toast. He spreads avocado on the toast, then plates Olive’s breakfast. 

They sit and eat, Olive moans at the first bite. Thinks she could get used to Steve living here. Though, she’s going to have to invest in a gym membership. She doesn’t usually eat breakfast, but she’s feeling rather hungry after all the cardio they did last night. 

“How’d you sleep?” Steve asks, piercing a potato with his fork. 

Olive smiles, remembering how cozy she felt with Steve spooning her all night. It was perfect. “Really good. How about you?”

“Best sleep of my whole life,” Steve says with a smile. “So I was thinking, I could like, go home and pack some stuff while you meet with Pilot. And maybe we can go out tonight? Like celebrate. Give me the chance to really show you off.”

Olive raises her brows, flush settling over her cheeks but fear twirling in her stomach. Breaking up with Pilot. That’s going to be hard to do. Pilot can get quite the temper and he’s going to want answers. So Olive is going to have to be honest. 

“You’re scared,” Steve notices, reaching over and putting his hand on Olive’s. “But you haven’t changed your mind, right?”

“Of course not,” she says, “I’m going to do it today. I promise.”

“Are you gonna do it in public?” Steve teases, smirking. 

She rolls her eyes but that was her plan, “He can get pretty explosive.”

Steve hums, watching as Olive reaches for the Tabasco to put on her eggs, then he snatches it from her and does the same to his, “Maybe I should come with.”

“Oh, god, no. That would make it ten times worse,” Olive tells him. 

Steve shrugs, “He did like me, ya know. Maybe he’ll be stoked for us.”

“I think the seven months of us fucking behind his back will put a damper on his fondness of you,” Olive winces. 

“You’re gonna tell him that?” Steve raises his brows, looking shocked. 

She nods, “He’s gonna expect an explanation. I might as well tell him the truth.”

Steve purses his lips, like he’s thinking over it. He sighs and tells her, “I guess that’s fair.”

They finish their breakfast and work on the dishes together. It all feels very domestic, even if there is a tension in the air. They work well together, Olive scrubbing at the dishes while Steve dries and puts them away. 

After, Steve lifts Olive up and places her on the counter. He slips his fingers into her hair, leaning close and tilting her head up towards him. Olive’s heart beats a little faster, she feels her stomach drop as Steve nudges his nose against hers. And she thinks, she’s so deeply in love. Steve’s going to make her feel this way forever. The butterflies will never dull. She’s sure they could be married for fifty years and Steve’ll still be making her feel like this. 

“I love you,” he whispers. 

Olive smiles, her hands moving to grab Steve’s hands and she intertwines their fingers. 

“I love you too, Stevie.”

Their lips meet and they melt into it. Olive tilts her head, Steve kisses her top lip. His hands find her waist, he squeezes as they kiss. It quickly becomes heated, as it usually does with them. There’s this electric deep energy between them, a chemistry that just can’t be ignored. Olive feels like she cannot help herself around him. Her hands move into his hair. 

“Can’t believe you’re my girlfriend,” he says, wrapping his arms around her waist and squeezing her.

Olive giggles, hugging back and says to him, “Finally, eh?”

“Girl of my dreams,” Steve mumbles against her lips, continuing the kiss and Olive feels like she’s floating.

She reaches into his briefs, licks into his mouth as she wraps her legs around Steve’s waist. He pulls the straps of her nightgown down her arms and the slip drops down to expose her breasts. Olive moans into his mouth as his hands touch her breasts. She squeezes his cock, begins to slowly stroke him and Steve whines. His hips jerk forward and he gasps. 

“Love how easy you are for me,” she tells him between kisses.

To which Steve replies, “It’s totally your fault.”

Then he’s licking into her mouth while he fondles her tits. Olive begins stroking him a little faster. Then she hears the door opening and before she can pull away, she hears Pilot’s voice. 

“You’re fucking kidding me.”

They turn to him, Olive pulls her hand out of Steve’s underwear and starts to pull her nightgown back up. But Pilot’s stalking over, his footsteps load on the hardwood floor. Steve takes a step back, lifts his hands up but Pilot’s winding back his fist. 

“Pilot, no! Don’t—“

Olive’s plea is interrupted by the sound of Pilot’s fist cracking into Steve’s face. She jumps off the counter as Steve makes a pained sound and stumbles back. Pilot winds back again but Olive’s grabbing his arm. He turns to her then, “The fucking Dogwalker? I can’t fucking believe you.”

He looks at Steve then, shakes his head and turns to leave. 

“I should’ve fucking believed Ezra,” he says on his way out. 

Olive’s reaching for her robe, slipping it on and a pair of heels. She runs to the door to follow Pilot, but before she leaves, she turns to Steve.

“Don’t leave. I’ll be right back.”

Steve stands, holding his hand over where he was just socked in the face. He lifts the other to wave and Olive runs out. Chases Pilot down the street before she catches up to him.

“Pilot, wait! Let me explain!”

He whips around, “Explain what? That you’ve been fucking this guy you apparently hate behind my back?”

“I know… I shouldn’t have— I—“ Olive swallows. She hadn’t even had time to think about what she was going to say. How she was going to explain this. 

“How long?” Pilot asks her then. 

Olive chews on her lip, looks at the sidewalk and then up at Pilot. “I’m sorry.”

“How long, Olive?”

“Seven months. Pretty much… immediately,” she admits. 

“Wow,” Pilot scoffs. 

Olive sighs, “I… I broke it off, that’s why he kinda disappeared for three months and well… last night he showed up and I…” she swallows hard, feeling like her breakfast might come back up, “I’m really sorry, Pilot. I shouldn’t have let it go on that long.”

“Well, fuck, Olive… I can’t believe you’d do something like this. It’s gonna take a while to forgive you… we’ll work through it but, it’s gonna be work,” Pilot says, “As long as it was just ya know, sex. I know we’ve been pretty stale in that department but—“

“Oh, no… I… Pilot,” she sighs, looks back at him and confesses, “I’m in love with him. Like, really, really in love with him.”

Pilot rubs his hand over his face. Scoffs again and says, “So what? That’s it? It’s over?”

Olive nods softly. Looks over her shoulder, she’s half expecting Steve to come. 

“Why didn’t you just break up with me ten months ago?” Pilot asks.

“I should’ve,” Olive admits, "But, I was terrified… I was in denial. I didn’t realize how deep it had gotten with him… and when I did I broke it off but…”

“But you’re jerking him off in your kitchen this morning, so clearly it didn't stick,” he mumbles. “Ezra told me… and I trusted you and fuck, I had this whole talk with Steve and he fucking lied to me… right to my face.”

“You punched him. He got punished enough. He was only trying to protect me,” she mumbled. “Don’t hate him. Hate me.”

“I hate you both,” Pilot grins, “I’ll pack up all your shit and bring it over soon. Bye.”

He turns and keeps walking. Olive feels like crying. She turns and walks back to her apartment. Inside, Steve’s sitting on her couch holding a bag of frozen peas to his face. Olive kicks out of her shoes and rushes over to him, she sits and grabs the peas. 

“Let me see…” she mumbles.

He lets her pull it off his face, showing her his swollen eyelids and the beginning of bruising. It’s gonna be a pretty gnarly black eye. 

“Aw… baby…” she puts the peas back over it. “I’m so sorry…”

Steve shrugs, “Guess I deserve it. Feel bad that’s how he found out.”

“Shocked it didn’t happen sooner, honestly,” Olive whispers, “I mean… the tent.”

He laughs, pulling Olive into his lap. “I should’ve been punched forever ago.”

Olive kisses Steve’s temple.

—-

Three weeks later, Steve was all moved in. Olive was forcing herself to compromise. Steve’s stuff didn’t exactly fit her aesthetic and now her apartment looked a whole lot more disorganized and cluttered. But, it really was worth it. Spending every single waking and sleeping second with Steve wasn’t as suffocating as she thought it was going to be. Mostly, Olive felt completely relieved. 

Steve handled chores, he planned meals and he expanded his doggy client list so that Olive could have enough alone time to write her articles. He really was the perfect roommate, even if he had a penchant for junk that made Olive think her apartment was ugly.

Sleeping has never been easier, though. She thought the cuddling would wear off, that after enough nights spent together, he wouldn’t cling to her. But he still does, every night. He’s incredibly clingy. And it’s exactly what Olive needed. He softens her edges, she’s in a good mood every morning. Partly because she’s booked the longest, extended “vacation” with a big chunk of her savings. 

Tonight, they’re doing the official new partner dinner with her friends. Even though they already know Steve, it’s still tradition. That’s where Olive will announce her trip. 

“Hey, babe,” Steve greets Olive when he gets through the door, pushing his little old man cart. She teased him but it’s actually brilliant. Olive would only get enough groceries to fit in one bag because she didn’t want to struggle to carry it all. Steve never struggles. And, he brought her flowers. He hands them over and kisses her cheek. 

“So pretty, thank you,” Olive smiles, bringing the flowers up to smell them. “Are you gonna be able to get this all done by the time they arrive, Steve?”

“With your help,” he says, snatching the flowers back from Olive so he can trim them and put them in a vase.

Olive groans, “I don’t wanna ruin it, Steve.” 

“Then, you’re just gonna have to follow my instructions really well,” he lifts his brows and Olive feels her thighs heat up. It’s truly a gift, he can turn her on so easily. He must recognize the look in her eyes because he says, “No. We do not have time for that. Don’t tempt me. Now, start cutting up the veggies.” 

“Yes sir,” Olive says, obeying him and Steve groans.

“You’re such a tease. Knock it off.”

They work together to make dinner and the timing is perfect. Everyone starts to arrive just as they finish. As they all sit at the table, Olive stands to make a toast. 

“First of all, I want to thank all of you guys for coming. This feels like a long time coming, to be honest. You’ve all been so supportive of Steve and I, and I wanted to thank you guys for that,” she says, and turns to Steve, “I also wanted to thank Steve for putting up with all my bullshit for the past year. And I’m looking forward to making up for it…”

“Oh, my god, are you proposing?” Amelia interrupts, her eyes widened.

The smile on Steve’s face grows and Olive has to crush it, “Oh, god, no! Amelia, what is wrong with you?”

“I’m hopeful,” she rolls her eyes. 

“I’m not proposing. God. I am trying to say, I’ve booked a trip. A very extended one. Six months,” she says, smiling ear to ear. It’s all she could think about after the breakup with Pilot. She was finally allowed to leave again.

Steve tilts his head, Olive’s kept him in the dark this whole time about it. “You… huh?”

Robin snorts, “That sick of Steve already?”

Olive gasps, shakes her head, “No! No! Actually… I planned to take him with me.”

“Wait, really?!” Steve asks, excitedly as he jumps up from his seat.

“If you’d go, yeah,” Olive tells him just as he wraps his arms around her tightly, spinning them in a circle which has Olive spilling her wine down his back but he doesn’t seem to care. 

“When do we leave?!”

“For the whole weekend?” You hook your arms around his neck.

“The whole weekend,” he confirms, grinning wildly.

“How the hell did you pull that off?” You laugh in disbelief, playing with the wisps of hair at the back of his neck.

“Dustin offered to watch them,” he replies.

You raise your eyebrows at that, “Dustin? Dustin Henderson voluntarily offered to take care of our children?”

Dustin and his wife were the godparents of your eldest girl, and Dustin loved your kids - but letting all six of them stay at his place was rare.

“Well, he also owes me a few favors for constantly saving his ass as a kid. And after the absolute nightmare that your birthday party was, I decided to cash in one of those favors,” Steve shrugs sheepishly.

You bite your lip in amusement at the memory, because your birthday party had been a bit of a train wreck.

It was going to be a surprise, but living in a house with seven other people meant things that were supposed to stay quiet spilled easily.

It’s not shocking that your four year old was the one who told you either.

You already knew Steve was up to something with the way he was rolling into bed late each night - claiming he was working on coaching strategies for the summer baseball leagues he was teaching.

Which was strange, because he always left work at work - stating that he wanted to be as present as possible for you and your children at home. So when it had been nearly two weeks straight of him acting like he still had things to do, you were growing suspicious.

It was another night without Steve in bed, and you were tossing and turning without the warmth that he usually provided, when there’s suddenly a quiet pounding on your door - making you push up on your elbows as it swings open.

Your youngest boy’s standing there, tears streaming down his face with his favorite stuffed animal clutched in his small fists.

“What happened, baby?” You call softly, and he quickly scrambles over to the bed, hauling himself up.

“I had a bad dream,” he sniffles, crawling across the covers and laying himself next to you.

“I’m sorry, buddy,” you reply, pushing his messy hair back.

He grasps onto the sleeve of your shirt, “It was scary.”

“I’m sure it was. Nightmares scare me too,” you reply, rubbing soothing circles on his back.

“They do?” He asks with interest.

“Oh yeah, for sure. They scare Daddy too. It’s okay to be scared of them. Sometimes they feel real, but you know the good thing about them is that they don’t follow you into the real world,” you assure him, pressing a kiss to his forehead.

He nods into your shoulder, before pulling back and looking around the room.

“Where is Daddy?” He questions, the mention of Steve making him realize he’s not in the room with you.

“He’s working on something,” you answer.

Your boy's eyes light up at that, “I know what he’s working on!”

“And what’s that?” You smile as you see that sweet little grin of his.

He sits up on his knees, leaning in close and whispering, “Your birthday party tomorrow.”

“My what?” You ask incredulously, caught off guard by that response.

“Shh, it’s a secret, Mommy,” he giggles, holding a finger to his lips.

“Okay, babe,” you laugh lightly, “I won’t tell anyone.”

“Tell anyone what?” Steve’s voice resounds as he walks in.

He looks tired - disheveled hair and bags under his eyes that make you want to trace the delicate skin there. It clicks into place then, what he’s really been spending his time doing, and it makes affection for him bloom throughout your chest.

“About Mommy’s party,” your son says giddily.

Steve closes his eyes in defeat, hands planted on his hips, “Awesome.”

“Don’t worry, Daddy. She won’t tell anyone,” your boy says seriously.

Steve collapses onto the bed next to you and slings an arm over your waist. Your hand instinctively comes up to brush over the arm that's now tucked around you.

“Guess you know now,” he grumbles into the side of your neck.

“It’s okay baby, I’m not telling anyone,” you laugh softly.

He hums sleepily in response, eyes cutting to the clock on the nightstand which reads just past midnight.

“Happy Birthday, honey,” he reaches up to press a kiss to the underside of your jaw.

Your boy repeats the statement while he worms his way in between you and Steve.

“Stop hogging your mom, buddy,” Steve says teasingly.

You start to drift off cuddled up next to them - gratitude stirring deep within your heart, contentment lulling you back into a peaceful sleep.

When the party started, Steve kept refusing your attempts to help - insisting that he and the kids had it under control.

They did not have it under control.

The party was mostly taking place outside with friends and family crammed into the backyard, but you came inside with Lucas and Max to take a break from the summer heat.

“Is Steve alright?” Max asks, eyeing your husband over the rim of her cup.

You glance over at him, watching as he bounces around the kitchen - constantly running his hands through his hair. It’s a tell-tale sign that he’s stressed, and you narrow your eyes in frustration because he won’t let you do anything to alleviate that tension.

“No, I don’t think so. But he keeps telling me he’s fine,” you mumble.

“He’s staring at that cake pretty hard for someone who’s supposedly okay,” Lucas laughs from where he stands next to her.

She gently elbows him, “Why don’t you go offer him a hand?”

He snorts at that, “No way. He nearly bit my head off when I asked him where the presents were supposed to go.”

“I’m gonna go check on him again,” you sigh.

The second you enter the kitchen, it’s like a mental radar goes off in Steve’s head, because he turns and starts shooing you out.

“Babe, I told you to go enjoy the party,” he emphasizes.

“Steve, I can’t when I can practically see you vibrating with nervous energy. Tell me what’s wrong,” you try to convince him, sliding your hands up his shoulders.

He gives in, melting at your touch, “The cake is lopsided.”

You smile a little, “So?”

He pinches the bridge of his nose in aggravation, “It’s really lopsided.”

“It’s my fault, Mom. I was on cake duty and hit a curb trying to get back here in time,” your eldest girl remarks from her space at the island. She cringes while she waits for your reaction to that, because Steve’s already gotten on to her about safe driving.

You take a deep breath, “You’re more important than the cake. I don’t care what it looks like. I’m sure it’s still gonna taste great.”

Lucas comes in at that moment, “Sorry to barge in, but you should probably head into the living room.”

“What now?” Steve asks anxiously.

“The twins,” Lucas says, which is enough of an answer because the two of them had been arguing more than usual lately - developing attitudes the closer they got to fifth grade.

Max is standing in front of them with her arms folded, disappointment clouding her eyes. In her hands is a ripped birthday card, and your kids are on the verge of tears at getting a scolding from their favorite aunt.

“What happened?” You hesitantly ask.

Your girls face crumples, “I worked really hard on my card for you, and he spilled his soda all over it.”

Your boy looks regretfully over at her, “I tried fixing it.”

“Yeah, and then you ripped it!” Your girl bites out.

“It was an accident!” He gripes back.

“I bet you were just jealous because my card for Mom was better than yours,” your girl seethes.

That comment makes your boy's tears spill over, and he turns around to run up the stairs. The sound of his door shutting reverberates throughout the house.

“I’ll go talk to him,” you decide, getting ready to follow him.

Steve turns to you, “No, honey, please sit down. I can handle it.”

“I can talk to him,” Max offers, and you shoot her a grateful look because it’s clear Steve’s stubborn tendencies are taking over his rational decision making.

When she disappears up the stairs, Steve turns to his middle girl - giving her a pointed look.

It makes her start crying too, “I’m sorry, Daddy. I didn’t mean it.”

Your oldest boy interrupts - carrying your toddler, who you heard before you saw because she’s screaming up a storm.

“She wants Mom,” he says, looking a little guilty.

“I’ve got her,” Steve cuts in, grabbing her from his boy.

It doesn’t soothe her, and Steve’s eyebrows pinch downwards as he tries to console her with no avail.

“Steve, I can take her. It’s fine,” you say calmly.

He looks like he’s on the verge of a breakdown, and you reach up to cup his face in your hands, thumbs lovingly skimming over the stubble on his jaw.

“Let me take her, baby,” your eyes glance over to your ten year old who’s dropped onto the couch in a fit of tears - quietly insinuating that he’s got another child that needs him.

He reluctantly lets your toddler squirm her way over into your arms before crouching down in front of his girl to talk to her.

It’s then that the fire alarm sets off, and your eldest girl squeals about forgetting to set the timer for the food in the oven - running back into the kitchen.

“Are you kidding me?” Steve barks out sarcastically.

Lucas claps a hand on his brother-in-law's shoulder, “I’ll take care of it, man.”

“Thanks, Lucas,” you smile, cradling your youngest babe in your arms.

Steve continues his conversation with your daughter, and since he has his back turned, you hightail it to your toddlers room before he can intervene - having a feeling she really just needs a good nap after all the excitement from the day.

When you try to lay her down on her bed, she starts clinging onto you, “What’s wrong, sweet girl?”

“Mommy, stay,” she begs.

You’ve never been any good at telling her no, especially when she gives you her puppy dog eyes - the color just like yours but the expression of it resembles those doe eyes Steve likes to give you.

“Just for a little bit, babe,” you concede, curling up next to her.

Eventually her breathing evens out, and the gentle puffs of air from your girl drags you into your own slumber.

“Baby,” Steve whispers, and you blink wearily when you feel his hand curl around your bicep.

“Hmm?” You muse groggily.

He reaches out to smooth down your top that’s riding up, “Been looking for you.”

“You found me,” you mutter, looking over to see your girl has turned around in her sleep - facing away from you now.

You sit yourself up, and Steve’s hands reach out to help you stand to your feet.

“C’mon,” he says quietly, trying to keep his voice down.

He guides you out into the hallway, shutting your girls door silently behind him. You expect him to usher you back to the party, but he leads you towards your bedroom.

“Steve?” You question, tone laced with confusion.

“Wait right here for me, please?” He requests.

When you nod, he heads into the walk in closet - clearly searching around for something.

A muffled screech of laughter catches your attention, and you peer out the window that overlooks the backyard. You smile at seeing all the people you love in one place and startle slightly when Steve’s arms wrap around your middle, pressing his body against yours as he stands behind you.

“God, I just wanted one day where you didn’t have to worry about anything,” he grumbles dejectedly, head dropping into the crook of your neck.

“Steve, we have six children,” you remind him, letting yourself relax in your hold.

“Yeah, who you take care of every single day. Just wanted you to have one day where you felt taken care of,” he refutes.

You turn in his arms, slipping yours around his waist, “How could you possibly think I don’t feel taken care of?”

You lightly run your fingers over the dark circles that still remain under his eyes from the work he put into planning this day for you.

“You take care of me, Steve,” you affirm.

He swallows hard, “Sometimes I feel like I don’t do enough for you.”

“Not enough? Babe, you go to work to teach middle schoolers, then you coach baseball, then you come home and still ask what you can do to help me. You spent weeks staying up way too late to try to plan something special for me, and just because it didn’t go exactly the way you planned doesn’t mean it’s any less appreciated. You do more than enough,” you declare, turning your head to tuck yourself under his chin.

“Do it because you’re everything, you know that?” He murmurs, resting his head on top of yours - making you grip tighter to the back of his shirt at hearing the emotion behind the words.

“Got another present for you,” he whispers, ducking down to press a kiss to your cheek.

“Steve, you’ve gotten me plenty already,” you object.

“It’s not finished, but thought you might wanna see what the kids and I have been working on for you,” he lets go of you, turning to grab whatever he was looking for in the closet.

He places a scrapbook in your hands, and on the front cover is a picture of you, Steve, and your babes posing cheesily for the camera last year on Christmas Day.

You start to flip through the pages, memories from milestones and celebrations filling them, and your throat constricts as you feel the familiar prick of tears.

“You crying, honey?” He asks fondly.

“This is literally the sweetest thing I’ve ever gotten, of course I’m crying,” you hiccup, thumbing each sleeve of the book adoringly.

“It was supposed to be another surprise, but I just had to show you it now. Guess I’m not much better than our four year old,” Steve says playfully.

“Don’t worry, baby. Remember, I won’t tell anyone,” you refer to your words from the night before.

“Good, because I think if you told the kids they’d riot against me,” he chuckles

You beam at him, setting the precious gift down on your bed before extending your hand to grab his - heading back to the chaos of your birthday party, but you wouldn’t have it any other way.

Though you reassured Steve that the effort put into the birthday party is what counted, he was still trying to make it up to you.

It’s why he’s just treated you to dinner at your favorite restaurant and promised the house as all yours for the next couple of days.

“And just what are we going to do with all that free time?” You ask coyly, hands coming up to toy with the collar of his button down.

“Hmm, I’ve got lots of ideas, honey,” he replies, dipping his head to nip at the base of your throat.

“Steve,” you say breathlessly, fingers messily popping open the buttons on his shirt so it hangs open, providing you with the heavenly sight of his naked chest.

He grunts in response, lips trailing down the valley of your breasts while his hands are pawing at the zipper of your dress - trying to get the damn thing off.

He shoves the fabric down, letting it pool at your feet - leaving you stripped down to your underwear.

He instantly drops to his knees in front of you, cupping his hands around the backs of your thighs - lips pressing eagerly against the exposed skin.

“Stop teasing,” you whine, pushing at his head - desperate for him to just be inside you already.

Steve doesn’t let up though; instead he moves his mouth to your panties, which are already wet with your slick.

“Play nice, baby. Wanna taste you first. Haven’t in god knows how long,” he mouths over the fabric that’s clinging to you.

Your head falls back against the door, fingers threading in his hair as he continues to tease you through the material before slowly taking them off.

“Oh, god,” you gasp at the feeling of being laid bare before him.

“That’s it, honey,” he coos, grasping at one of your legs - lifting it to have better access to your core.

He kisses your inner thigh that’s now hooked over his shoulder, hovering over your heat. His eyes flick up to meet yours as his tongue laves over your entrance - prodding inside gently, before licking his way up to your clit. A loud moan is torn from your throat, followed by a string of curse words as Steve’s lips secure themselves over the little nub.

“Taste so good, baby,” Steve moans, tongue working expertly against you.

Your hips rut involuntarily against his mouth, and you can feel the tension building faster than you’d like it too - embarrassingly close already from how worked up you are.

“Gonna come,” you whimper.

“Already, baby? Damn, must be good,” he smirks cockily, bringing two fingers up to sink inside of you to get you there faster.

You feel the coil in your stomach tighten as his fingers pump in and out of you - eyes rolling back when you feel the band snap.

Steve pulls away, breathing hard with your juices coating his mouth and jaw. The sight makes you needy, and you tug him to stand up.

“Bedroom, now,” you demand.

“Yes, ma’am,” he teases, sliding his hands down to cup your ass and lift you up into his arms.

He’s trying to multitask - kicking off his shoes while walking up the stairs at the same time.

As expected, it doesn’t end well. When his second shoe is off, he steps on it, causing him to tumble down at the top step that leads to the landing of the second floor.

Thankfully he catches your fall, arms still nestled securely behind your back. Once the shock wears off, you start giggling - back splayed out on the floor while Steve’s holding himself up over you.

“Sorry, baby,” he laughs, leaning forward to kiss you, and you can taste the remains of yourself on him.

It spurs you on, hands shooting out to eagerly unbuckle his belt. You toss it behind you somewhere before trying to shove his dress pants and boxer briefs down.

He helps you get them off, and your lips part at the sight of his member on full display. Your breath hitches as lust pools inside of you while you admire cock - fully hard and thick, with a prominent vein running down his shaft. The pretty pink tip is flushed, leaking incessantly with precum.

Steve takes the opportunity to hike your legs up and over his shoulders while you’re distracted, slipping a hand under your lower back to help guide you up off the hardwood floor.

His knees are digging into the steps of the stairs, back protesting the angle, but he can’t be bothered - greedily wanting to pull another orgasam from you.

“Please, just fuck me already, Steve,” you cry, weakly trying to move his head away.

“Patience, baby,” he replies, dragging his tongue up your slit - tasting your previous release, and he groans loudly when he feels your thighs press against his head.

“Shit, Steve, I’m too sens-,” you break off with a whine as his tongue flicks out to lap at your clit, lazily tracing circles over it.

When you come for a second time on his fingers, you know you’re not making it to the bed.

You push at his chest, forcing him to lay on his back. His eyes blow wide at your actions - hands shooting out to grasp at the meat of your hips when you sit down on him, cock nudging at your entrance from the movement.

You reach down to grab him, stroking unhurriedly - thumb brushing over the head, spreading the precum that’s now dribbling down towards the base.

Steve whimpers when you line him up, torturously gliding down on him - taking your time as each inch of his dick slides in until the hilt.

“Oh, fuck me,” Steve moans when your pussy flutters around him.

You pause, letting yourself adjust to the size of him before you start to rotate your hips slowly against him.

“Stop, it’s your birthday. I’m doing the work,” he pants, fingers sinking into your skin hard enough to leave bruises.

Steve starts to thrust up into you, steadily creating a rhythm that has you rocketing towards your third orgasam of the night.

“Feels so good,” you whimper as his hips jerk upwards into your tight cunt, deliciously stretching you open.

“C’mere, want you closer,” he pleads, reaching up to your necklace that’s swaying in the air.

He pulls at it, tugging you down so you’re flush against him. He’s relentless, continuing to thrust shallowly, so it’s more of a grind than anything, but you’re aching with need for him to move faster.

“Need you to go faster,” you mumble against his neck, fingers running through the dark hair on his chest.

His hips pick up speed at your request, pulling back till his ruddy tip nearly slips out before snapping forwards - burying himself deep inside of you.

“Steve, oh god, right there,” you cry out at the feel of him grazing your sweet spot.

“Doing so good for me, baby,” he starts planting sloppy kisses anywhere he can reach on your exposed skin.

The praise has your head spinning, clenching around him each time he bottoms out.

“Shit, ‘m not gonna last if you keep squeezing me like that, honey,” Steve moans, bucking up into you to chase his release.

At the realization that he’s about to come, you remember something that makes you panic.

“Wait, wait, wait,” you breathe worriedly.

Steve’s hips still immediately, “What? What’s wrong?”

Being stuffed full of him without moving is maddening, and you close your eyes blissfully - mewling at the feeling.

Steve leans forward to press his forehead against yours, “Baby, hey, tell me what’s wrong.”

You’re brought back to reality by him pinching lightly at your hipbone to get your attention.

“I, uh, I forgot to take my birth control today,” you admit.

Steve nods in understanding, “Okay. What do you wanna do?”

“The risk of getting pregnant is pretty low when you miss just one, but we’ve been so busy lately, and I haven’t exactly been taking it regularly because we haven’t had any alone time,” you trail off.

“That’s alright, honey. We can stop, and I’ll just finish w-,” Steve starts to try to lift you, but you grab onto his shoulders, refusing to let him move.

“No, no, don’t,” you protest frantically.

Steve runs his hands up your back lovingly, “You know I’m weak babe, haven’t ever been able to pull out.”

You scoff into his neck, “Yeah, you and your breeding kink. Trust me, I know.”

“Hey, don’t tease me. I’ve never heard you complaining when you call me Daddy,” his teeth skin over the shell of your ear and you lose all resolve.

“Just come inside me,” you whine, hips moving against his length.

Steve chokes out in surprise at the sudden action, before forcing you to stop again, “Wait, baby, seriously. Do you want that?”

“Do you?” You reply, looking into his eyes curiously.

“I mean, you know I love kids. I love our kids. And I love seeing you full with my kids,” he brushes a hand over your tummy, making you flush.

No matter how much your body has changed over the years, he still never fails to make you feel beautiful.

“But, it’s you who has to carry a baby - not me. And, six has been a lot on you. I know it has, and I don’t want you to feel forced into having another one,” Steve replies earnestly.

“God, I love you,” you whisper, leaning in to kiss him.

“Love you too, gorgeous. But that’s not exactly an answer,” he mumbles against your lips.

You make a high pitched noise of pleasure when you feel him twitch inside of you, and you subconsciously start to move your hips up and down - feeling sweet relief at the friction.

Steve huffs a breath of laughter, “You listening to me?”

“Mhm,” your nose nudges against his before capturing his lips in another swift kiss.

“What’s the final verdict? Cause I can’t hold off much longer,” he grunts at the feel of you rocking against him.

“Want you to fill me up, give me another baby,” you’re babbling at this point, nearing your climax again.

Steve lets out a guttural sound at that, shifting his hips to feverishly meet yours, and it stuns both of you when you feel him spurting thick ropes of cum into your pussy - flooding you with his release.

“Fuck, I’m so sorry, baby,” he mutters miserably, “didn’t mean to come before you.”

You push at the sweaty hair that’s sticking to his temples, “It’s okay, handsome.”

“No, gonna keep going, need you to finish,” he jerks upwards, pushing his seed further into you while also forcing some of it out - causing it to trickle down his balls.

Your jaw drops at the feeling, hand slipping down to rub at your clit, which Steve pushes away and replaces with his own fingers.

“C’mon, baby,” he urges, breath fanning across your cheek.

You’re completely gone for him, and when you finally tip over the edge, gushing over his cock, you collapse on top of him - bones dissolving into mush.

Steve’s breath is ragged in your ear, heart beating rapidly against your own - hands coming up to caress through the tendrils of your hair.

“You okay?” He asks, pressing a kiss to your hairline.

You laugh lightly, “Better than okay.”

The two of you grow quiet as you lay there, basking in each other’s presence for a few moments more until the ache in your muscles encourages you to get up off the floor.

Before you’re able to move, Steve brings his hands to your face - grasping it tenderly and looking at you a bit timidly.

“You meant it, right?” He questions.

You lean into him, “Of course I meant it, babe. I love you.”

“I’m so in love with you,” he replies, kissing the spot below your ear.

You nuzzle into him, pleased with the affection, “Besides, I probably won’t even get pregnant.”

Those were famous last words for someone who would be staring in shock at a positive test a month and a half later - two pink little lines strikingly clear.

Divider credits to @cafekitsune

Harrington Household Taglist: @daveythorntonslocker @mutual-future-repeat @cciessuzi @enchantedsharddetective @aria1108 @ann-aatn @willyoucry13 @soapyysofi @scoopstroop0704 @offbrandhandymanny @sweatydjoshoes @sckmyk1ss @storietilman @shadogirl

lmk in the comments or message me if you wanna be added to the HH taglist!

You’d already snapped at Gator twice: once for chewing too loud on his chips, once for asking if you wanted a beer like it was the stupidest question in the world. Tonight, you were determined to test exactly how much he’d take.

“Jesus Christ, will you sit still?” he muttered, tossing the empty chip bag in the trash. “You’ve been twitchy as hell since you got here.”

You rolled your eyes from your spot on the sagging couch, tugging the hem of his oversized flannel down over your bare thighs. It dwarfed your smaller frame, the sleeves swallowing your hands. “Maybe I wouldn’t be if you stopped breathing so loud. Everything you do is annoying right now.”

Gator’s head snapped toward you, dark eyes narrowing and right now he looked like he was one second away from snapping. “The fuck is your problem tonight? You’ve been a mouthy little bitch ever since you walked in.”

The words should’ve stung. Instead they lit a fire low in your belly. You smirked, crossing your arms under your chest. “Maybe I am. What are you gonna do about it, Tillman? Arrest me?”

He stalked over, boots heavy on the hard wood floor. Towering above you, he planted one knee on the couch cushion beside your hip, caging you in. “Keep running that smart mouth and I will put you over my knee. I ain’t in the mood for your attitude.”

You tilted your chin up defiantly, even as heat flooded between your legs. “Try it. See what happens.”

Gator’s jaw clenched. He didn’t know shit about PMS, hadn’t even occurred to him that your mood might have a reason beyond “being a pain in the ass.” To him, you were just being a brat, and brats got handled.

In one swift motion he grabbed your wrist, yanking you up off the couch. “Bedroom. Now. And lose the attitude before I lose my temper.”

You stumbled after him, heart pounding, but you couldn’t stop pushing. “Or what? You gonna cry to your daddy about how your girlfriend’s being mean?”

He shoved the bedroom door open hard enough that it banged against the wall. The second it slammed shut behind you, Gator spun you around and slammed you back against it, his big hand wrapping around your throat not squeezing, just holding you there, reminding you who was bigger.

“Watch your fucking mouth,” he growled, voice low and dangerous. His other hand shoved the flannel up roughly, exposing your bare cunt and sore tits. “No panties? You came over here dressed like this just to piss me off and get fucked, didn’t you?”

You gasped as his fingers immediately found your slick folds, parting them roughly. You were soaked, embarrassingly so, and he noticed.

“Goddamn. Look at this messy pussy. Acting like a spoiled brat but dripping down your thighs for it.” He pushed two thick fingers inside you without warning, curling them hard against your front wall. The stretch burned in the best way, his knuckles pressing deep.

“Gator—” you started, half moan, half protest.

“Shut up.” He pumped his fingers faster, thumb grinding mean circles over your swollen clit. “You’ve been begging for this all night with your little comments. Now you’re gonna take what I give you.”

He finger-fucked you mercilessly, the wet, obscene sounds filling the small room. Your knees buckled but he held you up by the throat and the relentless thrust of his hand. When your walls started fluttering, he ripped his fingers out, leaving you empty and whining.

“Not yet, brat.”

He manhandled you to the bed, stripping the flannel off you completely and shoving you face-down onto the mattress. You tried to push up but he planted a heavy hand between your shoulder blades, keeping your chest pinned while he yanked your hips up high.

“Ass up. Yeah, just like that. Arch that back.”

You heard his belt buckle, the zipper, then the heavy thud of his jeans hitting the floor. His cock slapped against your ass, thick, hot, already leaking. Gator was big and girthy enough that even when you were soaked it was a tight fit.

He dragged the fat head through your folds, teasing your entrance before slamming in to the hilt in one brutal thrust. You cried out, the sudden fullness punching the air from your lungs. He didn’t pause. He started pounding into you hard and fast, hips snapping against your ass with loud, wet smacks.

“Fuck— so tight,” he grunted, gripping your hips hard enough to leave fingerprints. “This little pussy is choking my cock. All that attitude and you still open up so easy for me.”

Every thrust dragged along every sensitive inch inside you. The angle had him hitting that perfect spot over and over, making your toes curl and your eyes water. You pushed back against him, desperate and greedy, and he rewarded you with a sharp slap to your ass.

“Greedy little brat. Can’t even pretend you don’t love getting used like this.”

He reached around and rubbed your clit roughly, three fingers pressing hard while his cock split you open. The orgasm crashed over you without mercy. Your walls clamped down on him, pulsing, gushing around his shaft as you screamed into the mattress. He fucked you through it, hips never slowing, drawing it out until you were shaking and oversensitive.

Gator pulled out suddenly, flipping you onto your back like you weighed nothing. He hooked your legs over his shoulders, folding you in half, and drove back in even deeper. The new position made you feel every thick inch, every vein as he stretched you wide.

“Look at me,” he demanded, one hand pinning your wrists above your head. His face was flushed, hair messy, eyes dark with lust and lingering irritation. “You wanted rough? This rough enough for you?”

He fucked you in long, punishing strokes pulling almost all the way out before slamming back in, grinding deep on every thrust so his pelvis rubbed your clit. Sweat slicked both your bodies. Your tits bounced with every impact, sore and sensitive, and when he leaned down to suck one nipple into his mouth and bite it, you nearly came again from the sharp sting.

“Gator—fuck—too much—” you gasped, but your hips rolled up to meet him anyway.

“You can take it.” He switched to the other nipple, biting harder while his cock battered that spot inside you. “You’re gonna come on my dick again like the needy slut you are.”

He released your wrists to grab your ass with both hands, tilting your hips and driving into you at a brutal pace. The wet squelch of your pussy taking every inch filled the room, mixed with your broken moans and his low grunts. When he pressed his thumb against your asshole, just circling the tight ring while he fucked you, the added sensation sent you spiraling.

You came hard a second time, vision blurring, walls milking his cock in rhythmic spasms. Gator cursed, hips stuttering as he buried himself deep and came with a guttural groan, flooding your pussy with thick, hot ropes of cum.

For a moment he stayed there, buried inside you, both of you panting. Then he pulled out slowly, watching his cum leak from your abused hole with dark satisfaction.

You expected him to roll away or make some asshole comment, but instead he surprised you. Gator collapsed beside you and hauled your smaller body against his chest without a word. His arms wrapped around you, one big hand stroking down your back in slow, soothing sweeps.

“You done being a pain in my ass?” he muttered, but his voice had lost its edge. He tucked your head under his chin, letting you curl up small against him. His skin was warm, heartbeat steady under your ear.

You nodded weakly, the fight draining out of you. “Yeah… sorry.”

He huffed a laugh, fingers threading through your hair. “Didn’t know what the hell was up with you tonight. Figured you were just being a brat on purpose.” His hand moved lower, rubbing gentle circles over your aching lower back. “Next time just say you need to get fucked stupid instead of picking fights.”

Despite everything, you smiled against his chest, already drifting. The cramps felt muted now, replaced by bone-deep exhaustion and the safe weight of his arms around you. Gator kept stroking your hair and back, surprisingly tender for someone who’d just railed you into the mattress.

“Sleep, baby,” he said quietly, pressing a kiss to the top of your head. “I got you.”

You fell asleep like that, naked, sticky, wrapped around Gator’s larger frame, his steady breathing lulling you under while his hand continued its slow, comforting path along your spine.

. ܁₊ ⊹ . ܁ ⟡ ܁ . ⊹ ₊ ܁. . ܁₊ ⊹ . ܁ ⟡ ܁ . ⊹ ₊ ܁. . ܁₊ ⊹ . ܁ ⟡ ܁ . ⊹ ₊ ܁. . ܁₊ ⊹ . ܁

His mouth… tastes foul. Bitter. Like he swallowed the world’s nastiest penny and let it rot on his tongue overnight. His body feels heavy in a weird way — not injured-heavy exactly, but slept-too-hard heavy. Like every muscle in him got left out in rain and dragged back in before dawn. His cheek is warm where it had been pressed into something lumpy. His neck feels tender. His forearm too. One knee throbs in this low, distant kind of way that tells him whatever happened there was bad enough to matter, but not bad enough to be all he can think about.

His back is warm.

There’s something draped over it.

He turns his head just enough to catch the black of his windbreaker over one shoulder, and that’s weird enough to make him frown a little.

Then he notices the leaves.

There are chewed-up green leaves plastered over his forearm.

More of them at his neck.

And when he shifts his leg carefully, dragging one knee up under himself to look, he sees his cargo pants have already been rolled above the sting there too, the leaf poultice mostly slipped off sometime in the night as he moved in his sleep.

He sits up slowly.

Very slowly…

The whole place around him comes into focus by miserable little degrees.

He’s under some kind of tree shelter. A shallow one. Barely two or three feet above his head even kneeling. Twigs woven into brush. Branches bent down and overlapped. Leaves shoved into every gap where light might’ve betrayed it. It’s not clean. Not fancy. Not even particularly symmetrical. It’s just… well, there. Effective. Tight and close and hidden as all hell. Like some little fairy hut out of one of Dustin’s rambling campaigns. Like a child built a fort in the woods and then got weirdly, terrifyingly good at it.

His backpack is under his chest.

Empty.

Used as a pillow.

That makes Steve’s eyes flick around more sharply now, and that’s when he sees all of his stuff lined up neatly along one curved side of the little hut.

Knife.

Iodine.

Jerky.

Crackers.

Rope.

Wire.

The little box of matches.

Toothbrush.

Toothpaste.

Water bottle.

His bow and quiver.

Everything is arranged in a line so respectful and careful it almost makes his chest pinch. And next to his stuff, in their own neat little gathered piles… are other things.

Tiny speckled eggs.

Berries. Roots. Tubers. Nuts. Wild herbs.

A whole little scavenger spread of arena breakfast.

Steve just kneels there for a second in complete, groggy disbelief. “What the hell,” he whispers hoarsely to nobody.

The sound of his own voice startles him a little. It comes out rough. And dry. Sandpapered by sleep and bug venom and whatever the fuck else his body’s been doing while he’s been dead to the world.

He reaches down and peels the leaf mash off his forearm first.

The skin underneath looks icky. Red, swollen, bruised around the edges. Still a trackerjacker sting, still nasty enough to make him hiss softly through his teeth at the sight of it.

But not nearly as bad as it should be.

Not even close.

That’s what makes his brows lift.

He rubs his thumb lightly around it without touching the center, feels the heat there. The raised welt, like a spider bite that’s still healing.

Better.

Way fucking better.

His fingers go to his neck next — feeling the damp, half-dried mash tucked against the skin there. He can’t see that one, but judging by the way it feels? Same thing. Angry, but healing. Then his knee. That one’s still throbbing, still ugly as hell, but even it looks more manageable than it has any right to after the amount of venom that got pumped into him.

Steve sits back on his heels a little, rubbing both hands over his face.

He remembers flashes.

The nest.

The screaming.

Glimmer.

Jesus Christ — Glimmer...

His stomach drops at the mental image of her body when it all comes back to him. Bloated. Ruined. Swarmed. Dead in a way that no seventeen-year-old girl should ever have to be dead.

He shuts that down fast.

Then comes another memory.

Yours.

Your face, splitting and doubling and tripling in front of him while he sat there out of his goddamn mind before you hauled him to his feet. Both your hands on his shoulders. Your voice, desperate and sharp and furious all at once.

Run, Steve. Run.

His eyes go distant. The whole little hut seems to shrink around that memory. You’d been there. Not with the Careers. Not helping them. Not leading him to slaughter.

You had been there trying to get him the hell out.

And now…? Kneeling in this tiny hidden hideout with his backpack under him and his wounds treated and his supplies all stacked in neat little rows and a whole message spelled out on the ground so he wouldn’t wake up and lose his shit—

Steve feels something twist hard and strange inside his chest.

Because whatever your angle was, it had never been what he thought.

Some sick, jaded, angry part of him wants to keep fighting that. Wants to just keep saying no, there’s another explanation, there has to be. Wants to stay cynical because cynicism’s far easier than feeling grateful to somebody who could still matter this much.

But the evidence is all around him.

And it’s hard to argue with mercy when it has physically kept his ass alive.

“Shit,” he breathes, his hand moving without him thinking.

Instinctive.

Reaching for his right wrist.

Not the left wrist, with Robin’s tattoo.

His right wrist, where—

…wait.

Steve glances down…

Only to find bare skin.

He stiffens instantly, looking around himself, looking for—

But then he sees it.

His olive branch.

It’s now tucked right into the quiver, nestled beside his arrows… like whoever found it understood exactly what it was and decided it should not be lost. That does something vulnerable to his face. Pulls one corner of his mouth up despite himself in this tired, crooked little almost-smile which vanishes just as quickly as it came.

“Unbelievable,” he mutters under his breath.

How many times does a guy have to come within breathing distance of death before the universe just commits? How many near-misses before somebody up there decides — alright, enough of this sad bastard — puts him out of his misery?

The dark thought lands exactly where it always lands now.

Easy. Familiar. Morbid as a shrug.

He doesn’t sit in it long, though, because his mouth tastes like actual roadkill and suddenly that’s the most pressing problem in the world.

So he grabs the toothbrush.

Squeezes out a little toothpaste.

Brushes around his mouth and gums and teeth with all the solemn misery of a man who’s trying not to gag on his own morning breath inside a woodland hobbit grave. Then he unscrews the water bottle and pauses.

It’s full.

Here it comes again.

That soft little quiet punch of being tended to by unknown guardians of fate.

Steve stares at the water bottle for half a second like it personally betrayed him by being decent, then tips some into his mouth and swishes hard, spits into a far corner of the hut, and does it again.

When he’s done, he wipes his mouth with the back of his hand and lets his gaze sweep the hideout again while he drinks from it.

It all feels… deliberate.

Safe in a way the arena has no business being.

…and that’s exactly when he hears something rustle above him.

Steve moves before he thinks.

Bow in hand.

Arrow notched.

Aimed straight upward at the shadow now shifting through the tiny gaps in an opening of brush overhead.

Everything in him goes cold and sharp all at once…

Then a familiar little face appears.

Little enough that Steve’s whole body changes in one staggered beat.

Ro!

The kid freezes halfway through climbing down, his eyes huge, all wiry little limbs and caution and immediate alarm at finding himself now being aimed at by a broadhead arrow before breakfast.

Steve lowers the bow at once. “Hey— hey, man.” His voice comes out rough but warm in a hurry. “S’alright. M’not gonna hurt you.”

He tosses the weapon aside and raises both hands, palms open.

Ro is still hanging there halfway down — one small foot on a jut of root, one hand gripping a branch — staring at Steve like he’s trying to figure out if this is some kind of test.

Steve softens even more.

“You’re all good,” he promises. “I swear.”

Ro blinks. Then he climbs down the rest of the way very carefully, like a cautious little animal approaching a fire it hopes is friendly. Steve watches him land inside the hut and has to fight the bizarre urge to laugh — because Jesus Christ, this kid really did build the place for himself. Standing there now, Ro almost fits it properly. He can hunch. Turn, and move around. Steve, meanwhile, looks like an overgrown golden retriever trying to hide in a rabbit hole.

Ro doesn’t say anything at first.

He just stands there with those giant dark eyes on Steve, little hands folded up near his chest, equal parts shy and wary and weirdly pleased all at once.

Steve clears his throat. “You did all this?”

Ro nods.

Steve looks around again. Then back at him. “The leaves too?”

Another nod.

“And the water bottle?”

Ro nods harder this time.

Something about that makes Steve smile for real. Small, but real. “Okay,” he says quietly. “Well. Thank you.”

Ro’s shoulders ease a tiny bit.

Steve watches him tenderly, then his brow pinches. “How long was I out?"

A beat lands.

Ro glances down at his fingers before shyly peeking up through his lashes… quietly murmuring, in the gentlest little voice, “two days.”

Steve’s brows shoot up, forehead creasing.

Two days?

“Days three and four,” Ro adds timidly. “It’s Day Five now.”

A soft, almost sheepish sigh slips past Steve’s nose. He watches Ro another moment, then glances down at his own lap. Then he glances at his forearm. 

“This stuff worked,” he tells Ro. “Like… really worked.”

Ro lights up so suddenly it’s almost startling.

Not in a loud way.

Just the way little kids do when praise hits them square in the chest and they don’t know where to put it.

“I changed them,” he blurts before he can apparently stop himself, voice soft and quick and a little breathless from finally using it. “A couple times. And—I put more ointment on your burn too but only a little, I promise, and I didn’t eat any of your food or touch any of your stuff—except I had to use two of your matches but that’s just because it’s way faster to cook eggs with a match and I’m sorry about that and—”

“Hey, hey.” Steve’s brows pinch sadly, voice kind. “Slow down.”

Ro clamps his mouth shut at once.

Steve stares at him for a second before he very, very gently asks, “Why are you apologizing?”

Ro looks confused by the question itself. Then guilty. Then both.

“I just… didn’t want you to think I was stealing.”

That hits Steve so hard and stupidly that for a second he doesn’t even know what to do with his face. He looks over at the neat little piles of food. At the lined-up supplies. The full water bottle. The carefully rewrapped olive branch.

Then back at Ro.

“Buddy,” he says, and there’s something almost helpless in his voice now. “I would not have cared if you ate half of it.”

Ro still looks uncertain.

Steve reaches over for the jerky and crackers. “Seriously. C’mere.”

Ro shuffles a little closer on instinct but still stays cautious, cross-legged now on the dirt floor while Steve opens the packet and breaks off a piece.

He offers it.

It takes another moment before Ro slowly takes it with both his hands, like it might disappear if he’s not respectful enough.

Steve hands him a cracker too, then takes one for himself. “There.” He nods toward the little scavenged spread. “Now we’re sharing. No crime committed.”

That gets the tiniest little smile out of Ro.

Steve leans back one shoulder against the side of the hut, gesturing vaguely with his cracker. “So where were you just now?”

Ro’s chewing slows.

He swallows, then says shyly, “Making birdcalls.”

Steve tilts his head. “Birdcalls.”

Ro nods, then reaches for a few seeds from one of his little piles — bringing them between them like this is just part of breakfast now.

“There’re mockingjays,” he explains. “They copy back whatever you sing, like a parrot. So if I do the right four notes and they’re close enough, they’ll carry it to you. Then if you do your four notes back, they’ll carry them to me.”

Steve stills halfway through another bite.

There’s a tiny pause in the hut.

“Me?” he repeats carefully.

Ro blinks. “Well, yes but… no. Not you.”

Then, as if realizing that sounded dumb: “Ren.”

There it is again.

Your name.

But now it’s spoken out loud and now Steve’s whole body goes kind of eerily still around it… Because whatever he’d expected out of waking up in this tiny woodland bunker, it sure as hell wasn’t a nine-year-old very calmly dropping confirmation that you and he apparently have some kind of secret birdcall- communication alliance.

And you’re alive.

“…you and Ren have a signal,” Steve says slowly.

Ro nods.

“…you’re allied.”

Ro nods harder, then he seems to realize this is maybe important information and starts talking faster about how you teamed up with him.

It comes out in pieces at first, shy and a little tangled up.

But Steve is good with kids. That’s the thing. No matter how much this world has hollowed him out, no matter how much venom and violence and grief and trauma have turned everything else inside him into barbed wire, that part still works. So he doesn’t crowd. Doesn’t interrogate.

He just nudges the story along. “When’d that happen?”

“Back at the Capitol.”

“Before the Games?”

“Mm-hm.”

“Who all knew?”

“Me and Wendy Bird and Jack and Hannah. Oh!—and Hopper. Hopper went over the cave part again with Hannah and Jack after.”

Steve blinks. “Wendy Bird?”

Ro says it like it’s obvious. “That’s Ren.”

Oh, so you have another bird-assigned nickname?

That’s the first thing that runs through Steve’s mind until then, because Steve apparently has somehow woken up inside a fever dream run by emotionally intelligent children.

Ro proceeds to explain the whole damn thing, bit by bit, chewing seeds and taking tiny bites of jerky. Talking with his hands sometimes… when the words come easier that way.

You were Wendy Bird.

Steve was Pan the Man.

Ro was a lost boy.

Hannah was a lost girl.

Jack was a lost boy too, even if he acted tougher about it.

And the whole plan had been built around getting the lost ones hidden first. The cave for Hannah and Jack. The signals in the trees. The markings along the stream in case Ro had to go looking. The birdcall. The fallback birdcall. The trail marks. The rule about not panicking if nobody answered back because that probably meant you’d made it safe. The rule about waiting for the sky at night before assuming the worst.

The whole thing laid out in this innocent, devastating little-boy cadence that somehow makes every piece of it hit Steve harder than if Hopper himself had walked in and barked it at him.

Because Ro explains it all like he’s telling Steve how to play a game that he missed the rules to all this time…

And buried inside every part of it is the same awful truth:

You had planned for him.

You had worked all of this out after the interviews.

After he’d lashed out at you backstage. After you went on live television and said the thing he’d least wanted anyone to say. After he made it ugly, after he stormed off and left you standing there.

And somehow, after all of that, you’d still built a strategy that kept not only three kids alive…

…but him too.

Steve sits there, very quiet through most of it, only asking questions when he has to.

“So… Hopper knew all of this?”

Ro nods. “Some of it. Most of it.”

“Hannah and Jack knew the cave part already?”

“Ren told them in the morning. Hopper repeated it later.”

Something about that irks Steve.

The fact that Hopper planned all of this, without ever considering that maybe Steve was capable of planning something too…? Something about that just doesn’t quite sit right yet.

But still. Steve’s far too blown away, too grateful, to let that take precedence.

“And you…?” Steve has to stop and start over. “You knew I was supposed to end up with you?”

Ro shrugs one shoulder. “Not exactly with me. Just… if I found you first, then yeah. Because she didn’t want any of us near the Careers.” 

Steve rubs a hand over his face again.

It is not helping.

Nothing about this is helping. Because Ro is so matter-of-fact about it all. So sweet. So trusting. So completely certain that of course this all makes sense because Wendy Bird said it would!

There’s something brutally unselfconscious in the admiration Ro has for you too. Every time that he says your name, it’s like he’s talking about someone brave and clever and magical and surreal. Someone who made a hard thing sound possible just by explaining it softly enough.

Steve smiles sometimes despite himself.

That’s the worst part.

He can’t even keep the smile off his face, because Ro is so damned earnest about all of it. And apparently? You’d explained the whole alliance through Peter Pan analogies and secret signals and lost boys and hidden places and prioritized how important it was to keep the little ones safe first.

Because apparently it worked.

Because apparently Steve Harrington, bitter bastard of the fucking woods… got kept alive by a plan made by a girl he hurt and a little boy who still looks at him like he hung the moon.

He hates what that does to his chest.

He hates that it isn’t simple.

Ro is talking about the cave now.

About how Hannah and Jack were supposed to stay put no matter what.

About how he’s gone out looking for your signal already.

About how he tried the mockingjay call.

Steve’s eyes go a little glossy around the edges at that. Not enough to show. Just enough to feel it everywhere inside of himself.

“You were out there this morning doing that?” he asks.

Ro nods. “I thought maybe if Wendy Bird— I mean if Ren—”

“If she answered back,” Steve finishes.

Ro nods again. “But she didn’t.”

Steve takes a slow breath, dread beginning to show in his features.

Ro rushes to add, “But that’s probably good. Ren said if I can’t hear her? It might mean she made it back where she needed to go and is staying quiet.”

There’s that faith again.

That calm little child-faith in your competence.

…and God help him, Steve feels himself borrowing from it.

Just for a second.

Just enough to feel relieved that you’re still alive.

He looks down at the half-eaten saltine cracker in his hand and thinks about your beautiful face again. Your voice. Run.

Then he looks back up… and he finds that Ro is now watching him now with all the patience in the world. Like he knows some grown-up silences are just things you have to let happen.

Steve laughs under his breath once, dry and small.

“What,” Ro asks curiously.

Steve shakes his head. “Nothing, man.”

But it isn’t nothing. 

It’s the soul-crushing, inconvenient realization that your angle had been him all along. Not to betray. Not to manipulate. Not to trap. To keep him alive.

And he doesn’t know what the fuck to do with that.

So he doesn’t try to.

Not just yet.

Instead he takes another bite of jerky and helps Ro keep talking.

“So alright then,” Steve says, sly and warm. “What else’ve I missed?”

Ro has gotten less shy now. The words come easier. Quicker. He tells Steve how Hannah nearly cried the first day and didn’t want Jack seeing, so she’d turned away first. How Jack acts tougher than he is but he still gets a wrinkle between his eyebrows when he’s scared. How he himself can climb higher than anybody if he has to. How the cave’s on the opposite side of the arena, and if they go down the stream long enough, they should be able to reach it.

It’s a whole world in here… This tiny hidden ecosystem of children surviving because you gave them a language to survive in.

Steve listens to all of it.

And then, when it’s finally all on the ground between them, when the plan is laid out and the crumbs have been gathered and the children accounted for and the terrible, impossible mercy of it has had time to settle—

Ro goes sly.

It happens so suddenly Steve almost misses it.

One second the kid is earnest as church. The next, there’s this little cat-who-ate-the-canary glint in his eye.

“Is it true about you guys?”

Steve blinks. “What.”

Ro wriggles his eyebrows.

He actually wriggles them.

Then he makes this ridiculous lovey-dovey face and a little kissy shape with his mouth and says, “You and herrrrr?”

Steve chokes a little on absolutely nothing.

It is humiliating how his cheeks go hot immediately. That’s worse. So much worse. He has not blushed like this since puberty kicked down the front door and moved into his awkwardly growing bones. He looks down. Laughs once in this awkward, disbelieving way. Rubs the back of his neck.

Ro is grinning like a little menace now.

And on top of that, Steve knows the cameras are on him.

That’s the slimiest, stupidest part. Even now, even tucked away in this little root-hut, he can feel the awareness of being watched. Of the whole country maybe seeing his ears go pink while a child tries to get gossip out of him like some tiny woodland tabloid reporter.

He could deny it.

Should deny it, probably.

Should say no, kid, don’t be ridiculous.

Except…

Something about that feels wrong.

Maybe because it helped keep everybody alive.

Maybe because Ro believes it with his whole little chest and Steve just can’t bring himself to stomp on that.

Maybe because saying no to anything that has your name wrapped up in it suddenly feels like trying to spit a mouthful of blood onto a grave.

He still can’t bring himself to say yes.

That feels wrong too.

So Steve does what Steve Harrington does best whenever he’s cornered by something soft and dangerous and true: he sidesteps.

He tilts his head, looks back up at Ro through a half-smile that’s still flushed around the edges and drawls, “I think that Wendy Bird’s got enough going on without you running her business for her.”

Ro gasps.

Then he dissolves into the most delighted little snickering fit that Steve’s ever heard in his life — shoulders shaking, hand slapped over his own mouth like that answer was even better than confirmation.

“Oh my God,” Steve mutters, but he’s laughing too now despite himself.

Ro points at him triumphantly. “That means yes!”

“Oh, does it now.”

“It does in my language.”

Steve squints at him playfully. “That sounds like communism.” 

“No it doesn’t.”

“It absolutely does.”

Ro’s still grinning ear to ear, looking like he’s about to explode from knowing a secret. “Jack has a crush on Hannah, too.”

The pivot is so sudden Steve almost gets emotional whiplash from it.

“What?”

Ro leans in. “He does.”

Steve stares — lips parted, already smirking. “No way.”

“Way.”

“Whaaaat?” Steve pretends to gasp, jutting his chin. “How do you know.”

“Because he told me.”

Steve lets out a long exaggerated breath. “Well. Sheeeeyit.”

That earns a little giggle from Ro as he snacks on another cracker.

Steve just shakes his head, smirking warmly. “Jack told you, huh?”

Ro nods very solemnly now, as if delivering battlefield intelligence even while he smiles. “He started liking her on picture day.”

“Picture day?”

“At the Capitol. In the pink dress.”

Steve actually grins at that. Full grin this time. “Damn. Kid’s got taste.”

Ro giggles.

“And Hannah likes him back?”

Ro lowers his voice like this is serious. “I think so.”

“You think so?”

“She looks at him kinda weird.”

Steve nods like a detective cracking the case. “Got it. Very damning.”

“And Hannah likes you,” Ro adds helpfully.

Steve adorably snorts. “Buddy, that is not the same thing.”

“No, I know. She likes you like Tigerlily likes Pan.”

“Oh good,” Steve chuckles.

“And Jack likes her like…” Ro trails off, then makes another kissy face.

Steve actually laughs out loud now.

It feels rusty. Strange. Good in a way that nearly makes him angry. Because all at once he’s sitting in a dirt hut in the arena swapping little kid gossip with a boy who should not be here at all… and every piece of this pure innocence makes him want to tear the whole goddamn sky down with his bare hands.

He cannot let that show.

Not now.

Not to Ro.

So he leans into it instead.

“Alright,” he drawls, nodding gravely. “Well. That is huge news. We’ll have to handle that very delicately.”

Ro brightens all over again. “Yeah.”

“Can’t have any heartbreak in the lost-kid division.”

“Nope.”

“Too much paperwork.”

Ro laughs so hard at that, he almost falls sideways.

Steve watches him with this secret, aching kind of fondness that hurts worse because of how easy it feels to let it completely take over.

Then his eyes drift.

To the little piles of gathered food.

The roots.

The eggshells.

The berries.

The signs that this child has been surviving in the wild on scavenged scraps while Steve lay on his stomach drooling into a backpack like Sleeping Beauty with a concussion.

The fondness in his face changes shape.

Gets sharper.

More resolved.

He looks at the bow. Then at Ro. Then back at the little scavenged breakfast and the shelter and the whole careful setup of it all.

“Tell you what,” Steve says.

Ro looks up.

Steve shifts, settling more squarely on his knees, and holds out his hand like this is a business deal being struck in a boardroom instead of a dirt den held together by sticks and divine intervention.

“You show me the ropes,” he says. “Teach me which plants won’t kill us while we go looking for the others. I’ll teach you how to hunt. Show you how to set snares. We’ll catch us something decent to eat.”

He lets the grin come back, crooked and warm and very himself.

“How’s that sound, ally?”

Ro’s whole face transforms.

It isn’t just happiness.

It’s this huge, glowing, can’t-believe-his-luck kind of joy that makes him look even younger than he is.

He reaches out at once and grabs Steve’s hand in a very serious shake.

“Deal,” he says.

And there they are.

One big, bruised, freshly reawakened golden boy. One tiny lost boy with dirt on his knees and night-watch courage in his bones and enough bravery for his entire alliance.

Shaking on it in the dark little heart of the arena, while danger still prowls just outside and the morning keeps climbing toward whatever horror comes next.

For now, though, the hut holds.

For now, the breath inside it is warm.

For now, Peter Pan and his shadow have found each other.

And when their hands part, they’re both still grinning.

By the time that the sun had properly hauled itself up over the arena, it still looked tired. No gold. No real warmth. Just a pale, overcast kind of morning that made the whole place feel bluer than it ought to be, as if even the sky had woken up sore. The woods wore it well. Everything looked damp without actually being wet. Bark darkened in broad streaks. Leaves held shadows in their veins. 

The little hidden world that Ro had built beneath roots and woven branches stayed tucked in its own cool hush, safe from sight and softened by the kind of gloom that made daylight feel less exposing.

It had been barely an hour since Steve woke up.

Barely three hours since he’d found the colorful little message for him spelled out in leaves and flowers onto the earth — U R SAFE — and felt something deep in his chest go strange and quiet.

Now he and Ro were out in the woods together.

Not far enough from the little hut to lose their bearings. Not stupid-far. Steve would rather eat bark and die than wander off without a plan now after finally finding the one corner of this hellhole that didn’t feel like a loaded machine gun pointed at his mouth. But still far enough to work. Far enough to use the trees. Far enough that if he and Ro did what they were doing right, any game would have no clue they were there until it was too late.

And what they were doing right now was moving.

Quietly.

Ro led as often as Steve did… which was maybe the first thing that really got under Steve’s skin in the best possible way.

Not because the kid was bossy. He wasn’t.

Because he was good.

Little freakishly good.

There was no other word for it. Ro moved like the forest made him itself and forgot to tell anybody. He hardly bent a twig wrong. Hardly shifted a fern. Half the time Steve had to keep his eyes glued on him just to make sure he didn’t lose the kid completely to the shadows. One second he’d be there, small frame slipping between two trunks with that little knapsack over one shoulder and the water skin bouncing softly at his side, and the next he’d be three feet farther ahead with barely a sound to show for it.

On top of that, he’d made himself a slingshot.

A real one.

Not some half-assed kid toy either. It was a genuinely decent little makeshift slingshot… built from a sturdy forked branch and some elastic from his pack, tucked against his side like he’d been carrying it all his life. Every time Steve looked at it, something in him snagged.

Because it reminds him of back home.

Of the little boy whose name he unknowingly called Ro while hallucinating.

Lucas Sinclair.

The parallels hit him every goddamn time... Lucas with his bandana and his stubborn little face and his slingshot held like it was Excalibur. Lucas, who’d mouth off first and think about the consequences later. Lucas, who would absolutely call this whole setup “sick as hell” — before immediately asking a thousand questions and wanting a turn.

Steve swallowed hard and kept moving.

He didn’t say any of that out loud.

Didn’t need to.

A lot of whatever this was with Ro happened without much talking. A glance. A hand signal. Steve touching two fingers to his own chest then pointing left. Ro nodding and drifting that direction like smoke. Steve raising one hand flat whenever he heard something in the underbrush. Ro going instantly still. Not scared-still. Listening-still.

It should have felt ridiculous, being this locked in with a nine-year-old inside a death arena where the game makers would probably cream their pants at the sight of the two of them playing wilderness scout troop together.

Instead it felt…

Good.

That was the fucked-up part.

It felt so goddamn good.

Not normal. Nothing about this was normal. But lighter, somehow. Less like he was dragging his own carcass through the woods by the teeth and more like there was… actually another pulse beside him now. Another heartbeat. Another person who wasn’t trying to kill him or leave him or force him into the one-man-against-the-world mode, including himself… because that’s always been his default since surviving the Purge night.

Lone wolf, Harrington.

That had become the whole bit.

But now? Now there was this tiny ghost-boy beside him, floating through the trees with a slingshot and an earnest little face and all the patience in the world, and Steve couldn’t even pretend he didn’t feel fuller for it.

Every now and then he’d glance down and ask, quietly, “You good?”

And every single time Ro would just nod.

Not with bravado, not trying to prove anything. Just simple confirmation.

He was good.

Once, after maybe the fourth time Steve asked — Ro even looked up at him like he was very politely trying not to laugh.

Steve squinted at him. “What.”

Ro shrugged, mouth twitching. “You keep askin’.”

“Yeah,” Steve muttered. “Well. You’re little.”

Ro’s eyes widened in theatrical offense. “I know that.”

That got a soft snort out of Steve before he shook his head and kept moving.

A while later, when the forest floor got nastier underfoot — roots buckling up like old knuckles, bramble patches creeping too close, the earth uneven in that ankle-breaking way — it became easier to just lift Ro onto his back for longer stretches.

The first time Steve did it, he crouched a little and jerked his chin over one shoulder.

“C’mon.”

Ro blinked. “What?”

Steve gave him a look. “Don’t make this a whole thing.”

Ro did not, in fact, make it a whole thing.

He just climbed right up, all light little limbs and careful hands — settling on, piggyback, all while Steve hooked an arm under his knees and rose back up. Easy. Way easier than it should’ve been. Ro barely weighed anything, which wasn’t exactly comforting because it reminded Steve a little too hard that this kid was supposed to still be losing baby teeth somewhere safer, not crossing through a murder forest on another kid’s back.

But even so, they made due.

Ro fit there like he belonged.

And once he was up, he’d lean in close and point sometimes.

A tap on Steve’s shoulder. A finger to the right. A whisper barely shaped by breath.

“There.”

The squirrel had been Ro’s find.

Steve froze when the little finger tapped his shoulder, followed the direction of the point… then saw the flicker of gray-brown fur on a low branch ahead. Small thing. Twitchy. Alert. Head ducked forward while it gnawed something invisible between its paws.

Steve shifted slowly, careful as sin, and lowered Ro to the ground.

Ro stayed glued to his side. And he watched Steve set one hand lightly over the back of his neck — not holding him down, just keeping him close and still — then reached for the bow over his shoulder.

The woods seemed to take one long breath.

Steve notched the arrow.

Pulled.

Released.

The whir of it cut the hush clean in two.

The squirrel dropped like a stone.

Ro’s whole face changed.

Not with horror, although not with delight either. Just this solemn, awestruck kind of stillness as he looked from where the squirrel had fallen to Steve and back again.

Steve went to collect it without saying much.

When he came back with the limp little body in his hand, Ro looked at it and then up at him.

“That was really fast,” he whispered.

Steve’s mouth twitched. “That’s the idea.”

Ro nodded like he was filing that away under very important information.

Later, one of the snares paid off.

That feat took longer.

Steve had spent a chunk of the morning showing Ro how to set them right. Where the ground told on itself. How trails looked if you actually knew what you were seeing. The difference between random brush movement and a path used often enough to matter. How to find all of the narrow places where rabbits liked to cut through because it saved them time and made them feel hidden even when they weren’t.

He’d shown Ro how to bend a young branch without snapping it. How to tie the loop clean. How to make the wire look like nothing at all.

Ro watched every second of it like the lesson was scripture.

Then he’d tried one himself.

Hands small but steady. Brow pinched. Tongue barely tucked into one cheek with concentration so fierce Steve almost laughed. The kid’s first loop came out a little crooked. Steve adjusted it with two fingers and a quiet, “Here—like this,” and Ro immediately corrected the next one better.

By the time they’d circled back to check them, Ro spotted the caught rabbit before Steve did.

He froze, little hand snapping out to grip Steve’s windbreaker sleeve.

Steve looked down automatically at the tiny fist hooked into the fabric. Then followed Ro’s gaze and saw the rabbit hanging there… kicking weakly in the snare, the branch bent high with tension above it.

Ro didn’t say anything.

Neither did Steve for a moment.

Then he murmured, “Good eye.”

Ro swallowed and nodded once.

Together they approached it.

Together they made it quick.

After that, Steve made the call to prep and cook away from the hut.

No debate.

No risking the smell.

No risking the sightline.

No leaving a pretty little trail of smoke curling up anywhere near the place Ro had built for them.

So they carried the squirrel and rabbit farther out — still careful, still under cover — until Steve found a tucked-in little patch between three big boulders and a fallen trunk where they could work fast and kill any trace faster.

That was when he tried, as casually as possible… to spare Ro.

He set both of their kills down and reached for the knife at his belt. “You can stand lookout for me if you want.”

Ro looked up at him.

Steve kept his tone as even as he could. “I can handle this part.”

Ro’s gentle eyes dropped briefly to the rabbit, then the squirrel…then back to Steve’s face. “I know.”

Steve waited.

Ro shifted his feet once. “But… I should learn it.”

Steve’s brows drew together.

“If I’m gonna learn how to hunt proper,” Ro kept going, sweet and brave all at once, “then I gotta know this part too, right?”

That hit harder than it should have.

Steve looked at him for a long second. The easy out would’ve been to say no or to play rank. To tell the kid he was too young or too small or too whatever and leave it there.

But that would’ve been bullshit.

And worse…? Ro would know it.

So Steve crouched instead, knife in hand, letting out a somber sigh through his nose. “Alright,” he said finally. “But you stay right here by me—and if you feel weird about any of it? You say so. No proving shit to me, cool?”

Ro nodded immediately. “Cool.”

Steve pointed the knife at the dead game. “And this is gonna be ugly.”

Ro’s mouth went small. “Okay.”

“It’s gonna smell bad too.”

“Okay.”

Steve glanced at him again. “You don’t have to be tough about it.”

Ro blinked. “I’m not.”

That one got him.

Steve huffed a quiet laugh, shook his head, and got to work.

He didn’t pretty it up.

Didn’t use baby words, or act like it was anything but what it was.

He showed Ro where to cut first. How to hold the body steady. How the hide needed easing more than sawing. How to separate the flesh from fur without ruining the meat if you could help it. He explained what to save time on and what not to rush unless you wanted to make a big mess of the whole damn thing.

All the while Ro watched.

Not green. Not gagging. Not flinching like he was watching gore. But his kind eyes did go glossy once or twice. So did Steve’s, honestly… because killing and cleaning innocent things for food never actually stopped feeling ugly, no matter how used to it he got. But Ro never pretended he liked it, and Steve never pretended he did either.

That maybe made it easier.

By the time they were skinning the rabbit, Ro asked questions.

Quiet ones.

“Why do you pull it like that?”

“So it doesn’t tear weird,” Steve answered softly.

Ro pointed. “This part good?”

“Yeah,” Steve smirked. “Good eye.”

Another little point from his shadow. “What about that?”

“Don’t nick that unless you want a smell you’ll never forgive.”

Ro made a face.

Steve snorted. “Exactly.”

The squirrel went faster.

The rabbit took longer.

Then came the fire.

That part somehow felt worse than the skinning. Maybe because fire meant smell. Meat meant reality. Hunger meant there wasn’t even room left for guilt that stayed clean and theoretical.

Ro used one of the matches before Steve could stop him. He struck it fast, brought it down to the little nest of dry material they’d built, then winced at Steve like he’d just committed a federal crime.

“Sorry,” he whispered immediately. “I meant to ask.”

Steve stared at him.

Ro held the still-burning match in his fingers like he expected to be scolded.

“You apologized,” Steve said.

Ro blinked. “Uh-huh.”

“For using one match?”

Ro looked wary now. “Supplies matter.”

“They do.”

“I just—”

Steve held up a hand. “No, hang on... I’m still processing the fact that you apologized for one match while I was fully about to use one anyway.”

Ro’s face went pink.

And because this whole situation was apparently insane from every possible angle, Steve had to bite back a grin.

“Buddy,” he muttered warmly, “you can use a match.”

Ro seemed to deflate with relief.

“Okay.”

“Within reason,” Steve said mock-seriously.

Ro’s face went serious again too. “For sure.”

Steve fully grinned now. “I’m seriously messing with you.”

That finally earned a sheepish little sniff-laugh from Ro, who still stared up at Steve like he absolutely hung the entire galaxy.

They both cooked the meat carefully. Nothing fancy. Just enough. Turning it. Watching it. Letting the fire do its job, hating the smell less… once it changed from raw to cooked and edible.

Ro asked more questions there too.

How did you know it’s done? Would it make you sick if it wasn’t? Could you eat it burnt? Why did the rabbit smell different than the squirrel? How many squirrels would it take to make someone full?

…that last one made Steve pause.

He looked over.

Ro was asking it honestly.

Steve stared at the little strip of rabbit in his hand for a second, trying not to laugh at that inquiry, then back to the fire. “Depends who,” he finally answers with a sweetly amused glint in his eye.

Ro took that answer and sat with it.

When the meat was ready to go, Steve had them line the outer pouch of his backpack with broad leaves they gathered nearby — creating a makeshift buffer of sorts so that the meat wouldn’t just slime up the inside like a horror movie lunchbox.

His ally helped with that too.

Holding leaves. Passing them over. Packing the cooked cuts carefully. Watching Steve redistribute the rest of his supplies deeper into the bigger, main pouch of his backpack.

The whole thing felt absurdly domestic.

Well, arena domestic, which meant every two minutes Steve had to stop and listen. And twice? He heard enough to make his whole body change.

It happened fast.

One second he’d be tying off a leaf bundle or crouching over the little dead fire pit, the next he’d go still as a blade and turn, bow in hand, arrow notched low but ready.

Ro never questioned it.

He just moved closer.

The second time, he ended up almost pressed to Steve’s side… his little fist caught in the sleeve of the windbreaker again while Steve scanned the trees with his jaw set and eyes sharp as broken glass.

Nothing came of it.

Some rustle. Some branch complaint. Some small movement in the underbrush that turned out to be nothing worth killing over.

Even so, Steve didn’t lower the bow until he was sure.

Ro stayed close until he did.

Something about that — something about the total trust of it… felt almost too big to look at directly. So Steve didn’t. He just touched the back of Ro’s head once, brief as a blink, and murmured, “We’re good,” before returning to their journey back to basecamp.

Later they hit the stream.

Ro led, of course.

He knew the way. He didn’t hesitate once, slipping through the woods with the confidence of somebody who’d already mapped out half the arena in his head and then asked it politely to make room. Steve fondly followed with the backpack over one shoulder, quiver of arrows over the other, knife at his hip, and watched the kid work while he held the bow at his side.

At the stream, Ro knelt first and refilled the water skin while Steve filled his water bottle. They drank. Steve splashed his face once and pushed back his damp hair — blinking the grit from his lashes. Ro watched like this somehow counted as strategy too.

“We’ll wash up properly tomorrow,” he said quietly, washing off his arms. “In the morning. See if the sun comes back out, lets us wash and dry our clothes too. Out on some rocks or tree limbs.”

Ro nodded, shaking his shoes and socks free of dirt before beginning to slip them back over his newly cleaned feet. “Okay, yeah.”

Steve smirked warmly. “C’mere.”

He was gesturing for Ro’s foot.

He curiously gave it, tilting his head.

Then his eyes went round with shyness and gratitude alike as Steve tugged up the hem of his t-shirt and carefully dried off both Ro’s wet little feet with it.

Ro swallowed, peeking up at him through his lashes.

“Thanks,” he breathed.

Steve winked, slipping his sock back on. “Got you, brother.”

That made Ro adorably beam to himself.

Brother?

Did Steve really consider him a brother?

At last, the two of them stood back up after washing off enough.

Then they headed back.

And coming back to the hut with daylight still on it (even dim daylight, flat and overcast) made Steve appreciate all over again…just how batshit impressive the whole thing was.

Ro had to actually point it out.

“It’s there,” he gestured.

Steve stood there squinting at what looked like nothing but root cluster and brush pile and muttered, “Jesus Christ.”

Ro beamed a little. “Good, right?”

Steve gave him a look. “Good? Brilliant. And creepy. But in a useful way.”

That got the tiniest laugh out of Ro.

“Best kind, then.”

Steve snorted and ducked low to crawl inside.

Once they were in, the little place somehow already felt more like theirs than it had that morning. Not… safe exactly. That word still came with conditions. But lived in. Claimed. Shared. The arranged supplies. The scavenged food. The sleeping bag. The bow propped again. The little message on the ground now kicked just slightly out of its originally perfect shape from Steve moving around earlier…

U R SAFE

He tried not to look at it too long.

Tried and failed.

They ate there. Quietly, at first. For a few minutes, it was just the sound of chewing, little breaths in between, the occasional brush of fabric when one of them shifted. The cooked rabbit tasted like survival and not much else. The squirrel was gamier. Ro liked both, pretending not to be absolutely starving until Steve noticed the way he kept eyeing the pieces before taking them.

So Steve quietly made sure the better portions kept ending up closer to Ro’s side.

Ro started noticing that too, but he didn’t comment. He just looked at Steve once with those big dark eyes and then down again, like he was storing the moment somewhere private and enormous.

It was somewhere in the middle of eating that Steve finally asked, “Who’s still up.”

Ro licked a bit of grease from his thumb and answered immediately, because of course he knew. “Thresh,” he said first. “Tommy and Carol. Marvel. Jack and Hannah. Foxface. Syl.” Then he looked at Steve, adding with shy matter -of-factness, “You. Me. Wendy Bird.”

Steve’s mouth twitched.

“Wendy Bird.”

Ro nodded. “That’s Ren.”

“I gathered.”

“She’s the Wendy Bird,” Ro grinned. “Because you’re Pan.”

Steve smiled and shook his head like he was exhausted by the whole world and not secretly a little wrecked by it. “Cool.”

“She’s suuuuper pretty,” Ro quietly sang, all sly and cheeky.

That earned the cheekiest little eye roll in return from Steve, who didn’t even bother trying to wipe that smile off his face now. Maybe because it was real.

“Yeah,” he agreed softly, nodding down at his squirrel meat. “She really is.”

Ro gladly accepted that.

Then, while picking a tiny seed from a fold in his knapsack and popping it in his mouth, he got to mentioning the cornucopia.

At first it was just bits.

The Careers waking up. Syl getting caught trying to steal. Tommy and Marvel dragging her out… …not killing her.

Steve’s brows rose a little at that. “They didn’t kill her?”

Ro shook his head. “Nope. Made her stay.”

“…stay.”

“Guard.”

Steve sat back slightly, one knee drawn up, a strip of rabbit gone forgotten in his hand. “They made her their bodyguard?”

Ro shrugged. “Kinda.”

And then he explained it as only Ro could.

The pacing. The shouting. The spear at Syl’s throat. Tommy stalking around all mean and snarly like he owned the sun. Marvel standing there like some big dumb scary statue with eyebrows. Syl freaking out and then not freaking out and then definitely freaking out again. Them pointing at stuff around the cornucopia like they were giving her the world’s worst tour. Handing her an apple. Untying her wrists. Giving her the riot act.

Steve listened to all of it with this increasingly crooked expression of his that hovered somewhere between disbelief and dark amusement.

“So now she’s just…” He gestured vaguely. “What. Their unpaid employee?”

Ro chewed thoughtfully. “Basically. They pay her in apples.”

“That sucks.”

Ro nodded. “Yeah.” Then, after a second: “She’s kinda mean, though.”

Steve looked over at him.

Ro shrugged. “Only nice to the little kids.”

That made Steve pause.

“Huh.”

“Well… some. She wasn’t mean to Hannah,” Ro clarified. “Just…didn’t talk to her. She grew up with brothers, so she kinda brushed her off.” He glanced at the pieces of meat still free, sighing quietly. “And Jack hated that.”

Something about the seriousness with which he said that almost got Steve.

He bit the inside of his cheek instead. “Got it,” he said. “Jack held a grudge. And a good one at that.”

Ro nodded solemnly. “Mhm.”

Honestly? That was enough for Steve.

Not because he wanted to write Syl off as expendable or anything noble and clean. Mostly because he already had too many people lodged under his ribs in this arena and the thought of adding one more half-unhinged girl from Five to the list made him want to chew glass.

Ro kept going.

The landmines. The squirrel. The boom.

That part made Steve’s whole face change.

“They planted mines…?”

“All around,” Ro confirmed, eyes widening again just at the memory while he recounted it. “They made Syl memorize all of them.”

Steve blinked, processing all of that.

Then Ro slyly grinned around his next bite. “We should set them all off, make them all go ka-boom.”

That one got a bark of dark laughter out of Steve before he could stop it.

It startled them both a little.

Ro immediately smiled bigger.

Steve scrubbed a hand over his face and muttered, “Not a bad idea.”

They grinned around their food.

And then the mood shifted a little.

A sound came from outside — not super close, not huge, just enough. Some odd scrape or far-off animal call made both of them go still.

Ro edged closer without thinking.

Steve automatically opened one hand for him.

His shadow took it, shuffling closer as Steve held his small hand between both of his palms while listening, bow within reach — shoulders going hard and alert for one long stretch before the woods settled again.

That was when Ro brought up the monster.

“There was somethin’ out there last night…”

Steve turned fully toward him.

Ro swallowed.

“…what do you mean?” Steve asked, voice low, already dreading this.

Ro sighed through his nose, shuffling just a few inches closer. 

And then he described it.

Not well at first, because how the hell do you describe something you never physically saw and just barely survived hearing? So he started with sounds. Wet sounds. Dragging sounds. The kind of noises that made all of the leaves shake when it circled the hut. The scream that had made him hide his face in Steve’s back. The way he’d stayed still. The way it had been right outside.

Steve listened without interrupting.

That was maybe the scariest part of all…how little he moved while Ro talked, how his stillness got sharper and sharper until it was practically a weapon of guilt towards himself.

Inside, something in him went cold. Because this kid had clung to his back in the dark while some unknown thing circled them all night…and Steve had been dead to the world. Useless. Out cold. No help at all.

He did his best to keep all that off his face by force.

And when Ro finished recounting everything, he just sat there staring at the dirt between them for one beat too long.

“Hey,” Steve said quietly.

Ro’s eyes flicked up to his.

“You don’t gotta worry about that alone anymore.”

Ro didn’t say anything.

Steve squeezed his little hand once between both his big palms. “Whatever bullshit they throw at us in here? Whatever monsters or mutts or freakshow nightmare fuel they cook up next—we deal with it together now. Alright?”

Ro’s whole face softened with something almost painful in how pure it was.

He nodded hard. “Alright.”

Steve smiled a little then. Realer than before.

“Cool.”

That seemed to settle something in both of them.

Not the danger. Not the fear. Just the shape of it.

They finished eating after that.

When there was only one rabbit leg left, Steve held it out.

Ro immediately shook his head. “It’s okay.”

Steve looked at him, brow furrowing.

“I’m not that hungry,” Ro lied.

Steve gave him a flat stare.

Ro tried to hold it… but failed in about half a second.

Steve pushed the rabbit leg closer. “Brother.”

Ro went rosy-cheeked at the nickname and being caught.

His handsome ally’s mouth softened at one corner. “Take it.”

At last, the shadow did. And the second it was in his hands, he devoured it like a tiny feral king who had absolutely, definitely, very much been that hungry all along.

Steve watched him for a second with this sad, helpless little fondness pulling at his face. Then he shook his head and slung an arm around the kid’s small shoulders.

Ro leaned right into him without hesitation, still chewing.

The hut went quiet around them.

Outside, the arena kept breathing. Leaves shifting. Wind rubbing itself along the brush. Far-off life making far-off sounds.

Inside, Steve sat with a little boy tucked under his arm and a whole ugly knot of worry twisting through him anyway — about you, somewhere out there in the woods. About Hannah and Jack, all alone in that cave unless you’d found them. About how many names were still up and how many wouldn’t stay that way for long.

He didn’t say any of it.

Just kept his arm where it was.

He kept Ro close while the kid finished the last of the rabbit.

And for one impossible little pocket of the day, beneath a crooked little dome of branches and camouflage and scavenged mercy… it almost felt like they had made a home out of something that was never meant to hold one.

-> continued in next post... [coming soon]

It didn’t take long for Gator’s senses to eventually catch up to him. Honestly, Gator would’ve found it impressive how effective you were in the field if it wasn’t his heart you were fighting upon. It was only four minutes before noon the next day, as Gator drilled a hole into his couch, that he finally realized how asinine he looked. 

There he was, just some lonely, miserable idiot—thinking he even had a chance with you. Why would he? There was no reason for you to come back. He looked like a sad puppy who was kicked to the curb, desperately awaiting someone who would love him—someone who didn’t have a reason to hate him yet. Gator could feel the familiar presence of his father in front of him, enjoyably berating him.

“You really think that bitch likes you? Don’t know shit about her and you’re already waiting for her like some pussy-whipped pup. No wonder you ended up like this. Broken, alone, worthless. It’s all you are, son—all you’ll ever be. You’re lucky if she even remembers your name, let alone cares about you.”

Gator’s hands began to shake as the tick of his watch echoed in the silent room.

11:57 A.M.

“All these years and you haven’t learned nothing about women. Whores like that don’t want nothing more than to use you, hurt you, and leave you to rot. If you don’t remember anything in that lousy head of yours, remember that.”

No. No, Roy was an asshole. Nothing more than a liar, a fraud, and a piece of shit. His word didn’t mean anything. His word didn’t mean shit to Gator. 

Then how come no one else stayed?

Roy’s voice was long gone. Not in his head, not in his life, and certainly not in front of him. There was nothing else but the silence and the ticking of his watch. Once again, Gator was alone. Abandoned and hopeless. 

11:58 A.M.

The more he thought it over, the more sense it made.

Gator didn’t know you.

He had no way of knowing if you were even coming back today. For all he knew, you could’ve been the one who pranked him in the first place. 

No. That didn’t make sense. Why would you have cleaned up your own prank? Gator may not have been an expert on guilt, but he was sure it wasn’t that stupid. Maybe it was all a setup. Some ruse to get inside his house and—quite literally—rob him blind. 

11:59 A.M.

It was settled. There was no way in hell you were coming inside his house. The outside world would have to do. Least then he’d have witnesses. Shit. People. Fuck’s sake, Gator would be better equipped for being mugged than dealing with other people right now.

His watch continued to count down, serving as the background music to his thoughts.

Shit, what if you knew about him already? What if you knew all about his past and were here to collect a bounty? Surely you would have already killed him by then, right? Unless you were in it for the long game. Less worried about the kill and more worried about—

A knock on his front door synced up perfectly with the alarm on his phone. 

12:00 P.M.

It was time. 

Looked like he should’ve spent more time writing his will and less time trying to figure out what he was gonna wear.

Gator got up from his couch like his executioner awaited him on his porch step. Eh, at least he wouldn’t die completely alone. That was worth something. Gator inhaled a sharp breath before unlatching his deadbolt, facing his doom head-on—

“Hey!”

The first thing Gator noticed was the scent of flowers—foreign to him, and yet overwhelmingly nostalgic. Reminiscent of his childhood—of getting caught playing in the dirt of his mother’s garden. Gator couldn't decipher if the fragrance was new or if the absence of eggs and soapy water revealed your usual aroma—

“Um, Gator?” Fuck, he never responded. Five seconds in and he was already fucking this up. Go figure. “...Are you alri—”

“—Y’smell good.”

Really?! That?! That was what he chose to go with? Great, now you were gonna think he was some kind of pervert who sniffed girls' hair like some kind of deranged freak—

“Oh, thanks!” You replied, further perplexing Gator. You didn't… sound freaked out. Weird. Maybe you didn't know how else to respond to him—afraid he would hurt you if you said the wrong thing. 

Gator couldn't help but spiral over whether or not you found him dangerous.

“—It's my favorite perfume, actually,” you continued. “I don't wear it too often—that's why you wouldn't have smelled it on me yesterday—but, well, I thought it'd be a better scent for you to associate with me than salmonella, right?”

The corners of Gator’s lips perked up. “Yeah, I—” Gator swallowed. “I like it.”

An awkward silence lingered between the two of you. Gator used to be better with women. You know, back when he could fucking see. But this was something else. Something more delicate. 

Before, he didn’t have to worry about being too rough—too hard. It didn’t matter. He would get his way in the end. Of course, he couldn’t rely on brute force anymore—on a reputation. Now, it would just work against him, invoking fear instead of safety. 

But then again, maybe it was always like that with Gator.

“Y’wanna come in?” Gator invited, completely forgoing his earlier rule.

“I’d love to, thank you.” As you stepped in, Gator found himself struggling to understand why you were so fucking kind—why you spoke with such a heartwarming smile. The deep, shallow part of Gator wanted to hate you for it. For being so clean with someone so tarnished. It didn’t seem fair.

Your footsteps padded across Gator’s wooden floorboards, faint in their journey. Gator closed the front door, internally debating whether or not to turn the lock. 

His instincts told him to. To seal himself off from the rest of the world, from the rest of the danger. Protect you from everything that could hurt you like it hurt him. But the other part of him—the fragile boy that hid past the Kevlar—didn’t want to scare you. 

“I like the place,” you called, notably farther into the room. “You been here long?”

Gator removed himself from the door, walking closer to the sound of your voice. Gator scoffed, “It that obvious?” His place was pretty bare. Made it easier to travel through the house.

“Mm, usually you can tell when a place is more lived in than… short-term,” you chimed, your melody singing from his kitchen.

“And?” Gator probed, approaching nearer. “What’s yer conclusion?” Gator figured he was closer to you now—mere feet away on account of your breathing.

“...Either you haven’t been here long,” you dragged out. “Or… you’re not planning on staying.”

Gator couldn’t tell whether or not the disappointment he heard was real or wishful thinking. Had to be the latter. Why would you be saddened by his absence? It wasn’t like anyone was before—even when he was useful.

“So?” You questioned. “Which is it?”

Gator took a step closer. “Neither,” he answered. “Mean ‘ve only been here for a few months now, but… ain’t point in decoratin’ when y’can’t- see shit.” Gator cleared his throat. He was being too honest, being too vulnerable.

“Don’t matter, anyway.” He scowled. “I ain’t leavin’ anytime soon, ‘f that’s what y’wanna know.”

Gator could feel the tension in the room had shifted—that he had crushed something fragile.

“...I have a feeling you’re not angry because of me.” You smiled, breaking the tension.

Gator sighed, a subtle smile quickly spreading across his face.

“Ya thirsty?”

To tell the truth, Gator didn’t know shit when it came to hospitality.

Not like father ever cared to teach him manners, or where to set the diningware—that was the women’s job. All he was told whenever company came over was to wash his hands and keep his trap shut. “Got soda and shit.”

“I’ll have some water, if that’s okay.” 

Gator nodded. “That’s just fine, darlin’.” He tried to regain control—find a way to keep a handle on the situation. 

Gator followed the familiar pathway to his fridge. “What ‘bout you?” He called. “Y’from around here?”

You mirrored his earlier scoff. “That obvious?”

Gator smiled, handing you a bottle of water. ”Y’definitely stand out against all the local assholes ‘round here."

“I take that as high praise.” Gator smiled, listening to you uncap your water bottle. “My grandparents used to live in the house across from you,” you answered. “I inherited it when they passed away four months ago.” 

Gator bowed his head respectfully. “Sorry for yer loss.” He heard you set your bottle down, shuffling closer to him. 

“It’s fine. At least I already knew the area, you know.” Gator could tell you didn’t want to get into it right now, something he could easily respect. 

He nodded. “Well, y’got a good neighbor out of it.”

You laughed softly, “Yeah? The one who gave me a nauseating headache to go along with my Halloween hangover?”

Gator smirked. “The one and only.” 

You laughed under your breath again. “You’re lucky you’re cute, you know,” you teased, making Gator’s cheeks warm. He hadn’t been subject to this kind of banter in well over a year, making every second with you feel dangerous to his immune system.

“Cute, huh? Thought yesterday y’said I was handsome?” He stepped closer.

You hummed in response. “Oh, you know, that’s right…” You sighed, “Well, I guess you’re just gonna have to be handsome from now on.” 

Gator couldn’t tell you the last time someone made him smile this much.

“Think I can live with that.” Your following laugh felt like a synonym for home. “Think I can live with a lot, y’know… Long as it’s you.”

With one step closer, Gator found your hand atop his counter. Gator couldn’t help but falter as he felt your warm skin against his own, quickly losing his nerve. 

He was pushing too far, moving too fast. His touch would poison you, draw you away from him until you were choking on his burdens. Or worse—he would sink. He would drown in your love like an ocean, pulling him under before he could catch his breath.

You were dangerous. Not because you wanted to be, but because he made you. How could you ever hold him afloat? Keep him from falling into his death just because you said he could trust you. Everyone he trusted played him for a fool—for an idiot starving for love.

Gator felt his soldier tremble as he retreated from your touch. It’s not that Gator was scared. No, he was just being safe. He was trusting reality instead of you—instead of hope. Gator Tillman was not scared. Gator Till-

Your fingers intertwined with Gator’s before he could fully withdraw. They molded with him seamlessly, drawing him a fraction closer—as if calling him closer. ‘Stay with me.' 

Your other hand trailed up to his forearm. “I think I’d like that.” 

Gator’s heart stuttered. He shifted, placing his other hand near your waist. “Really?” Gator felt pathetic asking—for wanting reassurance, but you interrupted his descent before the water could fill his lungs, gripping his hand tighter.

“Why wouldn’t I?”

“—How about Coraline?” You offered, continuing to search through Gator’s Roku account.

“That the one wit the button in the eyes ‘nd the scary stepmother ‘n shit?”

You hummed, “More or less.”

Gator kissed his teeth. He remembered the girls putting on that movie once. Not only did it scare the shit out of him—it felt too close to home. A kid discovering horrifying secrets in their house—ones with bodies and nightmares—unknowingly trapping themself into a world full of danger and darkness, having to escape a cruel and evil parent while the other one remained helpless? 

Yeah. Gator never watched it again.

“Button in the eyes a lil’ too on the nose, dontcha think?” Gator smirked. He found himself amusing. Your silence convinced him otherwise. “‘M just jokin’, sweetheart. We can watch it if y’want—”

“—No, it’s fine. We can find something else to watch.” Gator stayed quiet, listening to your continued clicking of the remote as he tried to ignore the feeling that he had ruined the moment. “Nightmare Before Christmas?”

Okay, this was just a bad idea in the first place.

Gator laughed, strained and false. “Seen it too many times,” he smiled.

It was a lie, complete and utter bullshit—not that he hadn’t watched it too many times. Gator used to love that movie when he was a kid. Something about Jack Skellington being adored and worshipped, separating himself from his reputation and finding out what he liked all on his own, saving the day and getting the girl—Gator wanted all of that.

But there was no way in hell Gator could ever watch that movie again.

That once-harmless movie had stained his subconscious ever since he tried to kidnap Dot. Wearing a stupid mask, Gator had tried to take her life and her family away from her—all in the name of his father. 

After he lost his sight, Dot visited him in jail whenever she could. But Gator’s guilt still festered. Swelling further and further until he would wake up choking on his own screams, no comfort to awake to. His dreams were more vivid than his reality now. More intense, more lifelike, and so much more terrifying.

“There gotta be somethin’ else on, ain’t there?” Gator was sure you were about to give up on him. That you were about to scoff and shrug him off, spend the rest of the time he had with you counting down the minutes until you were done with him—

“Yeah, I’m sure we’ll find something,” you assured him, inching closer to him on the couch. “Don’t worry, we still got plenty of Halloween movies left.” It had been you who insisted on watching something seasonal. ‘Why not?’ you had said.

Gator smiled, once again feeling grateful to have you in his life, even in such a small amount. He tried to shove it down—to be sensible and not get his hopes up—but he had a feeling you wouldn’t be this close to him if you planned on hurting him.

“Oh! What about Corpse Bride?” 

“Corpse what?” Gator laughed, confused as to why you sounded so excited about a dead bride—sounded more tragic to him if anything. 

You gasped. “You’ve never watched it? It’s another Tim Burton movie,” you explained. Gator could hear your smile. “We’re watching it. It’s good, I promise.”

Gator chuckled at how certain you were of this movie. “If you say so, darlin’.” He rested his arm over the back of the couch, leaving enough space for you to get closer if you wanted to. Unfortunately, you stayed on your respective side of the couch, presumably too invested in the movie to take notice of his move. “You seen this movie lot?"

“Only a few times,” you answered. “I just can’t believe you actually have it. I swear, every time I even think about this movie, it’s nowhere to be found. I mean, it’s—” Gator completely stopped listening on account of you making yourself comfortable by curling into his side.

In that moment, Gator briefly considered that he was right—that you were some kind of undercover agent, that you had some ulterior motive here. Because if not? Well, Gator didn’t think it was fair for someone to be that good at rendering someone useless.

Huddled into his side, Gator had lost all rational thought. Everything was gone. The senses that he relied on now were all gone to shit. The odor of his cologne had completely subsided. The texture of the couch had dwindled into atoms. The song from the movie, the audio description’s narrator, even his own breathing? Everything was gone.

Except you. You were all that was left.

Gator had learned what it was like to be left—what it was like to be abandoned. By the time he got close to someone, it didn’t matter how deeply he loved them—how close he felt to them—he knew it was only a matter of time before he was back to square one: betrayed and deserted. 

Gator had spent the last year learning that all he had left was himself. No matter what, at the end of the day, he was going to die as alone as he lived. The only company he had the beat of his heart and the chill of his breath. 

Until you.

In a single blink, you had instantly refuted everything Gator believed. 

He never had himself in the first place. 

Because of you, his breath, his heartbeat—every fiber of him down to the marrow of his bones had forsaken him, too. The pieces of himself that kept him breathing—that told him that he was alive—were never his. They were never meant to last. The fool that he was, Gator had assumed he would at least have one thing to keep him company when he died.

But he didn’t need them anymore.

Gator didn’t need anything else in his life to tell him he was alive than this—than you. You were all the evidence Gator required to know that he was breathing. Everything he had before had been waiting—carrying him upright until he reached his destination. You. His guide in the storm. His deliverer to safety. His savio—

“Gator?”

The call of his name warped him back into reality. “Yeah?”

“Two seconds in and you’re already giving up on me?” You teased, smile audible in your voice. He felt you shake your head. “Thought you had more faith in me.” You settled your head on Gator’s shoulder, attention directing back to the movie. 

Gator smiled, feeling more content than he had ever been in his life. “Trust me, sweetheart,” he muttered, hanging his arm around your shoulders.

“I got every faith in you.”

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The big door of the garage is rolled up, letting in the afternoon light. Eddie's got a rag thrown over his shoulder as he crouches in front of a tattered cardboard box that looks like it hadn't been opened since before each of the girls were born. His hair's tied back loosely in one of your hair ties, greying at the temples. 

Alice is sitting on the steps by the door into the house, leaning back on the palms of her hands. Roan walks back and forth slowly, kicking a loose bolt on the cracked concrete every time she passes. "This is insane, dad." Alice sighs, leaning her head back on her shoulders to stare at the ceiling above her. "You know that, right?"

Eddie shuffles around, grunts when he stands, and moves the box to another area of the garage. "Enlighten me." 

"You're famous!" She says, exasperated as she sits back up straight. She’s sure that one little detail should end this conversation right there. "You're rich! You could hire someone to do this." 

Roan nods, agreeing with her sister as she kicks at the bolt again, watching it bounce out of her vicinity this time. "Yeah, dad. This is a job for like… some guy named Gary. Not us." 

Eddie glances at them, raising his brows as he tries to find exactly where the audacity is coming from. This was just a regular Saturday in April back at Gareth’s for him, when Mrs. Mara Emerson would bribe them into a month’s worth of cleaning with the promise of their favorite burgers and a pineapple upside down cake. "Gary?"

"Yeah." Roan shrugs.

Eddie leans back against your car, crossing his arms over his chest. "That's pretty specific for two teenage girls who get anything and everything they could ever dream of." He shakes his head, "and also offensive to the many hardworking non-Gary's out there." 

Alice groans, loudly, in response, "daaaad."

"What?" He frowns and dips his head, throwing his hands up, palms to them. "Maybe I like cleaning my own garage."

"You don't." Roan challenges.

"You don't know me." Eddie chuckles and shakes his head, pushing off the car to move towards another stack of soft and worn cardboard boxes. "I’ve been gone for two months. Maybe I want to spend some time with my kids, whom I love and cherish and wish that I could see more. Ever think of that?"

Alice snorts, pushing herself off the stairs and then lowering herself down in front of the built-in shelving until she can reach the bottom shelves. "Spending time with us? Or getting free child labor?"

Eddie rolls his eyes, sorting through a bit of knick knacks, "You're welcome for the time you get to spend with your old man." 

Alice shakes her head, running her hands along the bottom shelf until she comes across a little blue tin. She pulls it out, confused, "I didn't know mom had sewing stuff." She shakes the tin, it doens't rattle in the way needles and thread would rattle. She looks at Roan.

Roan drops down beside her. "Open it." 

"Don't open it. Your mom doesn't sew for fun. It's probably some of her doll shit." He says automatically, not looking towards them. "And if it's something spooky she picked up from a yard sale, I really don't have time for that today."

Alice rolls her eyes and pops the lid on the tin despite the judgement. 

Roan tries to look over her shoulder, "what is it?"

"Pictures." Alice says and shrugs, reaching in to pull out a small bundle. The edges are worn and yellowing. She looks at the photo on the top of the stack. There's a red mustang in the background— much like her dad's that’s tucked away under a tarp in the second opening of their two car garage— the sun glaring off the windshield. There's a woman leaning against it with a little boy on her hip. She's wearing sunglasses, her hair dark brown and wild, just like her own. "Dad?" Alice glances over her shoulder at him. 

Eddie turns his head to look at her for a moment, before turning his attention back to the box, distracted. "Yeah?"

She holds up the photo, staying quiet. Quiet enough that it gets him to look up again. He squints and steps a bit closer. "Let me see that." He says softly, holding his hand out. Alice hands it over quietly. When his eyes fall over the photo, something in his face softens. His thumb brushes over the worn in edges of the photograph and he chuckles, almost to himself. The girls watch him quiet and curious. "Girls… That is my mom." He says softly, pointing to the woman. His smile is so kind, the girls aren’t sure if they’ve ever seen him look like that before. Then he points to the kid in her arms, "and that's me." 

Roan leans in, letting her eyes scan over the photo face. "You were pretty tiny."

"I was adorable once. Hard to believe, I know." He jokes softly.

Alice glances away from the photo and into the tin again, holding it up between them. "There's more in here."

Eddie glances down at it, "yeah?"

She nods and starts pulling photos out one by one. One's his mom, sitting on the hood of that same mustang in denim shorts. There's another one of her at a kitchen table somewhere with a man that looks a whole lot like Grandpa Wayne. His arm is slung around her shoulders and she has a lit cigarette between her fingers. In the final one they look at, she's holding who the girls decide is, Eddie, as a baby. He's cradled to her chest and she's looking at him like he was the best love she had ever felt in her life. 

Roan smiles at that one, taking it gently from her sister. "She's pretty." 

Eddie huffs out a breath that turns into another smile, nodding, "She is."

Alice looks at the photo, pinning down the kind brown eyes, dimples, and dark curls. The way she smiles, the same lines and dimples. "She looks like you."

Eddie laughs and shakes his head a little. "Other way around, kid."

Roan traces the edges of the photo in her hand as Eddie continues to peek through the stack. She bites the inside of her cheek and looks at her dad. "Why haven't we seen these before?"

Eddie leans his hip against the workbench along the back wall, not looking up from the photos in his hands. "Didn't know where they were." He says softly. "Thought I lost most of 'em when I moved out of Grandpa Wayne's before you girls were born, if I'm being honest."

Roan and Alice exchange a look, he hadn’t seen pictures of his mom in that long? “How did she die?" Roan asks softly.

"She got pretty sick." Eddie says quietly and leaves it at that.

Roan nods a little, looking at the pictures again. Her heart stinging for her dad's younger self. She knew her grandmother had been gone for a long time. But she couldn't imagine life without you, her mom, and she's 14. "How old were you?" She asks.

Eddie glances over where his own red mustang sits under the white canvas, "six."

Alice sucks in a breath and starts to stack the photos back up to place back into the tin. "That sucks."

It's blunt and honest, but Eddie nods. Laughing lightly at the way it’s said, as he shrugs. "Yeah, It did suck. Just a bit."

From inside, the three of them hear your voice call out the door for dinner. So Alice scoops the photos Eddie isnt holding back into the tin, carefully, and tucks it under her arm. She smiles at Roan, nodding her head towards the door to give signal to her to let Eddie have a minute. They make their way inside and the door swings shut behind them. Eddie sighs softly.

He pushes himself off the workbench and pins the photo of him and his mom in front of her car onto the board hanging on the wall, right next to a picture of you and him at his first big Corroded Coffin show, Alice's first day of kindergarten, and one of Roan covered in spaghetti from head to toe. All his favorite girls in one place.

He looks around, giving the garage one last once over, before walking into the kitchen. Cleaning this up can wait until Gareth’s free and until he can bribe his wonderful wife into making a pineapple upside down cake almost like Mrs. Emerson’s. He smiles at the family waiting for him at the table, the blue tin of photos sitting on the counter, waiting for him to comb through when the time is right. 

His mouth… tastes foul. Bitter. Like he swallowed the world’s nastiest penny and let it rot on his tongue overnight. His body feels heavy in a weird way — not injured-heavy exactly, but slept-too-hard heavy. Like every muscle in him got left out in rain and dragged back in before dawn. His cheek is warm where it had been pressed into something lumpy. His neck feels tender. His forearm too. One knee throbs in this low, distant kind of way that tells him whatever happened there was bad enough to matter, but not bad enough to be all he can think about.

His back is warm.

There’s something draped over it.

He turns his head just enough to catch the black of his windbreaker over one shoulder, and that’s weird enough to make him frown a little.

Then he notices the leaves.

There are chewed-up green leaves plastered over his forearm.

More of them at his neck.

And when he shifts his leg carefully, dragging one knee up under himself to look, he sees his cargo pants have already been rolled above the sting there too, the leaf poultice mostly slipped off sometime in the night as he moved in his sleep.

He sits up slowly.

Very slowly…

The whole place around him comes into focus by miserable little degrees.

He’s under some kind of tree shelter. A shallow one. Barely two or three feet above his head even kneeling. Twigs woven into brush. Branches bent down and overlapped. Leaves shoved into every gap where light might’ve betrayed it. It’s not clean. Not fancy. Not even particularly symmetrical. It’s just… well, there. Effective. Tight and close and hidden as all hell. Like some little fairy hut out of one of Dustin’s rambling campaigns. Like a child built a fort in the woods and then got weirdly, terrifyingly good at it.

His backpack is under his chest.

Empty.

Used as a pillow.

That makes Steve’s eyes flick around more sharply now, and that’s when he sees all of his stuff lined up neatly along one curved side of the little hut.

Knife.

Iodine.

Jerky.

Crackers.

Rope.

Wire.

The little box of matches.

Toothbrush.

Toothpaste.

Water bottle.

His bow and quiver.

Everything is arranged in a line so respectful and careful it almost makes his chest pinch. And next to his stuff, in their own neat little gathered piles… are other things.

Tiny speckled eggs.

Berries. Roots. Tubers. Nuts. Wild herbs.

A whole little scavenger spread of arena breakfast.

Steve just kneels there for a second in complete, groggy disbelief. “What the hell,” he whispers hoarsely to nobody.

The sound of his own voice startles him a little. It comes out rough. And dry. Sandpapered by sleep and bug venom and whatever the fuck else his body’s been doing while he’s been dead to the world.

He reaches down and peels the leaf mash off his forearm first.

The skin underneath looks icky. Red, swollen, bruised around the edges. Still a trackerjacker sting, still nasty enough to make him hiss softly through his teeth at the sight of it.

But not nearly as bad as it should be.

Not even close.

That’s what makes his brows lift.

He rubs his thumb lightly around it without touching the center, feels the heat there. The raised welt, like a spider bite that’s still healing.

Better.

Way fucking better.

His fingers go to his neck next — feeling the damp, half-dried mash tucked against the skin there. He can’t see that one, but judging by the way it feels? Same thing. Angry, but healing. Then his knee. That one’s still throbbing, still ugly as hell, but even it looks more manageable than it has any right to after the amount of venom that got pumped into him.

Steve sits back on his heels a little, rubbing both hands over his face.

He remembers flashes.

The nest.

The screaming.

Glimmer.

Jesus Christ — Glimmer...

His stomach drops at the mental image of her body when it all comes back to him. Bloated. Ruined. Swarmed. Dead in a way that no seventeen-year-old girl should ever have to be dead.

He shuts that down fast.

Then comes another memory.

Yours.

Your face, splitting and doubling and tripling in front of him while he sat there out of his goddamn mind before you hauled him to his feet. Both your hands on his shoulders. Your voice, desperate and sharp and furious all at once.

Run, Steve. Run.

His eyes go distant. The whole little hut seems to shrink around that memory. You’d been there. Not with the Careers. Not helping them. Not leading him to slaughter.

You had been there trying to get him the hell out.

And now…? Kneeling in this tiny hidden hideout with his backpack under him and his wounds treated and his supplies all stacked in neat little rows and a whole message spelled out on the ground so he wouldn’t wake up and lose his shit—

Steve feels something twist hard and strange inside his chest.

Because whatever your angle was, it had never been what he thought.

Some sick, jaded, angry part of him wants to keep fighting that. Wants to just keep saying no, there’s another explanation, there has to be. Wants to stay cynical because cynicism’s far easier than feeling grateful to somebody who could still matter this much.

But the evidence is all around him.

And it’s hard to argue with mercy when it has physically kept his ass alive.

“Shit,” he breathes, his hand moving without him thinking.

Instinctive.

Reaching for his right wrist.

Not the left wrist, with Robin’s tattoo.

His right wrist, where—

…wait.

Steve glances down…

Only to find bare skin.

He stiffens instantly, looking around himself, looking for—

But then he sees it.

His olive branch.

It’s now tucked right into the quiver, nestled beside his arrows… like whoever found it understood exactly what it was and decided it should not be lost. That does something vulnerable to his face. Pulls one corner of his mouth up despite himself in this tired, crooked little almost-smile which vanishes just as quickly as it came.

“Unbelievable,” he mutters under his breath.

How many times does a guy have to come within breathing distance of death before the universe just commits? How many near-misses before somebody up there decides — alright, enough of this sad bastard — puts him out of his misery?

The dark thought lands exactly where it always lands now.

Easy. Familiar. Morbid as a shrug.

He doesn’t sit in it long, though, because his mouth tastes like actual roadkill and suddenly that’s the most pressing problem in the world.

So he grabs the toothbrush.

Squeezes out a little toothpaste.

Brushes around his mouth and gums and teeth with all the solemn misery of a man who’s trying not to gag on his own morning breath inside a woodland hobbit grave. Then he unscrews the water bottle and pauses.

It’s full.

Here it comes again.

That soft little quiet punch of being tended to by unknown guardians of fate.

Steve stares at the water bottle for half a second like it personally betrayed him by being decent, then tips some into his mouth and swishes hard, spits into a far corner of the hut, and does it again.

When he’s done, he wipes his mouth with the back of his hand and lets his gaze sweep the hideout again while he drinks from it.

It all feels… deliberate.

Safe in a way the arena has no business being.

…and that’s exactly when he hears something rustle above him.

Steve moves before he thinks.

Bow in hand.

Arrow notched.

Aimed straight upward at the shadow now shifting through the tiny gaps in an opening of brush overhead.

Everything in him goes cold and sharp all at once…

Then a familiar little face appears.

Little enough that Steve’s whole body changes in one staggered beat.

Ro!

The kid freezes halfway through climbing down, his eyes huge, all wiry little limbs and caution and immediate alarm at finding himself now being aimed at by a broadhead arrow before breakfast.

Steve lowers the bow at once. “Hey— hey, man.” His voice comes out rough but warm in a hurry. “S’alright. M’not gonna hurt you.”

He tosses the weapon aside and raises both hands, palms open.

Ro is still hanging there halfway down — one small foot on a jut of root, one hand gripping a branch — staring at Steve like he’s trying to figure out if this is some kind of test.

Steve softens even more.

“You’re all good,” he promises. “I swear.”

Ro blinks. Then he climbs down the rest of the way very carefully, like a cautious little animal approaching a fire it hopes is friendly. Steve watches him land inside the hut and has to fight the bizarre urge to laugh — because Jesus Christ, this kid really did build the place for himself. Standing there now, Ro almost fits it properly. He can hunch. Turn, and move around. Steve, meanwhile, looks like an overgrown golden retriever trying to hide in a rabbit hole.

Ro doesn’t say anything at first.

He just stands there with those giant dark eyes on Steve, little hands folded up near his chest, equal parts shy and wary and weirdly pleased all at once.

Steve clears his throat. “You did all this?”

Ro nods.

Steve looks around again. Then back at him. “The leaves too?”

Another nod.

“And the water bottle?”

Ro nods harder this time.

Something about that makes Steve smile for real. Small, but real. “Okay,” he says quietly. “Well. Thank you.”

Ro’s shoulders ease a tiny bit.

Steve watches him tenderly, then his brow pinches. “How long was I out?"

A beat lands.

Ro glances down at his fingers before shyly peeking up through his lashes… quietly murmuring, in the gentlest little voice, “two days.”

Steve’s brows shoot up, forehead creasing.

Two days?

“Days three and four,” Ro adds timidly. “It’s Day Five now.”

A soft, almost sheepish sigh slips past Steve’s nose. He watches Ro another moment, then glances down at his own lap. Then he glances at his forearm. 

“This stuff worked,” he tells Ro. “Like… really worked.”

Ro lights up so suddenly it’s almost startling.

Not in a loud way.

Just the way little kids do when praise hits them square in the chest and they don’t know where to put it.

“I changed them,” he blurts before he can apparently stop himself, voice soft and quick and a little breathless from finally using it. “A couple times. And—I put more ointment on your burn too but only a little, I promise, and I didn’t eat any of your food or touch any of your stuff—except I had to use two of your matches but that’s just because it’s way faster to cook eggs with a match and I’m sorry about that and—”

“Hey, hey.” Steve’s brows pinch sadly, voice kind. “Slow down.”

Ro clamps his mouth shut at once.

Steve stares at him for a second before he very, very gently asks, “Why are you apologizing?”

Ro looks confused by the question itself. Then guilty. Then both.

“I just… didn’t want you to think I was stealing.”

That hits Steve so hard and stupidly that for a second he doesn’t even know what to do with his face. He looks over at the neat little piles of food. At the lined-up supplies. The full water bottle. The carefully rewrapped olive branch.

Then back at Ro.

“Buddy,” he says, and there’s something almost helpless in his voice now. “I would not have cared if you ate half of it.”

Ro still looks uncertain.

Steve reaches over for the jerky and crackers. “Seriously. C’mere.”

Ro shuffles a little closer on instinct but still stays cautious, cross-legged now on the dirt floor while Steve opens the packet and breaks off a piece.

He offers it.

It takes another moment before Ro slowly takes it with both his hands, like it might disappear if he’s not respectful enough.

Steve hands him a cracker too, then takes one for himself. “There.” He nods toward the little scavenged spread. “Now we’re sharing. No crime committed.”

That gets the tiniest little smile out of Ro.

Steve leans back one shoulder against the side of the hut, gesturing vaguely with his cracker. “So where were you just now?”

Ro’s chewing slows.

He swallows, then says shyly, “Making birdcalls.”

Steve tilts his head. “Birdcalls.”

Ro nods, then reaches for a few seeds from one of his little piles — bringing them between them like this is just part of breakfast now.

“There’re mockingjays,” he explains. “They copy back whatever you sing, like a parrot. So if I do the right four notes and they’re close enough, they’ll carry it to you. Then if you do your four notes back, they’ll carry them to me.”

Steve stills halfway through another bite.

There’s a tiny pause in the hut.

“Me?” he repeats carefully.

Ro blinks. “Well, yes but… no. Not you.”

Then, as if realizing that sounded dumb: “Ren.”

There it is again.

Your name.

But now it’s spoken out loud and now Steve’s whole body goes kind of eerily still around it… Because whatever he’d expected out of waking up in this tiny woodland bunker, it sure as hell wasn’t a nine-year-old very calmly dropping confirmation that you and he apparently have some kind of secret birdcall- communication alliance.

And you’re alive.

“…you and Ren have a signal,” Steve says slowly.

Ro nods.

“…you’re allied.”

Ro nods harder, then he seems to realize this is maybe important information and starts talking faster about how you teamed up with him.

It comes out in pieces at first, shy and a little tangled up.

But Steve is good with kids. That’s the thing. No matter how much this world has hollowed him out, no matter how much venom and violence and grief and trauma have turned everything else inside him into barbed wire, that part still works. So he doesn’t crowd. Doesn’t interrogate.

He just nudges the story along. “When’d that happen?”

“Back at the Capitol.”

“Before the Games?”

“Mm-hm.”

“Who all knew?”

“Me and Wendy Bird and Jack and Hannah. Oh!—and Hopper. Hopper went over the cave part again with Hannah and Jack after.”

Steve blinks. “Wendy Bird?”

Ro says it like it’s obvious. “That’s Ren.”

Oh, so you have another bird-assigned nickname?

That’s the first thing that runs through Steve’s mind until then, because Steve apparently has somehow woken up inside a fever dream run by emotionally intelligent children.

Ro proceeds to explain the whole damn thing, bit by bit, chewing seeds and taking tiny bites of jerky. Talking with his hands sometimes… when the words come easier that way.

You were Wendy Bird.

Steve was Pan the Man.

Ro was a lost boy.

Hannah was a lost girl.

Jack was a lost boy too, even if he acted tougher about it.

And the whole plan had been built around getting the lost ones hidden first. The cave for Hannah and Jack. The signals in the trees. The markings along the stream in case Ro had to go looking. The birdcall. The fallback birdcall. The trail marks. The rule about not panicking if nobody answered back because that probably meant you’d made it safe. The rule about waiting for the sky at night before assuming the worst.

The whole thing laid out in this innocent, devastating little-boy cadence that somehow makes every piece of it hit Steve harder than if Hopper himself had walked in and barked it at him.

Because Ro explains it all like he’s telling Steve how to play a game that he missed the rules to all this time…

And buried inside every part of it is the same awful truth:

You had planned for him.

You had worked all of this out after the interviews.

After he’d lashed out at you backstage. After you went on live television and said the thing he’d least wanted anyone to say. After he made it ugly, after he stormed off and left you standing there.

And somehow, after all of that, you’d still built a strategy that kept not only three kids alive…

…but him too.

Steve sits there, very quiet through most of it, only asking questions when he has to.

“So… Hopper knew all of this?”

Ro nods. “Some of it. Most of it.”

“Hannah and Jack knew the cave part already?”

“Ren told them in the morning. Hopper repeated it later.”

Something about that irks Steve.

The fact that Hopper planned all of this, without ever considering that maybe Steve was capable of planning something too…? Something about that just doesn’t quite sit right yet.

But still. Steve’s far too blown away, too grateful, to let that take precedence.

“And you…?” Steve has to stop and start over. “You knew I was supposed to end up with you?”

Ro shrugs one shoulder. “Not exactly with me. Just… if I found you first, then yeah. Because she didn’t want any of us near the Careers.” 

Steve rubs a hand over his face again.

It is not helping.

Nothing about this is helping. Because Ro is so matter-of-fact about it all. So sweet. So trusting. So completely certain that of course this all makes sense because Wendy Bird said it would!

There’s something brutally unselfconscious in the admiration Ro has for you too. Every time that he says your name, it’s like he’s talking about someone brave and clever and magical and surreal. Someone who made a hard thing sound possible just by explaining it softly enough.

Steve smiles sometimes despite himself.

That’s the worst part.

He can’t even keep the smile off his face, because Ro is so damned earnest about all of it. And apparently? You’d explained the whole alliance through Peter Pan analogies and secret signals and lost boys and hidden places and prioritized how important it was to keep the little ones safe first.

Because apparently it worked.

Because apparently Steve Harrington, bitter bastard of the fucking woods… got kept alive by a plan made by a girl he hurt and a little boy who still looks at him like he hung the moon.

He hates what that does to his chest.

He hates that it isn’t simple.

Ro is talking about the cave now.

About how Hannah and Jack were supposed to stay put no matter what.

About how he’s gone out looking for your signal already.

About how he tried the mockingjay call.

Steve’s eyes go a little glossy around the edges at that. Not enough to show. Just enough to feel it everywhere inside of himself.

“You were out there this morning doing that?” he asks.

Ro nods. “I thought maybe if Wendy Bird— I mean if Ren—”

“If she answered back,” Steve finishes.

Ro nods again. “But she didn’t.”

Steve takes a slow breath, dread beginning to show in his features.

Ro rushes to add, “But that’s probably good. Ren said if I can’t hear her? It might mean she made it back where she needed to go and is staying quiet.”

There’s that faith again.

That calm little child-faith in your competence.

…and God help him, Steve feels himself borrowing from it.

Just for a second.

Just enough to feel relieved that you’re still alive.

He looks down at the half-eaten saltine cracker in his hand and thinks about your beautiful face again. Your voice. Run.

Then he looks back up… and he finds that Ro is now watching him now with all the patience in the world. Like he knows some grown-up silences are just things you have to let happen.

Steve laughs under his breath once, dry and small.

“What,” Ro asks curiously.

Steve shakes his head. “Nothing, man.”

But it isn’t nothing. 

It’s the soul-crushing, inconvenient realization that your angle had been him all along. Not to betray. Not to manipulate. Not to trap. To keep him alive.

And he doesn’t know what the fuck to do with that.

So he doesn’t try to.

Not just yet.

Instead he takes another bite of jerky and helps Ro keep talking.

“So alright then,” Steve says, sly and warm. “What else’ve I missed?”

Ro has gotten less shy now. The words come easier. Quicker. He tells Steve how Hannah nearly cried the first day and didn’t want Jack seeing, so she’d turned away first. How Jack acts tougher than he is but he still gets a wrinkle between his eyebrows when he’s scared. How he himself can climb higher than anybody if he has to. How the cave’s on the opposite side of the arena, and if they go down the stream long enough, they should be able to reach it.

It’s a whole world in here… This tiny hidden ecosystem of children surviving because you gave them a language to survive in.

Steve listens to all of it.

And then, when it’s finally all on the ground between them, when the plan is laid out and the crumbs have been gathered and the children accounted for and the terrible, impossible mercy of it has had time to settle—

Ro goes sly.

It happens so suddenly Steve almost misses it.

One second the kid is earnest as church. The next, there’s this little cat-who-ate-the-canary glint in his eye.

“Is it true about you guys?”

Steve blinks. “What.”

Ro wriggles his eyebrows.

He actually wriggles them.

Then he makes this ridiculous lovey-dovey face and a little kissy shape with his mouth and says, “You and herrrrr?”

Steve chokes a little on absolutely nothing.

It is humiliating how his cheeks go hot immediately. That’s worse. So much worse. He has not blushed like this since puberty kicked down the front door and moved into his awkwardly growing bones. He looks down. Laughs once in this awkward, disbelieving way. Rubs the back of his neck.

Ro is grinning like a little menace now.

And on top of that, Steve knows the cameras are on him.

That’s the slimiest, stupidest part. Even now, even tucked away in this little root-hut, he can feel the awareness of being watched. Of the whole country maybe seeing his ears go pink while a child tries to get gossip out of him like some tiny woodland tabloid reporter.

He could deny it.

Should deny it, probably.

Should say no, kid, don’t be ridiculous.

Except…

Something about that feels wrong.

Maybe because it helped keep everybody alive.

Maybe because Ro believes it with his whole little chest and Steve just can’t bring himself to stomp on that.

Maybe because saying no to anything that has your name wrapped up in it suddenly feels like trying to spit a mouthful of blood onto a grave.

He still can’t bring himself to say yes.

That feels wrong too.

So Steve does what Steve Harrington does best whenever he’s cornered by something soft and dangerous and true: he sidesteps.

He tilts his head, looks back up at Ro through a half-smile that’s still flushed around the edges and drawls, “I think that Wendy Bird’s got enough going on without you running her business for her.”

Ro gasps.

Then he dissolves into the most delighted little snickering fit that Steve’s ever heard in his life — shoulders shaking, hand slapped over his own mouth like that answer was even better than confirmation.

“Oh my God,” Steve mutters, but he’s laughing too now despite himself.

Ro points at him triumphantly. “That means yes!”

“Oh, does it now.”

“It does in my language.”

Steve squints at him playfully. “That sounds like communism.” 

“No it doesn’t.”

“It absolutely does.”

Ro’s still grinning ear to ear, looking like he’s about to explode from knowing a secret. “Jack has a crush on Hannah, too.”

The pivot is so sudden Steve almost gets emotional whiplash from it.

“What?”

Ro leans in. “He does.”

Steve stares — lips parted, already smirking. “No way.”

“Way.”

“Whaaaat?” Steve pretends to gasp, jutting his chin. “How do you know.”

“Because he told me.”

Steve lets out a long exaggerated breath. “Well. Sheeeeyit.”

That earns a little giggle from Ro as he snacks on another cracker.

Steve just shakes his head, smirking warmly. “Jack told you, huh?”

Ro nods very solemnly now, as if delivering battlefield intelligence even while he smiles. “He started liking her on picture day.”

“Picture day?”

“At the Capitol. In the pink dress.”

Steve actually grins at that. Full grin this time. “Damn. Kid’s got taste.”

Ro giggles.

“And Hannah likes him back?”

Ro lowers his voice like this is serious. “I think so.”

“You think so?”

“She looks at him kinda weird.”

Steve nods like a detective cracking the case. “Got it. Very damning.”

“And Hannah likes you,” Ro adds helpfully.

Steve adorably snorts. “Buddy, that is not the same thing.”

“No, I know. She likes you like Tigerlily likes Pan.”

“Oh good,” Steve chuckles.

“And Jack likes her like…” Ro trails off, then makes another kissy face.

Steve actually laughs out loud now.

It feels rusty. Strange. Good in a way that nearly makes him angry. Because all at once he’s sitting in a dirt hut in the arena swapping little kid gossip with a boy who should not be here at all… and every piece of this pure innocence makes him want to tear the whole goddamn sky down with his bare hands.

He cannot let that show.

Not now.

Not to Ro.

So he leans into it instead.

“Alright,” he drawls, nodding gravely. “Well. That is huge news. We’ll have to handle that very delicately.”

Ro brightens all over again. “Yeah.”

“Can’t have any heartbreak in the lost-kid division.”

“Nope.”

“Too much paperwork.”

Ro laughs so hard at that, he almost falls sideways.

Steve watches him with this secret, aching kind of fondness that hurts worse because of how easy it feels to let it completely take over.

Then his eyes drift.

To the little piles of gathered food.

The roots.

The eggshells.

The berries.

The signs that this child has been surviving in the wild on scavenged scraps while Steve lay on his stomach drooling into a backpack like Sleeping Beauty with a concussion.

The fondness in his face changes shape.

Gets sharper.

More resolved.

He looks at the bow. Then at Ro. Then back at the little scavenged breakfast and the shelter and the whole careful setup of it all.

“Tell you what,” Steve says.

Ro looks up.

Steve shifts, settling more squarely on his knees, and holds out his hand like this is a business deal being struck in a boardroom instead of a dirt den held together by sticks and divine intervention.

“You show me the ropes,” he says. “Teach me which plants won’t kill us while we go looking for the others. I’ll teach you how to hunt. Show you how to set snares. We’ll catch us something decent to eat.”

He lets the grin come back, crooked and warm and very himself.

“How’s that sound, ally?”

Ro’s whole face transforms.

It isn’t just happiness.

It’s this huge, glowing, can’t-believe-his-luck kind of joy that makes him look even younger than he is.

He reaches out at once and grabs Steve’s hand in a very serious shake.

“Deal,” he says.

And there they are.

One big, bruised, freshly reawakened golden boy. One tiny lost boy with dirt on his knees and night-watch courage in his bones and enough bravery for his entire alliance.

Shaking on it in the dark little heart of the arena, while danger still prowls just outside and the morning keeps climbing toward whatever horror comes next.

For now, though, the hut holds.

For now, the breath inside it is warm.

For now, Peter Pan and his shadow have found each other.

And when their hands part, they’re both still grinning.

By the time that the sun had properly hauled itself up over the arena, it still looked tired. No gold. No real warmth. Just a pale, overcast kind of morning that made the whole place feel bluer than it ought to be, as if even the sky had woken up sore. The woods wore it well. Everything looked damp without actually being wet. Bark darkened in broad streaks. Leaves held shadows in their veins. 

The little hidden world that Ro had built beneath roots and woven branches stayed tucked in its own cool hush, safe from sight and softened by the kind of gloom that made daylight feel less exposing.

It had been barely an hour since Steve woke up.

Barely three hours since he’d found the colorful little message for him spelled out in leaves and flowers onto the earth — U R SAFE — and felt something deep in his chest go strange and quiet.

Now he and Ro were out in the woods together.

Not far enough from the little hut to lose their bearings. Not stupid-far. Steve would rather eat bark and die than wander off without a plan now after finally finding the one corner of this hellhole that didn’t feel like a loaded machine gun pointed at his mouth. But still far enough to work. Far enough to use the trees. Far enough that if he and Ro did what they were doing right, any game would have no clue they were there until it was too late.

And what they were doing right now was moving.

Quietly.

Ro led as often as Steve did… which was maybe the first thing that really got under Steve’s skin in the best possible way.

Not because the kid was bossy. He wasn’t.

Because he was good.

Little freakishly good.

There was no other word for it. Ro moved like the forest made him itself and forgot to tell anybody. He hardly bent a twig wrong. Hardly shifted a fern. Half the time Steve had to keep his eyes glued on him just to make sure he didn’t lose the kid completely to the shadows. One second he’d be there, small frame slipping between two trunks with that little knapsack over one shoulder and the water skin bouncing softly at his side, and the next he’d be three feet farther ahead with barely a sound to show for it.

On top of that, he’d made himself a slingshot.

A real one.

Not some half-assed kid toy either. It was a genuinely decent little makeshift slingshot… built from a sturdy forked branch and some elastic from his pack, tucked against his side like he’d been carrying it all his life. Every time Steve looked at it, something in him snagged.

Because it reminds him of back home.

Of the little boy whose name he unknowingly called Ro while hallucinating.

Lucas Sinclair.

The parallels hit him every goddamn time... Lucas with his bandana and his stubborn little face and his slingshot held like it was Excalibur. Lucas, who’d mouth off first and think about the consequences later. Lucas, who would absolutely call this whole setup “sick as hell” — before immediately asking a thousand questions and wanting a turn.

Steve swallowed hard and kept moving.

He didn’t say any of that out loud.

Didn’t need to.

A lot of whatever this was with Ro happened without much talking. A glance. A hand signal. Steve touching two fingers to his own chest then pointing left. Ro nodding and drifting that direction like smoke. Steve raising one hand flat whenever he heard something in the underbrush. Ro going instantly still. Not scared-still. Listening-still.

It should have felt ridiculous, being this locked in with a nine-year-old inside a death arena where the game makers would probably cream their pants at the sight of the two of them playing wilderness scout troop together.

Instead it felt…

Good.

That was the fucked-up part.

It felt so goddamn good.

Not normal. Nothing about this was normal. But lighter, somehow. Less like he was dragging his own carcass through the woods by the teeth and more like there was… actually another pulse beside him now. Another heartbeat. Another person who wasn’t trying to kill him or leave him or force him into the one-man-against-the-world mode, including himself… because that’s always been his default since surviving the Purge night.

Lone wolf, Harrington.

That had become the whole bit.

But now? Now there was this tiny ghost-boy beside him, floating through the trees with a slingshot and an earnest little face and all the patience in the world, and Steve couldn’t even pretend he didn’t feel fuller for it.

Every now and then he’d glance down and ask, quietly, “You good?”

And every single time Ro would just nod.

Not with bravado, not trying to prove anything. Just simple confirmation.

He was good.

Once, after maybe the fourth time Steve asked — Ro even looked up at him like he was very politely trying not to laugh.

Steve squinted at him. “What.”

Ro shrugged, mouth twitching. “You keep askin’.”

“Yeah,” Steve muttered. “Well. You’re little.”

Ro’s eyes widened in theatrical offense. “I know that.”

That got a soft snort out of Steve before he shook his head and kept moving.

A while later, when the forest floor got nastier underfoot — roots buckling up like old knuckles, bramble patches creeping too close, the earth uneven in that ankle-breaking way — it became easier to just lift Ro onto his back for longer stretches.

The first time Steve did it, he crouched a little and jerked his chin over one shoulder.

“C’mon.”

Ro blinked. “What?”

Steve gave him a look. “Don’t make this a whole thing.”

Ro did not, in fact, make it a whole thing.

He just climbed right up, all light little limbs and careful hands — settling on, piggyback, all while Steve hooked an arm under his knees and rose back up. Easy. Way easier than it should’ve been. Ro barely weighed anything, which wasn’t exactly comforting because it reminded Steve a little too hard that this kid was supposed to still be losing baby teeth somewhere safer, not crossing through a murder forest on another kid’s back.

But even so, they made due.

Ro fit there like he belonged.

And once he was up, he’d lean in close and point sometimes.

A tap on Steve’s shoulder. A finger to the right. A whisper barely shaped by breath.

“There.”

The squirrel had been Ro’s find.

Steve froze when the little finger tapped his shoulder, followed the direction of the point… then saw the flicker of gray-brown fur on a low branch ahead. Small thing. Twitchy. Alert. Head ducked forward while it gnawed something invisible between its paws.

Steve shifted slowly, careful as sin, and lowered Ro to the ground.

Ro stayed glued to his side. And he watched Steve set one hand lightly over the back of his neck — not holding him down, just keeping him close and still — then reached for the bow over his shoulder.

The woods seemed to take one long breath.

Steve notched the arrow.

Pulled.

Released.

The whir of it cut the hush clean in two.

The squirrel dropped like a stone.

Ro’s whole face changed.

Not with horror, although not with delight either. Just this solemn, awestruck kind of stillness as he looked from where the squirrel had fallen to Steve and back again.

Steve went to collect it without saying much.

When he came back with the limp little body in his hand, Ro looked at it and then up at him.

“That was really fast,” he whispered.

Steve’s mouth twitched. “That’s the idea.”

Ro nodded like he was filing that away under very important information.

Later, one of the snares paid off.

That feat took longer.

Steve had spent a chunk of the morning showing Ro how to set them right. Where the ground told on itself. How trails looked if you actually knew what you were seeing. The difference between random brush movement and a path used often enough to matter. How to find all of the narrow places where rabbits liked to cut through because it saved them time and made them feel hidden even when they weren’t.

He’d shown Ro how to bend a young branch without snapping it. How to tie the loop clean. How to make the wire look like nothing at all.

Ro watched every second of it like the lesson was scripture.

Then he’d tried one himself.

Hands small but steady. Brow pinched. Tongue barely tucked into one cheek with concentration so fierce Steve almost laughed. The kid’s first loop came out a little crooked. Steve adjusted it with two fingers and a quiet, “Here—like this,” and Ro immediately corrected the next one better.

By the time they’d circled back to check them, Ro spotted the caught rabbit before Steve did.

He froze, little hand snapping out to grip Steve’s windbreaker sleeve.

Steve looked down automatically at the tiny fist hooked into the fabric. Then followed Ro’s gaze and saw the rabbit hanging there… kicking weakly in the snare, the branch bent high with tension above it.

Ro didn’t say anything.

Neither did Steve for a moment.

Then he murmured, “Good eye.”

Ro swallowed and nodded once.

Together they approached it.

Together they made it quick.

After that, Steve made the call to prep and cook away from the hut.

No debate.

No risking the smell.

No risking the sightline.

No leaving a pretty little trail of smoke curling up anywhere near the place Ro had built for them.

So they carried the squirrel and rabbit farther out — still careful, still under cover — until Steve found a tucked-in little patch between three big boulders and a fallen trunk where they could work fast and kill any trace faster.

That was when he tried, as casually as possible… to spare Ro.

He set both of their kills down and reached for the knife at his belt. “You can stand lookout for me if you want.”

Ro looked up at him.

Steve kept his tone as even as he could. “I can handle this part.”

Ro’s gentle eyes dropped briefly to the rabbit, then the squirrel…then back to Steve’s face. “I know.”

Steve waited.

Ro shifted his feet once. “But… I should learn it.”

Steve’s brows drew together.

“If I’m gonna learn how to hunt proper,” Ro kept going, sweet and brave all at once, “then I gotta know this part too, right?”

That hit harder than it should have.

Steve looked at him for a long second. The easy out would’ve been to say no or to play rank. To tell the kid he was too young or too small or too whatever and leave it there.

But that would’ve been bullshit.

And worse…? Ro would know it.

So Steve crouched instead, knife in hand, letting out a somber sigh through his nose. “Alright,” he said finally. “But you stay right here by me—and if you feel weird about any of it? You say so. No proving shit to me, cool?”

Ro nodded immediately. “Cool.”

Steve pointed the knife at the dead game. “And this is gonna be ugly.”

Ro’s mouth went small. “Okay.”

“It’s gonna smell bad too.”

“Okay.”

Steve glanced at him again. “You don’t have to be tough about it.”

Ro blinked. “I’m not.”

That one got him.

Steve huffed a quiet laugh, shook his head, and got to work.

He didn’t pretty it up.

Didn’t use baby words, or act like it was anything but what it was.

He showed Ro where to cut first. How to hold the body steady. How the hide needed easing more than sawing. How to separate the flesh from fur without ruining the meat if you could help it. He explained what to save time on and what not to rush unless you wanted to make a big mess of the whole damn thing.

All the while Ro watched.

Not green. Not gagging. Not flinching like he was watching gore. But his kind eyes did go glossy once or twice. So did Steve’s, honestly… because killing and cleaning innocent things for food never actually stopped feeling ugly, no matter how used to it he got. But Ro never pretended he liked it, and Steve never pretended he did either.

That maybe made it easier.

By the time they were skinning the rabbit, Ro asked questions.

Quiet ones.

“Why do you pull it like that?”

“So it doesn’t tear weird,” Steve answered softly.

Ro pointed. “This part good?”

“Yeah,” Steve smirked. “Good eye.”

Another little point from his shadow. “What about that?”

“Don’t nick that unless you want a smell you’ll never forgive.”

Ro made a face.

Steve snorted. “Exactly.”

The squirrel went faster.

The rabbit took longer.

Then came the fire.

That part somehow felt worse than the skinning. Maybe because fire meant smell. Meat meant reality. Hunger meant there wasn’t even room left for guilt that stayed clean and theoretical.

Ro used one of the matches before Steve could stop him. He struck it fast, brought it down to the little nest of dry material they’d built, then winced at Steve like he’d just committed a federal crime.

“Sorry,” he whispered immediately. “I meant to ask.”

Steve stared at him.

Ro held the still-burning match in his fingers like he expected to be scolded.

“You apologized,” Steve said.

Ro blinked. “Uh-huh.”

“For using one match?”

Ro looked wary now. “Supplies matter.”

“They do.”

“I just—”

Steve held up a hand. “No, hang on... I’m still processing the fact that you apologized for one match while I was fully about to use one anyway.”

Ro’s face went pink.

And because this whole situation was apparently insane from every possible angle, Steve had to bite back a grin.

“Buddy,” he muttered warmly, “you can use a match.”

Ro seemed to deflate with relief.

“Okay.”

“Within reason,” Steve said mock-seriously.

Ro’s face went serious again too. “For sure.”

Steve fully grinned now. “I’m seriously messing with you.”

That finally earned a sheepish little sniff-laugh from Ro, who still stared up at Steve like he absolutely hung the entire galaxy.

They both cooked the meat carefully. Nothing fancy. Just enough. Turning it. Watching it. Letting the fire do its job, hating the smell less… once it changed from raw to cooked and edible.

Ro asked more questions there too.

How did you know it’s done? Would it make you sick if it wasn’t? Could you eat it burnt? Why did the rabbit smell different than the squirrel? How many squirrels would it take to make someone full?

…that last one made Steve pause.

He looked over.

Ro was asking it honestly.

Steve stared at the little strip of rabbit in his hand for a second, trying not to laugh at that inquiry, then back to the fire. “Depends who,” he finally answers with a sweetly amused glint in his eye.

Ro took that answer and sat with it.

When the meat was ready to go, Steve had them line the outer pouch of his backpack with broad leaves they gathered nearby — creating a makeshift buffer of sorts so that the meat wouldn’t just slime up the inside like a horror movie lunchbox.

His ally helped with that too.

Holding leaves. Passing them over. Packing the cooked cuts carefully. Watching Steve redistribute the rest of his supplies deeper into the bigger, main pouch of his backpack.

The whole thing felt absurdly domestic.

Well, arena domestic, which meant every two minutes Steve had to stop and listen. And twice? He heard enough to make his whole body change.

It happened fast.

One second he’d be tying off a leaf bundle or crouching over the little dead fire pit, the next he’d go still as a blade and turn, bow in hand, arrow notched low but ready.

Ro never questioned it.

He just moved closer.

The second time, he ended up almost pressed to Steve’s side… his little fist caught in the sleeve of the windbreaker again while Steve scanned the trees with his jaw set and eyes sharp as broken glass.

Nothing came of it.

Some rustle. Some branch complaint. Some small movement in the underbrush that turned out to be nothing worth killing over.

Even so, Steve didn’t lower the bow until he was sure.

Ro stayed close until he did.

Something about that — something about the total trust of it… felt almost too big to look at directly. So Steve didn’t. He just touched the back of Ro’s head once, brief as a blink, and murmured, “We’re good,” before returning to their journey back to basecamp.

Later they hit the stream.

Ro led, of course.

He knew the way. He didn’t hesitate once, slipping through the woods with the confidence of somebody who’d already mapped out half the arena in his head and then asked it politely to make room. Steve fondly followed with the backpack over one shoulder, quiver of arrows over the other, knife at his hip, and watched the kid work while he held the bow at his side.

At the stream, Ro knelt first and refilled the water skin while Steve filled his water bottle. They drank. Steve splashed his face once and pushed back his damp hair — blinking the grit from his lashes. Ro watched like this somehow counted as strategy too.

“We’ll wash up properly tomorrow,” he said quietly, washing off his arms. “In the morning. See if the sun comes back out, lets us wash and dry our clothes too. Out on some rocks or tree limbs.”

Ro nodded, shaking his shoes and socks free of dirt before beginning to slip them back over his newly cleaned feet. “Okay, yeah.”

Steve smirked warmly. “C’mere.”

He was gesturing for Ro’s foot.

He curiously gave it, tilting his head.

Then his eyes went round with shyness and gratitude alike as Steve tugged up the hem of his t-shirt and carefully dried off both Ro’s wet little feet with it.

Ro swallowed, peeking up at him through his lashes.

“Thanks,” he breathed.

Steve winked, slipping his sock back on. “Got you, brother.”

That made Ro adorably beam to himself.

Brother?

Did Steve really consider him a brother?

At last, the two of them stood back up after washing off enough.

Then they headed back.

And coming back to the hut with daylight still on it (even dim daylight, flat and overcast) made Steve appreciate all over again…just how batshit impressive the whole thing was.

Ro had to actually point it out.

“It’s there,” he gestured.

Steve stood there squinting at what looked like nothing but root cluster and brush pile and muttered, “Jesus Christ.”

Ro beamed a little. “Good, right?”

Steve gave him a look. “Good? Brilliant. And creepy. But in a useful way.”

That got the tiniest laugh out of Ro.

“Best kind, then.”

Steve snorted and ducked low to crawl inside.

Once they were in, the little place somehow already felt more like theirs than it had that morning. Not… safe exactly. That word still came with conditions. But lived in. Claimed. Shared. The arranged supplies. The scavenged food. The sleeping bag. The bow propped again. The little message on the ground now kicked just slightly out of its originally perfect shape from Steve moving around earlier…

U R SAFE

He tried not to look at it too long.

Tried and failed.

They ate there. Quietly, at first. For a few minutes, it was just the sound of chewing, little breaths in between, the occasional brush of fabric when one of them shifted. The cooked rabbit tasted like survival and not much else. The squirrel was gamier. Ro liked both, pretending not to be absolutely starving until Steve noticed the way he kept eyeing the pieces before taking them.

So Steve quietly made sure the better portions kept ending up closer to Ro’s side.

Ro started noticing that too, but he didn’t comment. He just looked at Steve once with those big dark eyes and then down again, like he was storing the moment somewhere private and enormous.

It was somewhere in the middle of eating that Steve finally asked, “Who’s still up.”

Ro licked a bit of grease from his thumb and answered immediately, because of course he knew. “Thresh,” he said first. “Tommy and Carol. Marvel. Jack and Hannah. Foxface. Syl.” Then he looked at Steve, adding with shy matter -of-factness, “You. Me. Wendy Bird.”

Steve’s mouth twitched.

“Wendy Bird.”

Ro nodded. “That’s Ren.”

“I gathered.”

“She’s the Wendy Bird,” Ro grinned. “Because you’re Pan.”

Steve smiled and shook his head like he was exhausted by the whole world and not secretly a little wrecked by it. “Cool.”

“She’s suuuuper pretty,” Ro quietly sang, all sly and cheeky.

That earned the cheekiest little eye roll in return from Steve, who didn’t even bother trying to wipe that smile off his face now. Maybe because it was real.

“Yeah,” he agreed softly, nodding down at his squirrel meat. “She really is.”

Ro gladly accepted that.

Then, while picking a tiny seed from a fold in his knapsack and popping it in his mouth, he got to mentioning the cornucopia.

At first it was just bits.

The Careers waking up. Syl getting caught trying to steal. Tommy and Marvel dragging her out… …not killing her.

Steve’s brows rose a little at that. “They didn’t kill her?”

Ro shook his head. “Nope. Made her stay.”

“…stay.”

“Guard.”

Steve sat back slightly, one knee drawn up, a strip of rabbit gone forgotten in his hand. “They made her their bodyguard?”

Ro shrugged. “Kinda.”

And then he explained it as only Ro could.

The pacing. The shouting. The spear at Syl’s throat. Tommy stalking around all mean and snarly like he owned the sun. Marvel standing there like some big dumb scary statue with eyebrows. Syl freaking out and then not freaking out and then definitely freaking out again. Them pointing at stuff around the cornucopia like they were giving her the world’s worst tour. Handing her an apple. Untying her wrists. Giving her the riot act.

Steve listened to all of it with this increasingly crooked expression of his that hovered somewhere between disbelief and dark amusement.

“So now she’s just…” He gestured vaguely. “What. Their unpaid employee?”

Ro chewed thoughtfully. “Basically. They pay her in apples.”

“That sucks.”

Ro nodded. “Yeah.” Then, after a second: “She’s kinda mean, though.”

Steve looked over at him.

Ro shrugged. “Only nice to the little kids.”

That made Steve pause.

“Huh.”

“Well… some. She wasn’t mean to Hannah,” Ro clarified. “Just…didn’t talk to her. She grew up with brothers, so she kinda brushed her off.” He glanced at the pieces of meat still free, sighing quietly. “And Jack hated that.”

Something about the seriousness with which he said that almost got Steve.

He bit the inside of his cheek instead. “Got it,” he said. “Jack held a grudge. And a good one at that.”

Ro nodded solemnly. “Mhm.”

Honestly? That was enough for Steve.

Not because he wanted to write Syl off as expendable or anything noble and clean. Mostly because he already had too many people lodged under his ribs in this arena and the thought of adding one more half-unhinged girl from Five to the list made him want to chew glass.

Ro kept going.

The landmines. The squirrel. The boom.

That part made Steve’s whole face change.

“They planted mines…?”

“All around,” Ro confirmed, eyes widening again just at the memory while he recounted it. “They made Syl memorize all of them.”

Steve blinked, processing all of that.

Then Ro slyly grinned around his next bite. “We should set them all off, make them all go ka-boom.”

That one got a bark of dark laughter out of Steve before he could stop it.

It startled them both a little.

Ro immediately smiled bigger.

Steve scrubbed a hand over his face and muttered, “Not a bad idea.”

They grinned around their food.

And then the mood shifted a little.

A sound came from outside — not super close, not huge, just enough. Some odd scrape or far-off animal call made both of them go still.

Ro edged closer without thinking.

Steve automatically opened one hand for him.

His shadow took it, shuffling closer as Steve held his small hand between both of his palms while listening, bow within reach — shoulders going hard and alert for one long stretch before the woods settled again.

That was when Ro brought up the monster.

“There was somethin’ out there last night…”

Steve turned fully toward him.

Ro swallowed.

“…what do you mean?” Steve asked, voice low, already dreading this.

Ro sighed through his nose, shuffling just a few inches closer. 

And then he described it.

Not well at first, because how the hell do you describe something you never physically saw and just barely survived hearing? So he started with sounds. Wet sounds. Dragging sounds. The kind of noises that made all of the leaves shake when it circled the hut. The scream that had made him hide his face in Steve’s back. The way he’d stayed still. The way it had been right outside.

Steve listened without interrupting.

That was maybe the scariest part of all…how little he moved while Ro talked, how his stillness got sharper and sharper until it was practically a weapon of guilt towards himself.

Inside, something in him went cold. Because this kid had clung to his back in the dark while some unknown thing circled them all night…and Steve had been dead to the world. Useless. Out cold. No help at all.

He did his best to keep all that off his face by force.

And when Ro finished recounting everything, he just sat there staring at the dirt between them for one beat too long.

“Hey,” Steve said quietly.

Ro’s eyes flicked up to his.

“You don’t gotta worry about that alone anymore.”

Ro didn’t say anything.

Steve squeezed his little hand once between both his big palms. “Whatever bullshit they throw at us in here? Whatever monsters or mutts or freakshow nightmare fuel they cook up next—we deal with it together now. Alright?”

Ro’s whole face softened with something almost painful in how pure it was.

He nodded hard. “Alright.”

Steve smiled a little then. Realer than before.

“Cool.”

That seemed to settle something in both of them.

Not the danger. Not the fear. Just the shape of it.

They finished eating after that.

When there was only one rabbit leg left, Steve held it out.

Ro immediately shook his head. “It’s okay.”

Steve looked at him, brow furrowing.

“I’m not that hungry,” Ro lied.

Steve gave him a flat stare.

Ro tried to hold it… but failed in about half a second.

Steve pushed the rabbit leg closer. “Brother.”

Ro went rosy-cheeked at the nickname and being caught.

His handsome ally’s mouth softened at one corner. “Take it.”

At last, the shadow did. And the second it was in his hands, he devoured it like a tiny feral king who had absolutely, definitely, very much been that hungry all along.

Steve watched him for a second with this sad, helpless little fondness pulling at his face. Then he shook his head and slung an arm around the kid’s small shoulders.

Ro leaned right into him without hesitation, still chewing.

The hut went quiet around them.

Outside, the arena kept breathing. Leaves shifting. Wind rubbing itself along the brush. Far-off life making far-off sounds.

Inside, Steve sat with a little boy tucked under his arm and a whole ugly knot of worry twisting through him anyway — about you, somewhere out there in the woods. About Hannah and Jack, all alone in that cave unless you’d found them. About how many names were still up and how many wouldn’t stay that way for long.

He didn’t say any of it.

Just kept his arm where it was.

He kept Ro close while the kid finished the last of the rabbit.

And for one impossible little pocket of the day, beneath a crooked little dome of branches and camouflage and scavenged mercy… it almost felt like they had made a home out of something that was never meant to hold one.

-> continued in next post... [coming soon]

His mouth… tastes foul. Bitter. Like he swallowed the world’s nastiest penny and let it rot on his tongue overnight. His body feels heavy in a weird way — not injured-heavy exactly, but slept-too-hard heavy. Like every muscle in him got left out in rain and dragged back in before dawn. His cheek is warm where it had been pressed into something lumpy. His neck feels tender. His forearm too. One knee throbs in this low, distant kind of way that tells him whatever happened there was bad enough to matter, but not bad enough to be all he can think about.

His back is warm.

There’s something draped over it.

He turns his head just enough to catch the black of his windbreaker over one shoulder, and that’s weird enough to make him frown a little.

Then he notices the leaves.

There are chewed-up green leaves plastered over his forearm.

More of them at his neck.

And when he shifts his leg carefully, dragging one knee up under himself to look, he sees his cargo pants have already been rolled above the sting there too, the leaf poultice mostly slipped off sometime in the night as he moved in his sleep.

He sits up slowly.

Very slowly…

The whole place around him comes into focus by miserable little degrees.

He’s under some kind of tree shelter. A shallow one. Barely two or three feet above his head even kneeling. Twigs woven into brush. Branches bent down and overlapped. Leaves shoved into every gap where light might’ve betrayed it. It’s not clean. Not fancy. Not even particularly symmetrical. It’s just… well, there. Effective. Tight and close and hidden as all hell. Like some little fairy hut out of one of Dustin’s rambling campaigns. Like a child built a fort in the woods and then got weirdly, terrifyingly good at it.

His backpack is under his chest.

Empty.

Used as a pillow.

That makes Steve’s eyes flick around more sharply now, and that’s when he sees all of his stuff lined up neatly along one curved side of the little hut.

Knife.

Iodine.

Jerky.

Crackers.

Rope.

Wire.

The little box of matches.

Toothbrush.

Toothpaste.

Water bottle.

His bow and quiver.

Everything is arranged in a line so respectful and careful it almost makes his chest pinch. And next to his stuff, in their own neat little gathered piles… are other things.

Tiny speckled eggs.

Berries. Roots. Tubers. Nuts. Wild herbs.

A whole little scavenger spread of arena breakfast.

Steve just kneels there for a second in complete, groggy disbelief. “What the hell,” he whispers hoarsely to nobody.

The sound of his own voice startles him a little. It comes out rough. And dry. Sandpapered by sleep and bug venom and whatever the fuck else his body’s been doing while he’s been dead to the world.

He reaches down and peels the leaf mash off his forearm first.

The skin underneath looks icky. Red, swollen, bruised around the edges. Still a trackerjacker sting, still nasty enough to make him hiss softly through his teeth at the sight of it.

But not nearly as bad as it should be.

Not even close.

That’s what makes his brows lift.

He rubs his thumb lightly around it without touching the center, feels the heat there. The raised welt, like a spider bite that’s still healing.

Better.

Way fucking better.

His fingers go to his neck next — feeling the damp, half-dried mash tucked against the skin there. He can’t see that one, but judging by the way it feels? Same thing. Angry, but healing. Then his knee. That one’s still throbbing, still ugly as hell, but even it looks more manageable than it has any right to after the amount of venom that got pumped into him.

Steve sits back on his heels a little, rubbing both hands over his face.

He remembers flashes.

The nest.

The screaming.

Glimmer.

Jesus Christ — Glimmer...

His stomach drops at the mental image of her body when it all comes back to him. Bloated. Ruined. Swarmed. Dead in a way that no seventeen-year-old girl should ever have to be dead.

He shuts that down fast.

Then comes another memory.

Yours.

Your face, splitting and doubling and tripling in front of him while he sat there out of his goddamn mind before you hauled him to his feet. Both your hands on his shoulders. Your voice, desperate and sharp and furious all at once.

Run, Steve. Run.

His eyes go distant. The whole little hut seems to shrink around that memory. You’d been there. Not with the Careers. Not helping them. Not leading him to slaughter.

You had been there trying to get him the hell out.

And now…? Kneeling in this tiny hidden hideout with his backpack under him and his wounds treated and his supplies all stacked in neat little rows and a whole message spelled out on the ground so he wouldn’t wake up and lose his shit—

Steve feels something twist hard and strange inside his chest.

Because whatever your angle was, it had never been what he thought.

Some sick, jaded, angry part of him wants to keep fighting that. Wants to just keep saying no, there’s another explanation, there has to be. Wants to stay cynical because cynicism’s far easier than feeling grateful to somebody who could still matter this much.

But the evidence is all around him.

And it’s hard to argue with mercy when it has physically kept his ass alive.

“Shit,” he breathes, his hand moving without him thinking.

Instinctive.

Reaching for his right wrist.

Not the left wrist, with Robin’s tattoo.

His right wrist, where—

…wait.

Steve glances down…

Only to find bare skin.

He stiffens instantly, looking around himself, looking for—

But then he sees it.

His olive branch.

It’s now tucked right into the quiver, nestled beside his arrows… like whoever found it understood exactly what it was and decided it should not be lost. That does something vulnerable to his face. Pulls one corner of his mouth up despite himself in this tired, crooked little almost-smile which vanishes just as quickly as it came.

“Unbelievable,” he mutters under his breath.

How many times does a guy have to come within breathing distance of death before the universe just commits? How many near-misses before somebody up there decides — alright, enough of this sad bastard — puts him out of his misery?

The dark thought lands exactly where it always lands now.

Easy. Familiar. Morbid as a shrug.

He doesn’t sit in it long, though, because his mouth tastes like actual roadkill and suddenly that’s the most pressing problem in the world.

So he grabs the toothbrush.

Squeezes out a little toothpaste.

Brushes around his mouth and gums and teeth with all the solemn misery of a man who’s trying not to gag on his own morning breath inside a woodland hobbit grave. Then he unscrews the water bottle and pauses.

It’s full.

Here it comes again.

That soft little quiet punch of being tended to by unknown guardians of fate.

Steve stares at the water bottle for half a second like it personally betrayed him by being decent, then tips some into his mouth and swishes hard, spits into a far corner of the hut, and does it again.

When he’s done, he wipes his mouth with the back of his hand and lets his gaze sweep the hideout again while he drinks from it.

It all feels… deliberate.

Safe in a way the arena has no business being.

…and that’s exactly when he hears something rustle above him.

Steve moves before he thinks.

Bow in hand.

Arrow notched.

Aimed straight upward at the shadow now shifting through the tiny gaps in an opening of brush overhead.

Everything in him goes cold and sharp all at once…

Then a familiar little face appears.

Little enough that Steve’s whole body changes in one staggered beat.

Ro!

The kid freezes halfway through climbing down, his eyes huge, all wiry little limbs and caution and immediate alarm at finding himself now being aimed at by a broadhead arrow before breakfast.

Steve lowers the bow at once. “Hey— hey, man.” His voice comes out rough but warm in a hurry. “S’alright. M’not gonna hurt you.”

He tosses the weapon aside and raises both hands, palms open.

Ro is still hanging there halfway down — one small foot on a jut of root, one hand gripping a branch — staring at Steve like he’s trying to figure out if this is some kind of test.

Steve softens even more.

“You’re all good,” he promises. “I swear.”

Ro blinks. Then he climbs down the rest of the way very carefully, like a cautious little animal approaching a fire it hopes is friendly. Steve watches him land inside the hut and has to fight the bizarre urge to laugh — because Jesus Christ, this kid really did build the place for himself. Standing there now, Ro almost fits it properly. He can hunch. Turn, and move around. Steve, meanwhile, looks like an overgrown golden retriever trying to hide in a rabbit hole.

Ro doesn’t say anything at first.

He just stands there with those giant dark eyes on Steve, little hands folded up near his chest, equal parts shy and wary and weirdly pleased all at once.

Steve clears his throat. “You did all this?”

Ro nods.

Steve looks around again. Then back at him. “The leaves too?”

Another nod.

“And the water bottle?”

Ro nods harder this time.

Something about that makes Steve smile for real. Small, but real. “Okay,” he says quietly. “Well. Thank you.”

Ro’s shoulders ease a tiny bit.

Steve watches him tenderly, then his brow pinches. “How long was I out?"

A beat lands.

Ro glances down at his fingers before shyly peeking up through his lashes… quietly murmuring, in the gentlest little voice, “two days.”

Steve’s brows shoot up, forehead creasing.

Two days?

“Days three and four,” Ro adds timidly. “It’s Day Five now.”

A soft, almost sheepish sigh slips past Steve’s nose. He watches Ro another moment, then glances down at his own lap. Then he glances at his forearm. 

“This stuff worked,” he tells Ro. “Like… really worked.”

Ro lights up so suddenly it’s almost startling.

Not in a loud way.

Just the way little kids do when praise hits them square in the chest and they don’t know where to put it.

“I changed them,” he blurts before he can apparently stop himself, voice soft and quick and a little breathless from finally using it. “A couple times. And—I put more ointment on your burn too but only a little, I promise, and I didn’t eat any of your food or touch any of your stuff—except I had to use two of your matches but that’s just because it’s way faster to cook eggs with a match and I’m sorry about that and—”

“Hey, hey.” Steve’s brows pinch sadly, voice kind. “Slow down.”

Ro clamps his mouth shut at once.

Steve stares at him for a second before he very, very gently asks, “Why are you apologizing?”

Ro looks confused by the question itself. Then guilty. Then both.

“I just… didn’t want you to think I was stealing.”

That hits Steve so hard and stupidly that for a second he doesn’t even know what to do with his face. He looks over at the neat little piles of food. At the lined-up supplies. The full water bottle. The carefully rewrapped olive branch.

Then back at Ro.

“Buddy,” he says, and there’s something almost helpless in his voice now. “I would not have cared if you ate half of it.”

Ro still looks uncertain.

Steve reaches over for the jerky and crackers. “Seriously. C’mere.”

Ro shuffles a little closer on instinct but still stays cautious, cross-legged now on the dirt floor while Steve opens the packet and breaks off a piece.

He offers it.

It takes another moment before Ro slowly takes it with both his hands, like it might disappear if he’s not respectful enough.

Steve hands him a cracker too, then takes one for himself. “There.” He nods toward the little scavenged spread. “Now we’re sharing. No crime committed.”

That gets the tiniest little smile out of Ro.

Steve leans back one shoulder against the side of the hut, gesturing vaguely with his cracker. “So where were you just now?”

Ro’s chewing slows.

He swallows, then says shyly, “Making birdcalls.”

Steve tilts his head. “Birdcalls.”

Ro nods, then reaches for a few seeds from one of his little piles — bringing them between them like this is just part of breakfast now.

“There’re mockingjays,” he explains. “They copy back whatever you sing, like a parrot. So if I do the right four notes and they’re close enough, they’ll carry it to you. Then if you do your four notes back, they’ll carry them to me.”

Steve stills halfway through another bite.

There’s a tiny pause in the hut.

“Me?” he repeats carefully.

Ro blinks. “Well, yes but… no. Not you.”

Then, as if realizing that sounded dumb: “Ren.”

There it is again.

Your name.

But now it’s spoken out loud and now Steve’s whole body goes kind of eerily still around it… Because whatever he’d expected out of waking up in this tiny woodland bunker, it sure as hell wasn’t a nine-year-old very calmly dropping confirmation that you and he apparently have some kind of secret birdcall- communication alliance.

And you’re alive.

“…you and Ren have a signal,” Steve says slowly.

Ro nods.

“…you’re allied.”

Ro nods harder, then he seems to realize this is maybe important information and starts talking faster about how you teamed up with him.

It comes out in pieces at first, shy and a little tangled up.

But Steve is good with kids. That’s the thing. No matter how much this world has hollowed him out, no matter how much venom and violence and grief and trauma have turned everything else inside him into barbed wire, that part still works. So he doesn’t crowd. Doesn’t interrogate.

He just nudges the story along. “When’d that happen?”

“Back at the Capitol.”

“Before the Games?”

“Mm-hm.”

“Who all knew?”

“Me and Wendy Bird and Jack and Hannah. Oh!—and Hopper. Hopper went over the cave part again with Hannah and Jack after.”

Steve blinks. “Wendy Bird?”

Ro says it like it’s obvious. “That’s Ren.”

Oh, so you have another bird-assigned nickname?

That’s the first thing that runs through Steve’s mind until then, because Steve apparently has somehow woken up inside a fever dream run by emotionally intelligent children.

Ro proceeds to explain the whole damn thing, bit by bit, chewing seeds and taking tiny bites of jerky. Talking with his hands sometimes… when the words come easier that way.

You were Wendy Bird.

Steve was Pan the Man.

Ro was a lost boy.

Hannah was a lost girl.

Jack was a lost boy too, even if he acted tougher about it.

And the whole plan had been built around getting the lost ones hidden first. The cave for Hannah and Jack. The signals in the trees. The markings along the stream in case Ro had to go looking. The birdcall. The fallback birdcall. The trail marks. The rule about not panicking if nobody answered back because that probably meant you’d made it safe. The rule about waiting for the sky at night before assuming the worst.

The whole thing laid out in this innocent, devastating little-boy cadence that somehow makes every piece of it hit Steve harder than if Hopper himself had walked in and barked it at him.

Because Ro explains it all like he’s telling Steve how to play a game that he missed the rules to all this time…

And buried inside every part of it is the same awful truth:

You had planned for him.

You had worked all of this out after the interviews.

After he’d lashed out at you backstage. After you went on live television and said the thing he’d least wanted anyone to say. After he made it ugly, after he stormed off and left you standing there.

And somehow, after all of that, you’d still built a strategy that kept not only three kids alive…

…but him too.

Steve sits there, very quiet through most of it, only asking questions when he has to.

“So… Hopper knew all of this?”

Ro nods. “Some of it. Most of it.”

“Hannah and Jack knew the cave part already?”

“Ren told them in the morning. Hopper repeated it later.”

Something about that irks Steve.

The fact that Hopper planned all of this, without ever considering that maybe Steve was capable of planning something too…? Something about that just doesn’t quite sit right yet.

But still. Steve’s far too blown away, too grateful, to let that take precedence.

“And you…?” Steve has to stop and start over. “You knew I was supposed to end up with you?”

Ro shrugs one shoulder. “Not exactly with me. Just… if I found you first, then yeah. Because she didn’t want any of us near the Careers.” 

Steve rubs a hand over his face again.

It is not helping.

Nothing about this is helping. Because Ro is so matter-of-fact about it all. So sweet. So trusting. So completely certain that of course this all makes sense because Wendy Bird said it would!

There’s something brutally unselfconscious in the admiration Ro has for you too. Every time that he says your name, it’s like he’s talking about someone brave and clever and magical and surreal. Someone who made a hard thing sound possible just by explaining it softly enough.

Steve smiles sometimes despite himself.

That’s the worst part.

He can’t even keep the smile off his face, because Ro is so damned earnest about all of it. And apparently? You’d explained the whole alliance through Peter Pan analogies and secret signals and lost boys and hidden places and prioritized how important it was to keep the little ones safe first.

Because apparently it worked.

Because apparently Steve Harrington, bitter bastard of the fucking woods… got kept alive by a plan made by a girl he hurt and a little boy who still looks at him like he hung the moon.

He hates what that does to his chest.

He hates that it isn’t simple.

Ro is talking about the cave now.

About how Hannah and Jack were supposed to stay put no matter what.

About how he’s gone out looking for your signal already.

About how he tried the mockingjay call.

Steve’s eyes go a little glossy around the edges at that. Not enough to show. Just enough to feel it everywhere inside of himself.

“You were out there this morning doing that?” he asks.

Ro nods. “I thought maybe if Wendy Bird— I mean if Ren—”

“If she answered back,” Steve finishes.

Ro nods again. “But she didn’t.”

Steve takes a slow breath, dread beginning to show in his features.

Ro rushes to add, “But that’s probably good. Ren said if I can’t hear her? It might mean she made it back where she needed to go and is staying quiet.”

There’s that faith again.

That calm little child-faith in your competence.

…and God help him, Steve feels himself borrowing from it.

Just for a second.

Just enough to feel relieved that you’re still alive.

He looks down at the half-eaten saltine cracker in his hand and thinks about your beautiful face again. Your voice. Run.

Then he looks back up… and he finds that Ro is now watching him now with all the patience in the world. Like he knows some grown-up silences are just things you have to let happen.

Steve laughs under his breath once, dry and small.

“What,” Ro asks curiously.

Steve shakes his head. “Nothing, man.”

But it isn’t nothing. 

It’s the soul-crushing, inconvenient realization that your angle had been him all along. Not to betray. Not to manipulate. Not to trap. To keep him alive.

And he doesn’t know what the fuck to do with that.

So he doesn’t try to.

Not just yet.

Instead he takes another bite of jerky and helps Ro keep talking.

“So alright then,” Steve says, sly and warm. “What else’ve I missed?”

Ro has gotten less shy now. The words come easier. Quicker. He tells Steve how Hannah nearly cried the first day and didn’t want Jack seeing, so she’d turned away first. How Jack acts tougher than he is but he still gets a wrinkle between his eyebrows when he’s scared. How he himself can climb higher than anybody if he has to. How the cave’s on the opposite side of the arena, and if they go down the stream long enough, they should be able to reach it.

It’s a whole world in here… This tiny hidden ecosystem of children surviving because you gave them a language to survive in.

Steve listens to all of it.

And then, when it’s finally all on the ground between them, when the plan is laid out and the crumbs have been gathered and the children accounted for and the terrible, impossible mercy of it has had time to settle—

Ro goes sly.

It happens so suddenly Steve almost misses it.

One second the kid is earnest as church. The next, there’s this little cat-who-ate-the-canary glint in his eye.

“Is it true about you guys?”

Steve blinks. “What.”

Ro wriggles his eyebrows.

He actually wriggles them.

Then he makes this ridiculous lovey-dovey face and a little kissy shape with his mouth and says, “You and herrrrr?”

Steve chokes a little on absolutely nothing.

It is humiliating how his cheeks go hot immediately. That’s worse. So much worse. He has not blushed like this since puberty kicked down the front door and moved into his awkwardly growing bones. He looks down. Laughs once in this awkward, disbelieving way. Rubs the back of his neck.

Ro is grinning like a little menace now.

And on top of that, Steve knows the cameras are on him.

That’s the slimiest, stupidest part. Even now, even tucked away in this little root-hut, he can feel the awareness of being watched. Of the whole country maybe seeing his ears go pink while a child tries to get gossip out of him like some tiny woodland tabloid reporter.

He could deny it.

Should deny it, probably.

Should say no, kid, don’t be ridiculous.

Except…

Something about that feels wrong.

Maybe because it helped keep everybody alive.

Maybe because Ro believes it with his whole little chest and Steve just can’t bring himself to stomp on that.

Maybe because saying no to anything that has your name wrapped up in it suddenly feels like trying to spit a mouthful of blood onto a grave.

He still can’t bring himself to say yes.

That feels wrong too.

So Steve does what Steve Harrington does best whenever he’s cornered by something soft and dangerous and true: he sidesteps.

He tilts his head, looks back up at Ro through a half-smile that’s still flushed around the edges and drawls, “I think that Wendy Bird’s got enough going on without you running her business for her.”

Ro gasps.

Then he dissolves into the most delighted little snickering fit that Steve’s ever heard in his life — shoulders shaking, hand slapped over his own mouth like that answer was even better than confirmation.

“Oh my God,” Steve mutters, but he’s laughing too now despite himself.

Ro points at him triumphantly. “That means yes!”

“Oh, does it now.”

“It does in my language.”

Steve squints at him playfully. “That sounds like communism.” 

“No it doesn’t.”

“It absolutely does.”

Ro’s still grinning ear to ear, looking like he’s about to explode from knowing a secret. “Jack has a crush on Hannah, too.”

The pivot is so sudden Steve almost gets emotional whiplash from it.

“What?”

Ro leans in. “He does.”

Steve stares — lips parted, already smirking. “No way.”

“Way.”

“Whaaaat?” Steve pretends to gasp, jutting his chin. “How do you know.”

“Because he told me.”

Steve lets out a long exaggerated breath. “Well. Sheeeeyit.”

That earns a little giggle from Ro as he snacks on another cracker.

Steve just shakes his head, smirking warmly. “Jack told you, huh?”

Ro nods very solemnly now, as if delivering battlefield intelligence even while he smiles. “He started liking her on picture day.”

“Picture day?”

“At the Capitol. In the pink dress.”

Steve actually grins at that. Full grin this time. “Damn. Kid’s got taste.”

Ro giggles.

“And Hannah likes him back?”

Ro lowers his voice like this is serious. “I think so.”

“You think so?”

“She looks at him kinda weird.”

Steve nods like a detective cracking the case. “Got it. Very damning.”

“And Hannah likes you,” Ro adds helpfully.

Steve adorably snorts. “Buddy, that is not the same thing.”

“No, I know. She likes you like Tigerlily likes Pan.”

“Oh good,” Steve chuckles.

“And Jack likes her like…” Ro trails off, then makes another kissy face.

Steve actually laughs out loud now.

It feels rusty. Strange. Good in a way that nearly makes him angry. Because all at once he’s sitting in a dirt hut in the arena swapping little kid gossip with a boy who should not be here at all… and every piece of this pure innocence makes him want to tear the whole goddamn sky down with his bare hands.

He cannot let that show.

Not now.

Not to Ro.

So he leans into it instead.

“Alright,” he drawls, nodding gravely. “Well. That is huge news. We’ll have to handle that very delicately.”

Ro brightens all over again. “Yeah.”

“Can’t have any heartbreak in the lost-kid division.”

“Nope.”

“Too much paperwork.”

Ro laughs so hard at that, he almost falls sideways.

Steve watches him with this secret, aching kind of fondness that hurts worse because of how easy it feels to let it completely take over.

Then his eyes drift.

To the little piles of gathered food.

The roots.

The eggshells.

The berries.

The signs that this child has been surviving in the wild on scavenged scraps while Steve lay on his stomach drooling into a backpack like Sleeping Beauty with a concussion.

The fondness in his face changes shape.

Gets sharper.

More resolved.

He looks at the bow. Then at Ro. Then back at the little scavenged breakfast and the shelter and the whole careful setup of it all.

“Tell you what,” Steve says.

Ro looks up.

Steve shifts, settling more squarely on his knees, and holds out his hand like this is a business deal being struck in a boardroom instead of a dirt den held together by sticks and divine intervention.

“You show me the ropes,” he says. “Teach me which plants won’t kill us while we go looking for the others. I’ll teach you how to hunt. Show you how to set snares. We’ll catch us something decent to eat.”

He lets the grin come back, crooked and warm and very himself.

“How’s that sound, ally?”

Ro’s whole face transforms.

It isn’t just happiness.

It’s this huge, glowing, can’t-believe-his-luck kind of joy that makes him look even younger than he is.

He reaches out at once and grabs Steve’s hand in a very serious shake.

“Deal,” he says.

And there they are.

One big, bruised, freshly reawakened golden boy. One tiny lost boy with dirt on his knees and night-watch courage in his bones and enough bravery for his entire alliance.

Shaking on it in the dark little heart of the arena, while danger still prowls just outside and the morning keeps climbing toward whatever horror comes next.

For now, though, the hut holds.

For now, the breath inside it is warm.

For now, Peter Pan and his shadow have found each other.

And when their hands part, they’re both still grinning.

By the time that the sun had properly hauled itself up over the arena, it still looked tired. No gold. No real warmth. Just a pale, overcast kind of morning that made the whole place feel bluer than it ought to be, as if even the sky had woken up sore. The woods wore it well. Everything looked damp without actually being wet. Bark darkened in broad streaks. Leaves held shadows in their veins. 

The little hidden world that Ro had built beneath roots and woven branches stayed tucked in its own cool hush, safe from sight and softened by the kind of gloom that made daylight feel less exposing.

It had been barely an hour since Steve woke up.

Barely three hours since he’d found the colorful little message for him spelled out in leaves and flowers onto the earth — U R SAFE — and felt something deep in his chest go strange and quiet.

Now he and Ro were out in the woods together.

Not far enough from the little hut to lose their bearings. Not stupid-far. Steve would rather eat bark and die than wander off without a plan now after finally finding the one corner of this hellhole that didn’t feel like a loaded machine gun pointed at his mouth. But still far enough to work. Far enough to use the trees. Far enough that if he and Ro did what they were doing right, any game would have no clue they were there until it was too late.

And what they were doing right now was moving.

Quietly.

Ro led as often as Steve did… which was maybe the first thing that really got under Steve’s skin in the best possible way.

Not because the kid was bossy. He wasn’t.

Because he was good.

Little freakishly good.

There was no other word for it. Ro moved like the forest made him itself and forgot to tell anybody. He hardly bent a twig wrong. Hardly shifted a fern. Half the time Steve had to keep his eyes glued on him just to make sure he didn’t lose the kid completely to the shadows. One second he’d be there, small frame slipping between two trunks with that little knapsack over one shoulder and the water skin bouncing softly at his side, and the next he’d be three feet farther ahead with barely a sound to show for it.

On top of that, he’d made himself a slingshot.

A real one.

Not some half-assed kid toy either. It was a genuinely decent little makeshift slingshot… built from a sturdy forked branch and some elastic from his pack, tucked against his side like he’d been carrying it all his life. Every time Steve looked at it, something in him snagged.

Because it reminds him of back home.

Of the little boy whose name he unknowingly called Ro while hallucinating.

Lucas Sinclair.

The parallels hit him every goddamn time... Lucas with his bandana and his stubborn little face and his slingshot held like it was Excalibur. Lucas, who’d mouth off first and think about the consequences later. Lucas, who would absolutely call this whole setup “sick as hell” — before immediately asking a thousand questions and wanting a turn.

Steve swallowed hard and kept moving.

He didn’t say any of that out loud.

Didn’t need to.

A lot of whatever this was with Ro happened without much talking. A glance. A hand signal. Steve touching two fingers to his own chest then pointing left. Ro nodding and drifting that direction like smoke. Steve raising one hand flat whenever he heard something in the underbrush. Ro going instantly still. Not scared-still. Listening-still.

It should have felt ridiculous, being this locked in with a nine-year-old inside a death arena where the game makers would probably cream their pants at the sight of the two of them playing wilderness scout troop together.

Instead it felt…

Good.

That was the fucked-up part.

It felt so goddamn good.

Not normal. Nothing about this was normal. But lighter, somehow. Less like he was dragging his own carcass through the woods by the teeth and more like there was… actually another pulse beside him now. Another heartbeat. Another person who wasn’t trying to kill him or leave him or force him into the one-man-against-the-world mode, including himself… because that’s always been his default since surviving the Purge night.

Lone wolf, Harrington.

That had become the whole bit.

But now? Now there was this tiny ghost-boy beside him, floating through the trees with a slingshot and an earnest little face and all the patience in the world, and Steve couldn’t even pretend he didn’t feel fuller for it.

Every now and then he’d glance down and ask, quietly, “You good?”

And every single time Ro would just nod.

Not with bravado, not trying to prove anything. Just simple confirmation.

He was good.

Once, after maybe the fourth time Steve asked — Ro even looked up at him like he was very politely trying not to laugh.

Steve squinted at him. “What.”

Ro shrugged, mouth twitching. “You keep askin’.”

“Yeah,” Steve muttered. “Well. You’re little.”

Ro’s eyes widened in theatrical offense. “I know that.”

That got a soft snort out of Steve before he shook his head and kept moving.

A while later, when the forest floor got nastier underfoot — roots buckling up like old knuckles, bramble patches creeping too close, the earth uneven in that ankle-breaking way — it became easier to just lift Ro onto his back for longer stretches.

The first time Steve did it, he crouched a little and jerked his chin over one shoulder.

“C’mon.”

Ro blinked. “What?”

Steve gave him a look. “Don’t make this a whole thing.”

Ro did not, in fact, make it a whole thing.

He just climbed right up, all light little limbs and careful hands — settling on, piggyback, all while Steve hooked an arm under his knees and rose back up. Easy. Way easier than it should’ve been. Ro barely weighed anything, which wasn’t exactly comforting because it reminded Steve a little too hard that this kid was supposed to still be losing baby teeth somewhere safer, not crossing through a murder forest on another kid’s back.

But even so, they made due.

Ro fit there like he belonged.

And once he was up, he’d lean in close and point sometimes.

A tap on Steve’s shoulder. A finger to the right. A whisper barely shaped by breath.

“There.”

The squirrel had been Ro’s find.

Steve froze when the little finger tapped his shoulder, followed the direction of the point… then saw the flicker of gray-brown fur on a low branch ahead. Small thing. Twitchy. Alert. Head ducked forward while it gnawed something invisible between its paws.

Steve shifted slowly, careful as sin, and lowered Ro to the ground.

Ro stayed glued to his side. And he watched Steve set one hand lightly over the back of his neck — not holding him down, just keeping him close and still — then reached for the bow over his shoulder.

The woods seemed to take one long breath.

Steve notched the arrow.

Pulled.

Released.

The whir of it cut the hush clean in two.

The squirrel dropped like a stone.

Ro’s whole face changed.

Not with horror, although not with delight either. Just this solemn, awestruck kind of stillness as he looked from where the squirrel had fallen to Steve and back again.

Steve went to collect it without saying much.

When he came back with the limp little body in his hand, Ro looked at it and then up at him.

“That was really fast,” he whispered.

Steve’s mouth twitched. “That’s the idea.”

Ro nodded like he was filing that away under very important information.

Later, one of the snares paid off.

That feat took longer.

Steve had spent a chunk of the morning showing Ro how to set them right. Where the ground told on itself. How trails looked if you actually knew what you were seeing. The difference between random brush movement and a path used often enough to matter. How to find all of the narrow places where rabbits liked to cut through because it saved them time and made them feel hidden even when they weren’t.

He’d shown Ro how to bend a young branch without snapping it. How to tie the loop clean. How to make the wire look like nothing at all.

Ro watched every second of it like the lesson was scripture.

Then he’d tried one himself.

Hands small but steady. Brow pinched. Tongue barely tucked into one cheek with concentration so fierce Steve almost laughed. The kid’s first loop came out a little crooked. Steve adjusted it with two fingers and a quiet, “Here—like this,” and Ro immediately corrected the next one better.

By the time they’d circled back to check them, Ro spotted the caught rabbit before Steve did.

He froze, little hand snapping out to grip Steve’s windbreaker sleeve.

Steve looked down automatically at the tiny fist hooked into the fabric. Then followed Ro’s gaze and saw the rabbit hanging there… kicking weakly in the snare, the branch bent high with tension above it.

Ro didn’t say anything.

Neither did Steve for a moment.

Then he murmured, “Good eye.”

Ro swallowed and nodded once.

Together they approached it.

Together they made it quick.

After that, Steve made the call to prep and cook away from the hut.

No debate.

No risking the smell.

No risking the sightline.

No leaving a pretty little trail of smoke curling up anywhere near the place Ro had built for them.

So they carried the squirrel and rabbit farther out — still careful, still under cover — until Steve found a tucked-in little patch between three big boulders and a fallen trunk where they could work fast and kill any trace faster.

That was when he tried, as casually as possible… to spare Ro.

He set both of their kills down and reached for the knife at his belt. “You can stand lookout for me if you want.”

Ro looked up at him.

Steve kept his tone as even as he could. “I can handle this part.”

Ro’s gentle eyes dropped briefly to the rabbit, then the squirrel…then back to Steve’s face. “I know.”

Steve waited.

Ro shifted his feet once. “But… I should learn it.”

Steve’s brows drew together.

“If I’m gonna learn how to hunt proper,” Ro kept going, sweet and brave all at once, “then I gotta know this part too, right?”

That hit harder than it should have.

Steve looked at him for a long second. The easy out would’ve been to say no or to play rank. To tell the kid he was too young or too small or too whatever and leave it there.

But that would’ve been bullshit.

And worse…? Ro would know it.

So Steve crouched instead, knife in hand, letting out a somber sigh through his nose. “Alright,” he said finally. “But you stay right here by me—and if you feel weird about any of it? You say so. No proving shit to me, cool?”

Ro nodded immediately. “Cool.”

Steve pointed the knife at the dead game. “And this is gonna be ugly.”

Ro’s mouth went small. “Okay.”

“It’s gonna smell bad too.”

“Okay.”

Steve glanced at him again. “You don’t have to be tough about it.”

Ro blinked. “I’m not.”

That one got him.

Steve huffed a quiet laugh, shook his head, and got to work.

He didn’t pretty it up.

Didn’t use baby words, or act like it was anything but what it was.

He showed Ro where to cut first. How to hold the body steady. How the hide needed easing more than sawing. How to separate the flesh from fur without ruining the meat if you could help it. He explained what to save time on and what not to rush unless you wanted to make a big mess of the whole damn thing.

All the while Ro watched.

Not green. Not gagging. Not flinching like he was watching gore. But his kind eyes did go glossy once or twice. So did Steve’s, honestly… because killing and cleaning innocent things for food never actually stopped feeling ugly, no matter how used to it he got. But Ro never pretended he liked it, and Steve never pretended he did either.

That maybe made it easier.

By the time they were skinning the rabbit, Ro asked questions.

Quiet ones.

“Why do you pull it like that?”

“So it doesn’t tear weird,” Steve answered softly.

Ro pointed. “This part good?”

“Yeah,” Steve smirked. “Good eye.”

Another little point from his shadow. “What about that?”

“Don’t nick that unless you want a smell you’ll never forgive.”

Ro made a face.

Steve snorted. “Exactly.”

The squirrel went faster.

The rabbit took longer.

Then came the fire.

That part somehow felt worse than the skinning. Maybe because fire meant smell. Meat meant reality. Hunger meant there wasn’t even room left for guilt that stayed clean and theoretical.

Ro used one of the matches before Steve could stop him. He struck it fast, brought it down to the little nest of dry material they’d built, then winced at Steve like he’d just committed a federal crime.

“Sorry,” he whispered immediately. “I meant to ask.”

Steve stared at him.

Ro held the still-burning match in his fingers like he expected to be scolded.

“You apologized,” Steve said.

Ro blinked. “Uh-huh.”

“For using one match?”

Ro looked wary now. “Supplies matter.”

“They do.”

“I just—”

Steve held up a hand. “No, hang on... I’m still processing the fact that you apologized for one match while I was fully about to use one anyway.”

Ro’s face went pink.

And because this whole situation was apparently insane from every possible angle, Steve had to bite back a grin.

“Buddy,” he muttered warmly, “you can use a match.”

Ro seemed to deflate with relief.

“Okay.”

“Within reason,” Steve said mock-seriously.

Ro’s face went serious again too. “For sure.”

Steve fully grinned now. “I’m seriously messing with you.”

That finally earned a sheepish little sniff-laugh from Ro, who still stared up at Steve like he absolutely hung the entire galaxy.

They both cooked the meat carefully. Nothing fancy. Just enough. Turning it. Watching it. Letting the fire do its job, hating the smell less… once it changed from raw to cooked and edible.

Ro asked more questions there too.

How did you know it’s done? Would it make you sick if it wasn’t? Could you eat it burnt? Why did the rabbit smell different than the squirrel? How many squirrels would it take to make someone full?

…that last one made Steve pause.

He looked over.

Ro was asking it honestly.

Steve stared at the little strip of rabbit in his hand for a second, trying not to laugh at that inquiry, then back to the fire. “Depends who,” he finally answers with a sweetly amused glint in his eye.

Ro took that answer and sat with it.

When the meat was ready to go, Steve had them line the outer pouch of his backpack with broad leaves they gathered nearby — creating a makeshift buffer of sorts so that the meat wouldn’t just slime up the inside like a horror movie lunchbox.

His ally helped with that too.

Holding leaves. Passing them over. Packing the cooked cuts carefully. Watching Steve redistribute the rest of his supplies deeper into the bigger, main pouch of his backpack.

The whole thing felt absurdly domestic.

Well, arena domestic, which meant every two minutes Steve had to stop and listen. And twice? He heard enough to make his whole body change.

It happened fast.

One second he’d be tying off a leaf bundle or crouching over the little dead fire pit, the next he’d go still as a blade and turn, bow in hand, arrow notched low but ready.

Ro never questioned it.

He just moved closer.

The second time, he ended up almost pressed to Steve’s side… his little fist caught in the sleeve of the windbreaker again while Steve scanned the trees with his jaw set and eyes sharp as broken glass.

Nothing came of it.

Some rustle. Some branch complaint. Some small movement in the underbrush that turned out to be nothing worth killing over.

Even so, Steve didn’t lower the bow until he was sure.

Ro stayed close until he did.

Something about that — something about the total trust of it… felt almost too big to look at directly. So Steve didn’t. He just touched the back of Ro’s head once, brief as a blink, and murmured, “We’re good,” before returning to their journey back to basecamp.

Later they hit the stream.

Ro led, of course.

He knew the way. He didn’t hesitate once, slipping through the woods with the confidence of somebody who’d already mapped out half the arena in his head and then asked it politely to make room. Steve fondly followed with the backpack over one shoulder, quiver of arrows over the other, knife at his hip, and watched the kid work while he held the bow at his side.

At the stream, Ro knelt first and refilled the water skin while Steve filled his water bottle. They drank. Steve splashed his face once and pushed back his damp hair — blinking the grit from his lashes. Ro watched like this somehow counted as strategy too.

“We’ll wash up properly tomorrow,” he said quietly, washing off his arms. “In the morning. See if the sun comes back out, lets us wash and dry our clothes too. Out on some rocks or tree limbs.”

Ro nodded, shaking his shoes and socks free of dirt before beginning to slip them back over his newly cleaned feet. “Okay, yeah.”

Steve smirked warmly. “C’mere.”

He was gesturing for Ro’s foot.

He curiously gave it, tilting his head.

Then his eyes went round with shyness and gratitude alike as Steve tugged up the hem of his t-shirt and carefully dried off both Ro’s wet little feet with it.

Ro swallowed, peeking up at him through his lashes.

“Thanks,” he breathed.

Steve winked, slipping his sock back on. “Got you, brother.”

That made Ro adorably beam to himself.

Brother?

Did Steve really consider him a brother?

At last, the two of them stood back up after washing off enough.

Then they headed back.

And coming back to the hut with daylight still on it (even dim daylight, flat and overcast) made Steve appreciate all over again…just how batshit impressive the whole thing was.

Ro had to actually point it out.

“It’s there,” he gestured.

Steve stood there squinting at what looked like nothing but root cluster and brush pile and muttered, “Jesus Christ.”

Ro beamed a little. “Good, right?”

Steve gave him a look. “Good? Brilliant. And creepy. But in a useful way.”

That got the tiniest laugh out of Ro.

“Best kind, then.”

Steve snorted and ducked low to crawl inside.

Once they were in, the little place somehow already felt more like theirs than it had that morning. Not… safe exactly. That word still came with conditions. But lived in. Claimed. Shared. The arranged supplies. The scavenged food. The sleeping bag. The bow propped again. The little message on the ground now kicked just slightly out of its originally perfect shape from Steve moving around earlier…

U R SAFE

He tried not to look at it too long.

Tried and failed.

They ate there. Quietly, at first. For a few minutes, it was just the sound of chewing, little breaths in between, the occasional brush of fabric when one of them shifted. The cooked rabbit tasted like survival and not much else. The squirrel was gamier. Ro liked both, pretending not to be absolutely starving until Steve noticed the way he kept eyeing the pieces before taking them.

So Steve quietly made sure the better portions kept ending up closer to Ro’s side.

Ro started noticing that too, but he didn’t comment. He just looked at Steve once with those big dark eyes and then down again, like he was storing the moment somewhere private and enormous.

It was somewhere in the middle of eating that Steve finally asked, “Who’s still up.”

Ro licked a bit of grease from his thumb and answered immediately, because of course he knew. “Thresh,” he said first. “Tommy and Carol. Marvel. Jack and Hannah. Foxface. Syl.” Then he looked at Steve, adding with shy matter -of-factness, “You. Me. Wendy Bird.”

Steve’s mouth twitched.

“Wendy Bird.”

Ro nodded. “That’s Ren.”

“I gathered.”

“She’s the Wendy Bird,” Ro grinned. “Because you’re Pan.”

Steve smiled and shook his head like he was exhausted by the whole world and not secretly a little wrecked by it. “Cool.”

“She’s suuuuper pretty,” Ro quietly sang, all sly and cheeky.

That earned the cheekiest little eye roll in return from Steve, who didn’t even bother trying to wipe that smile off his face now. Maybe because it was real.

“Yeah,” he agreed softly, nodding down at his squirrel meat. “She really is.”

Ro gladly accepted that.

Then, while picking a tiny seed from a fold in his knapsack and popping it in his mouth, he got to mentioning the cornucopia.

At first it was just bits.

The Careers waking up. Syl getting caught trying to steal. Tommy and Marvel dragging her out… …not killing her.

Steve’s brows rose a little at that. “They didn’t kill her?”

Ro shook his head. “Nope. Made her stay.”

“…stay.”

“Guard.”

Steve sat back slightly, one knee drawn up, a strip of rabbit gone forgotten in his hand. “They made her their bodyguard?”

Ro shrugged. “Kinda.”

And then he explained it as only Ro could.

The pacing. The shouting. The spear at Syl’s throat. Tommy stalking around all mean and snarly like he owned the sun. Marvel standing there like some big dumb scary statue with eyebrows. Syl freaking out and then not freaking out and then definitely freaking out again. Them pointing at stuff around the cornucopia like they were giving her the world’s worst tour. Handing her an apple. Untying her wrists. Giving her the riot act.

Steve listened to all of it with this increasingly crooked expression of his that hovered somewhere between disbelief and dark amusement.

“So now she’s just…” He gestured vaguely. “What. Their unpaid employee?”

Ro chewed thoughtfully. “Basically. They pay her in apples.”

“That sucks.”

Ro nodded. “Yeah.” Then, after a second: “She’s kinda mean, though.”

Steve looked over at him.

Ro shrugged. “Only nice to the little kids.”

That made Steve pause.

“Huh.”

“Well… some. She wasn’t mean to Hannah,” Ro clarified. “Just…didn’t talk to her. She grew up with brothers, so she kinda brushed her off.” He glanced at the pieces of meat still free, sighing quietly. “And Jack hated that.”

Something about the seriousness with which he said that almost got Steve.

He bit the inside of his cheek instead. “Got it,” he said. “Jack held a grudge. And a good one at that.”

Ro nodded solemnly. “Mhm.”

Honestly? That was enough for Steve.

Not because he wanted to write Syl off as expendable or anything noble and clean. Mostly because he already had too many people lodged under his ribs in this arena and the thought of adding one more half-unhinged girl from Five to the list made him want to chew glass.

Ro kept going.

The landmines. The squirrel. The boom.

That part made Steve’s whole face change.

“They planted mines…?”

“All around,” Ro confirmed, eyes widening again just at the memory while he recounted it. “They made Syl memorize all of them.”

Steve blinked, processing all of that.

Then Ro slyly grinned around his next bite. “We should set them all off, make them all go ka-boom.”

That one got a bark of dark laughter out of Steve before he could stop it.

It startled them both a little.

Ro immediately smiled bigger.

Steve scrubbed a hand over his face and muttered, “Not a bad idea.”

They grinned around their food.

And then the mood shifted a little.

A sound came from outside — not super close, not huge, just enough. Some odd scrape or far-off animal call made both of them go still.

Ro edged closer without thinking.

Steve automatically opened one hand for him.

His shadow took it, shuffling closer as Steve held his small hand between both of his palms while listening, bow within reach — shoulders going hard and alert for one long stretch before the woods settled again.

That was when Ro brought up the monster.

“There was somethin’ out there last night…”

Steve turned fully toward him.

Ro swallowed.

“…what do you mean?” Steve asked, voice low, already dreading this.

Ro sighed through his nose, shuffling just a few inches closer. 

And then he described it.

Not well at first, because how the hell do you describe something you never physically saw and just barely survived hearing? So he started with sounds. Wet sounds. Dragging sounds. The kind of noises that made all of the leaves shake when it circled the hut. The scream that had made him hide his face in Steve’s back. The way he’d stayed still. The way it had been right outside.

Steve listened without interrupting.

That was maybe the scariest part of all…how little he moved while Ro talked, how his stillness got sharper and sharper until it was practically a weapon of guilt towards himself.

Inside, something in him went cold. Because this kid had clung to his back in the dark while some unknown thing circled them all night…and Steve had been dead to the world. Useless. Out cold. No help at all.

He did his best to keep all that off his face by force.

And when Ro finished recounting everything, he just sat there staring at the dirt between them for one beat too long.

“Hey,” Steve said quietly.

Ro’s eyes flicked up to his.

“You don’t gotta worry about that alone anymore.”

Ro didn’t say anything.

Steve squeezed his little hand once between both his big palms. “Whatever bullshit they throw at us in here? Whatever monsters or mutts or freakshow nightmare fuel they cook up next—we deal with it together now. Alright?”

Ro’s whole face softened with something almost painful in how pure it was.

He nodded hard. “Alright.”

Steve smiled a little then. Realer than before.

“Cool.”

That seemed to settle something in both of them.

Not the danger. Not the fear. Just the shape of it.

They finished eating after that.

When there was only one rabbit leg left, Steve held it out.

Ro immediately shook his head. “It’s okay.”

Steve looked at him, brow furrowing.

“I’m not that hungry,” Ro lied.

Steve gave him a flat stare.

Ro tried to hold it… but failed in about half a second.

Steve pushed the rabbit leg closer. “Brother.”

Ro went rosy-cheeked at the nickname and being caught.

His handsome ally’s mouth softened at one corner. “Take it.”

At last, the shadow did. And the second it was in his hands, he devoured it like a tiny feral king who had absolutely, definitely, very much been that hungry all along.

Steve watched him for a second with this sad, helpless little fondness pulling at his face. Then he shook his head and slung an arm around the kid’s small shoulders.

Ro leaned right into him without hesitation, still chewing.

The hut went quiet around them.

Outside, the arena kept breathing. Leaves shifting. Wind rubbing itself along the brush. Far-off life making far-off sounds.

Inside, Steve sat with a little boy tucked under his arm and a whole ugly knot of worry twisting through him anyway — about you, somewhere out there in the woods. About Hannah and Jack, all alone in that cave unless you’d found them. About how many names were still up and how many wouldn’t stay that way for long.

He didn’t say any of it.

Just kept his arm where it was.

He kept Ro close while the kid finished the last of the rabbit.

And for one impossible little pocket of the day, beneath a crooked little dome of branches and camouflage and scavenged mercy… it almost felt like they had made a home out of something that was never meant to hold one.

-> continued in next post... [coming soon]

The big door of the garage is rolled up, letting in the afternoon light. Eddie's got a rag thrown over his shoulder as he crouches in front of a tattered cardboard box that looks like it hadn't been opened since before each of the girls were born. His hair's tied back loosely in one of your hair ties, greying at the temples. 

Alice is sitting on the steps by the door into the house, leaning back on the palms of her hands. Roan walks back and forth slowly, kicking a loose bolt on the cracked concrete every time she passes. "This is insane, dad." Alice sighs, leaning her head back on her shoulders to stare at the ceiling above her. "You know that, right?"

Eddie shuffles around, grunts when he stands, and moves the box to another area of the garage. "Enlighten me." 

"You're famous!" She says, exasperated as she sits back up straight. She’s sure that one little detail should end this conversation right there. "You're rich! You could hire someone to do this." 

Roan nods, agreeing with her sister as she kicks at the bolt again, watching it bounce out of her vicinity this time. "Yeah, dad. This is a job for like… some guy named Gary. Not us." 

Eddie glances at them, raising his brows as he tries to find exactly where the audacity is coming from. This was just a regular Saturday in April back at Gareth’s for him, when Mrs. Mara Emerson would bribe them into a month’s worth of cleaning with the promise of their favorite burgers and a pineapple upside down cake. "Gary?"

"Yeah." Roan shrugs.

Eddie leans back against your car, crossing his arms over his chest. "That's pretty specific for two teenage girls who get anything and everything they could ever dream of." He shakes his head, "and also offensive to the many hardworking non-Gary's out there." 

Alice groans, loudly, in response, "daaaad."

"What?" He frowns and dips his head, throwing his hands up, palms to them. "Maybe I like cleaning my own garage."

"You don't." Roan challenges.

"You don't know me." Eddie chuckles and shakes his head, pushing off the car to move towards another stack of soft and worn cardboard boxes. "I’ve been gone for two months. Maybe I want to spend some time with my kids, whom I love and cherish and wish that I could see more. Ever think of that?"

Alice snorts, pushing herself off the stairs and then lowering herself down in front of the built-in shelving until she can reach the bottom shelves. "Spending time with us? Or getting free child labor?"

Eddie rolls his eyes, sorting through a bit of knick knacks, "You're welcome for the time you get to spend with your old man." 

Alice shakes her head, running her hands along the bottom shelf until she comes across a little blue tin. She pulls it out, confused, "I didn't know mom had sewing stuff." She shakes the tin, it doens't rattle in the way needles and thread would rattle. She looks at Roan.

Roan drops down beside her. "Open it." 

"Don't open it. Your mom doesn't sew for fun. It's probably some of her doll shit." He says automatically, not looking towards them. "And if it's something spooky she picked up from a yard sale, I really don't have time for that today."

Alice rolls her eyes and pops the lid on the tin despite the judgement. 

Roan tries to look over her shoulder, "what is it?"

"Pictures." Alice says and shrugs, reaching in to pull out a small bundle. The edges are worn and yellowing. She looks at the photo on the top of the stack. There's a red mustang in the background— much like her dad's that’s tucked away under a tarp in the second opening of their two car garage— the sun glaring off the windshield. There's a woman leaning against it with a little boy on her hip. She's wearing sunglasses, her hair dark brown and wild, just like her own. "Dad?" Alice glances over her shoulder at him. 

Eddie turns his head to look at her for a moment, before turning his attention back to the box, distracted. "Yeah?"

She holds up the photo, staying quiet. Quiet enough that it gets him to look up again. He squints and steps a bit closer. "Let me see that." He says softly, holding his hand out. Alice hands it over quietly. When his eyes fall over the photo, something in his face softens. His thumb brushes over the worn in edges of the photograph and he chuckles, almost to himself. The girls watch him quiet and curious. "Girls… That is my mom." He says softly, pointing to the woman. His smile is so kind, the girls aren’t sure if they’ve ever seen him look like that before. Then he points to the kid in her arms, "and that's me." 

Roan leans in, letting her eyes scan over the photo face. "You were pretty tiny."

"I was adorable once. Hard to believe, I know." He jokes softly.

Alice glances away from the photo and into the tin again, holding it up between them. "There's more in here."

Eddie glances down at it, "yeah?"

She nods and starts pulling photos out one by one. One's his mom, sitting on the hood of that same mustang in denim shorts. There's another one of her at a kitchen table somewhere with a man that looks a whole lot like Grandpa Wayne. His arm is slung around her shoulders and she has a lit cigarette between her fingers. In the final one they look at, she's holding who the girls decide is, Eddie, as a baby. He's cradled to her chest and she's looking at him like he was the best love she had ever felt in her life. 

Roan smiles at that one, taking it gently from her sister. "She's pretty." 

Eddie huffs out a breath that turns into another smile, nodding, "She is."

Alice looks at the photo, pinning down the kind brown eyes, dimples, and dark curls. The way she smiles, the same lines and dimples. "She looks like you."

Eddie laughs and shakes his head a little. "Other way around, kid."

Roan traces the edges of the photo in her hand as Eddie continues to peek through the stack. She bites the inside of her cheek and looks at her dad. "Why haven't we seen these before?"

Eddie leans his hip against the workbench along the back wall, not looking up from the photos in his hands. "Didn't know where they were." He says softly. "Thought I lost most of 'em when I moved out of Grandpa Wayne's before you girls were born, if I'm being honest."

Roan and Alice exchange a look, he hadn’t seen pictures of his mom in that long? “How did she die?" Roan asks softly.

"She got pretty sick." Eddie says quietly and leaves it at that.

Roan nods a little, looking at the pictures again. Her heart stinging for her dad's younger self. She knew her grandmother had been gone for a long time. But she couldn't imagine life without you, her mom, and she's 14. "How old were you?" She asks.

Eddie glances over where his own red mustang sits under the white canvas, "six."

Alice sucks in a breath and starts to stack the photos back up to place back into the tin. "That sucks."

It's blunt and honest, but Eddie nods. Laughing lightly at the way it’s said, as he shrugs. "Yeah, It did suck. Just a bit."

From inside, the three of them hear your voice call out the door for dinner. So Alice scoops the photos Eddie isnt holding back into the tin, carefully, and tucks it under her arm. She smiles at Roan, nodding her head towards the door to give signal to her to let Eddie have a minute. They make their way inside and the door swings shut behind them. Eddie sighs softly.

He pushes himself off the workbench and pins the photo of him and his mom in front of her car onto the board hanging on the wall, right next to a picture of you and him at his first big Corroded Coffin show, Alice's first day of kindergarten, and one of Roan covered in spaghetti from head to toe. All his favorite girls in one place.

He looks around, giving the garage one last once over, before walking into the kitchen. Cleaning this up can wait until Gareth’s free and until he can bribe his wonderful wife into making a pineapple upside down cake almost like Mrs. Emerson’s. He smiles at the family waiting for him at the table, the blue tin of photos sitting on the counter, waiting for him to comb through when the time is right.