girls, will you please take the wheel?

Since moving to Hawkins that July, most of your summer went this way. Your mom already made friends with the other housewives in the neighborhood and dad worked all day at the plant. They left you with a nanny, a nice lady named Marie, but she didn’t care to play with you very much, just make you food and get you ready when your mom alerted her of places you needed to be at — like this one.

You hadn’t gotten to know any of the kids you’d be going to school with, let alone any other children in the neighborhood. In fact, Steve Harrington may have been the first person your age you’d seen in a month.

Steve’s parents acted like yours did. They puffed out their chests and laughed too nasally and drank too much wine. You watched Steve from across the dinner table, eyes slightly squinted, as if you were trying to tell if he was some sort of robot made by adults to make you feel less lonely. Steve was too busy kicking his feet out from under him and stuffing bread in his mouth to notice. Your mom wasn’t.

“Teresa, did you introduce these two?” your mom asked, taking a long sip from her wine glass. Teresa, you assume, was Steve’s mom, who somehow had bigger hair than your mom and a lot of perfume on. She blinked, then plastered a wide grin on. 

“How silly of me!” she exclaimed, and you suddenly felt uncomfortably small beneath her gaze. “Sweetheart, this is my son, Steven Harrington. You two will be at Hawkins Elementary together in the fall. You should get to know each other!”

That’s the only introduction you got before Teresa turned her back to you and Steve, immersing herself back into whatever discussion she’d been having prior.

You sighed heavily and reached forward to pluck a roll out of the bread basket. 

“You get used to it eventually,” The boy in front of you said, making you look up. Your eyes rounded, and he made a vague gesture at the room. “This whole thing. It’s not as bad when you get used to it.”

When he smiled at you, you can’t tell if it’s a genuine one, and you don’t know if you’ve ever seen a little boy look so sad before.

October 1981

The first time you hang out with Steve one-on-one is when you’re 14 years old. 

At first, you think it’s a prank. Over the summer, Steve must have gone through puberty, because he came back to school much taller, with better styled hair, and a deeper voice. You didn’t see him because your parents sent you to an all-girls sleepaway camp, which was a sort-of improvement from accompanying them to country club soirees. 

He also started hanging out with Tommy Hagan, who’s kind of a dick, and you don’t quite understand how they’re friends because Steve’s a nice guy. He’s always been really kind to you, even if you’re not the closest of friends. But that’s why you think the note slipped into your locker is some kind of cruel joke, because there’s no way Steve wants to hang out with you outside of school, tonight.

You quickly crumple up the looseleaf and stuff it in your jeans pocket, grab your textbooks for your next class, and slam your locker shut, deciding to forget about it for now. You’ll have time to ruminate over it after school. 

That’s your plan, anyway, until after eighth period, when Steve’s standing by your locker, hands shoved in his pockets. You want to turn around and run away, but you can’t bring yourself to do it — not when he looks like that. 

“Hey,” Steve greets as you approach your locker, “Did you, um, get my thing?”

You raise an eyebrow. “Your note?”

He nods. “Yeah. Did you get it?”

“That was real?”

The tips of Steve’s ears flush. 

“Of course it was real. Why wouldn’t it be?”

You shrug. 

“Well, are you gonna be there?”

You think for a moment. You have a strict curfew of 8 p.m., otherwise your dad will seriously kill you.

“Yeah, but I can’t be out any later than 8. My dad is really serious about that kind of thing.”

“You’ve never snuck out before?”

“No, Steve.”

He backs off. “Alright, meet me at the park on Grove at 6, then? After dinner?” 

“Sure,” you nod, “I’ll see you then.”

“Cool.” he says it with a smile, and this time, you know it’s real.

In 1980, secret meet-ups at the park become yours and Steve’s thing. 

It’s not so much that you’re hiding from anyone (well, you aren’t, anyway), but it’s nice to have privacy, away from nosy onlookers at school or overbearing opinions from your parents. It’s always at the same time, on the same bench, in the same park. 

At first, they were innocent, if not a little awkward. 

You’d avoid Steve’s eyes, even if conversation flowed freely. You’d gaze at the asphalt or the playground set as you talked about Tommy Hagan’s new girlfriend, Carol, or Steve wanting to try out for the basketball team. 

Within weeks, you felt a bit more comfortable.

“Tommy said he got to second base with Carol,” Steve revealed, and you rolled your eyes.

“As if. I heard her talking about it in the locker room today at gym and she said he went for it and she knocked him off her couch.”

Steve ended up making it on the basketball team after you encouraged him to try out, and your conversations got deeper. He started telling you about how his parents were leaving him alone more often and that he didn’t feel like they were very proud of him. You voiced your fears about making your parents proud. A few weeks later, when you watched the sun set together, he asked to kiss you.

“I’ve never kissed anyone before.” you said, gaze still set on the horizon. You weren’t sure why you admitted that. You were scared he wouldn’t want to kiss you anymore.

“That’s okay,” Steve replied softly, making your stomach do backflips, “I want to be your first.”

So you turned to look at him, and he was much closer than you anticipated, and you nodded. His eyebrows raised slightly, as if he was somewhat surprised that you wanted this too, and he waited a beat, like you were going to change your mind.

But you didn’t, and then he slowly leaned forward to gently seal his lips to yours, and it felt so perfect, so sweet, so Steve, that you can’t believe you hadn’t been spending all your time kissing him before.

April 1987

You’re home from college for the week when your friend, Brandy, convinces you to go with her to some house party. 

Admittedly, you were looking forward to spending your time in Hawkins decompressing from midterms and academics, but you know one night out isn’t going to kill you — especially in your tiny hometown. 

And at first, you’re having a blast. You’re not sure who’s house you’re in, but the vibes are great. The music is fun, the alcohol is flowing, and you’re dancing together without any creeps hitting on either one of you. You haven’t even run into anyone you know yet, which is a serious win considering how small Hawkins, Indiana is. 

“I have to go to the bathroom!” Brandy shouts in your ear, trying to overpower a Michael Jackson song blasting through the living room. “Do you wanna find it with me?”

You shake your head and give her hand a squeeze. “No, I’m okay! I’m gonna grab another drink, though! Meet me in the kitchen!”

Brandy nods and flashes you a smile, and you head to the kitchen while your friend goes in the direction of the stairs. With your red solo cup in hand, you push past some bodies, tugging your skirt down when you finally get to your destination. 

And truthfully, you probably would’ve missed him if you opened the tequila bottle a second or two earlier.

But instead, you looked around the kitchen, maybe subconsciously so, just in case you did know anyone at this party, and lo and behold, you did: Steve Harrington.  

He’s currently got his front pushed up against a pretty brunette, his hand pressed against the wall above her with a smirk on his lips as his other palm finds her ass. You grow nauseous just at the sight of it. 

He doesn’t notice you. He’s too involved with whoever he has in his grasp, and you try to tell yourself that that’s okay, because you, too, have hooked up and dated people since you last saw Steve Harrington. Of course you have.

But for some reason — and maybe it’s the nostalgia of it all, being home, or seeing him in person — all you can think about are those stupid park dates you used to have your freshman year of high school, when Steve became your entire world. Nothing ever came of them, much to your chagrin — you dreamt of the day he would ask you to be his girlfriend, especially once those evenings involved nightly makeout sessions — but then one day he started dating Nancy Wheeler, and your days no longer ended hand in hand.

It killed you. 

Piece by piece, and then all at once. You felt like a shell of a human, all because you let Steve Harrington be your first heartbreak.

Your hand is still wrapped around the handle of vodka when Brandy barrels in the kitchen, talking about how long the bathroom line was. You swallow harshly and reach out to grab her elbow, and she immediately stops when she sees your watery eyes.

“Can we go?” you ask softly. 

She nods and loops her arm around your shoulders.

November 1993

You’re staring at a package of chicken in the poultry aisle, trying to decide if you even want to eat chicken for dinner this week, when you hear your name being called.

You drop the chicken and turn around, eyebrows furrowed. You want to duck and hide when you see its source.

“Holy crap! When’d you get back to town?” Steve asks with a grin, pushing his shopping cart and stopping it next to yours.

“Um…” you shift your weight from foot to foot, wondering if it’s too late to bolt. “Uh, a few weeks ago. My… my dad passed away, so I’m kind of here, settling and taking care of stuff for the time being.”

“Shit,” Steve says, and he genuinely looks like he feels bad, “I’m so sorry, I had no idea. How’s your mom doing? Do you guys need anything?”

“She died in that big earthquake that hit a few years ago,” you reply dismissively, shaking your head. “It’s fine. You know I wasn’t very close with them. I kind of cut things off with them once I graduated college, but they don’t have anyone else to do this type of stuff, and they left everything to me.”

“Wow. That’s… a lot.”

You nod. “Yeah, it is.”

“I mean… if you need anything, I’m still more than happy to help,” Steve says, and you don’t know why but even with years and miles of distance between you two, the mere offer is enough to make you smile. 

“Why am I not surprised that you’re still in this shitty town?” you ask playfully, picking the package of chicken back up and placing it in your cart. He laughs.

“Well, I’ll have you know, I’m the Hawkins Middle baseball coach and sex ed teacher,” he replies, and you let out a loud cackle that makes you smack your hand over your mouth. “I also… I have a daughter. Her mom and I aren’t together, but we co-parent. She lives here, too.”

You raise your eyebrows. “No shit, huh? King Steve’s a dad now.”

“King Steve died a long time ago, sweetheart.”

The pet name makes your face warm and you shake your head, pushing your cart forward. Steve follows your lead.

“What’s your daughter like?” you ask.

“Amazing,” he immediately says. You smile. “Her name’s Ella. She’s four now, so she just started kindergarten. She’s so smart and funny and she’s taught me so much. Being a dad is my favorite thing in the world. I don’t think I knew who I was before this.”

You look over at him, and you swear he’s glowing. In all the years you’ve known Steve, you’ve never seen him look so naturally happy, and it makes your stomach flip, just like it did when you were a teenager kissing him on a bench just before your curfew. 

“I’m really happy to hear that, Steve.” you say, reaching out to touch his hand on the handle of his cart. He stalls for a moment, almost as if he doesn’t know what to do with himself, before allowing himself to relax into your touch, just as you issue a gentle squeeze. 

“She would love you,” Steve continues before grabbing a box of Cheerios off the shelf. “She’d probably think you’re the coolest person ever.”

You snort. “Why?”

“‘Cos you are,” he says with a shrug. “You always have been. The coolest, smartest, prettiest… I was too stupid to see it for a long time, but I figured it out.”

You blink, wondering if you’re stuck in some kind of alternate timeline. Steve clears his throat. You look down at the speckled tiled floors, then back up at the brunette man before you, who somehow isn’t a little boy or a lost teenager with sad eyes anymore. 

“Um, I’m staying in my parents’ house and it’s weird,” you admit, laughing breathily, “But I feel like… I don’t know, maybe it would be a little less weird with you in it? So if that offer to… if I need anything, if that still stands, you can come over. I would like you to come over, is what I’m saying.”

A grin paints itself on Steve’s face. Small wrinkles edge themselves at the edges of his eyes, and he’s never looked so beautiful. 

“I would love to,” he says. “Ella’s at her mom’s tonight. Does— is that okay?”

“That’s perfect.”

In 10 years or so, you’ll tell a lie to yourself and say that your love story with Steve Harrington began in the poultry aisle at the grocery store, which is one of the more unremarkably romantic spots in the world. 

He tried to distract himself. Amanda on Monday. Mary on Tuesday. Both futile. He felt disgusted with himself, guilty in a way that didn't make logical sense. You two weren't together, had never been together. But the guilt sat in his chest regardless, heavy and persistent and— fuck.

Another secret he's been carrying for two months: he's been faking it with everyone else.

He slips the condom off before they can notice, drops it at the bottom of the bathroom trash, and waits in there until he's sure they've left. He never finishes himself off afterward. He knows the only way he can is if he thinks about you, and that knowledge sits in him like something radioactive. It’s too dangerous to acknowledge directly and too present to ignore.

He can’t sleep. He tosses and turns, wondering what you’re doing, if you’re in your dorm with Robin or if that meathead is feeling you up— nope. He can’t be jealous. It’s not fair to you if he’s jealous of you messing around with other people too. Even if it’s a fucking Alpha Tau. 

He doesn’t know what is wrong with him. 

On Wednesday you were walking out of the library when he caught sight of you, and his entire body responded before his brain could intervene. You looked so pretty in the moonlight. He watched you laugh when you caught his eyes, your breath a small cloud in the cold air, warm and there and real. Your hand squeezed his arm when he held the door open, and then your mouth was on his neck and his hands were moving under your blouse— butter yellow, soft against his palms, genuinely so pretty on you. It drove him mad.

He always hated when the other girls left marks on him. But yours were different. Yours he'd flaunt, wearing shirts that wouldn't cover them, pretending in some parallel life that he was allowed to show off that he was yours. People assumed it was Robin. He let them assume.

Neither of you had the patience to undress properly. He'd hiked your skirt up, your legs hooking around his waist, pulling him deeper. His chain had swung against your collarbone with each thrust. His jeans bunched at his thighs. Both of you loud and breathless, the car rocking with the rhythm of it, your skin against his a sound he'd been replaying ever since.

He'd looked down at you— eyes clenched, fingers digging into his shoulders, neck arched— and dragged his tongue up the column of your throat. When he spat into your mouth and watched you swallow, the moan that tore out of him was completely beyond his control.

Sex had always come easily to him. But with you there's a challenge he keeps wanting to solve. He loves being the reason for your sounds, loves finding the specific combination of things that makes you cry out, loves the places in you that he finds and you didn't know existed. He loves how he fits inside you, the way you stretch and clench around him perfectly. He thinks about what it would feel like without a condom— like the first time. He thinks about it too often.

With you he doesn't hold back. He never has to muffle himself or perform. He just is. And that, more than anything else, is the thing that terrifies him.

He knows what anyone would tell him if he described this out loud. End it with the others. Or if he can't do that: think of you when he's with them. He's tried the second option. He's ashamed to admit it, more ashamed to admit what happens when he does.

He doesn't think of you in those moments. His mind doesn't go to anything compromising. It goes, instead, to conversations. The way you make him laugh. The particular sharpness of your wit, the patience you extend to Robin and— somehow, inexplicably— to him. More patience than he deserves and you both know it.

He thinks about how people are drawn to you and you have no idea. How they gravitate toward you at parties, on the sidewalk, in line at the library, and you move through it all like it's ordinary. He thinks about the line between your brows when you're irritable, and how badly he wants to press his thumb there and smooth it out. He thinks about how when you get mean, you're ferocious— certain and passionate and immovable— and how hours later you always go back and apologize to whoever it was. You always know what to say. He has never once known what to say.

Thursday, he tried to write off everything as stress and a bad week. This time of year is always hard for him. Nightmares. Headaches. The insomnia that arrives like a seasonal houseguest who doesn't know when to leave. He guesses he can add ejaculation issues to the list too.The anniversary of the accident, seeps in, coloring everything gray, his scars aching before his brain has caught up to what day it is.

He'd skipped his classes and gone out once for air. He told himself it was coincidental that he wandered toward the building where your class meets. That he hadn't, over the course of the past several weeks, memorized the rough shape of your schedule. That he didn't sometimes take routes that would put you at the edges of his vision, even from a distance.

Purely coincidental.

He wasn't even sure he'd say anything if he saw you. He could ask if you wanted to get lunch, take a walk— two friends, only two friends, who happened to be sleeping together. He ignored the small sharp pain in his chest at the phrasing.

When he rounded the corner and found you kissing Sammy, the guy's hands on you and yours on him, Steve stopped walking. He stood there for five full seconds. Then he turned around and went back to Pike.

He'd like to say he did the honorable thing after that. Moved on, let it go, focused on something else. He can't stop thinking about it. It's his own rule— the one he made, the one that's supposed to protect both of them— and it's eating him alive.

Which is why he snapped at Robin when she started in about Nancy. He knows it's different for them. He does. But a selfish, rotting part of him was jealous— not that he'd ever say so— jealous that at least she got to be with someone she loved without everything being underwater. He felt guilty about it almost immediately. It wasn't that he wasn't happy for them. He was. He is.

He's also drowning.

He didn't even register you asking to come in when you appeared in his doorway later. He was too busy being struck dumb by the sight of you— hair up, pink sweater he loves tucked into your light wash jeans, fresh manicure you'd probably done in your dorm with Robin. He watched you cross the room and felt his chest do that thing it does. Tighten first. Then soften, like something rigid giving way.

You touched his knee. You gave him the look that meant it was okay.

He felt safe. He always feels safe, and that is the most dangerous thing about you.

His rules dissolved and he put his head in your lap because it was the only context in which he was allowed to do that. He went limp and hoped you couldn't see his eyes going wet. He breathed you in— clean laundry, something faint and warm underneath, the specific scent he's started associating with a future he wants and can't have. He asked you to talk about your day because he could sit for hours inside the sound of your voice. You made the mundane parts of your life sound like somewhere he wanted to be.

Broken, he told you. He feels broken. He didn't tell you he wasn't sure how to fix it. Or that he suspected he knew exactly how, and was terrified of what it would cost.

After you left, the thought of you kissing Sammy returned and wouldn't stop. It moved through him in different frequencies. He wondered what your lips would feel like against his— not his neck, not the geography of his shoulders and chest, but his mouth. He wondered if the rhythm would be the same as everything else between you, that strange melodic fit, the way your bodies always seemed to find the same tempo without trying.

On the night of Mardi Tau, he'd told Robin three times he wasn't going. He couldn't. Couldn't watch you across a crowded room, couldn't watch you dance with Sammy, couldn't see your mouth on someone else's again and pretend the sight wasn't carving something out of him.

He watched from his window when your car pulled up and Eddie climbed in. It was dark outside andhe couldn't see you. His heart thumped anyway.

The car pulled away.

His heart sank.

It should be him.

.-.-.-.

Katrina was always a sweet girl. Her hair was a bit much sometimes— reminded him of when Tammy Thompson got her first perm and he couldn't see the board in Mrs. Click's class until he finally moved seats. 

But she didn't deserve tonight.

Everything was going well. He did everything he normally did, and by her sounds, Katrina was enjoying herself. All while his mind kept drifting to Sig Tau. To you. His heart racing because the rumors had been circulating through Greek life all week— that Sammy really likes you. 

It was all dirty touches and heat between them until he got Katrina over the edge.

But when it was his turn and she went to touch him— nothing.

He laughed it off awkwardly and told her to give him a second, spitting in his hand, trying to coax any reaction from his body. The redness crept up the back of his neck and deepened in his cheeks, not from the sex but from something worse. He kept trying. But even looking at Katrina sprawled naked on his bed, cheeks flushed, watching him with patient eyes, he still couldn't think properly.

He kept thinking about what an asshole he was. What an utter prick, to be here with a nice girl who deserved better than this. All because he couldn't fucking admit what he'd been running from all this time.

His shoulders drooped. He deflated.

"Oh my god," Katrina whispered.

Steve opened his mouth, a lump rising in his throat. "I—" Nothing came. No excuse worth saying out loud. "It's not you. I swear—"

"Oh my fucking god." She stood up from his bed. He could tell she wasn't happy by the way she moved— quick and stiff, snatching up her clothes. He saw the tears rolling down her face before she turned away.

"Katrina—"

"I am missing the biggest party of the year for this," she said, voice unraveling as she pulled her shirt over her head.

Steve stood there, still holding his limp dick, unsure whether he should wait until she left. He didn't know the proper etiquette for this situation. He'd never had anyone leave in the middle of a hookup before. Never because he couldn't get hard. He rubbed his face with one hand, trying to think.

"I'm sorry. I'm really stressed out—"

She turned around, lip quivering. "This," she hissed, motioning between them, "is what's supposed to relieve you of stress."

Steve picked up his boxers and slipped them on, feeling her watch him. Then his jeans. He looked at the floor, then up into her eyes, hoping and praying her memory of the last half hour might somehow evaporate.

It was in that humiliating moment he realized it wasn't only hating the fact you were with someone else tonight. He was too. Even though his hookups with other girls had become rare. Even with the lie he'd told you from the start— that he had a once-a-week rule— it still sent pain radiating through his chest, the particular kind that comes from knowing you're doing something wrong.

"I don't think we should keep seeing each other," he said, trailing off because he was a coward.

Katrina ticked her jaw. She sniffled once, sharply, through the hurt. He watched her shrink into herself, arms crossing over her chest, trying to make sense of something that didn't make any sense. She didn't have feelings for him— he knew that. But he could almost see the trust between them severing, clean and quiet as a cut. Without another word she picked up her handbag and walked out.

He wished he were man enough to sit with it or run after her to tell her… anything that would make her feel better. To feel the full weight of hurting someone he hadn't meant to hurt. To reckon with the ways his selfishness was splitting him apart from the inside.

Instead he got dressed quickly and put on his glasses. He needed to see you.

Not needed. Wanted. Both. He couldn't untangle them anymore.

His adrenaline was high and he ignored the beaming DON'T DO IT sign glowing right in front of him. Rules be damned. There were never really rules with you to begin with.

He smoked two cigarettes on the walk to Sig Tau without realizing it, and hadn't noticed he'd arrived until he was already pushing through the crowd outside and through the doors. He stood in the middle of the main gathering space, chest heaving, eyes scanning the room.

The scary thing was he always knew when you were there before he found you. Some magnetic pull in his chest that swung toward you like a compass finding north— maybe it was your perfume, the one you only wore when you went out. He found you before his brain caught up to the fact that he was looking.

You were alone. Relief moved through him so fast it embarrassed him.

Except you were scanning the room the same way he had been, searching for someone— Sammy, probably. Then you stopped. Hair framing your face, lip gloss catching the colored lights. He watched your expression shift. Watched your lips flicker upward. You looked exactly as relieved to see him as he felt seeing you.

He crossed the room toward you, taking you in the whole way. Gold crop top. Your purple skirt and white pumps. The line of your collarbone. But he kept returning to your eyes. He drowned in them every time and he did it willingly, like a man who had made peace with the water.

You were the most beautiful person he'd ever met. It drove him absolutely crazy.

He was so close but he needed more, and if there weren't people watching he'd have pulled you into him right there. Instead he motioned toward the bathroom tucked out of the way, the one nobody else seemed to know about.

He pulled you inside and crowded you against the counter.

"Touch me," he said. The words came out wrecked. A plea, not a request.

You started to say something and he shook his head. He said please. Said it again. Please.

And you did. You touched him exactly where he knew you'd touch him first, and he twitched and let out a breath that was equal parts relief and pleasure. His skin knew you. Reacted to you the way muscle reacts to memory— without instruction, without hesitation. He whimpered when your fingers traced along his scars and brushed through the trail of hair on his stomach.

He pressed his hips against you involuntarily. Already hard against your bare thigh.

Both of you were asking for more without saying it. You pulled his hand and pressed it against the damp cotton of your panties. His knees buckled, his weight nearly crushing you as he started working slow circles against your clit. His mouth found your cheek, breath short and ragged.

Then you were up on the counter and he was fucking you with his fingers, his cock aching against his zipper, completely engulfed in your wetness and the sounds falling from your mouth. You clutched at him. He still wasn't close enough. It wasn't enough anymore. It hadn't been enough for a long time.

He worked faster, stretching you with another finger, curling to find that spot that made your whole body shift. He could feel you shaking. He could hear the pitch of your whimpers climbing.

He rutted against your leg, moaning into your neck, until you made a sound he'd never heard from you before. He pulled back to look at you— half-lidded, mouth open— and his eyes dropped to your lips. Parted and pretty, lip gloss still sticky.

Before he could think longer he grabbed you by the head, fingers fisting your hair, and kissed you.

Then froze immediately.

"Fuck. I'm sorry. I'm sorry—"

You smirked at him. Hunger in your eyes. One finger hooked into his chain necklace, pulling him back.

Your lips crashed against his.

He grunted when you bucked your hips, grinding on his hand still inside you. The kiss was messy and filthy and open-mouthed and unforgiving, and it rearranged everything inside him. His skin felt like it was burning, the heat moving straight to his cock. But underneath all of it— underneath the want and the noise and the desperate friction— his heart was beating against his ribs in a rhythm he recognized from somewhere he'd been trying not to visit.

He couldn't ignore it this time. Didn't want to.

All he wanted to do was smile. Because he was kissing his girl. His Hot Shot. Finally.

He felt you getting close and threw himself into it— fingers moving faster, palm pressing harder. His tongue licked into your mouth because if this was the only time he got to do this, he refused to forget what you tasted like. Sweet and warm and everything kissing was supposed to feel like and never had before. Feeling you kiss him back with the same urgency, the same hunger, he whined against your lips.

You nipped his bottom lip between your teeth and let it go.

In the fraction of a second it took, he thought about your first time together. How he'd wanted to kiss you then. How he'd wanted to kiss you every single time since. He thought about how swollen your lips were now— wet from him, undone.

That was all it took. He came, pressing against your leg, letting you feel it. Letting you know it was all you.

But he doesn't stop kissing you.

Can't.

And the thing is— he knows, standing here with his hand leaving your thighs and both arms pulling you in instead— that this has nothing to do with sex anymore. It stopped being about sex somewhere between the first time your mouth found his and right now, in this dim bathroom at a party neither of you particularly wanted to attend. What he wants is not the thing bodies want. It's something older and quieter and much more frightening.

He wants to keep kissing you in the morning. He wants to know what you look like when you're half-asleep and grumpy. He wants to sit across a table from you and argue about something stupid and be wrong and have you tell him so. He doesn’t want to say goodnight, because then that means leaving. And he’s so tired of leaving.

Your fingers tighten in his hair, pulling hard enough to sting, and the groan that comes out of him is helpless. It’s not because of the pain but because of the wanting underneath it, the sheer volume of it. He wraps both arms around you, one hand wide and flat across your lower back, the other cradling the back of your head, and he holds on.

You clutch at him with the same desperation and something in him cracks open. He moves his mouth to your jaw, your throat, pressing kisses into the warm skin there. He needs to touch every part of you he can reach, needs you to know he's here, he's here, he's been here this whole time.

His hands won't stop moving. One slides up your side, thumb grazing the underside of your tit through your top, and the other grips your hip hard enough to mark. He's not sorry. He wants to mark you. He wants there to be proof.

You pull his face back to yours and he comes back willingly and gratefully. If he's honest, every second his mouth isn't on yours feels like something wasted now. The kiss shifts, messier, all tongue and teeth and two people running out of ways to say something neither of them has said yet.

You slide your hands under his shirt, palms flat against his stomach, and every muscle in his body contracts under the touch. Your nails drag up his sides and across his ribs and he shudders. It’s not even from sensation but from the specific tenderness of being known. You know exactly where to touch him. You've always known.

He pulls you impossibly closer, hands roaming across your bare back, until there's no space left between you. Chest to chest. He can feel your heartbeat against his own and he doesn't know which is which. Doesn't care.

He kisses you slower this time. Still wanting, still urgent, but slower. His tongue slides against yours and he thinks: this is the problem. This has always been the problem. There is no casual version of this. There never was.

Your fingers find his belt loops and pull his hips flush against yours. He can feel the wet warmth in his jeans against your inner thigh. He makes a sound into your mouth. It’s broken and wanting and almost pained, like something has been held under pressure for a very long time and is only now, in increments, being allowed to surface.

He brings his hand up to cup your face. His thumb strokes your cheekbone with a tenderness he has no business feeling, and he knows it, and he does it anyway. You tilt your head and deepen the kiss and he thinks: I would do anything. I would blow up every rule I've ever made. I would stop being careful entirely.

The kisses slow. Gentle now. Each one landing separately, softly. Just lips resting against lips. Just breathing the same air. Just staying.

He draws your bottom lip carefully between his teeth one last time. His tongue soothing the place, and then he pulls back.

Steps away.

He looks at the floor. Then at you.

Something moves across his face that he can't stop in time. Something guilty and sad and full of all the things he hasn't said and should have, all the moments he's walked away from and chosen rules and Robin over this, over you.

He opens the bathroom door.

He leaves.

The click of the latch behind him sounds, in the silence that follows, like the loneliest thing he's ever heard.

.-.-.-.

Steve walked into the empty Pike house and the silence swallowed him whole.

His eyes were still blown wide, hair wrecked, clothes wrinkled and askew— every detail of him a confession he hadn't meant to make or even think. He trudged inside and let out a heavy breath, both hands dragging down his face like he could physically rearrange what had happened tonight into something he could live with.

He knew he'd fucked up. The only thing he could do to avoid thinking about it was sleep, which meant he was going to lie awake staring at the ceiling and think about nothing else.

He made it to his room and threw himself backward onto his bed, depleted and spent. His fingers drifted to his lips without him meaning for them to— still buzzing faintly, still warm from where your mouth had been.

A smile crept onto his face before he could stop it.

Then, as fast as it arrived… gone.

His phone rang.

He launched himself off the bed. He looked at his watch and wondered who the hell was calling at this hour. Eddie? Robin? His heart lurched sideways at the thought that it might be you. Could it be you calling to come over, to talk, to say something that would either fix everything or make it completely irreparable?

He picked up. "Hello?"

"Steveee," a voice slurred.

Steve pulled the receiver away from his ear, stared at it, put it back. "Uh..."

"Were you asleep?"

His eyes went wide. "Max? Why are you calling this late? Are you okay?"

"Stevee, I'm more than okaaay." She hiccupped.

"Are you drunk?" His voice came out protective before he could temper it. He knew he'd gotten into things he shouldn't have at her age, but he was an idiot. Max was not. He bit at the skin around his thumbnail. "Are you safe?"

"I'm at Wheeler's." The line crackled and her voice dropped to a hushed whisper. "We got into a bottle of Mrs. Wheeler's wine playing truth or dare."

Steve laughed, the coiled tension in his chest easing slightly. "Right, and are you doing a dare right now?"

"Yuuuup," Max sang.

"What is it? You supposed to prank call me or something?"

"Nope. Got dared to tell someone I love them. Dustin, the shithead he is, wanted me to probably say it to Lucas in front of everyone, because apparently I kind of suck at telling people that shit..."

Max's words drifted off.

Steve went completely still. He replayed the sentence. Made sure he'd heard it correctly. Because it was true—Max had never said that to him. Not once. Not directly. Not without enough sarcasm layered on top to make it deniable.

"Steveee, oh my god, did you die over there? Hellloooo?"

"Yeah." He swallowed hard. "I'm here. Sorry."

"Oh god, don't tell me it cut out and I have to say it again," she groaned.

He smiled at the ceiling, something loosening in his chest. "No. I heard you."

A beat of silence.

"I love you too, kid."

Max made an immediate and theatrical gagging noise. But he could still hear her smiling on the other end. "Gross, dude. You didn't have to say it back."

The quiet that followed wasn't really quiet at all. It was the specific kind of silence that exists between two people who both meant exactly what they said and know the other one did too.

"Now it's my turn to dare you to do it," Max giggled.

He rolled his eyes. "That's not how the game works and you know it."

"Maybeee. Or maybee you're scared."

"Max—"

"Steveeee," she mocked.

"I'm going to hang up now. Go be a pain to Wheeler or something." He shook his head when he heard her cackling.

She went quiet for a moment. Then: "You never called this week."

His throat went dry. He sighed, picking up the base of the phone and moving to sit at the edge of his bed. She couldn't see him, but he looked down anyway. "Yeah. I know. I got busy. I'm sorry."

Another wave of silence settled between them— the weighted kind, the kind that carries whole seasons inside it.

Steve raked his fingers through his hair.

"I don't miss him, y'know?" Max mumbled, her words soft and slurred but perfectly clear.

"Max—"

"And I know you still feel guilty, and we haven't really talked about it. But I needed you to know that."

She was right. They hadn't talked about the accident. That was probably mostly his fault—he never wanted to drag her back into bad water. He wasn't sure what to say.

"Drink water before bed. Okay?"

"Steve." His name was soft on the receiver, careful with him in a way she rarely was out loud.

"Yeah?"

"I dare you to tell me if you love her."

"Robin? Of course I love her, you know it's not like that thou—"

"No, not Robin." Max said your name.

It moved through the phone line and landed somewhere behind his sternum.

He froze. His face fell. Something cold and certain moved through his blood all at once. "Max, you know that's—I can't—why would you—she's a friend. A friend, okay?"

"Do you?" she asked again. Steady and almost sober-minded. Almost like she already knew the answer long before he ever did.

And Steve felt all the weeks of careful avoidance collapse at once.

He thought about you. He let himself, fully, for the first time in months— didn't redirect the thought, didn't shut the door on it before it could open. He let it open.

It wasn’t like a lightbulb, or a lightning bolt striking him. That was the thing about it that undid him. It didn't arrive the way he'd always assumed love would arrive. He had always imagine it to be loud and obvious and impossible to miss. It had crept in the way warmth does in a room you've been sitting in for a long time. Slow. Pervasive. Already everywhere before you think to notice.

The specific moment for him was all on Valentine’s when he saw you lying on his chest fast asleep. It overwhelmed him. It excited him. He knew it then, there was no one else. But he stayed in denial, tormented by thoughts of what it’d be like to go steady with you.

It felt like something that had always been true and was only now, under the specific pressure of Max saying your name through a crackling phone line at midnight, being acknowledged.

He carried it the way you carry an injury you've decided not to mention— working around it, adjusting your movement, telling yourself it wasn't that bad. But it had been pressing into him constantly. Heavy and specific and shaped like everything about you: the way you looked at him when he wasn't performing anything, the particular patience you extended to him that he hadn't earned, the sound of your laugh when something caught you off guard, the way the room organized itself differently when you were in it.

It felt like something that was equally killing him inside but also the thing that was keeping him alive. 

He wanted things he hadn't let himself want in years. Simple things. Quiet things. He wanted to call you for no reason. He wanted to make you breakfast. He wanted, god help him, to introduce you to people and have a word for what you were to him that was true.

Instead he had rules. He had arrangements. He had you hidden away in a bathroom, holding a kiss that rearranged everything and a door he'd closed behind him anyway.

The wanting sat inside him like a lit match in a closed room. It illuminated everything, consuming itself, running out of air.

"Yeah," he whispered. "I do."

The words landed in the quiet of his empty room and he didn't take them back.

When he finally got off the phone and lay down in the dark, Steve stared at the ceiling and wondered if this was what it was like in every version of things. Every alternate arrangement of choices and timing and circumstance– did they all wind up here? Something in him said yes. Something in him had been saying yes for a while now, quietly, in a register he'd been working very hard not to hear.

No matter what he built around it. No matter how many rules he made or broke or pretended still applied. No matter the timing, no matter the cost.

It was you.

It had probably always been you.

You were worth falling in love for.

- you’re usually caught up in grading or room cleanup and have to stay past when Steve’s finished up with his admin work, so he swings by your classroom after he’s wrapped up. You’re usually sitting at a desk in the back grading projects or wiping paint off of the chairs and he dotes over the lesson plan, the artworks lining your shelves. Saying things like, “you taught em how to make this, baby? You’re such a great teacher.” And making your stomach flip with butterflies.

- Nancy, Jonathan, and Robin come stay at your house any time they’re free. Sometimes it’s just one person, other times all three of them stop by and it feels like old times again. You and steve pull the mattresses into the living room and all of you eat too much pizza and drink too much wine before falling asleep together, hearts full and minds a little fuzzy. you all wake up with raging hangovers the next day, of course, and make a groggy drive to the diner for the cure.

- once a year, Steve and Dustin disappear off to the woods somewhere for a weekend. you invite Nancy to come stay with you in the meantime, and the two of you spend your time reminiscing on the good old days, not quite believing where everyone ended up. She gives you a sneak peek into the articles she’s working on and you show her your most recent art project — half finished and no end date in sight, but it feels good to unveil it to your best friend. at the end of the weekend, you and Steve reunite and swap stories, highlighting how grateful you are to be able to take care of the people you love most.

- cooking dinner together on the weekends anytime the weather’s nice and eating it in the backyard, watching the sunset and talking about all of the things you want to do someday: going to see the Grand Canyon, saving up to buy a new Beamer, and taking the party on a road trip for Steve; visiting the east coast, finishing an art project, and getting a puppy for you. “Y’know,” Steve mumbles eventually, tracing patterns over the back of your hand as he eyes your ring finger, “there’s.. something else I wanna do, with you, someday. Or, more, ask you to do with me.” You smile and lean in and kiss him, sweet and slow, mumbling how you know your answer and are just waiting for the question, which makes his ears go pink as he leans in for another kiss.

- it’s late nights at the town drive-in, recreating your first date whenever it feels like time is passing too quickly. it’s swims at lover’s lake and dinner with the byers and driving aimlessly through the cornfields whenever the mood strikes you. It’s talking about marriage, about children, about picking up and starting a new life somewhere states away; hearts giddy at the thoughts of your life stretching into forever together. snuggled in bed, lights off, voices hushed as if the two of you are still nervous about jinxing it after all this time. It’s full of laughter and joy and hope, and everything you and Steve wanted it to be <3

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