M ᯓ★

before, it used to be you, dean, and sammy.

sam with his too-long legs shoved in the front seat, complaining about dean’s music, stealing your snacks when he thought you weren’t looking. dean calling him princess. you laughing until sam threatened to switch cars at the next gas station. stupid things. little things. the kind of things you don’t know are holding your life together until one person leaves and the other one starts acting as if anything soft has become a liability.

dean doesn’t joke with you anymore. not really. not the way he used to, with his mouth crooked and his eyes bright and all that ridiculous flirting tossed at you just to make you roll your eyes. he barely looks at you unless it’s about the case. location. weapons. salt. iron. exit points.

you miss sam so much it makes you angry, but missing dean when he’s right beside you feels worse.

so, yeah—by the time you pull up outside the old farmhouse, your face is probably doing something awful. dean notices. yet, he picks the worst possible thing to do with it.

“gee,” he says, glancing over as he parks. “poor ghost that has to face you tonight. we might not even need the salt rounds. your face’ll do all the work.”

it’s meant to be nothing. a jab. a little scrap of the old dean, thrown badly into the air between you. but it lands wrong.

you turn your head slowly. “are you kidding me?”

his eyebrows lift, already defensive. “what?”

“don’t what me.”

“it was a joke.”

“no, dean, it was you remembering how to speak to me for three seconds and choosing to be an asshole.”

that wipes the almost-smirk off his face. good.

you hate that it feels good.

he looks out through the windshield at the farmhouse, all black windows and peeling paint, his fingers tightening around the steering wheel. “we have a job.”

“we always have a job.” your voice comes out sharper than you expect, but you’re already opened up now, you’re already bleeding in the passenger seat, and there is no neat way to stop it. “that’s the problem, right? there’s always some house, some ghost, some excuse not to talk about the fact that sam left and you decided i had to lose both of you.”

his face changes. just a fraction. but you see it.

“you didn’t lose me,” he says, too fast.

you laugh once, ugly and hurt. “didn’t i?”

“i’m sitting right here!”

“no, you’re driving the car.” your throat tightens, and you hate that part. hate the wobble. hate how young you sound. “you’re loading guns and reading police reports and telling me to duck. you’re not here. you haven’t been here since he left!”

dean turns toward you then, anger rising because anger is easier—it’s always easier for him. “what do you want me to say?”

“anything,” you snap. “literally anything real.”

“real?” he repeats, voice low. “you want real?”

“yeah, i do.”

“sam walked out.”

“sam went to school.”

“he left!” dean bites out, and there it is, mean and raw and still not the whole truth. “he left, and dad’s pissed, and everything’s screwed, and i don’t have time to sit around holding hands and talking about feelings because people are dying.”

you stare at him, chest heaving.

outside, the farmhouse waits. the job waits. everything always waits just long enough to take something else from you.

“i wasn’t asking you to hold my hand,” you say quietly. too honest. too tired. “i was asking you not to disappear while sitting next to me.”

dean flinches. then he looks away, swallowing hard, eyes fixed on the house as if the ghost inside is easier to face than you. maybe it is.

you sit there for a few seconds, the engine ticking softly, the cassette still playing low under the silence. neither of you moves for the weapons bag. neither of you apologizes.

finally, dean reaches for the keys and shuts the car off. “let’s go,” he says, voice rough, smaller than before.

you nod, even though nothing is fixed, even though the empty seat still feels louder than both of you, even though you know this conversation is going to crawl into the space between your ribs and stay there.

you open your door before he can look at you again. and when you step out into the cold, you don’t wait for him to follow.

You were worried, but you haven’t had the chance to truly ask him, not when you were constantly fenced in by relatives wanting to congratulate you.

The relief that had flooded Jack’s eyes when you sat together at the center of the banquet during the speeches had long died down. He was fighting through the exhaustion and nerves and anxiety—he didn’t want to let you down. 

One of his aunts, or maybe a cousin—you weren’t sure—was talking to you when Jack came up to you. He was limping a little, his mouth clamped tight, but when your eyes met his, he smiled. 

“Hey, sweetheart,” he muttered. 

He pulled you into his side and planted a tender kiss in your hair, then glanced at you. Just as his lips parted to say something to you, the DJ’s voice echoed through the speakers. 

“May we ask Mr. and Mrs. Abbot to return to the dancefloor now? We’re oh-so-desperate to see them back here.”

Just for a second, Jack’s face fell. And you saw it.  All eyes immediately snapped to the two of you, big smiles all around. Everyone seemed so utterly happy, but you didn’t care about them. You only cared about Jack.

“We don’t have to, Jack,” you mumble, low enough that only he caught it. “We can take a break.”

If you had one wish guaranteed, you’d ask the universe for Jack to never look at you again the way he did in that second.  Embarrassment flushed his face, and something in his eyes broke. You knew his stubbornness, having been on the receiving side of his pride a million times, but you didn’t expect him to be like this, not today. 

“No, baby, let’s go dance,” he replied and took your hand.  He pulled you into the middle of the dance floor, waiting for the music to start. Not once did his eyes catch yours. 

The song that began to play was slow, with violins and gentle piano notes filling the air. Jack’s hand snaked around your waist, pulling you close enough that you could feel his breath ghost over your cheek as he peered past you, anywhere but at you. 

You smelled the sweat on his skin, the tell-tale sign of his utter exhaustion. As he started guiding you over the floor, his breath catching any time his right leg hit the ground, you tried to lead. Tried to make him slow down, tried to get him to lean onto you, tried anything to make it a little easier for him. But Jack was stubborn. He had worked 12, 15, hell, 24-hour shifts on his prosthetic; he had done the physical therapy—he wasn’t going to skip a single dance with you, not on your day. Not when today was the day he was meant to prove that he was worthy of you.

“Honey,” you whispered, desperation tinting your voice, “It’s okay. We can… we can sit this one out. Have… have some more cake.”

This time, his gaze bore into you, determination burning in his eyes.  “No, sweetheart. I want to dance with my wife. I don’t need a break,” he rasped. 

You briefly loosened your hand from its spot on his shoulder to wipe the dampness from his brow. Jack practically flinched away. 

“I mean it,” he muttered. “I can do it. Just… dance with me, baby. Please.”

So you kept dancing, ignoring the sound of your heart breaking for him with every step he took, every wince he suppressed. You couldn’t wait for the song to end.  But once it did, the next one played. And then the next one. 

You saw the light dwindling in Jack’s eyes, his soft grunts turning into pained whines. The moon had long taken over the sun’s spot in the sky, surrounded by dark blues. 

As Jack continued to bite his tongue instead of giving in, the pain growing more and more obvious, you decided to put an end to this. 

“I’m so thirsty,” you declared, loud enough for the couples around you to hear it. “And my feet hurt sooo bad. These damn heels.”

Jack gave you a look—a mix of shame and relief.

“You sure, baby?” he asked. “I… I don’t want you getting bored.”

“Oh, I’m sure,” you replied. “Let’s have some more champagne.”

You pulled him to the bar, basically forcing him onto the chair. All the guests were dancing, distracted. As the barkeeper passed you two glasses of champagne and then moved to the other side to “give the newly-weds some privacy”, you gave Jack a sharp glance. 

“Take it off,” you muttered. 

Jack shook his head immediately. “No. Not here, not today.”

“Honey,” you murmured. “Please. You’re hurting. No… no one’s gonna say anything. Everyone here loves you. I love you, with two legs or with one.”

He shook his head again, lips pressed together in a tight line. 

“I don’t need to take it off. I won’t.”

For a moment, you closed your eyes and took a deep breath. Anger bubbled up in you like venom, but you refused to let it boil over. Jack wasn’t being unreasonable for the fun of it—he was behaving like this out of fear.  Then you said, “You’re coming with me. Right now.”

Even as he began to protest, your fingers enclosed his, and you pulled him out of the large hall, heading towards one of the smaller rooms used for storage. Your body pressed into his, making him lean on you a bit.

“Sweetheart, I- I can do it—” Jack insisted again, but you didn’t let him finish. 

You forced him onto the floor and kneeled down in front of him. The tulle of your skirt got in your way, making you cry out in frustration.  “Jesus,” you hissed, then pressed down the force of the dress.  Your shaky hands were quick to start cuffing Jack’s pant leg. 

“Maybe you can do it,” you acknowledged angrily, “But I can’t. I can’t keep watching you grit your teeth through the pain. It hurts me to see you like this.”

With quick, practiced ease, you loosened the prosthetic and leaned it against the wall next to him. 

Jack gasped, both from shock and relief. He had never seen you like this. 

“Baby…” he began, then lowered his head. “Fuck. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t you dare apologize,” you answered immediately. “Not for this. Not with me.”

You sat in silence for a while. Once the anger in your veins had eased, you moved to sit next to Jack. He hesitated before he slowly lowered his head to rest on your shoulder. You felt the tension leave both your bodies instantaneously. 

“Why would you do this to yourself?” you asked softly. “Why… why didn’t you… just take a break?”

Jack sighed so deeply you felt his entire chest deflate. 

“I… it’s embarrassing,” he muttered. 

You took his hand between yours and squeezed insistently.  “You don’t need to be embarrassed. It’s only me and you,” you whispered. 

“It’s our wedding day,” he murmured. “I… I’m your husband now. I’m supposed to take care of you and keep you safe and—”

“We’re supposed to keep each other safe,” you interrupted. 

His fingers played with yours as he stared straight ahead. The sun-kissed skin of his arms stood out against the white of your dress.

“I just want to be good enough for you. I want to—I want to deserve you,” he said quietly then. 

His words tugged at your heartstrings so forcefully that you were afraid it would shatter. 

“Jesus, Jack,” you whispered, “Why would you… You are good enough for me—fuck, you’re more than good enough. You’re a great man, the only man I could ever want.  Whether you have two legs or one, it—it doesn’t matter to me. I love you for you. And if you need to take a break, I’ll be sitting right there next to you.”

Jack chuckled wetly, the sound sending goosebumps down your arms. You cupped his face and turned it towards you. A single tear ran down his cheek. 

“Oh, honey,” you gasped. You pressed your forehead against his, the proximity almost allowing you to taste the salt on his face. His skin felt hot against yours. 

“I don’t know how I got so lucky with you,” he mumbled.

“Just shut up,” you replied, but there was no bite to it. 

“No, I mean it,” he insisted. “I… you kinda got the short straw with me. I work nights, and I carry a goddamn boatload of baggage with me. The leg—that’s just the fucking cherry on top. When I… when I proposed, I couldn’t believe that you said yes to this… this fucking mess.”

“Stop it,” you pleaded. “Jack, I’m so serious right now. I don’t wanna hear any more of this. I said yes because you asking me, getting down on your knee—it meant the world to me. I knew what I was getting into. And I’d do it all over again. A million times. There’s no… no parallel universe where I wouldn’t kill to be your wife.”

Jack was quiet for a while. You could almost see the way his brain worked to make space for your words. 

“You really mean that?” he asked. 

“Of course I do,” you replied. “I love you.”

Through the walls of the room, you heard the music play on, but neither one of you cared to return to your party. Jack kissed your knuckles one by one and exhaled.  “It’s only me and you, right?”

─── ⋆ CHAPTERS ⋆

PART ONE 𖤓♡ — Jack Abbot values his routine and structure. Work, SWAT, gym... and for the past six weeks, spending his Sunday mornings admiring the enigmatic single mom who's apartment balcony sits across from his. [3k]

PART TWO 𖤓♡ — A scuffle in the hall causes Jack to accidentally take Phoebe’s wallet to work instead of his. He gains himself a new nickname amongst the Pitt and finally learns a thing or two about you and your daughter. [7.3k]

PART THREE 𖤓 — A trip to the ED, a retirement meal, and a phone call with Robby. One leaves you up close and personal with your neighbor, one has Phoebe spilling secrets like it's an Olympic sport, and another has Jack realizing he's got a fucking crush on the single mom in apartment seventeen. [7.1k]

PART FOUR 𖤓♡ — Phoebe's birthday party consists of four sets of eyes ogling Jack from the second he enters your apartment, screaming children, your mom noticing something rather interesting, and a night on the balcony that changes the trajectory of everything. [8.7k]

⤷ PART 4.5 — A series of texts between you and Jack after Phoebe's birthday party. [smau]

PART FIVE — June 10th

PART SIX — June 15th

PART SEVEN — June 20th

PART EIGHT — June 25th

More chapters TBD

#APT.17 (a tag for anything related to this series)

Tag list for this series has grown way too big for me to keep up with so it’s unfortunately CLOSED. You can however follow the #apt.17 tag instead for updates on the series!

your chest hit you with that deep, near-painful ache once again. "i- like, you're breaking up with me? right now?"

he sighed. "i didn't say that, baby-"

"no, you did," you replied. "you just suggested we split up! jack, no way..." your voice trembled with the tears of panic and desperation that were slowly crawling their way up your throat. "no, no, no..."

millions of thoughts ran through your mind. where am i going to live?--with trinity and dennis, maybe? how am i going to cope with my depression? a breakup will surely make it harder... am i going to have to start seeing my therapist again?

"yes, y/n. we're clearly not working out. i don't know how you can't see that."

you took a deep breath. "we were working out just fine, jack, until i asked you a few weeks ago how you felt about marriage. ever since then, you've been really weird."

"i don't want marriage," he muttered tersely.

"yes, jack, i know that now," you bit out through gritted teeth, frustration coursing through your veins. "lets not distract from the fact that you just tried to break up with me!"

before jack could mull the words over in his brain, he spit them out. "not tried to," he corrected. "i did. break up with you, that is."

your face fell, and jack swore to himself at that very moment, that the look on your face would haunt him forever. "you... oh." you swallowed a few times, pushing down the lump in your throat. "have you.. did you lose feelings for me..?" you couldn't help but ask.

jack thought for a moment. did he? he couldn't deny the fact that he loved you, but not enough for marriage, not enough for anything bigger. or maybe he was just scared and wouldn't admit it.

"at some point, yes. i think i did," he replied, making an effort to keep his voice flat and stoic. to not give off any emotion.

"so you don't love me anymore?"

"..." he thought briefly. "i don't think so."

he wouldn't realize how badly he'd lied straight to your face when he said that, not for another 2 months or so.

the tears which immediately pooled in your eyes made him want to take it all back, to reverse the past few weeks if he could. that way, marriage wouldn't come up. he wouldn't've shut down slowly over weeks' time. you would've still been y/n and jack, jack and y/n. the attending and the R1.

that night, so much changed in jack's life.

an hour after the breakup, he had to listen to you on the phone with dennis through your bedroom door, crying to him and asking for a place to stay.

jack knew you and dennis were close. you'd gone to med school together, became best friends, then completed med school at PTMC. you both went on to intern in the ED as R1s and plan to stay for a long time.

"i'm sorry, den," jack heard you sniffle. "i know it's last minute, and with you and trin already in the apartment it'll be crowded but-"

"y/n," he could hear dennis chuckle through the phone. "you're okay. you're not burdening us or anything, if that's what you're thinking. i'll change my sheets for you; you take my bed and i'll take the couch."

2 hours after the breakup, jack had to watch you begin to pack your things. you'd wandered into the kitchen for a brief moment to inform him that you'd take your important stuff with you to dennis' tonight and you'd be back for the rest later that week.

"i'll make sure to text you that i'm coming before i do," you'd muttered. jack felt like he was already losing you; you were treating him like a stranger, and it'd only been mere hours. god, how would you treat him in a week? two? in a month? a year?

"y/n-" he'd started, but you'd already shut the bedroom door behind you. he blinks back the tears that burn his eyes. he's not allowed to cry over losing the best thing in his life, not when it's all his fault.

to be courteous, you left for dennis' once jack was already gone for his night shift at the ED, that way he didn't have to see you leave. you were heartbroken, but not cruel.

you drove to dennis' in silence. no music, no humming, none of jack's talking to keep you sated.

you took a deep sigh. this really was your life now. no jack. no boyfriend. no love. just... you and yourself.

present day...

"dr. y/l/n," robby calls as you pass him. you quickly do a 180, smiling at your attending. "robby," you greet. "to what do i owe to pleasure?"

he chuckles. "always so theatrical... uh, i need a favor," he cuts straight to the chase, scratching at his scruffy beard.

you arch a brow. "does it concern dennis? because yes, i know that a sock on the door handle means your bus-"

"no, no!" he rubs his face. "y/n, no... god." he chuckles again. "no, i need to ask.. if you'd take a few night shifts.." he mutters the last bit quietly, knowing you'll be upset. because, of course, your first thought is jack.

"robby!" you scowl, arms crossed. "no. absolutely not! you know why i don't do nights."

"yes, i know. but they're short-staffed, i like you, and i trust you most out of all my residents..."

you roll your eyes. "liar. you trust and like dennis the most. why don't you just ask him to take up nights?"

robby sighs. "i mean, you can ask whitaker to take your spot, if being on shift with abbot is really that debilitating-"

"robinavitch! shut up!" you hiss, looking around to make sure nobody heard.

"what? he and i are friends, y/n," robby laughs. "we talk. but anyway, yes, i suppose you can grovel to dennis and ask him to cover for you."

he steps closer so that he can lower his voice. "though--as a friend and not your senior attending--i think it'd be good for you and abbot to have some time near each other."

you swat his chest. "goodbye, michael," you grumble, immediately searching for your huckleberry. "DENNIS!"

it took some convincing, but after offering to pay for all of dennis's drinks at the bar on friday, he was finally moved.

"seriously?" you snort, leant against the counter standing face-to-face with your friend. "those are the terms you agree to?"

he smiles proudly. "yes; since you're paying and i'm not, i can finally drink without a worry at friday bar night," dennis says happily, reaching out to slide your lip gloss further into your scrub top pocket before it falls out.

you giggle. "what a dork you are, den. why did i choose to take you in, hm?

he scoffs, all niceties gone. he swats the back of your head. "take me in, huh? you little shit."

you laugh loudly, knowing he isn't really offended or angry. "oh, huckleberry. i love the fuck out of you."

he shakes his head, biting back a smile. "you're just un-fucking-believable, you know that?- oh, shit.." his face drops, and he moves to stand on the other side of you, as if to block your vision from something.

you frown. "what? what, what is it?" you try to look around him, but he moves with you, keeping your view blocked. "dennis, what?"

you hear dana's voice before you see him.

"oh, dr. jack abbot!" she exclaims from the front desk in her familiar pittsburgh accent. "the one and only adrenaline junkie. what're you doing here during day shift, huh? shouldn't you be with SWAT?"

your pale face looks to dennis, who's already looking down at you sympathetically. "no..."

he nods. "yep..."

trinity, in passing, pats your arm. "keep that head up, sister." instinctively, you lift your chin up a bit. leave it to trinity to make you feel better.

you peek around dennis to see jack, dressed in a casual grey, long-sleeve henley and cargo pants, and your chest aches greatly at how stupidly good he looks.

you watch as he lens against the counter, chatting in a little circle with dana and robby. you used to be a part of that circle, once upon a time. you'd always be leant against jack and/or (usually and) holding his big hand in yours.

then, just to make matters worse, his eyes flicker to you. once. then a second time, as if it hadn't registered in his head before who exactly he was looking at. you hate it, the way his face softens. he doesn't deserve to look at you like that, not when he left you like he did.

"hold on, you guys, i'll be right back," he murmurs to dana and robby, and before you know it he's making his way to you and dennis.

"alright, brother. whitaker! cmon, take this case with me!" robby calls.

your eyes snap to dennis's, heart plummeting to your ass. "no... den-"

he sighs, patting the top of your head sympathetically. "sorry, bud. duty calls."

you frown, chest aching with anxiety as he gloves up and joins robby, leaving you no choice but to face the older man approaching you.

you stand there for a bit, rigid but hands still shaking. he stops a bit in front you, and while you don't meet his gaze, that doesn't mean you can't feel it.

minutes must pass before he speaks. "you look tired."

you scoff. "wow, abbot, what a way to start a conversation."

his heart aches at the way you address him. abbot. not jack, not jackie, not baby or honey or sweetheart. abbot. as if you're merely just colleagues, if even that.

"i'm serious, pumpkin. your under-eyes are so dark. why're your hands so shaky? did you eat breakfast?"

"pumpkin? seriously?" you arch a brow, tone defensive and unimpressed. he knows you loved that stupid name; that and 'sunshine' were always your favorites, next to 'sweet girl' (bonus if it was 'my sweet girl').

his heart clenches even though he knows exactly what you're doing. he knows you were hurt one too many times growing up, that your immediate response to pain and distrust is defensiveness. he doesn't blame you, but it still hurts.

"sorry, old habits."

silence falls over you both once again. he watches you pick at your nails, and his fingers twitch to stop you.

you sigh, wanting any excuse to get away from him. you love him still, but you also hate him. it's a painful game of push-and-pull. "i should probably find a case to hop on," you murmur, reaching for a pair of gloves.

"y/n, wait-"

"gotta go, bye!" you call in a flat tone, deciding to take an incoming GSW wound to get your mind off things.

he runs his hands down his face, staying in that spot you previously occupied, watching you move around the ED like it was your second home.

what-ifs course through his mind as he admires your pretty, pretty self. what if i had been more open about why i opposed marriage? what if i hadn't broken her heart? what if i hadn't let her walk out two years ago? what if she still trusted me, still loved me?"

he's snapped back to reality by the knock of robby's knuckles against his temple. "jesus, man, fuck off," he swats robby's hand away, grumbling.

robby laughs, "grouch. i was just checking the gears were all turning properly in there, cus ya spaced out for a good two minutes. staring at a special, 29 year-old R3..."

jack glared at him, "someone needs to keep a few rolls of duct tape around this damn ED. y'know, for your stupid mouth."

robby shakes his head. "you and her, man. you're both 2 sides of the same coin."

jack scoffs. "meaning?"

"meaning you're still in love with each other but neither of you want to admit it and instead turn to being defensive, snarky, stupid pieces of shit who're scared of vulnerability. so stubborn."

jack gives him a hard, nasty glare. "she's not in love with me."

robby makes a noise, resembling that of a loud "WRONG" buzzer. "she is. i'd know. i catch her in the hall at least, i don't know, 8 times a shift, staring up at that plaque of you on the wall. y'know, from when you--somehow--won attending of the year last year?

jack smacks his arm.

robby laughs before turning serious again. he and jack stare up at the patient board, swaying side-to-side in tandem. until jack stops, because it hits him that you two used to that when you stood together.

"seriously, though, i've already had to call her back into the ED twice, and shift only started a few hours ago. it's like she can't help looking at that photo. maybe it gives her comfort."

"why would she need comfort?" jack spits before realizing how shitty it sounds. he knew you needed comfort for so, so many reasons. your depression being the main one. add that to working in a job where you watch people die by the hour and are expected to just move on. having no close family to talk to.. he knows you need comfort, he used to be the source of it.

he'd never admit to robby how many nights he's lied awake, worried sick about how you're handling your mental health. when you were with him, you stopped needing therapy because his being there was enough. but now that he was gone out of your life, were you seeing your therapist again? he could only hope.

robby shrugs. "she lost a patient today, only 45 minutes into the shift," he explains. "4 year-old girl who died in an MVA. parents lived with a few broken bones, but y/n just couldn't save the kid. she broke down in the break room, then went out to go look at your picture."

jack's insides feel like lead. "no way she went to look at that for comfort," he scoffs, still in denial. "she hates my guts-"

"she doesn't hate you-"

"she so does-"

"jack, for fucks sake, man!" robby snaps, sighing. "that girl is still so in love with you and it amazes me that you can't see it. she feels lost without you. she looks for guidance, even when you're not there. y'know, you're still her wallpaper on her phone. it alternates between some photo of her with whitaker and you, but you're still there, man! your contact still has a heart next to it, and i've seen her thumb hover over the call button whenever she finishes with a hard case.

"but for some reason you're both so painfully stubborn that neither of you can tell how badly you need each other back," he finishes. "and this is me saying this, man. i don't usually do this shit."

jack sighs. "did she ever agree to switching to nights for a bit?"

robby scowls, giving him the don't change the subject look, but indulges him anyway. "no, she didn't. because she was too scared to have you as her attending, let alone interact with you at all. she got whitaker to cover for her instead."

"dammit," jack sighs. his one attempt to get you near without directly asking you, failed. now what?

"you'll have to try something else," robby says. "like, i don't know, actually talking to her instead of talking to her through me. oh, and do it without psychoanalyzing her."

to be continued...

eeek! i hope this is good.. :) i'm hoping to expand this into a series because i really wanna make it a slow burn and i enjoy writing it.

No, your attention is across the room by the bar, where none other than Jack Abbot is standing, his large hands wrapped around the neck of a beer bottle, and across from him stands Samira Mohan, dark curls let loose and plump lips stretched into a beautiful, wide smile.

It’s been a week since your last conversation with Jack, in the breakroom. A week since you had last let him into your bed, a week since he had touched you– a week since the two of you had ended things.

And Jack Abbot was clearly doing fucking fine. 

Your stomach twists and before you know it, you’re grabbing your glass and chugging the rest of your drink down, grimacing at the bitter taste. 

Parker sends you an impressed look, nodding in approval– clearly unaware of the internal battle you're going through.

“Atta girl!” she laughs, already motioning for the bartender to bring another round.

You give her a weak smile, eyes flickering past her and towards the bar once again.

They’re closer now, and you can see the faint smile on Jack’s face while his hand rests on her waist.

Jesus Christ, you’re gonna hurl.

Letting out a shaky sigh, you quickly stand up, almost falling into Trinity's lap when you climb over her.

“Woah– hey!” she exclaims, but you’re too lost in your head to hear her protests. 

The alcohol in your system is making the room spin, but you manage to find an empty hallway, stumbling down it. Leaning against a wall, you let the cool plaster bring you back to earth, eyes still downcast as you take a few breaths, trying to your racing heart.

Fuck this night, fuck that old man and fuck this fucking job–

A pair of shoes end up walking into view, and suddenly the surrounding noise is rushing back into your ears. You look up, blinking as you come face to face with dark eyes, equally as dark hair and a faint smile on the strangers lips.

Nick Barker.

“Huh?” you mutter dumbly, having seen his lips move but not registered any sound.

Nick gives you a small grin, eyebrows furrowing slightly as he takes in your disheveled appearance.

“I said, are you okay, Doc?”

You blink once again, the nickname finally snapping you back into reality.

“Yeah,” you say automatically, even though you can still feel your heart in your throat, beating wildly. “I’m okay,”

You were far from okay.

“Had one too many, have we?” he teases, singlehandedly carrying the conversation while you try to get your shit together.

Charming, you think to yourself. 

If only you could completely lose yourself in Nick Barker's pathetic attempts at flirting, rather than the sight of your…whatever, making eyes at your colleague in front of half the department.

“Something like that,” you muse weakly, unable to stop your eyes from flickering past him and towards the bar again.

“Wanna tell me what’s going on in that head of yours, Doc?” he asks, softer this time.

You hesitate, standing up straighter.

You don’t know Nick like that.

He’s… around. Familiar, in the way everyone that frequents the pitt is but not enough to spill relationship troubles to, and definitely not about a relationship that isn’t a relationship, but isn't nothing either.

You glance at him, then away again. He thankfully gets the hint. 

“For what it’s worth, whatever it’s about, I doubt it's on you,”

You snort, shaking your head as you give him an incredulous look.

“And how would you know that?”

Nick shrugs, biting back a grin as his eyes dart across your face and you notice them linger on your lips.

“Pretty girls are rarely the issue,”

You actually let out a laugh at that– at his audacity and relentless flirting. It’s a respectable feat at this point. 

“Christ, Barker–”

Your shared laughter is interrupted by Victoria stumbling into the hallway, already flushed cheeks growing even warmer as her doe eyes dart between you and the radiologist, looking so…cozy.

“Oh, I was just– I mean– I didn’t mean to– bathroom!” she laughs nervously, lips parted and face contorted in that trademark disgruntled look, before she squeezes herself between the two of you and through the doorway you were blocking.

Only then do you realize you’ve been gone from your table for quite some time, and Nick seems to have that same revelation.

“Can I buy you a drink?” he interrupts, just as you were about to come up with an excuse and leave, clearly thinking ahead of you.

A small wave of doubt flashes across your face, and Nick quickly speaks up again when he feels that you’re about to question his motives.

“You know, as an apology for my terrible attempts at flirting, and to take your mind off of…things,”

Still flirting horribly, but fuck it– you could use another drink and let yourself be distracted by pointless flirting for one night, right?

“How about we join the rest again?” you suggest instead, not bothering to wait for an answer as you grip his wrist, already tugging him back into the crowd.

The main room is still loud, still crowded and still way too warm, but this time, it proves itself to be a distraction you welcome with open arms.

The booth is right as you left it– Trinity laughing at something Parker is saying, Dennis is flushing in a way that reveals that he’s the butt of the joke and Victoria is somehow back in her seat again, giving you a sheepish smile. 

The more time that passes, the closer you end up, until eventually, his arm stretches along the back of the booth where you’re sitting. Just then, the rest of the table is conveniently led to the dance floor by Trinity– though not before she sends you an imprudent wink.

Nick is fun, easy to talk to and definitely easy on the eyes. Hell, even Cassie gives you the stamp of approval– a single, smug nod from the other side of the room.

Everything feels normal.

And for a few minutes, you let it be just that.

You laugh when you’re supposed to, nod along to the conversation even when you’re barely following, take a sip of your drink just to have something to do with your hands.

It almost works.

Almost.

Like a magnet drawn to a forcefield, your eyes are drawn to where you saw Jack earlier.

Only this time your gaze is met by his.

It’s cliche– the way the rest of the room seems to blur, the noise fading away when your eyes lock, but it’s the truth.

It’s not for long though, because soon his stare shifts to the person that's supposed to be blocking your view of him. Jack’s eyes move to follow the length of Nick’s arm along the back of your seat, then to the way you’re leaning towards him, down the bare expanses of your crossed legs, before finally landing on you again– with a newfound tension.

Nick is still talking besides you, completely unaware of the fact that you’re not listening to a word he’s saying. No, instead you’re dialed in on everything that is Jack Abbot. And just as his gaze had shifted to Nick, your own now shifts towards Samira, observing the lack of space between the two of them.

You should look away. You should be listening to Nick rambling about something, yet you’re letting your attending eye-fuck you from across the bar.

Something akin to satisfaction settles deep in your stomach at the idea of Jack feeling even a semblance of what you have been feeling all night.

But it’s not enough. No, you want him to suffer just as you had.

So you tear your gaze away, reaching out to brush a lock of hair from Nick’s face. He freezes mid sentence, before sitting straighter, clearly pleased by your action. You don’t give him a moment to collect himself before you lean closer.

“Remember how you said you wanted to help me take my mind off of things?” you mutter, eyes flickering to his lips.

Nick nods, swallowing dryly.

“Now’s your chance,” you whisper, closing your eyes, and thankfully Nick doesn't need much convincing, because in an instant, his lips land on yours, moving softly, before he gains some confidence, pulling you closer. His palm lands on your thigh, squeezing it.

Your eyes flutter open mid-kiss, back to that same corner of the bar, back to those hazel ones.

Jack is in the same position you last saw him in, only you can sense the newfound tension in him radiating off his frame.

You let your hands slip into Nick’s hair, tugging slightly– eyes half-lidded and locked on the way Jack’s fingers tighten its grip around his bottle of beer, before he brings it to his lips, taking a large sip– still not looking away.

The moment stretches too long, and before you know it, the rest of the table is coming back. Pulling away from Nick, who’s looking a little dazed, you give him a pat on the shoulder, squeezing past him to get out of the booth.

“Thanks. I’m going to get some air, ‘kay?”

As soon as you step out of the bar, a flood of cold air is washing over you and you take your first proper breath of the night once you’ve rounded the corner of the building, a bit further away from the front entrance.

The little bell above the door rings again when it swings open and you don’t need to look behind you to see who has followed out. 

“Quite the show you put on in there,” he drawls, and you already feel your irritation grow at the smugness in his voice.

“Wasn’t aware we had an audience” you quip back, blatantly lying.

Jack enters your field of vision, and you almost wish he had stayed behind you– out of sight, so that you could continue pretending that he doesn’t have an effect on you anymore.

His hands are shoved into the pockets of his grey jeans, the black t-shirt he’s wearing stretching deliciously over the broad expanse of his shoulders and the short sleeves constricting the bulging muscles in his arms.

You force yourself to stop checking him out.

You’re expecting a smirk– an unbothered, amused look on his face when you finally look at him. Instead, you’re met with a sharpened glare and a gritted jaw.

Oh?

“That was real mature, by the way,” he jeers sarcastically, Adam's apple bobbing when he awaits your answer, a reaction– anything to indicate you still give a fuck about him.

“Excuse me?” you say in disbelief, arms crossing at his harsh tone. You were used to the closed off version of him– one that held his cards close to his chest– but from here, the Jack standing in front of you was nothing like the calm and collected man from inside– out here, he was unabashedly unraveling.

Jack steps closer, close enough to where you can smell the beer on his breath and the last, lingering scent of the cologne he must have used before coming to the bar. His hands run through his short locks, and he gives you a torn look.

“What the fuck are you playing at?” he hisses, gripping your arm and pulling you closer to him.

You tilt your head, forced to strain your neck as you glare up at his towering frame.

“Not everything is about you, Abbot–”

“Oh, bullshit!” he snaps, chest heaving as he struggles with rationalizing what he’s feeling. “You’re messing with me on purpose, you knew how I’d feel seeing that,”

You splutter in disbelief once again, eyebrows furrowing at his words.

“Are you serious right now? I don't know shit about what you feel for me– that’s the entire fucking reason we’re here right now!” you spit, shoving him away from you. 

Jack stumbles back, before catching himself and stepping right back into your space again– crowding you against the wall of the building.

For months on end you had compromised your own feelings for the sake of his, agreeing to something casual because that was what he wanted. You had spent months convincing yourself that it didn’t matter that Jack wouldn’t touch you in public, because behind closed doors, he was all yours.

For months you had begged for the same attention he so easily gave someone else tonight. 

Tonight, he had proved once again that you should stop making excuses for him.

“What do you want from me?” you say weakly, breathing growing heavier as you swallow the lump in your throat. 

Jack falters at your defeated tone of voice, so unlike the fire he knows lives within you.

Had he done this to you?

He wants you– how could you not know that? Everything Jack had done had been with your best interest in mind and yet here you were, falling apart because of him. Because he thought keeping his distance, letting you go was the right choice. 

Because you had so much to do, and Jack had nothing ahead of him. 

Jack’s stare searches your face, and you can feel his breath warming the side of your face. If you turned your head, you’d be close enough to feel his lips brush against yours. Pressing his nose to your temple, he breathes in the scent he’s been without for what feels like an eternity. 

A final, sharp inhale and Jack is pulling away again.

“I can’t give you what you want,” he mumbles. 

You sniffle, shaking your head at his words. The memory flashes in your head– his hand on Samira’s waist, the easy smile you hadn’t seen directed at you in weeks, the way he didn’t even look your way until it was too late.

“You can, you just don’t want to–”

“Of course I want to,” Jack cuts in immediately, shutting down whatever you were trying to allude to. “But it’s not fair to you if I take what I want,”

A sharp, bitter laugh bubbles in your chest, and you push his hands away from you, wiping your face harshly as you speak. 

“What’s not fair is you treating me like this. You tell me we’re casual, then treat me like more– then you let me end things with you, only to act like some possessive jerk afterwards!”

Jack drags a hand down his face, exhaling sharply. “That wasn’t– fuck, you’re twisting it.”

“Then explain it to me,” you challenge, stepping closer despite everything. His eyes snap to yours, something frantic flickering in them.

“I screwed up,” he admits, voice rough. “Okay? I saw you with him and I–” he breaks off, jaw clenching. “I lost it,"

Your heart stutters at the revelation, but you don’t let it soften you. 

“That’s not enough,” you say quietly, not looking away from him. 

Jack sighs, running a hand through his hair restlessly.

“What do you want me to say huh? Just tell me and I’ll do it–”

“No, I’m done telling you what to feel!” you exclaim, unable to hold back any longer. A look of hurt flashes across your face and you step back, shaking your head in disappointment.  

“Figure it out yourself,” you spit, giving him one last look, before rounding the corner and hailing yourself a cab to go back home. 

The sound of your heels against the pavement is too loud in the quiet of the night and Jack can feel his heart constrict in his chest at the sight of your retreating figure.

“Hey– ” Jack’s voice calls after you, strained, but you don’t stop.

Not this time.

You lift a hand, waving down the first cab you see like your life depends on it. The car screeches to a halt a few feet ahead, and you don’t dare to look back, not until you're inside of it and it's pulling away.

Jack stands right where you left him, watching you slip away.

The next day, you get to work earlier than you have to, immediately zeroing in on Robby, who’s standing by the hub, staring up at the patient board.

Over the rim of his glasses, he squints, giving you a one over.

“Fancy seeing you here! Surely you heard that we were swamped and decided to come in early to help?” he says teasingly, giving you a tightlipped smile.

You barely slow your stride towards the lockers, matching his sarcasm with your own.

“Oh, you know me! Always happy to help–” you retort, not lingering long enough for him to find you something to do. 

He huffs out a quiet laugh, adjusting his glasses as he turns back to the board, hands gripping each side of his stethoscope hanging around his neck. 

“Bet you are, hoo-ahh,” he mocks as you pass him, and you bite back a smile at the reminder of the silly night shift chant the team does– to build morale, apparently.

Slipping into your work shoes, you roll the sleeves of your undershirt up then head back to the hub, where Robby is now joined by Dana.

“I do actually have to speak to you, though,” you try to say as casually as you can, but Dana still gives you an appraising look, while Robby turns to face you, putting the ipad in his hands, down.

“Okay,” he says carefully, sharing a glance with the equally as curious charge nurse, before looking back at you. “Shoot,”

You shift your weight on your feet, suddenly very aware of their expecting gazes.

“I’d like to be put on the day-shift,” you say simply.

The silence that ensues does nothing to calm the cold sweats you're starting to have.

“…You’re kidding,” Robby says first, raising his eyebrows  like he’s waiting for the punchline.

“I am not,” you press, a shaky laugh escaping you when they continue to look at you like you’ve suddenly started to speak French.

That’s when Dana straightens a little, arms uncrossing as her attention sharpens fully, as she does a tentative scan over your frame.. 

“You’ve been fighting to stay on nights since you started here, kid, what’s with the sudden change of heart?”

“I know,” you say, shrugging slightly. “Just need a change of scenery,”

Robby lets out a low whistle, rocking back slightly on his heels as he studies you like you’ve just grown a second head.

“Does Abbot know about this?”

You look down, fiddling with your scrub top.

“No, why should he?”

“Well, he is the night shift attending–”

“It’s not a big deal. We don’t have to like…tell everyone,” you mutter as inconspicuously as you can.

Robby gives you a stiff smile, eyes darting to Dana, who gives him a shrug, equally as baffled.

“...Alright,” he sighs, scratching at his scruff.

You perk up, clearly surprised but quickly steel yourself again.

“Really?”

Robby nods, leaning back against the counter and holds your gaze a moment longer than necessary, like he’s weighing whether this is just a simple rescheduling request or something deeper.

Relief flickers through you before you can stop it.

“Thank you,” you say quickly, almost too quickly, then flash a smile at them, turning around and making your way towards the elevators, leaving them alone at the hub. 

Dana watches you go, the faintest crease forming between her brows as you disappear around the corner. After making sure that you’ve left, she turns back to Robby.

“...You’re going to tell Abbot, right–”

“Who’s going to tell Abbot what?”

Jack saunters into the department, his backpack slung over his shoulder and looking ready for work, like he’s not an hour early.

“Scheduling,” Dana snorts, not bothering with greetings.

Jack grimaces, dumping his bag at the counter.

“Ah, my favorite topic of conversation,” he says dryly, leaning back as he squints at the board, assessing the current patients administered there. 

Robby clears his throat, glancing up over his glasses before going back to reading on the ipad.

“Yeah, seems like you’ve got some residents jumping ship, brother,”

“Oh, yeah?” Jack hums, only half listening as he grabs a chart, ready to start his shift, “Who?”

The silence he’s met with has him coming to a halt. Setting the chart back on the counter, he sniffs, running his knuckles under his nose. 

He knows who.

“When did she speak to you?”

Robby doesn’t respond immediately, debating whether or not he should tell him, but seeing Jack’s hardened glare he decides to spare himself the headache.

“She came in early, asked to be put on days and I said yes,” Robby responds earnestly, knowing better than to try and sugar coat anything related to you.

Jack chuckles dryly, shaking his head. A hand runs down the back of his neck as if he’s trying to calm himself down, but before he knows it he’s moving.

“She came in early?” he confirms, already starting to walk away from his oldest friend.

“Jack–” Robby starts, only to stop mid sentence once Jack raises his hand, effectively cutting him off. Sighing for what felt like the hundredth time in only 20 minutes, Robby gives up on trying to intervene, “...I saw her head upstairs.”

Jack doesn’t spare him another glance. 

The door to the roof opens abruptly, breaking you out of your thoughts and sending you flinching.

At the scene of the crime is none other than Jack Abbot, looking very fucking pissed.

“You’re asking to be put on days?” he spits, not even bothering to act cool about it.

The wind tousles your hair when you turn around to face him

“I’m not asking, I’ve already switched–”

“Like hell you have,” Jack cuts in, slamming the door behind him harshly, before stalking over to where you’re standing. “Are you trying to get back at me– is that it?”

Scoffing, you resist the urge to roll your eyes instead meeting his glare with your own, face twisted in bewilderment.

“Get back at you?” you repeat incredulously, pushing off the railing and walking around him when he steps closer– keeping your distance.

Jack exhales, his palms rubbing into his eyes.

“Because of last night. Because of Mohan–”

“It’s not about her–”

But he’s not hearing you, continuing to ramble.

“ – you saw one moment, and now you’re cutting me out of your life completely–”

Frustration builds in your chest, bubbling up until you’re lashing out– the false, composed demeanor you had been trying to keep falling apart. 

“I saw you give her what I’ve been wanting for months for, Jack!”

The words finally seem to register in his ears, and for the first time since he stepped onto the roof with you, Jack is silenced.

You continue speaking, voice shaking but sharp nonetheless, the wind howling between the two of you.

“I asked you, no I begged you for the bare minimum, and you made me feel like it was still too much. And then I walk into that bar,” you go on, a bitter laugh slipping out, “and suddenly you have no problems anymore. Touching her, laughing with her in front of everyone, like it’s easy?”

Jack swallows his words, fists clenching and unclenching as he tries to hold back– to stop himself from spilling everything he’s ever felt out on the roof of the hospital.

It’s a losing battle.

You watch him stay silent yet again, a look of disappointment flashing in your eyes before you turn around, moving towards the exit.

Jack would rather fling himself off the roof than have you look at him like that again.

“It is easier with her,” he finally speaks, and you end up wishing he wouldn’t. 

“Go tell her that and spare me, Jack–”

"You told me to figure my shit out, so I am– just, hear me out okay?” he pleads, taking a deep breath and forcing himself to continue when you let him speak. “...It’s easier with her because I don’t care about her,”

You freeze in your step, his words causing your racing mind to finally quiet down.

“I never did. I–” he sighs and you hear him step closer to you, yet you refuse to turn around to face him. “...I was trying to forget," 

When you stay silent, Jack continues rambling, walking until he’s right in front of you, looking into your eyes with his own pleading ones.

“ –But then I saw you with him, and I realized I didn't want to see you with anyone but me. And I know it’s far too fucking late, and that I’ve been putting you through hell, but I…” he trails off, and you hear him breathe heavily, trying to collect his thoughts. “I thought I was doing the right thing…that I was helping you realize you didn’t actually want this,”

That you didn’t actually want me, Jack thinks to himself. 

The sky is falling behind you, casting an orange hue over the rooftop where the two of you are standing. The distant sounds of ambulance sirens can be heard, as well as the honks from traffic, the sound of people walking on the street and a lone helicopter flying above, yet all Jack can focus on is the broken look on your face. 

“I’ve always wanted you, Jack,”

You say, taking in the way his chest rises unevenly, the way his hands hang uselessly at his sides like he doesn’t trust himself to reach for you. 

You feel your eyes well up, and you break away from his searching eyes, blinking away the tears threatening to spill.

Jack can’t fight it anymore– he can’t let the distance last. Like a moth drawn to a flame, he steps closer, cupping your face. 

“I know and I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, honey–” he mutters, pressing his forehead to yours. Your breath shudders when you feel his lips kiss the tears away, the familiar yet strange feeling of his coarse stubble scratching against your damp cheeks.

Pulling back just enough to look into your eyes, Jack doesn’t hesitate this time.

“I’m in love with you,” he says, the words catching in his throat, but he forces them out nonetheless. He wasn't going to let his fear win this time. 

Your breath hitches at his words, eyes searching him for an inkling of doubt– of regret, anything that would indicate you being hurt by him again.

He hates that you have to be cautious around him, that you’re worried about protecting your heart when all he’s ever wanted was to hold it in his hands forever. To protect you, to love you.

“I love you,” he repeats, softer this time. “ And if you’ll let me, I’ll make sure to prove it– no matter how long it takes,”

You watch him– waiting for that same version of him that would let his walls down just enough to reel you in, before shutting you out again.

And when he doesn’t– when you realize that the person you see before you is nothing like him– a tentative, soft smile forms on your face.

Jack can’t take his eyes off of you– he never wants to take his eyes off of you again. 

“Took you long enough,” you huff weakly, allowing yourself to relax in his arms when his lips press against your forehead.

That day, Jack Abbott decided to spend the rest of his life trying to make up for the biggest mistake he’s ever made– hurting you.

☆END NOTE: Yeah, yeah– sappy ending I know, but they've been through a lot, let them be happy! Speaking of going through a lot,I personally went through the five stages of grief writing this. It was supposed to be short n sweet (get it?), not an age gap-situationship-final boss fic. Not proud of it, man enough to say it and I hope you still like it?

“Fuck.” The word punched out of him and he pressed his hips forward, letting out a low groan as he said, Been thinkin’ about this all night.

“Just tonight?”

He pulled back just enough to look at you, and you could feel strands of his hair—softer than it used to be, less product—brushing against your forehead as he lowered his head. His pupils were blown so wide you could hardly see the hazel. His expression was so open it made your chest ache. “Longer.”

Your breath caught. For a second neither of you moved, and you let his eyes bore into your own. “Steve—” 

“Since you showed up again.” His thumb found the sliver of skin where your jeans, the Levi’s you’d found in a thrift store near college, sat low on your hip. “Maybe longer. Maybe I never really stopped.” 

You should probably tell him not to say things like that. Yes, you should remind him—so you can remind yourself—that this was just scratching an itch, just getting it out of your system. But his forehead was pressed to yours and his hands were warm and solid on your hips and you couldn’t get yourself to care about should. 

“Kiss me again,” you said instead.

He wasted no time. His tongue slid against yours and you made a sound you’d be embarrassed about later, pulling him closer by the shirt. The fabric bunched in your fists and you could feel his heart beating against your palms. 

“Bed?” you managed to say when you pulled for air. 

He kissed along your jaw, down your neck, finding that spot below your ear that made you gasp. "Just give me a second."

"We're still by the door."

“‘m aware.” His hands were pulling your sweater up, impatient in a way that made you smile against his mouth because that was familiar; Steve wanting too much too fast, Steve getting ahead of himself. You lifted your arms to help him and the sweater caught on your necklace—the delicate gold chain with your initial you never took off, the one your mom gave you for graduation —before it came free and dropped to the floor next to your bag. Your keys were probably tangled in the strap and your lip gloss was definitely getting crushed.

Then his hands were on your bare skin, thumbs brushing the underside of your bra. 

You pulled at his shirt and he helped you, yanking it over his head in one motion that messed his hair up even more. And then you were both breathing hard, pressed against the door, and you couldn't remember why you'd wanted to move in the first place.

Your eyes traced over him in the dim light from the window. He really had filled out, shoulders broader, arms more defined, the suggestion of actual muscle instead of the lanky basketball-player frame he'd had earlier. 

“Hey,” he said, softer this time. His hands cupped your face again as he stroked your cheekbones. 

"Hi." You traced the line of his collarbone with your finger, watching goosebumps rise in its wake. "You got broader."

He laughed, surprised. "What?"

“Your shoulders. They’re—” You ran your hands over them, feeling the muscle there. “You filled out.”

"Four years of actually working out instead of just pretending to for basketball will do that." His hands slid down your sides, settling on your waist. "You got—"

"Careful how you finish that sentence."

"—even prettier." He said it simply, like it was obvious. Like there was no other possible word. "I was going to say even prettier."

Something in your chest cracked wide open. "Steve—"

"This is new." He mused as he hummed while his thumb traced the outline of the black lace. "Pretty girl,” he murmured.

“You don’t know that.” 

His eyes flicked up, dark and a little smug. “Yeah. I do. I remember all of them.” His thumb dipped beneath the lace, brushing bare skin, and he kept his eyes on your face. “The pink one. The white one with the flowers. The red one you wore for—”

“Okay, okay,” you cut him off, face heating. “Point made.”

“Just saying,” he said, tilting his head as he grinned, that cocky smile that used to drive you crazy. “I paid attention.”

“Clearly.”

“Had to.” He hummed as his fingers came up and around your neck, warm and possessive. “You were my girl.”

Were. God. The word hung between you for a second before he was kissing you again, erasing it, swallowing it, taking it back. His tongue slid against yours and you forgot what you were thinking about, forgot everything except the way his hands were moving you, confident now. Like he was more sure.

“Bedroom,” you said against his mouth. “Steve, we gotta—”

“Yeah. Yeah, okay.” But his hand was already sliding higher, thumb brushing the underside of your breast, and you gasped. “Fuck, you sound—”

“Steve.” Your voice was firmer now. 

“Bossy,” he said, smirking as he pulled away from you. 

He grabbed your thighs and lifted you. Your legs wrapped around his waist automatically and his hands gripped you tight, fingers digging into your ass as he he walked off. “Show off,” you murmured against his neck.

“You love it.”

“Maybe.”

He let out a throaty laugh. “Definitely.” He squeezed and you bit his shoulder in retaliation, which only made him laugh harder. “Careful. Don’t start something you can’t finish.”

“Who says I can’t finish it?”

His laugh was cut off by a groan you felt vibrate through his chest. “Okay, yeah. We’re—let’s go, before I drop you.”

"I might." But his grip tightened, hands flexing against your thighs as he navigated through his apartment. You could feel every step, the way his muscles shifted, the controlled strength in how he held you. He'd always been strong—basketball had seen to that—but this was different. Deliberate. Like he wanted you to feel exactly how easily he could carry you.

You kissed along his jaw, his neck, finding that spot behind his ear that used to make him crazy. Still did, apparently, because he stumbled slightly, shoulder hitting the doorframe.

"Jesus—" He course-corrected, finally making it through the doorway. "You're the worst."

"You love it."

"Maybe," he said, throwing your words back at you, and then he was setting you down on the bed. Not gently—with enough force that you bounced once, twice, and had to catch yourself on your elbows.

"Smooth," you said, grinning up at him.

"Shut up." But he was grinning too as he braced his hands on either side of you, leaning down until his face was inches from yours. Close enough that you could see the flecks of gold in his eyes, the way his pupils were blown wide. "Hi."

"Hi."

His knee pressed between your thighs, and the grin faded into something more serious and intense. "You good?"

"Yeah." Your hands found his shoulders, sliding down to his chest. You could feel his heart racing under your palm. "You?"

“Yeah. Really good. Just—” He stopped, and something flickered across his face, something more vulnerable. “Can’t believe you’re really here.”

“Where else would I be?”

“I don’t know. Anywhere but here.” He said it like he’d truly thought you’d change your mind somewhere between the bar and his bedroom. “With me.”

Your throat felt tight. “Steve—”

He kissed you before you could finish. His knee pressed between your thighs and you gasped into his mouth. He shifted his weight, pressing closer, and the friction made you both groan. His hand found the button of your jeans. "Can I?"

"If you don't, I'm doing it myself."

He laughed, pleased. "Bossy girl." He was already working the button open, sliding the zipper down with maddening slowness. His knuckles brushed your stomach and you sucked in a breath.

"So sensitive everywhere," he said, more to himself than to you. He traced the path his knuckles had made, watching your face. "I remember that. How you'd get goosebumps when I—" He did it again, firmer this time, and you shivered.

"Steve—"

"Yeah, baby?"

The endearment made your stomach flip. "Keep going."

"So demanding," he said, but hooking his fingers in your jeans, tugging them down over your hips. You lifted to help and they joined the growing pile on his floor. He sat back on his heels, just looking, and you fought the urge to cover yourself.

“What?” you asked when the silence stretched on.

“Nothing. Just—” His hand settled on your thigh, thumb tracing idle circles. “You’re so fuckin’ pretty like this. I mean—” His hands slid higher, fingers running over the edge of the lace of your underwear. “So pretty,” he murmured, this time more to himself. His touch went from teasing to reverent. “Can I take these off?” 

He pulled them down slowly, pressing kisses to your hip, your thigh, the inside of your knee. By the time they were gone, you were breathing so hard you felt dizzy.

"Okay?" he asked, settling between your legs again.

"Yeah. Yes. Very okay." You reached for his belt. "Your turn."

"Impatient."

"You're one to talk."

He helped you with his belt, both of you fumbling with the buckle until it came free. Then his jeans were open and you could feel him, hard and hot against your hip through his boxers.

"Fuck," you breathed.

"Yeah." He kicked his jeans off the rest of the way. "That's—yeah."

You laughed despite yourself. "Eloquent."

“Shut up.” He smiled as he kissed you and his hand slid up your ribs, as his thumb found your nipple through the lace and you arched into the touch. “You make me stupid.”

"Pretty sure you were stupid before me."

"Definitely." His mouth found your neck, that spot below your ear. "But you make it worse."His words were muffled against your skin. 

His hand moved lower, between your legs, and you stopped caring about conversation entirely. His fingers found you and you gasped. 

A corner of his lips kicked up at your sound. “That good?”

“Yeah.” 

“Tell me.” His fingers moved in slow circles. “C’mon, baby. I wanna hear you say it.”

“It’s—good—” His fingers kicked up the speed a notch. “Good. Fuck, Steve—”

“That’s my girl.” His voice had gone rough. “Let me make you feel good. That’s all I want.”

His fingers moved faster and you grabbed his shoulder, nails digging into his skin. The tension was building low in your stomach, and you shifted your hips but he held you down with one of his palms.

"Steve—"

"I know. I've got you." His mouth was on your neck, your collarbone, your chest. "Just let me take care of you, baby. I've got you."

Your eyes squeezed shut and your head tilted back and—

And that's when you saw it.

Your eyes had drifted in a haze without meaning to, unfocused, looking for something to ground yourself, and there it was. On the dresser, three feet away. A picture frame catching the amber streetlight that filtered through the closed blinds. There were five people, but the only one who you could focus on was Steve, with his arms around Nancy Wheeler. Nancy was laughing at something, head tilted back, looking carefree and perfect right next to Steve. Nancy, who belonged in that picture. Nancy, who belonged in Steve’s life, on a picture he wakes up to every morning—

Your body went rigid without meaning to. Every muscle locked; your breath caught somewhere between your lungs and your throat. The heat that had been building in your stomach—the want, the need, the almost—all of it just stopped, went cold. Like someone had thrown a bucket of ice water over your entire body. 

Steve noticed. Of course he did, the switch was so crystal clear he couldn’t have ignored it even if he wanted to. His hands stilled between your legs and he looked up at you, breathing hard. “Hey. What’s wrong?”

You couldn’t answer. You couldn’t even look at him. Your eyes were still fixed on the dresser. Or maybe they weren’t, you couldn’t really process the information from your eyes to your mind all that well. 

It’s fine, you told yourself desperately. It’s just a picture. A picture that tells you nothing about yourself. This is casual anyway. This doesn’t matter. It doesn’t— But your throat was getting tight and your eyes were burning. 

“Baby?” Steve’s voice had changed, gone from rough and wanting to worried. “Did I hurt you? Was it too much?”

You shook your head but still couldn't speak. Couldn't look away from the picture.

Just close your eyes. Just ignore it. Just let him keep going. You can do this. You can be normal about this.

But you couldn't. Because Nancy was right there. Nancy who he'd chosen. Nancy who'd been worth leaving you for. Nancy who was still here, in his bedroom, in his life, looking perfect and happy while you were—

“Talk to me.” You didn’t know when he’d retracted his fingers, but his hand was on your face, trying to turn your head towards him. “Please, baby. You’re scaring me.”

The concern in his voice—the genuine fear—was what broke you. A full-body sob came from somewhere deep in your chest, and it sounded like you’d been holding it for four years. The kind that made your shoulders shake and breath come in gasps. 

“Shit.” Steve pulled back slightly. “What did I do? What do I do? What happened?”

You pressed your palms to your eyes but the tears kept coming, hot and fast and unending. “I’m sorry,” you choked out between sobs. “I’m so sorry. I’m sorry—”

"Why are you apologizing?" He was hovering over you now, hands fluttering near your arms, your face, like he wanted to touch but didn't know if he was allowed. "Just tell me what's wrong. Please. Did I do something? Did I hurt you?"

"No." You shook your head frantically. "No, you didn't—"

"Then what?" His voice cracked. "What happened? Two seconds ago we were—and now you're—"

You tried to stop crying. You tried to get control of yourself. But every time you almost had it, you'd think about Steve's arm in that picture, about how easy they looked together, and the sobs would start again.

"I'm sorry." You couldn't stop saying it. "I'm sorry. I thought I could do this. I thought—"

"Do what?" He was sitting back now, running his hands through his hair. "I don't understand what's happening."

"This." You gestured between you with shaking hands. "I thought I could—I told myself I could just hook up casually. Just get it out of my system but I—" Your voice broke completely. "I can't. I can't do this."

Steve went very still. "What?"

“I can’t.” You were trying to clutch your face and cover your eyes again. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. You wanted—we were supposed to—and I messed it up by getting emotional—I feel crazy—”

“You’re not crazy—”

“I am.” You finally looked at him and his face was stricken and pale, like you’d said the worst things he could imagine. “I’m crying in your bed about something that happened four years ago and that’s crazy.”

“What—” His voice broke. “What—what are you saying?” he asked carefully, like he was afraid of the answer. 

You looked back at the dresser, at the picture. And even through the blur of tears, you could see it perfectly. Nancy's smile. His arm around her. The way they fit together. You’d seen it everyday at school, and now…

Steve followed your gaze. You watched him see it. And you watched understanding start to dawn on his face.

"That's—" He stopped. "That's from Robin's birthday. Last summer. It's everyone."

“Okay.” Your voice was barely a whisper.

“So what’s—” He stopped, then dug his teeth into his lower lip. “It’s Nancy?”

You nodded slowly, fresh tears slipping over. 

“We’re friends,” he said slowly. “We’ve been friends for years. That picture is just—it’s all of us. I don’t even really look at it anymore. It’s just there, it’s just been there so long—”

“I know.” You wrapped your arms around yourself, trying to cover your body as much as possible. “You don’t have to explain. This wasn’t supposed to mean anything.”

“Hey, what—” His face changed. “What does that mean?”

You couldn't answer because you couldn't tell him that you'd been lying to yourself all night. That nothing about this felt casual. That being in his bed, under his hands, hearing him call you baby, it all felt like falling back in time. Like being seventeen and in love and believing in forevers.

"Look at me." His voice was gentle but insistent. "Please."

You lifted your head and he was right there, close enough to touch. His eyes were red now too. Wet.

“I didn’t think this was casual,” he said quietly, his head tilted down to look at his bedspread, as he shook his head. “Why would it be?”

“Because—” you started, voice rising. “Because it can’t be anything but casual. It can’t mean anything—”

“Why?” he asked, like there was a point he knew he was completely blind to.

“Because I fucking can’t—” Your breath hitched. “Everytime I close my fucking eyes I see you choosing her. And I know it was so long ago and I should be over it but I’m not.” Fresh tears spilled over. “I’m still the girl who wasn’t enough for you to stay.”

Steve was shaking his head the entire time as you spoke, and you barely caught all the emotions that ran through his features. The pain, the realization, the grief. His mouth opened, but nothing came out. He just stared at you and you watched something crack behind his eyes as they glazed over with dampness. 

“Stop saying things like that.” Steve parted his lips, staring at you with unguarded hurt covering his face. “Please.”

“I won’t because I know I wasn’t.” You wiped at your face with the back of your hand. “I know I wasn’t, and I know it now, too.”

"That's not—" His voice broke completely. He pressed the heel of his hand to his chest like something hurt there. "That's not true. That's not what happened."

“Then what did happen” Your voice came out desperate and sharp. “Because from where I’m standing, Steve, you met Nancy Wheeler in AP English and suddenly I wasn’t—”

He was quiet for a moment, and you watched him struggle with something. His jaw worked, his hands flexed, and when he finally spoke, his voice was different. Smaller. “I don’t know.”

You stared at him.

“I don’t—” He pressed his palms to his eyes. “I’ve spent all this time trying to figure it out and I still don’t know. I just—one day, I was with you and everything was good. And then I—” He dropped his hands. His eyes were red. “I started thinking about her. And what it would be like. And I couldn’t stop.”

The honesty of it was worse than any excuse he could’ve given you. Isn’t this what you wanted?

"I tried," he continued, voice cracking. "I tried to stop. To just—focus on us. But it was like—I don't know. Like I'd already fucked it up just by thinking about someone else. And I felt so guilty and I thought maybe—maybe if I just ended things it would be cleaner. Better for both of us."

"Better for both of us," you repeated flatly.

"I know how that sounds—"

"Do you?" Your voice was shaking. "Because it sounds like you got bored. Like you wanted something new and exciting and I was just—what? Comfortable?"

"No—"

"Then what?" You were crying harder now. "What was it about her? What did she have that I didn't?"

"Nothing." He shook his head frantically. "It wasn't about you not having something. It was—I don't know. She was different. New. And I was seventeen and stupid and I thought—" He stopped. "I thought maybe I didn’t need to decide forever. Nobody was—" His voice broke. “And that’s so fucked up. I know that’s fucked up. But that’s what I was thinking.”

The words hit like a physical blow. You couldn’t process what he was saying. You didn’t fucking want to. You couldn’t breathe.

“I know I made the biggest mistake I could’ve,” he said, and he had his hands in the air gripping on nothing as he spoke.

“The only mistake was me loving you too much, Steve,” you said quietly. He opened his mouth to respond, but you continued, “Don’t say it isn’t true. I loved you so much I couldn’t see you didn’t—that you weren’t—” You stopped, trying to hold back another embarrassing sob building up in your chest. Then, you breathed in, then out. “I should’ve known. I should’ve seen it coming earlier.”

“There was nothing to see,” he said, shaking his head frantically. “I loved you. I did. I just—” 

“Just not enough to say,” you said through a bitter, final laugh. 

He parted his lips, breaths growing faster, and you could see his chest going up, down. Up. Down. He looked like he was running through everything he could say, but nothing came out. “Please.”

The corners of your lips curved downwards, frowning. “It’s okay, Steve,” you said, trying to keep your voice even. You stood up, grabbing your underwear off the bed, putting them on, then standing up to pick up the jeans in the pile on the floor. You moved around without meeting Steve’s face. 

As you were buttoning up your jeans, you looked at him from the corner of your eye. There was a single tear running down his cheek and he was frozen to the spot on the bed. 

You clipped on your bra quickly. Your sweater was by the door outside, so you’d have to grab that. 

You cleared your throat, then turned to look at Steve finally, an arm hugging your torso because you felt just too exposed. “It’s okay, Steve,” you repeated, voice cracking. 

“Please don’t go,” Steve said, voice cracking completely. “Don’t—leave like this.” He stood up, hands shaking. “I’ll do anything. I’ll—tell me what to do and I’ll do it.”

“Steve,” you said, and this time there may have been something in your voice that reached all his neurons because he walked closer to you immediately, hurried. 

His palms closed over your shoulders as he tipped his head down to look at you. “Hey, hey. Please. Just not tonight. Not right now. It’s late, I don’t want you walking out of here like this.”

You looked up at him and his face was so close. Close enough that you could see every tear track, every red rim around his eyes, the way his bottom lip was trembling slightly like he was trying to hold back more tears.

"I can't stay here." Your voice came out broken. "I can't—I can't be in your bed and pretend this doesn't—"

“I know.” His thumb pressed into your shoulder, grounding. “I know it hurts. But it's—" He glanced toward the window where the darkness pressed against the glass. "It's late and you've been drinking and you're upset and I just—" His voice cracked. "I can't watch you leave like this. I can't."

"Steve—"

"Please." The word came out desperate. "Just—just until morning. That's all I'm asking. Just stay until morning and if you want to leave then, I won't—I won't stop you. I promise."

You wanted to argue. Wanted to push his hands off and walk out anyway because staying felt dangerous. It felt like crossing a line you couldn't uncross.

But you were exhausted. Your whole body ached—from crying, from tension, from holding yourself together when all you wanted to do was fall apart. And the thought of getting dressed, walking home, facing your sister's questions—

"Okay." It came out barely above a whisper.

His eyes closed briefly and you watched relief flood his features. His shoulders sagged and his grip on you tightened for just a second before he seemed to catch himself. "Yeah?"

"Just tonight." You had to make that clear. Had to protect yourself somehow. "And you're—you're sleeping on the couch or something."

"Yeah. Yes. Of course." He was nodding quickly, hands still on your shoulders like he was afraid if he let go you'd change your mind. "Whatever you need. I'll sleep on the couch. You take the bed."

You looked down at yourself. At the bra and jeans that suddenly felt too tight, too constricting. "Can I—" You gestured vaguely. "The sweater?"

"Yeah. Here." He finally let go of you, moved at lightning speed grab the t-shirt from earlier off the floor in the hallway. He held it out. "Take whatever you need."

You took it, pulled it over your head. You were suddenly hyperaware that Steve was still standing there. Watching you with red eyes and shaking hands.

"I'll just—" He seemed to realize the same thing. "Let me grab some stuff and I'll give you privacy."

Steve had stopped at the doorway, pillow and blanket clutched to his chest. He was looking at you with this expression you couldn't quite read. Something between grief and longing and regret.

"Bathroom's right there if you need it," he said, nodding to a door you hadn't noticed. "And uh—there's a spare toothbrush in the drawer under the sink. Never been used."

"Okay."

He stood there for another moment, like he was waiting for something. Or maybe working up the courage to say something else.

"I'm sorry," he finally said. "I know that doesn't—I know it doesn't fix anything. But I'm sorry. For tonight. For all of it."

Your throat felt too tight to respond. You just nodded.

He nodded back, wiped at his face with the back of his hand, and turned to leave.

"Steve?" The word came out before you could stop it.

He froze in the doorway, turned back immediately. "Yeah?"

You opened your mouth, then closed it. You didn't even know what you wanted to say. Just that him leaving felt wrong somehow. That the thought of being alone in his bed while he was on the couch felt—

"Nothing," you said finally. "Never mind."

His face fell slightly but he nodded. "Okay. Well—I'll be right out there. If you need anything. Anything at all."

The door closed softly behind him.

Steve hadn’t been sleeping. Not really. The couch was comfortable enough. The only thing uncomfortable about it was knowing that you were only a few footsteps away, in his bed, and he could do nothing about it. It felt worse from when you were hundreds of miles away for some fucked up reason. It made it impossible for him to relax. Every creak of the floorboards, every shift of the mattress springs through the wall, he heard it all. He was hyper-aware of your presence in a way that made his chest ache.

He’d been staring at the ceiling for hours, watching the shadows shift as maybe three or four cars passed outside. Replaying everything. The picture. Your face when you saw it. The way you’d looked at him like he’d destroyed you all over again. 

But he hadn’t, had he? All over again. No, he’d made you hold onto it and carry it for four years like some fucked up souvenier of his cowardice. And tonight, he’d just reopened the wound. He had reminded you exactly why you’d left, why you had to leave this place, why you’d spent four years becoming someone who didn’t need him.

Except you’d come back. You’d walked into the baseball field all those months ago and his entire world had flipped all the way fucking sideways. He’d been picking up bases and thinking about what to make for dinner, and then he’d looked up and there you were. Steve’s brain had entirely stopped working.

You’d looked the same. Different. The same. Your hair was longer, falling past your shoulders instead of the collarbone length you’d had junior year. You held yourself with your shoulders back and chin up. But your eyes were the same. They were the specific shade of colour he’d tried and failed to describe to Nancy once, back when he’d been stupid enough to think talking about you would make it hurt less. It hadn’t worked. Nothing had.

And tonight it happened. Tonight, when you showed up to the bar in that sweater, the cropped one that showed just a sliver of skin when you moved, he’d known that the careful restraint he’d been practicing would dissolve the second you looked at him like you did at the pool table. Like you still wanted him.

And then everything had fallen apart. Because of course it had. Because he’d been living in his apartment for one year and he saw that picture every single day and it had never occurred to him—not once—that you might see it too. That you might see his arm around Nancy’s shoulder and remember. 

He pressed the heels of his hand to his eyes until he saw stars. 

A sound from his bedroom made him freeze. Soft footsteps and the quiet creak of his bedroom door opening. 

His heart jumped like it had its own silly, uncontrollable mind. Maybe you couldn’t sleep either. Maybe you’d come out here to, what? Talk? Yell at him? But the footsteps weren’t heading toward the living room where he laid, they were heading towards the door.

You were leaving.

The realization hit him like a punch. Of course you were leaving. Of course you couldn't even wait until morning like you'd said. Why would you stay with the guy who'd—

His throat felt tight. His chest felt like something was sitting on it.

You'd promised. You'd said you'd stay until morning and you were leaving anyway and he was going to lose you all over again and this time he couldn't even blame you because he'd done this, he'd caused this, he'd—

“You just gonna sneak out?”

You froze by the door, and Steve realized just how naive he’d been all this time. What had he expected? For you to wake up the next morning and have breakfast with him? For you to sleep on it all and come out on the other side forgiving?

You cleared your throat as your palms settled flat against your upper thigh. “I think—” You stopped yourself, letting out a small exhale he could hear from his spot on the couch. “We should pretend like tonight didn’t happen.”

And Steve had faced consequences in life, so much that after skating half his life without them, he was bombarded with a slew of the aftermath of his decisions that were sure to haunt him till time. But this, you. God, Steve had never felt anything that cut through him quite like this did. 

“Pretend,” he echoed, like the word was foreign to him. 

“Yeah.” You still weren't looking at him, and your hands had moved to grip the doorknob now like it was the only thing keeping you standing and reminding you of your decision. “We just… We forget about it. Move on.”

“Move on.” His voice sounded so hollow. “How—how am I supposed to do that?” His voice cracked. “It was all going so well. We were—”

“I know,” you said, cutting him off, as your voice shook. “I know. That’s why we need to forget about it.”

“I can’t do that,” he said, voice going softer now, as he pushed himself off the couch. You gripped the doorknob tighter. “I’ve spent so long trying to forget you and I can’t. I can’t fuckin’ do it. So how am I supposed to forget tonight?”

“Well, that’s how it works, Steve,” you said, the sharpness of your voice cutting through the thickening air instantly. You turned to look at him, the streetlight from outside catching your face, and he could see the fresh tracks of tears on your cheeks and he just wanted to—he just wanted to fucking help. Do something. But your voice held him back. “That’s how it works. If you could throw away three—three years so quickly, then you can forget about one night now.”

The words hit him like a ton of bricks. He staggered back a step, feeling something twist inside his chest.

“That’s not fair,” he said quietly, shaking his head.

“Fair?” You laughed, and it was the worst sound he’d ever heard, all bitter and broken. “You wanna talk about fair? Was it fair when you left me for someone else? Was it fair when I had to see you everyday after with someone else? Was it fair I had to spend years thinking I wasn’t—” Your voice cracked completely, like the sorrow had manifested into a physical thing and swallowed your words whole. “Don’t talk to me about fair.” 

“You’re right.” He held up his hands. 

“Stop—stop looking at me like you’re the one this is hurting.” He opened his mouth, hands shaking beside him, but you continued, “Don’t act like I’m breaking your heart when you—when you—”

You couldn’t finish, only stood there swallowing back sobs, shoulders shaking. Steve had never felt more helpless in his entire life. 

He shook his head, lips trembling. “I just want you to know how I feel.”

You dropped your hand. “I don’t want to know how you feel. I don’t want to hear about how you missed me or how sorry you are. Or how tonight meant so much to you. None of it matters because you left. You still chose her. And I—” Your voice broke. “I can’t unhear that. I can’t fucking unknow that.”

Steve raised his arms, then dropped them to his sides. You tracked his movement and your palm turned the doorknob. It was like he’d blinked once and you were gone, the door closing softly behind you.

March. Junior year. His BMW was in the parking lot behind the football field.

You’d known something was wrong for weeks, maybe longer. He’d started saying “I’m tired” when you asked him to come over. His hand felt looser in yours when you walked through the hallways. He’d stopped calling the phone in your room before bed. He’d stopped showing up to your locker between classes with a stolen cookie from the cafeteria because he knew you always woke up too late to eat your full breakfast.

Small and tiny things. All things you told yourself you were imagining because Steve loved you and you loved him and that was enough. That had to be enough. 

But then he’d asked you to meet him after school in between classes and his voice had been so careful when he said it, like he was testing each word before saying it.

You’d gotten into his car and the heat was too high. It was always too high because Steve ran cold and you ran warm, and usually you’d reach over and turn it down while he protested and you’d compromise on a temperature that made neither of you happy but at least you were together. But that day you just sat there and let the heat blast your face until your eyes watered. 

You’d sat in his passenger seat hundreds of times. There were dents left in the leather from the studded jeans you wore. Your perfume was embedded in the fabric. There was a scrunchie of yours in the cupholder. A study guide you’d left in the backseat last week. Evidence of you, it was everywhere. 

What confirmed it was him not looking at you. Steve looked at people when he talked to them. It was one of the first things you’d noticed about him, back in eighth grade when he’d asked to borrow a pencil and actually looked you in the eyes. That was probably the first example that stopped translating eye contact as a concept in your mind. But now his hands were on the steering wheel even though the car was stationary, and he was staring at the brick wall of the gym.

There was a coffee stain on his jeans. The dark roast you'd bought him that morning because you'd gotten to school early and wanted to surprise him. You'd drawn a terrible heart on the cup in Sharpie and he'd laughed, real and bright, and kissed you in front of his locker. That had been six hours ago. It felt like a different lifetime.

“Steve,” you said, and your voice came out steady even though your hands were shaking in your lap. You pressed them flat against your thighs. “Just say it.”

“Say what?”

“Whatever you asked me here to say.” You were still looking at him even though he wouldn’t look at you, or couldn’t look at you? “Come on, Steve,” you urged, but your voice was hollow, probably because you didn’t want to hear it. “We’ve been together for three years. You owe me a clean break, at least.”

Steve flinched like you’d hit him. “I don’t—” He breathed through his nose. “I don’t wanna hurt you.”

“Then don’t leave me.”

God. It came out before you could stop it. It was desperate and completely raw. It wasn’t how you’d practiced it. You’d meant to be collected and easy, make this easy for him so he wouldn’t call you dramatic. But your voice betrayed you, cracked right down the middle, and now he was finally looking at you. His eyes were red.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I’m so fucking sorry.”

Your chest felt like something was sitting on it. You pressed your palms flat against your sternum and felt your heart racing underneath. The heating vents were blasting recycled air. 

“Is it Nancy?”

You shouldn’t have asked. You shouldn’t have said her name. But it had been sitting in your throat for three weeks, choking you, and now it was out. 

His face almost looked relieved and guilty, like you’d said it before he could, taking the weight off his shoulders. That was answer enough, wasn’t it? But he still said it.

“Yeah,” he said quietly. “Yeah, it’s—I met someone.”

Your body knew before you brain caught up; your stomach dropped, your hands went numb, your vision went blurry until you could only see his profile, not facing you. Your hand pressed to your chest and you realized you were trying to hold yourself together physically. If you pressed hard enough, you could keep from falling apart. 

“How long?” Your voice came out steadier than you expected.

“We haven’t—nothing’s happened—” he said quickly and desperately. “I wouldn’t do that to you. We’ve just been working on this project and talking and I—”

His jaw worked. You watched a muscle jump in his cheek, watched him dig his teeth into his bottom lip the way he did when he was working up the courage for something. You'd seen him do it before free throws, before asking his dad for the car keys, before telling you he loved you for the first time at the quarry with the radio playing and his hands shaking worse than yours were now. 

“You what?” You needed him to say it.

“I think I like her.” He said it so quietly, like if he whispered it, it wouldn’t hurt as much. “I didn’t mean to. I swear, I didn’t mean to. It just—happened. I tried to ignore it. I tried to just focus on us, but I can’t—” His voice cracked. “I can’t stop thinking about it.”

You were nodding. Why were you nodding? Maybe because your body needed something to do to process what was happening. 

“Okay.”

“Okay?” He finally turned to look at you, confusion cutting through the guilt on his face.

“What should I say, Steve?” You were surprised by how calm your voice sounded. “Should I ask why? Because I know why. She’s smart and pretty and she probably makes you feel different than I do. Should I ask when you realized? Because I felt it weeks ago. I just hoped I was wrong. Do you want me to ask what she has that I don’t? Because I don’t want to know the answer to that”

“You didn’t do anything wrong—this isn’t about you being—”

“Enough,” you finished for him. “Everyone says that. ‘It’s not you it’s me.’ But it is me, isn’t it? Something about me—” Your voice wavered, and you pressed your lips together for a moment. “Something about me made you look somewhere else.”

“No—” He reached for you, like his palms were going to cup your face, and you pulled back. His hand hung in the air for a moment before dropping. “No. That’s not—you’re perfect. You’ve been perfect. That’s almost what’s—” He stopped himself, physically reeling back as he ran his hand through his hair. He pressed his head against the headrest, eyes focused on the roof of the car. “That’s almost the problem.”

“I don’t understand,” you said quietly, shaking your head.

“I don’t understand either.” He pressed his palms against his eyes. “I don’t know what I’m doing. I don’t know what I want. And I thought I did. I thought—” He looked at you, and the small crinkle between his brows and the desperation in his eyes made your chest tight. “I thought I wanted forever with you. I really did. But then I met—” He skipped over saying her name. “—I don’t know anymore. And it’s not fair to you. To keep dating you when I don’t know.”

“So you’re breaking up with me because you’re confused,” you said flatly.

"I'm breaking up with you because you deserve someone who's sure." His voice broke completely. "You deserve someone who doesn't have doubts. And I—" The words seemed to cost him something. “I’m not sure anymore.”

You never thought you could do the same things as someone, be in the same position as someone, but be so far apart in your minds. He genuinely thought he was doing you a favor. Thought he was being noble by letting you go instead of stringing you along.

“We had plans,” you said quietly. “We were gonna—we circled schools together. We talked about getting an apartment in a few years.”

“I know—”

“We picked out colors, Steve.” Your voice cracked on his name. “We have a whole folder of apartment listings I printed at the library. You organized them by price.” You breathed through your nose because your chest was getting tight. “You said you wanted to wake up next to me every morning. You said that. Do you remember?”

His face crumpled. “I remember.”

“Then what changed?” You weren’t crying but your eyes were burning. “What changed between then and now? Between you saying you couldn't wait for our future and you not being sure you want one with me?”

“I don’t know—”

You twisted to face him fully. The seatbelt dug into your shoulder but you couldn’t care about it. “Are you scared? It sounds like it all got too real and now you’re looking for an exit.”

“Maybe I am scared!” His voice rose to match yours. “Maybe I am. We’re fucking seventeen. We’re seventeen and you’re talking about apartments and forever and—and you expect me to marry you!” 

The words hung in the air like something sharp and jagged that cut both ways. 

You stared at him, chest rising and falling through your top. “What?”

He pressed his palms against his eyes again. “I didn’t mean—”

“You expect me to marry you,” you repeated his words slowly. “Like—like that’s a bad thing?” 

“That is not what I meant—”

“No.” Your voice had gone quiet. “You said it like it’s some sort of—what? Burden? Like I’ve been forcing you? Trapping you?”

“No—”

“I never asked you to marry me, Steve.” You were shaking now. You could feel it in your hands, legs, voice. “You’re the one who gave me this.” Your index brushed over the promise ring on your left hand as you raised it. It caught the light, the tiny diamond chip throwing a rainbow across the dash. “You’re the one who gave me this eight months ago in front of everyone we know. Your family. My family. You said you’ll replace it with a real one. Not me.”

His face had gone pale as you talked. “I know.”

You were twisting the ring around your finger now, yanking it. It caught on your knuckle. You’d worn it every single day since he’d given it to you and your finger had slightly swelled around it. “Do you know what you did? You made a promise. You looked me in my eyes and you promised me a future. And now you’re acting like I’m the one who made it all up in my head?”

“I’m not saying that.”

“Then what are you saying?” The ring came free suddenly, painfully. You gasped and something lodged in your throat at the empty finger, but you just held it in your palm. This tiny piece of silver and stone that had meant everything. The thing freshman girls would look at and swoon over. “Was I not supposed to expect all of it?”

He opened his mouth, then closed it. 

“You know what?” you said, sweat prickling through your skin. “Take it.” You held it out to him. It sat there between you for a moment, tiny and meaningless. Just a piece of jewelry. 

“I can’t.” He shook his head, eyes focused on the logo on the steering wheel.

“Take the ring, Steve.” Your voice was steady now. “You’re giving back the promise. So, take the ring.”

“Please—” His voice cracked, shaking his head more forcefully. “Just keep it. Please.”

“I don’t want it.” You pushed your palm toward him, and your arm was starting to feel heavy now. He turned his neck to look at the ring in your palm. “Take it. Take it or I’m throwing it out the window. It’s your choice.”

His hand shook as he reached for it. The movement was so slow and so reluctant, like he was hoping you’d change your mind. But it was happening. His fingers closed around the ring. When his skin brushed yours, you felt nothing. No spark. No electricity. Not even a ghost of what his touch made your whole body light up. The only thing you could feel was the absence of what used to be there. 

He pulled his hand back and stared at the ring in his palm. Small compared to his hand. His shoulders were shaking like he was trying to hold something back, and you almost wanted to reach out to comfort him and make this easier. 

But you didn’t because he’d done this. He’d chosen this. 

“I should go,” you said quietly.

“Wait—” he said as your fingers curled around the door handle. “I—I really hope you find someone. I know you will.”

You smiled bitterly. By tomorrow, everyone would know. By Monday, you’d walk through the hallways and feel their eyes on you filled with pity and curiosity. You didn’t want to tell Steve you weren’t sure you’d ever find anyone again, not when right now, it seemed all the love you had, you’d already given to him. He had become the only person you knew how to love, and that had never, ever been a problem before because you never thought it would be. 

“Yeah,” you said, voice hollow. “Sure.”

You pushed the door open. The cold March air rushed in and hit your overheated face like a slap. You could hear the squeak of sneakers from basketball practice, the distant sound of someone's car stereo playing too loud, the ordinary sounds of an ordinary day where your entire world had just ended.

You stepped out. Your legs were shaking so badly you had to grip the car door to stay upright. Through the window you could see Steve still sitting there, the ring clutched in his fist, his shoulders shaking with sobs he was trying to hold back. His other hand was pressed against his mouth like he was trying to keep something in.

You wanted to say something else. Something cutting or final or profound. But there was nothing left to say. He'd made his choice. It was over. So you just slammed the door.

You showed up late on purpose. The plan had been to arrive right as practice ended—5:45 PM—grab Carter, and leave before Steve could do more than wave across the lot. Clean and simple with no prolonged interaction required. Except you’d forgotten how Steve always ran practice five minutes over because the kids never wanted to leave, and he was too nice to cut them off mid-enthusiasm. 

So when you pulled into the parking lot, practice was still very much happening.

You could see them on the field, a cluster of middle schoolers in various states of athletic coordination, and Steve in the middle of them with a baseball bat, demonstrating something. His backwards cap was crooked. His coaching jacket had dirt smudged across the shoulder. He was laughing at something one of the kids said, head thrown back, completely unguarded.

Your hands tightened on the steering wheel. You could leave and come back in ten minutes. You could pretend your shift had run late or traffic had been bad or literally any excuse that didn't involve admitting you'd timed this specifically to avoid him.

But Carter had already spotted your car. You watched him point, say something to Steve, and start jogging toward the parking lot.

Steve's head turned. His eyes found your car.

Even from this distance, you saw it happen. The way his whole face lit up for half a second—hope, raw and unguarded—before reality crashed back in and the light died. His expression smoothed out into something carefully neutral. Carefully friendly.

You got out of the car because there was no choice now. Your legs felt unsteady. You'd slept maybe three hours last night, kept waking up with your hand pressed to your chest, trying to breathe through the tightness there.

Carter reached you first, sweaty and grass-stained and completely oblivious to the fact that your entire world had imploded five days ago. “Can I get ice cream? Please? I've been so good and I haven't asked all week—”

“We'll see.” You ruffled his hair, grateful for something to do with your hands. “Go grab your stuff. We gotta get home for dinner.”

“But ice cream could be dinner—”

"Carter." Please.

Fine." He groaned dramatically and jogged back toward the dugout where his water bottle was probably lying abandoned in the dirt.

Which left you standing by your car, very aware that Steve was walking over.

He'd taken his cap off and was holding it in both hands, turning it over and over like he needed something to do. His hair was a mess from the hat, sticking up at odd angles the way it always did. You used to fix it for him. Would reach up without thinking and smooth it down while he smiled at you like you'd done something miraculous instead of just touching his hair.

Your hands stayed firmly at your sides.

"Hey," Steve said when he got close enough. His voice was careful.

"Hey."

The silence stretched out. Two syllables and you'd already run out of words. Four years of not seeing each other, then months of cautious rebuild, then one night that had blown it all apart, and now you were back to hey.

Carter was taking his time gathering his things. Probably trying to negotiate five more minutes of playing catch with another kid.

“How was your day?” you asked, because someone had to say something.

“Good. Yeah. Good. Everyone’s really excited for the game soon.” Steve turned the cap over in his hands. “Think Carter might start that game.”

“That’s great.”

“Yeah.”

Another stretch of no words. Another silence. You could hear everything else. the other kids shouting, a car door slamming in the parking lot, a bird making some kind of aggressive territorial call from a nearby tree. All of it too loud in the space between you and Steve.

“Work?” It sounded like he pushed out the word.

“Fine.” You shifted your weight and crossed your arms, then uncrossed them because that looked defensive. “Benny Ward’s mom came in today, so that was—” You let out a forced laugh at the mention of the boy from your high school year.

Steve sucked in a breath, pressing his lips into a thin line as he shook his head. “Must’ve been a blast.”

“Mhm.” You nodded slowly. “A real ball.”

Carter was finally heading back over, water bottle in hand, chattering with another kid about something. You had maybe thirty seconds before he reached you.

"I should—" you started.

"Yeah, of course—" Steve said at the same time.

You both stopped. The silence was worse now because you'd spoken over each other, created a weird overlap that felt like a physical thing between you.

"You go ahead," Steve said quietly.

"I was just gonna say I should get him home. Devon's probably wondering where we are."

"Right. Yeah. Of course." Steve took a step back. Then another. Creating distance that felt both necessary and completely wrong. "I'll see you Thursday?"

It was framed as a question. Like you might say no. Like you might decide that picking up Carter wasn't worth this—standing in a parking lot making painful small talk with your ex-boyfriend who you'd almost slept with five days ago before having a complete breakdown in his bedroom.

"Yeah," you said. "Thursday."

"Cool. That's—yeah. Cool."

Carter crashed into your side, immediately launching into a detailed play-by-play of every single thing that had happened during practice. You made appropriate noises, nodded in the right places, let him talk while you very deliberately did not look at Steve.

Emily was the only one who'd stayed late.

Most of the kids had filtered out twenty minutes ago, grabbed by parents or older siblings or carpools, chattering about homework and dinner plans. But Emily had asked—voice tentative, hopeful—if she could stay and practice the turn sequence one more time. She almost had it, she'd said. She just needed like fifteen more minutes.

You'd said yes because of course you had. Because she reminded you of yourself at that age, determined and perfectionist and so afraid of letting anyone down.

So now it was just you and Emily in the gym at 6:15 on a Wednesday, the overhead lights humming, the sound system playing the same eight bars of music on repeat while Emily turned and turned, trying to nail the timing. 

When the gym doors opened, you expected it to be Mrs. Stone coming back for something she’d forgotten. Instead, it was Steve. He stopped just inside the doorway, one hand still on the handle, like he was already second-guessing this decision. “Mrs. Stone asked if I could move these tomorrow before the assembly. But if you’re still—I can come back—?” 

“It’s fine,” you said even though your stomach dropped at the sight of him even though everything had been going perfectly normal between the two of you for the past week. Back to square one, yeah, but normal. “We’re almost done anyway.” 

“Cool. Yeah.” He walked in and let the door close behind him. The sound echoed. 

Emily had stopped mid-turn, was looking between you and Steve with barely concealed interest. You could practically see the wheels turning in her head. She'd definitely heard things. The whole school had heard things. Everyone know everyone, and someone’s someone must’ve known you and Steve way back when. 

“Keep going, Em,” you said firmly. “Show me what you’ve got so far.”

She spun back, but you caught her eyes flickering to Steve. 

The music kept playing. Emily turned. You called out corrections—"Spot! Hold your core! Good!"—while Steve very deliberately started moving gym mats across the gym.

It shouldn't have been weird. It was a big space. Plenty of room for both of you to exist in it without interacting. Except you were aware of exactly where he was at all times. You could track his movement in your peripheral vision; lifting a mat, carrying it across the gym, stacking it by the door. The muscles in his shoulders and back flexing under his t-shirt. The way he'd push his hair back when it fell into his eyes.

"I think I got it!" Emily's voice broke through your spiral. She was grinning, slightly out of breath. "Can I show you one more time? For real?"

"Yeah, of course." You reset the music. "From the top."

Emily took her position. The music started.

And she did it, the full turn sequence, properly spotted, held through the end without wobbling. When she finished, she looked at you with this expression of pure joy, the kind that made your chest ache because you remembered exactly what that felt like. The first time you'd nailed something you'd been working on forever.

"That was perfect," you said, and meant it. "Em, that was so good. You've been working so hard on this."

"Really?" She was bouncing on her toes now. "It felt good but I wasn't sure if—"

"Really. I'm proud of you."

Her whole face lit up.

The gym doors opened again.

A man in scrubs walked in, looking apologetic and slightly harried. He was tall, athletic build, probably mid-twenties. He had the same nose as Emily.

“Hey, Em. So sorry—” He stopped when he saw you. “Oh, sorry. Didn’t mean to interrupt. Is practice still?—”

“We’re done,” you said quickly. “You’re good.”

Emily grabbed her bag and was shoving her water bottle into the side pocket. “I finally got it,” she said to him. 

“That’s awesome.” He smiled at her, then looked at you and extended his hand. “Tyler Bennett. I’m Emily’s brother. Sorry I’m late—we had this thing at the hospital that ran over and traffic was—anyway. Sorry.” 

You shook his hand. His grip was firm and warm. “It’s okay. She did great today.”

“She can’t stop talking about this.” He ruffled her hair and she swatted him away. “I think I’ve heard the soundtrack approximately nine hundred times.”

“It’s good.” 

“I didn’t say it wasn’t. I said I’ve heard it too much. There’s a difference.” 

You laughed slightly, eyes bouncing between them. Behind Tyler, you could see Steve. He'd stopped moving gym mats. He was standing there holding one, just watching. His face was very carefully neutral but his knuckles were white where he gripped the mat.

"Well, we're all done for today," you said, forcing your attention back to Tyler and Emily. "Same time Friday, Em. Don't forget to practice at home."

"I won't!" She was already heading toward the door.

Tyler lingered for a second, that apologetic smile still in place. "Thanks for staying late with her. I know she’s a bit of a… perfectionist?”

You smiled slightly, shrugging one shoulder. “She’s a hard worker. Makes my job easier, honestly.”

“Well, I appreciate it.” He shifted his weight, hands going to his pockets. “I’m Tyler, by the way. I don’t think I said—I mean, I did—” He laughed slightly, self-deprecating, and shook his head before meeting your eyes again. “Sorry, it’s been a long day.”

“Don’t worry. I’ve seen it before. I’m a receptionist at the dental office.”

He quirked up a brow. “Yeah? Which one?”

“Dr. Feldman’s. Over on—”

“Tyler!” Emily’s voice echoed from the doorway. “Come on, I’m starving.”

“I’m coming!” He turned back to you, still smiling. “Sorry. High schoolers. You know how it is. Thanks again.”

“No problem.”

He started toward the door. Emily was already halfway down the hallway, her voice carrying back as she launched into a detailed explanation of her entire day.

Tyler paused at the door and turned back.

"This is—god, Em's gonna kill me for this, but—” He laughed and ran a hand through his hair. “You seem really nice and I just got out of this thing and I’m apparently horrible at this now, but—would you maybe want to get coffee sometime? Or dinner? Or literally anything that doesn’t involve being at a high school?”

You froze in your spot. You were aware of several things happening at once, from Tyler’s hopeful expression to Emily’s delighted gasp from the hallway, and also the sound of something hitting the floor across the gym. 

You looked over and pursed your lips. Steve had dropped the gym mat and it had landed directly on his foot. 

“Shit—” He stumbled back, hand shooting down to grab his foot. “Fuck.”

Your eyebrows furrowed at the sight. His face was bright red. He was looking at everything else but you. 

Tyler turned at the noise. “You okay, man?”

“Fine.” Steve’s voice came out strangled. He was bent slightly, hands still gripping his foot through his sneaker. “Just wasn’t paying attention.”

Emily’s voice broke the silence from the hallway as she sauntered back in and looked at you mischeviously. “You should totally say yes. Tyler’s like, super nice. He volunteers at the animal shelter on weekends and makes oreo pancakes and he’s been single for like six months, so he’s definitely ready to date—”

“Emily.” Tyler’s ears started turning red. “Oh, my god.”

“What? I’m helping.” She raised her brows like she was confused. “You’re always saying you wanna meet someone who’s not from work—”

“We’re leaving,” Tyler said, grabbing her arm and steering her toward the door. “Right now.”

“But—”

“Now, Em.”

“Fine, but just think about it!” Emily called back to you as Tyler physically dragged her toward the door down the hallway. “He’s got good insurance, too.”

"Emily, I swear to god—"

Their voices faded as they disappeared around the corner, leaving behind a silence so thick you could feel it pressing against your skin.

You were still standing in the middle of the gym. Steve was still standing by the pile of gym mats, favoring his left foot, not looking at you.

“Is your foot okay?” you asked before you could stop yourself. 

Steve bent down to pick up the gym mat, moving carefully. When he straightened, you could see him testing his weight on it. Trying not to limp. "Heavy mat. Should've been paying attention."

"Steve—"

"You should say yes." He said it to the gym mat in his hands, not to you. Then, he started walking it over to the pile by the door, that slight hitch in his step that he was trying to hide. "He seems like a good guy."

You watched him stack the mat with the others. Watched the way his shoulders were tight, the way he was moving with too much precision, like if he focused hard enough on the task he could ignore everything else.

"I didn't say yes," you said.

Steve's hands stilled on the mat. "You didn't say no either,” he said quietly, eyes looking down at the ground. 

You swallowed harshly, shaking your head. “He asked me out in front of you,” you said softly. “And his sister. I wasn’t going to—”

"You can go out with him." Steve turned around finally, and his face was doing that thing again. He looked carefully neutral and blank. Except his eyes were too bright and his jaw was too tight. "You don't need my permission or whatever. I'm not—we're not—" He stopped and shoved his hands in his pockets. "You should go out with him."

"Why do you keep saying that?"

"Because it's true." His voice was firm now. Almost too firm. "He's probably a good guy. He seems to have his shit together. He’s not—”

He stopped himself but you knew what he was saying. Not like me. Not complicated. Not carrying three years of history and a picture of his ex-girlfriend on his dresser.

You nodded because he was right.

The applause was almost deafening. You stood in the wings with your hand pressed to your mouth, watching the kids take their bows. Sarah’s ponytail had come half undone; Marcus was grinning so wide his face had to hurt; Emily was actually crying, actual tears streaming down her face as she held hands with the freshman next to her, both of them shaking with relief and joy and the adrenaline crash that came after six weeks of work culminating this. 

They had been perfect. Almost flawless—Sarah had still dropped her shoulder on the fifth count during the opening, and one of the boys been half a beat behind in the bridge—but they had been together. They’d moved as one organism and told the story exactly how you’d imagined it in your head at two in the morning when you couldn’t sleep, scribbling formations in your sketchbook. You’d done it. You’d actually done it.

Mrs. Stone materialized beside you, her hand warm and gentle on your shoulder. “Get out there, sweetie,” she said, giving you a gentle push toward stage left. “They want you.”

“I can’t—God, I’m not—” you tried to say through a choked up laugh.

“Yes, you can. Go.” 

Before you could form another protest, Sarah had spotted you in the wings. She was waving frantically, mascara smudged under her eyes, and then she was shouting your name. Suddenly, all fifteen of them were turning, reaching for you, and Emily was yelling, “Get out here!” and running into the wings.

“Come on,” Emily said, grabbing your hand with both of hers, tugging you hard enough that you stumbled forward. “You have to come out.”

“Em, I don’t think—”

But she was dragging you onto the stage and the lights were too bright, washing everything in white-hot brilliance that made you squint. You couldn't see the audience clearly—just dark shapes and the occasional pinprick flash of a phone camera, the red glow of EXIT signs at the back—but you could hear them. Still clapping, some standing now, and the sound was so big it felt physical.

The kids surrounded you immediately. Sarah crashed into your left side, Marcus your right, and then they were all there, arms around your shoulders and waist, a tangle of sweaty teenagers who smelled like hairspray and stage makeup and pure, undiluted joy.

"You did it!" someone was saying, maybe the freshman who'd been so scared of it all she cried on the first week. "We actually did it!"

“You did it,” you corrected, trying to hug all of them at once, voice thick. “You all worked so hard. I’m so—I’m so proud of you guys—”

Your voice cracked on the last word. You were crying now, too. Couldn’t help it, not a smidge. It was the kind of crying that came from somewhere deep in your chest where you’d been holding tension for years straight. 

When they finally released you—when the applause started to fade and the curtain began rolling down—you just stood there for a moment, center stage, trying to catch your breath, trying to hold onto this feeling before it slipped away. You gasped and hiccuped as you wiped your face slightly. 

You'd forgotten what this felt like. What it was like to work toward something and have it actually pan out. To put in the hours and the effort and have it mean something tangible, something you could point to and say I did that.

The kids were filing offstage now, high-fiving each other, already dissecting every moment in rapid-fire teenage chatter. You could hear them behind you—"Did you see when I almost fell?" "That was so good!" "My mom is going to freak out—"

Parents were starting to congregate near the front of the stage. Your eyes were scanning the auditorium, searching through the crowd filtering back toward the lobby.

Fourth row. Aisle seat.

Steve.

He was standing, hands in his pockets, and the second your eyes found him, his whole face transformed. The smile that crinkled the corners of his eyes and showed all teeth graced his face. The same smile he wore when he used to wait for you after practice, a cookie and juicebox in hand. The smile that said he was so proud of you, so proud he couldn’t contain it. It was a release from the careful one he’d been giving you for weeks, the one that never quite reached his eyes.

And something in your chest cracked wide open. Your feet were moving before you could make a conscious decision, down the stage steps—you nearly tripped on the second one but caught yourself on the railing—and through the small cluster of parents already making their way forward. Someone had touched your elbow, a congratulations you barely registered, and you mumbled thank you without stopping, without looking away from where Steve was standing. 

He'd taken his hands out of his pockets now. His expression had shifted from proud to confused, eyebrows drawing together as you got closer, weaving between seats.

"Hey, that was—" he started.

You crashed into him.

You threw your arms around his neck and hugged him with everything in you, so tight you could feel his surprise in the way his body went stiff and rigid, his breath catching sharply. For half a second, he just stood there, frozen, and your brain caught up with what you were—

Then his arms came up to your waist, pulling you closer, one hand splaying across your back and the other curling around your ribs, and he was solid and warm and completely real. You felt your feet lose hold of the ground as he tightened his arms around you, slightly lifting you in the air and rocking you back and forth for a couple seconds. 

Your face buried into his chest, the almost-dried tears probably leaving a stain on the baby blue sweater he was wearing. “Thank you,” you said, words muffled against his body. “Thank you, thank you, thank you—”

“Hey,” he said, voice rough and barely a whisper—you almost forgot there were people surrounding you—and his arms tightened around you even more like he was trying to hold you together. “You don’t have to thank me. You did all the—”

“You made this happen for me.” You pulled back just enough to look at him but didn’t let go, couldn’t let go yet. Your hands were still on his shoulders, his were still on your waist. “You told Mrs. Stone about me. You gave me this. And I just—” Your voice cracked as something lodged in your throat. “Thank you, Steve. For believing I could do it.”

Steve’s eyes had gone too bright, like he was fighting to keep his own composure. His smile had gone softer now, more gentle, and his thumb was moving in tiny circles on your waist, barely perceptible. He opened his mouth to say something, then closed it. One of his hands moved up to the back of your head and he pulled your face closer to his chest and pressed his lips against your hair, lingering for a moment.

“You earned it,” he said quietly against your head. “I knew you’d be incredible at it. I knew the second I remembered you in high school and when I saw you with Carter, breaking down the cartwheel for him, I just—” He stopped and swallowed hard, and you felt his body move with it. “I’m really proud of you.”

The words shouldn't have hit as hard as they did. Shouldn't have made your eyes burn all over again, shouldn't have made your chest feel so full it hurt.

"Steve—" You pulled your head back to meet his eyes. 

He smiled softly, hands shaking slightly as they ran over your hair. “You looked so happy up there,” he said, his voice going thick. His hand came to cup your jaw, a ghost of a touch, as his thumb brushed just under your cheekbone. “I remember you tapping your fingers on the desk doing counts. I remember you making me watch you run through combinations in the backyard even though I had no idea what I was looking at or how I could help. I remember—” His hand was still on your face, fingers gentle against your skin like you were something precious he was afraid of breaking. “I remember thinking you were going to do amazing things with it someday. And you did. You are.”

The observation was too much. It was too raw. It was too honest what the two of you were supposed to be now. You stood there for a moment that stretched too long, his hands on your face, your hands on his shoulders, too close and not close enough all at once. People were definitely watching now. You could feel their eyes like a physical weight, hear the whispers starting to ripple through the crowd still lingering near the stage.

But Steve was looking at you like nothing else existed. Like the auditorium had emptied and it was just the two of you in this bubble where history didn't matter and broken promises could be forgotten and four years hadn't passed since the last time he'd held you like this. Since before the breakup and college and all the ways you'd both tried and failed to move on.

“Auntie!” 

Carter’s voice cut through whatever moment you were having. You dropped your hands quickly, and his fell from your face and got shoved in his pockets, and the both of you looked to see your nephew barreling toward you through the crowd. 

He crashed into your side with enough force to make you stumble. Steve's hand shot out automatically to steady you, brief contact on your elbow before he pulled away. 

"That was so cool!" Carter was bouncing on his toes, words coming out in a rush. "All the dancing and all and the girl was so good and there was this part where everyone spun at the same time and it looked like—like a kaleidoscope or something—"

"A kaleidoscope?" You laughed, ruffling his hair even though you were still trying to catch your breath, still feeling the ghost of Steve's hands on your face. "That's a big word."

"We learned it in science. But seriously, that was awesome. Can you teach me how to do that? The spinning thing?"

"You want to learn that?"

"I want to learn how to spin without falling over. That seems useful."

“Hey, kiddo,” Steve said, voice warm and still a little rough from whatever emotion he’d been holding back moments ago. He'd taken a step back to give you space, hands still firmly in his pockets, but he was smiling at your nephew with affection. "Pretty cool what your aunt pulled off, huh?"

"So cool! Did you see it, Coach Steve? Did you see the part where they all jumped at the same time? How do they do that without crashing into each other?"

"That's what she does," Steve said, and you could hear the smile in his voice even though you weren't looking at him. You were very deliberately not looking at him. "Your aunt spent weeks teaching them how to move together like that. It takes a lot of patience."

"Weeks?" Carter's eyes went wide. "That's so long. I get bored after like five minutes of practice."

"Yeah, I've noticed." Steve's tone was teasing, affectionate in that coach way he'd perfected.

Behind Carter, your family was approaching. Devon with her knowing smirk already firmly in place, your mom dabbing at her eyes with a tissue that was definitely beyond salvageable at this point, your dad looking proud in that uncomfortable way he got when emotions were involved and he didn't know what to do with his hands.

But they all stopped short when they saw Steve standing there and noticed the careful distance you'd put between yourselves that somehow still felt too close. They saw the way you were both flushed, eyes too bright, like you'd been caught doing something you shouldn't.

Devon's smirk widened into something absolutely dangerous. "Steve Harrington. Been a minute."

"Hey," Steve's smile was polite, careful, but you could see the tension creeping into his shoulders, the way he straightened his posture like he was bracing for impact. "Good to see you."

"Is it?" Devon's eyes were doing that thing where they cataloged every detail with surgical precision. The way Steve's hair was slightly messed up on one side, from your hands, oh god. The way his sweater had a wet spot on the chest from your tears. The way you were both standing too carefully, maintaining distance that felt deliberate and obvious. "Because from where I'm standing, it looks pretty complicated."

"Dev," you warned, voice low.

"What?" She raised her eyebrows in mock innocence. "I'm just making an observation. The show was great, by the way. Really great." She turned back to Steve, and her smile had teeth now. "My little sister's talented. But you already knew that, didn't you?"

The emphasis on already made your face burn hotter.

"She is," Steve agreed, and his voice was steady but you could see the muscle jumping in his jaw, the tell he'd had since high school when he was uncomfortable but trying not to show it. "The kids were really lucky to have her. Mrs. Stone made a great choice."

"Oh my goodness." Your mom had finally found her voice, and when she spoke it was thick with too many emotions to name. She was staring at Steve like she was seeing a ghost. "Steve? Steve Harrington? Is that really you?"

And here it was. The moment you'd been dreading since you'd thrown yourself at him in front of half the town.

Steve's smile shifted when he saw your mom, became something more genuine despite the clear discomfort radiating off him. “Hi,” he said, addressing your mom. "It's really good to see you."

“I had no idea you were—” Your mom’s eyes were bouncing between you and Steve like she was watching a tennis match. “Are you two?—”

“No,” you said quickly. “No, Mom. Steve teaches at the high school and he coaches Carter’s baseball team.”

“Coach Steve is the best!” Carter interjected, still bouncing with leftover excitement from the show. “He taught me how to slide into base without getting hurt and he always brings orange slices even though they're kind of a pain to peel and he lets us have extra practice if we want and he doesn't even get mad when Toby throws his glove because Toby’s working through some stuff with his parents' divorce—”

"That's great, bud," Devon said, but she wasn't looking at Carter. She was still watching you and Steve with that expression that meant you were in for a very long, very uncomfortable conversation later. Probably in the car on the way home. Probably with her asking pointed questions while you stared out the window and pretended not to hear her.

Your mom stepped closer, and you watched recognition and memory and something complicated flash across her face. She'd liked Steve, back then. She’d invited him to family dinners every Sunday and asked about his college applications and genuinely believed you two were going to make it. She had bought into the fairy tale the same way you had. And then the breakup happened, and graduation, and you'd left for college six hours away, and your mom had spent the first month calling you every night to make sure you were eating and sleeping and not completely falling apart.

You'd lied every time. Said you were fine. Said you were adjusting. Said the breakup was for the best.She'd known you were lying but had let you pretend anyway because that's what mothers did.

Steve cleared his throat, eyes darting to you, wide. “Health,” he squeaked out. His hands were buried in his pockets. You could see him curling them into fists, then relaxing, then curling again. “Also some P.E. classes when the coach needs me to cover. And yeah, I coach middle school baseball.”

“That’s wonderful,” your mom said, smiling brightly. “That’s so different from—” So different from the basketball scholarship you used to talk about. So different from the party boy we all thought you’d be forever. 

"Yeah," Steve said simply, and he didn't elaborate. 

"And you recommended our daughter for this position?" Your mom's eyes were sharp now, focused. 

"I did." Steve glanced at you, and something in his expression softened despite the careful neutrality he was trying to maintain like he couldn't help it. As though his face just did that automatically when he looked at you. "Mrs. Stone was looking for someone to choreograph the musical and I remembered—" He stopped, corrected himself. "I knew she'd be perfect for it. And she was. The kids were really lucky."

Your mom’s face softened and hardened at the same time, if that was possible. She remembered, too. She was remembering Steve picking you up for your dates, promising your dad to have you home by 10:30 on the dot, Steve talking about apartment-hunting. And also the Steve at graduation who could hardly meet her eyes when she hugged him goodbye. 

Carter was looking between all the adults like he was trying to figure out why everyone was being weird. Devon was openly enjoying your discomfort now, smirking like this was the best entertainment she'd had in months. Your dad had appeared from somewhere—probably the bathroom, he always disappeared during emotional moments—and was now standing slightly behind your mom, looking uncomfortable and ready to escape.

"Well." Your dad clapped Steve on the shoulder, one of those firm pats that was borderline aggressive, the kind men did when they didn't know how else to communicate. "Good to see you, son. You look well. More grown up than last time."

Last time was graduation. Steve surprising your parents with a different girlfriend. You, with your college decision six hours away, like a lifeline. Your dad had shaken Steve’s hand and said, “Good luck with everything,” in a tone that meant do not ever come near my daughter again, even though the damage was catastrophically done. 

Your mom was still doing that thing where she looked between you and Steve, and you could practically see her mental notebook filling with observations.

She was your mother. She'd changed your diapers and taught you to read and held you while you cried over this exact boy four years ago. She knew.

"I should—" Steve gestured vaguely toward the exit, already taking a step back. "Let you guys celebrate. This is a family moment. Congratulations again. The show was—" He stopped, looked at you directly for the first time since your family had arrived. "You were incredible."

You smiled softly as you watched him retreat slowly, with all eyes on him. 

“So,” Devon said into the silence. “That was subtle.”

“Dev, I swear to god—”

“What? I’m just saying if you wanted to keep whatever this was a secret, maybe don’t do it in front of a crowded auditorium.” She was grinning now. “Pretty sure half the PTA saw you two basically—”

"We weren't doing anything," you cut her off, face burning so hot you probably looked sunburned.

"Mmhmm. Why your lipstick is smudged?"

“Whaaa—” Your hand flew to your mouth automatically. Devon laughed.

"Got you. Your lipstick is fine. But you should see your face right now."

"I hate you."

"No you don't." She slung an arm around your shoulders, still grinning. "But we are definitely talking about this later. In detail. With wine."

"There's nothing to talk about—"

"Honey." Your mom's voice cut through your protests, gentle but firm. "Can we not do this right now? Not here?"

You looked at her and saw understanding in her eyes. There was just concern. The same concern she'd had four years ago when you'd come home from college for Thanksgiving break and she'd found you crying in your childhood bedroom at two AM.

"Okay," you said quietly. "Yeah. Okay."

She squeezed your arm. "We'll talk tomorrow. Lunch. Just you and me."

"Mom—"

"Tomorrow," she said firmly, but kindly. "Tonight, we celebrate. You did something amazing today. You should be proud."

"I am," you said, and meant it. "I really am."

Carter tugged on your sleeve. "Can we get ice cream? I feel like this deserves ice cream. That was way cooler than my baseball games."

"Hey," your dad protested mildly.

"It was! There was dancing and costumes and the person sitting next to us cried real tears! When's the last time someone cried at one of my games?"

"Last week when you got hit in the face with the ball," Devon pointed out. “I cried because I thought your nose was messed up forever.”

"That doesn't count!"

“Hi, Steve,” you said as the door opened, hands flexing and unflexing by your sides. 

He looked like he’d been crying. His eyes were dry and his face was composed, but there was a redness around his eyes and a rawness to his expression that made your chest ache. He was still in the same sweater from the show. His hair was a mess, like he’d been running his hands through it over and over. There was a beer bottle in his hand, barely touched by the looks of it, condensation dripping down the glass.

He stared at you for a long moment, like you were a hallucination. “Hi,” he said finally. His voice was hoarse. 

You'd left dinner early and told your family you were tired, that the adrenaline crash was hitting you hard and you needed to sleep. Devon had given you a look that said she knew exactly where you were going, but she hadn't stopped you. Your mom had hugged you and told you to call her about tomorrow. Carter had made you promise to teach him the spinning thing next week.

And then you'd driven here—to Steve's apartment—without letting yourself think about it too hard because if you thought about it, you'd talk yourself out of it.

You'd sat in your car in the parking lot for fifteen minutes, engine off, hands on the steering wheel, trying to figure out what you were doing. What you were going to say. Why you'd come here instead of going home to decompress in your own bed like a normal person.

“Can I come in?” you asked and your voice came out smaller than you’d intended.

Steve stepped back immediately, opening the door wider. “Yeah. Yeah. Of course—yeah.”

You walked past him into the apartment and it looked different than it had a few weeks ago. Or maybe you were just seeing it differently now. The picture was gone from the dresser in the bedroom, you could see through the open door that the surface was bare except for a lamp and some spare change. There was a stack of graded papers on the coffee table, red pen marks visible from here. A half-eaten sandwich on a plate. The TV was on but muted, some late-night show with a laugh track you couldn't hear.

It looked like he'd been sitting here alone, grading papers and not eating. 

Steve closed the door behind you but stayed rooted in his spot, watching you.

“Sorry for just showing up,” you said, turning to face him. “I know it’s late. I should’ve called—”

"Don't apologize." He set the beer down on the side table with more force than necessary. "You can show up here whenever you want. I mean—not that you'd want to, I just—" He stopped and ran a hand through his hair which made it worse. "I'm glad you're here."

"Your family. They must be so proud. You should be celebrating with them."

"I was." You shoved your hands in your jacket pockets because you didn't know what to do with them. "We went to dinner. Got ice cream. Carter talked for forty-five minutes straight about the show. My mom cried three more times.”

“Good,” Steve said, nodding. “That’s good.”

"I kept thinking about—about you. About how you were the one who made tonight possible. How you believed in me when I didn't even believe in myself. How you've been showing up even though you didn't have to. How—"

You stopped because your voice was breaking and you weren't sure you could finish the sentence without falling apart.

Steve was staring at you with an expression that looked like hope and pain and disbelief all tangled together.

“I should’ve been there,” he said quietly. “With you guys. I should’ve—” He laughed, all bitter and self-depracating. “But I can’t be there. Because I’m not—we’re not—” He gestured helplessly between the two of you. “I fucked that up four years ago and I keep fucking it up.”

“Steve,” you said, voice trailing. 

He shook his head, more to himself than you. “Your dad looked at me like he wasn’t sure if he should punch me.” Steve’s voice was getting louder now, more emotion bleeding through. “Your mom looked sad and it was—like she barely knew me.” He stopped and pressed his palms into his eyes. 

You’d never seen Steve like this. Even at seventeen, when he broke up with you, he held it together. Even the night at his apartment, he hadn’t let this much show. 

"I sat here after the show," Steve continued, hands dropping from his face. His eyes were red now, wet. “And I thought about everything I missed. You going to college. Your sister’s anniversaries. Every Christmas and Thanksgiving and every birthday party. All those moments where I would’ve been there if I hadn’t just—” He stopped. “And I thought about the life we were going to have that I threw away because I was a stupid kid who didn’t realize how good he had it.”

“Steve—” You took a step toward him. 

“No, let—let me—” He held up a hand. “I—when you saw the picture that night, I should’ve told you that it didn’t work out between me and her. It never could. With her or anybody else.” He met your eyes, and your vision was beginning to get foggy. “Nobody I’ve met can be you,” he said quietly. “And I’ve spent so long trying to convince myself it was for the best. That you were better off without me.”

He laughed, and it almost sounded broken.

“But then you came back,” he continued. “And you were just, exactly the same and completely different all at once. And I thought maybe I could handle it all. Maybe I could be a friend. But tonight—when you hugged me—” His voice cracked as he went to lean against the wall. “I can’t be normal about you. I don’t know how to be normal about you.” 

You were crying now. You couldn't help it. The tears were hot on your cheeks and you didn't bother wiping them away.

“If I could go back,” he started, neck craning to look at the ceiling as he rubbed a palm over his neck, throat bobbing. “If I could go back, I would do everything we planned. I would follow you wherever you went. I would’ve—”

His voice broke completely and he stopped, hand still on his neck like he was trying to physically hold himself together. You watched his chest rise and fall too fast, watched him try to get control of his breathing.

Steve looked at you then, really looked at you, and his eyes were devastated. "I would've packed up my car and driven to whatever college you got into. Would've gotten some shitty apartment nearby and worked whatever jobs I could find just to—just to be close to you.” He pushed off the wall and started pacing. “I think about it sometimes, about what our apartment would’ve looked like. We probably would’ve gotten that place on Maple Street, no? The one we circled on the map, remember?”

You did remember. You'd circled it together during lunch senior year, sitting in his car, planning a future that felt so real you could taste it.

"I remember," you said.

“I thought—” He swallowed hard. “I thought you were living a whole life without me. I thought you’d done everything you’d wanted and living and doing exactly what you dreamed about. And I was—” He laughed shortly. “I was so happy for you. Even though it killed me.”

He moved toward you and his fingers clasped around your wrist as he meekly gestured to the living room. You followed him in as he walked, completely in a trance from everything that was coming out of his mouth. 

You sat on the couch, a short distance away from him, and watched his head lean back as he stared at the ceiling again. “I feel so stupid,” he said into the air. 

“Don’t,” you said, trying to get your voice out. “Don’t feel stupid. You—well, you weren’t wrong when you said it was all too much we were planning.” He turned his neck to look at you then, brows furrowing. “I was stupid to think it all could be a fairytale like we planned. It wouldn’t have worked, probably.”

“Don’t say that,” Steve said, voice so broken like you’d just slapped him in the face. “Don’t make what we had smaller just because I fucked it up. It would’ve worked.”

“We were seventeen—”

“I don’t care,” he said, shaking his head, jaw clenching. “I don’t care that we were young and that people say high school relationships don’t last. I don’t care about the odds or anything. It would’ve worked because we would’ve made it work. Because we loved each other enough to—” He stopped abruptly, like something was caught in his throat. 

Your mouth was parted, staring at him because you had no idea how to respond.

“I would’ve married you.” The words came out so raw, so desperate, and his eyes were locked on yours now like he needed you to hear the words completely. Your breath caught. “I would’ve married you and stood in front of everyone and promised to love you for the rest of my life. And I would’ve meant it. Every fucking word.”

Your chest felt like it was caving in, and you could feel seventeen-year-old you crawling through your body, shaking and letting the tears fall down your cheeks. 

“I know I said—I said it like it was a bad thing when I was breaking up with you but I didn’t mean it. I swear, I didn’t mean it. I’ve spent years wishing I could take it back and said what I actually meant instead of—instead of making you feel like loving me was too much. Like wanting to be with me was something to be ashamed of.”

You were crying now, full-on crying, tears streaming down your face faster than you could wipe them away.

"You made me feel like I was crazy," you said, and your voice was shaking with anger and grief and four years of hurt. "Like I was this—this desperate girl who was trying to trap you into something you didn't want. And I—" Your voice broke. "I spent so long trying to figure out why I was so afraid of wanting things. Of planning for the future. Of—of expecting anything from anyone. Because you made me feel like expectations were a burden.”

"I know." Steve's voice was wrecked. "I know and I'm—I'm so fucking sorry. I ruined that for you.And I—" He stopped, hand coming up to cover his mouth for a second. "I hate myself for that. For making you feel like you were crazy for wanting what we both wanted. For making you doubt yourself when you were—you were right. About all of it. About us. About forever."

"Steve—"

"I would've married you," he said again, and this time his voice was steady. "Fuck, I would've married you right out of high school and I would've been terrified and I probably would've fucked up a thousand different ways but I would've—I would've shown up. Every single day. I would've chosen you. And I'm so sorry I didn't."

Something in you broke completely. Four years of holding yourself together, of telling yourself you were fine, of pretending the breakup hadn't fundamentally changed who you were, all of it shattered.

You were sobbing now, the kind of crying that made your whole body shake, the kind you'd been holding back since the moment you'd seen him at baseball practice for the first time.

Steve moved closer, hesitant, like he wasn't sure if he was allowed. "Can I—?"

You didn't let him finish. You just collapsed against him, face pressed into his chest, hands fisted in his sweater. And he held you, arms tight around you, one hand in your hair and the other splayed across your back, holding you together while you fell apart.

“I’m sorry,” he said against your hair. “I’m so sorry. I’m so fucking sorry, baby.”

"I would've married you," Steve said again, and you could feel his tears in your hair now. "I would've married you and I would've been so fucking proud to call you my wife. And I threw that away because I was seventeen and stupid and scared. And I've regretted it every single day since."

You pulled back just enough to look at him, and his face was wrecked. Tears streaming down his cheeks, eyes red and swollen, expression raw and open in a way you'd never seen before.

“You really hurt me,” you said, your voice coming out broken and accusatory. 

"I know." He was crying harder now too. "I know. And I don't—I don't know how to fix that. I don't know how to give you back what I took. But I—" He stopped, hands coming up to cup your face, thumbs brushing away tears that just kept coming. "I want to try. If you'll let me. I want to spend however long it takes proving to you that I'm not going anywhere this time. That when I say forever, I mean it. That you can trust me again."

"I don't know if I can," you whispered.

"I know." His forehead pressed against yours. "I know. But can I—can I at least try?"

"I would've said yes," you said quietly.

Steve's breath caught. "What?"

"If you'd asked me to marry you. At graduation. Or after. Or—or anytime. I would've said yes." Your voice was shaking. "I would've married you in a heartbeat and I wouldn't have cared if we were too young or if everyone said it wouldn't work. I would've—" You stopped. "I would've chosen you. Every time."

Steve made a sound that was half-sob, half-something else, as he pressed his eyes closed. His arms tightened around you.

"I'm so sorry," he said again. "I'm so sorry I didn't give you that chance. I'm so sorry I made you feel like wanting that was wrong. I'm so sorry I—"

You kissed him.

Cut him off mid-apology because you couldn't hear him say sorry one more time, couldn't handle the weight of his regret on top of your own grief. You kissed him and he kissed you back desperately, like you were oxygen and he'd been suffocating.

It was messy and wet with tears and tasted like salt. His hands were in your hair and yours were fisted in his sweater and you were both crying and kissing and trying to get closer even though there was no space left between you.

When you finally pulled apart, you were both gasping for air.

"I don't know how to do this," you admitted. "I don't know how to trust this again."

"We'll figure it out," Steve said, and he sounded more certain than you'd heard him all night. "Together. We'll figure it out together. No more running. No more making decisions alone. We'll—"

"Actually talk to each other like adults?" you suggested, voice watery.

"Yeah." He laughed, and it sounded lighter now, almost hopeful. "That. We'll do that."

You sat there on his couch, wrapped in his arms, both of you crying, both of you acknowledging that this was going to be hard and messy and complicated.

But for the first time in four years, you felt like maybe—maybe—you could find your way back to each other.

“I love you so much,” he said, breaking the silence the two of you had build like a cocoon around you. His voice was soft, barely there. 

And your shoulders shook as you realized this was the first time you’d heard him say the words in so long. Because Steve Harrington was saying everything you'd needed to hear four years ago. Everything you'd needed to hear to know you weren't crazy for wanting forever with him. That your expectations hadn't been too much. That loving him the way you had wasn't something to be ashamed of.

You cried against his chest and he held you through it, murmuring apologies and promises and I love yous into your hair until the tears finally slowed, until you could breathe again, until you felt like maybe you could start to believe him.

Dana had not asked. She’d taken the slip of paper you’d written it on—you hadn't been able to say it out loud, you'd written it down at the workstation and handed it to her, like a child passing a note in class—and she had read it and folded it in half and put it into her breastpocket. She clicked her pen twice then set it down then picked it back up. 

“Okay, honey. I’ll see what I can do,” she’d said, and turned back to the assignment board.

You had loved her in that moment with a small, almost dumb, religious gratitude. You had loved her for not asking, You had loved her for the way she had not, in the eleven days since, looked at you any differently than she had looked at you in the years she had been your charge nurse. Except for one morning the previous week where she had passed you in the hall and put her hand on your forearm, briefly, in passing, and squeezed once, and kept walking. You had cried for thirty seconds in the supply closet about it. It was the only crying you had done that week.

You checked the schedule every morning. You did it on your phone, from the wrong bed, in the wrong apartment, the second after the alarm went off and before you’d even sat up. You checked it again on the subway. You checked it again at the workstation by the supply closet when you got in, the monitor you'd come to think of as yours because the rolling chair in front of it had a busted wheel that everybody else avoided. You knew it was pathological, yet you continued to do it. 

The next chart you did was a woman in her seventies with back pain. The next chart was a teenager with a probably-broken thumb. The next chart was a man in his forties who had cut his hand on a can of black beans and was apologetic about being there. You worked. Your hands worked. Your hands had been very good, the last eleven days, at working. You had begun to suspect that your hands had decided to take this one for the team.

At 11:14 a peds laceration came in. You heard it before you saw it. The The father saying that it was okay, over and over, the way fathers said it in waiting rooms, less to the kid than to themselves.

Dana looked at you from across the central desk and you looked at her. You did not know, in that moment, what she was asking. You found out about three seconds later, when she did not, after looking at you, hand the chart to anybody else.

She handed it to you.

You did not check the schedule again, which was the first thing your hand wanted to do. You opened the chart. Female, five, forehead lac from a playground fall. Vitals stable. Father in the room. Mother on her way from work. Tetanus current. No known allergies. Five-year-old's name was Lily.

You walked to the room.

The dad stood up when you came in, which you wished he wouldn’t, because people standing up when nurses or doctors came in always made you want to apologize. You told him it’s okay if he sat, so he did. He had the kind of fleece on that meant he had left the house in a hurry—half-zipped, the inner liner showing—and his phone was face-up on his thigh and the screen was lit and he was not looking at it. The father was almost always in fleece; you couldn’t pinpoint what it was about emergencies that made men reach for fleece, but in the four years, you’d seen it hold.

Lily herself was on the bed with a gauze pad to her forehead by her own small hand, and her tears were slowing down a little, all cried out. Her cheeks were the high red of a child who had been outside in the cold. She was wearing a pink hoodie with a unicorn on the front and the unicorn had a small smear of blood on its horn, and the detail of the smear on the horn was going to live in your chest for a long time. Your first thought, before you could stop it, was that’d need cold water to clean it. Your mother had said to you so many times that it had become, somewhere in your twenties, the only thing you knew how to think when you saw blood on cotton. 

The second thing you noticed was that Lily had a barrette in her hair shaped like a strawberry, hanging on by one clip, and that somebody had put that barrette in this morning, and the somebody was probably the woman currently crying in the hallway, and you were going to have to not think about that for the next forty minutes.

“Hi, Lily,” you said. “I’m your nurse,” and you said your name. You said it the way you said it to children, with your voice pitched a little higher than it sat. It had taken you a year to get it right. You were quietly, stupidly proud of it. It was the kind of thing you'd never told Jack about, because it was the kind of thing that sounded like nothing when you said it out loud, and you understood now that this was probably the category of thing your whole inner life lived in.

Lily’s tears continued to roll down her cheeks but she looked at you, which was a start.

“I’m going to do a couple of things really fast,” you said, “and the doctor’s going to come look at your cut, okay?” 

She nodded. The gauze on her forehead moved when she nodded, and the dad reached forward to hold it for her, but Lily re-pressed the gauze with the exact wrong amount of pressure and your own hand twitched to fix it and you did not fix it, because the holding of one's own gauze was a thing a five-year-old could do for herself and was, in fact, the first task she had been given in the long career of being a patient, and you wanted her to have it.

You took her vitals. You did them the way you did them. Temperature, BP—pediatric cuff, the small one with the cartoon giraffes—pulse ox, the clip on her index finger that she watched with something like interest because the red light fascinated her. Her vitals were good. Her vitals were the vitals of a five-year-old who had fallen off something and was scared but was not, medically, in any trouble. You wrote them down. 

You asked the dad the questions. Tetanus current — yes, he checked his phone for the date of her last well visit and read it off. Allergies — none. What she had been doing: monkey bars. Where she had fallen from: the third bar, he said, and looked stricken, and you said, "That's not high," in the voice that meant please put your face back together, and he did, sort of.

How long ago: twenty minutes maybe. Whether she had hit anything else on the way down: he didn't think so. Whether she had been unconscious: no, she had cried immediately, which he said with the specific relief of a father who had read the same internet article every father had read about head injuries. You wrote it all down. Lily watched you write.

“Okay, kiddo. The doctor’s going to be here any second to come look at it. They’ll probably want to fix it up so it heals nice. Can you keep holding that for me?”

She nodded, and her tears had slowed. 

Dana was at the central desk when you stepped out. “I’ll page,” she said, without looking up as though she could sense your presence.

“Page who?”

“Whoever can cover peds lac in the next five minutes.”

“Okay.”

“Go restock the suture cart.”

You went to restock the suture cart. The suture cart lived in the equipment alcove off the main hallway. You stood in front of it and you opened the drawers and you did the inventory. You counted nylon. You counted prolene. You counted the gauge of the needles. The act of counting was good. The act of counting was the kind of thing your hands could do without your brain. You let your hands count. Your brain did the thing it had been doing intermittently all morning, which was nothing, which was a kind of low gray hum.

You did not check the schedule. You wanted to. You did not. You had decided, sometime around the fourth drawer, that checking the schedule again would be the act of a person who was not okay, and you were going to be okay, you were going to be okay through this shift, you were going to be okay until you got home, you were going to be okay until you could close a door behind yourself and not be okay in private. The not-checking was an act of discipline. The not-checking was the only thing you had control over.

You restocked. You closed the drawers. You walked back to Lily's room with the cart.

You knocked once and pushed the door open with your hip.

He was in the room.

Jack had taken a chair with his weight foot forward, his elbows on his knees, his hands clasped loose between them, looking up at Lily on the bed. He had positioned himself so his eyes were a little below the level of hers, a thing he’d clearly done on purpose, because the chair was lower than the bed and he’d wheeled it closer. He made himself, in the structure of the room, small. 

You had not realized, in the moment, that you thought the word ‘father’ until you heard it land somewhere behind your sternum. 

He turned his head when the door moved and saw you. His face went neutral, a deliberate-neutral that he had to will it to be.

“Hey,” he greeted softly, the way an attending greeted a nurse who walked in with a cart in tow. He said it in the voice he used at work, the voice that had nothing to do with you, the voice that was for any nurse who had walked through that door in the last fifteen years. The voice was a mercy. The voice was also a small specific cruelty, the way mercies sometimes were.

“Doctor Abbott,” you said.

You realized, cruelly, that you’d never used his last name since the fifth date. You said it now, flat and professional, the way you’d practiced it in case you ever were in this situation. You were proud of yourself for one second, then you immediately regretted it because Lily was looking at both of you with an alertness only a child can have and make it obvious. 

Jack turned back to Lily. “Alright, kiddo. This is who I was telling you about. She’s gonna help me.” When Lily tilted her head to the side with a small smile, Jack added, “She’s the best we’ve got around here. You’re lucky.”

You wheeled the cart in, parked it, set the tray up. Your hands set the tray up. Your hands knew what tray Jack liked, for they had been setting up trays for Jack for years, since before the dates, since back when he’d been an attending you’d worked with and gone home and thought about more than was appropriate. You set it up the way Jack liked it, with the needle driver on his left because he was right-handed (he liked to grab things cross-body), the forceps angled toward him, the suture spread out so he could see the gauges without rotating the pack. Your hands did all of this arranging and you did not, you realized, have any conscious memory of telling them to do it.

Jack didn’t look at the tray. He had, you suspected, watched it all go together in his peripheral vision in the same way a violinist heard another one tuning. He’d likely registered that the tray was just how he liked it and decided to stay silent about it.

“All right,” he said to Lily. “We’re gonna take a look. You’ve been doing such an amazing job with the gauze. Can you let your dad hold it for a second so I can see?”

Lily looked at her dad who nodded and took the gauze. Jack braced his right hand on the arm of the chair and stood—a motion he had developed, the half-second pause as he settled his weight before he moved—and stepped to the bedside and bent at the waist over Lily to look at the cut.

“Yeah,” he said. “You were having a good time, huh.”

“I fell.” 

“I heard. The third bar, right?”

She nodded.

“I would’ve fallen on the first one,” he said, pressing his lips into a straight line before shaking his head self-depricatingly. “Monkey bars were not my game. I had no upper body strength. I had—what’s the word—noodle arms.”

Lily, despite herself, made a small sound that was almost a laugh.

“Yeah, that’s funny,” Jack said, nodding as his lips spread wide. “I had noodle arms. Your dad probably also had noodle arms.”

“Hey,”  the dad said, with a softness of a man who had just been given permission to be in on a joke.

“Sorry,” Jack said, faux-shrugging.

Lily did a snotty, half-cry, which was a laugh. You stood at the cart with a packet of lidocaine in your hand as you watched a five-year-old laugh at a joke Jack had made. You realized he had built this whole calibration for kids, probably years ago. He’d been carrying it all the time you’d been with him, and you had never once seen it deployed so thoroughly in front of you. Perhaps it came down to the fact that there weren’t many peds cases in the middle of the night, and as luck had it, today, the universe decided to play a cruel joke on you by putting you on one with him. 

You handed him the lidocaine with steady hands. You were so proud of your hands. Your hands were carrying you.

“Okay,” he said to Lily. “I’m going to put a tiny bit of stuff in the edges of the cut. It’s gonna pinch; I’m not gonna lie to you about that, ‘cause I think you can handle the truth. Can you handle the truth?”

She nodded solemnly.

“Good. So it’s gonna pinch. It’s like a bee sting but smaller. You ever been stung by a bee?”

“No.”

“Okay, so this’ll be your first bee. Congratulations. Some people would be good money for a bee this small.”

The dad made a small huff that was almost a laugh.

“Once it pinches, it’s gonna feel cold. And then in about two minutes, you’re forehead’s gonna feel super weird. Like—” He looked up, and you were almost certain he was pretending to think. “—Has your foot ever fallen asleep?”

“Yes.”

“Like that. But on your face. It’s a weird feeling. Some people don’t like it. I want you to tell me if you don’t like it, okay? So we know you’re being honest with us.”

“Okay.”

“And then once the numbing stuff is working, I’m going to clean the cut, and then I’m going to put some stitches in. The stitches are going to feel like pushing, and they’re not gonna feel like pain. If they feel like pain, you tell me right away, and I’ll stop, and we’ll fix it. Deal?”

“Deal.”

Jack blew out a breath, tilting his head to the side. “You are an excellent patient, you know that?” he said. “I had a forty-year-old in here last week who cried more than you, and he was getting a much smaller thing.” 

You couldn’t look at Jack, so you looked at the tray. You looked at the suture pack and the lidocaine vial sitting next to the sharps box. You looked anywhere but at his face, because his face, right now, was doing something you couldn’t afford to look at. 

Jack’s face was being kind and patient. His face was being good at being this; his face was one of a man who would have been an extraordinary father, and the face was standing six-feet from you in a fluorescent-lit ED room with a kid’s blood on the sleeve of his coat. You had to hand him forceps in approximately ninety seconds, and you couldn’t look at that face.

When he gave the lidocaine, Lily flinched and gasped but there were no tears. Jack said, “There it is, that’s the bee. You did so good. You did so good.” 

He capped the needle and handed it back to you. Your fingers brushed when you took it. The brush was less than a second, and neither of you reacted, except for his thumb, which was curled in, briefly, against his palm. 

Lily was hiccuping, and her had had his hand on her ankle. 

Jack stepped back from the bed to let the lidocaine work. He did not sit back down in the chair. He stood at the foot of the bed, one hand resting on the rail, weight on his left, which was his good side, the side he stood on when he had to stand for a while. 

His eyes didn’t find yours while the lidocaine worked. He looked at Lily, asked her about her hoodie. She told him about the unicorn. He asked the unicorn’s name. She said it was Strawberry. He said Strawberry was a great name for a unicorn. He said he had a stuffed animal when he was a kid named Bear, which he admitted was a low-effort name. Lily told him he should’ve named it something better.

The dad had relaxed by degrees watching this, like he realized their kid was going to be okay and he was allowed to stop bracing. He was watching Jack with something that was close to a love born out of appreciation. Parents fell in love with their kid’s doctors in moments like this; it was a small and clean version of love. It came out of realizing their child was being held by someone who could be trusted to hold them. 

You filed it down with the smear of blood on the unicorn’s horn, the muscle in his jaw, and the word ‘father.’

“Okay,” Jack said. “I think we're ready. Let's see if you can feel this.” He took the forceps from your hand — your fingers brushed again, the second time, less than a second, again no reaction. And he touched the closed end of the forceps very lightly to the skin a centimeter from the cut. “Feel that?”

“No,” Lily answered, voice bemused.

“Cool. Cool cool cool. That’s what we want. I’m gonna clean it up and then do the stitches. You can close your eyes if you want; some kids like to close their eyes, some like to watch.”

“Can I watch?”

“Absolutely. I have to warn you, it’s a little gross.”

“I want to watch.”

“Okay, brave girl,” he said, chuckling slightly as he exhaled through his nose. “Girl who’s also potentially a future surgeon, what do I know?”

You handed him saline. You handed him gauze. He blotted. He worked. He talked to Lily the whole time. He told her about the saline. He told her what the irrigation was for. He told her that the cut was going to need four stitches, probably, maybe five, depending on how it sat once he got the first two in. He told her that the stitches would dissolve, eventually, but for now they would look like little blue threads, like tiny pieces of embroidery floss. He told her she could tell people at school she had embroidery in her forehead. He told her, when she asked, that embroidery was a kind of needlework, where you made pictures out of thread on fabric. 

You watched his hands. You watched his hands because watching his hands was your job, because watching his hands was the thing a scrub nurse did, because you had to be ready to hand him the next thing he needed, because watching his hands meant you did not have to watch his face. His hands were the hands you knew. His hands were the hands that had held your hips in the kitchen during one of the worst three weeks of your life. His hands were the hands that had built you a stew thirteen days ago. His hands were the hands you had watched, for three years, do small competent things in your apartment like open jars, fix things, hold a coffee cup, work a buttonhole. His hands were doing small competent things now, on a five-year-old's face, the same hands, the same exact hands, and you watched them work the suture through the skin and you understood that hands were the cruelest organ a person had, because hands kept doing what hands did, regardless. Hands didn't grieve or pause for the convenience of the people watching them. Hands were just hands.

He did four stitches. He did them well. He did them in the time it would have taken a worse doctor to do two. He talked to Lily through every one of them. He told her when the next push was coming. He told her she was doing great. He told her, at one point, that her dad had been very brave to bring her in so fast, which was the kind of gift a doctor sometimes gave a parent in a room and which the dad in the corner accepted by closing his eyes for a second and exhaling.

He cut the last suture and stepped back. “You’re officially repaired. How do you feel?”

“Weird,” Lily said, dragging the word out. 

“Yeah, the numbing stuff is weird. That’ll wear off in sometime. Your forehead’s gonna feel normal again by dinner.”

“What’s for dinner?” the dad asked Lily with a wobbly smile at being handed his kid back.

“Don’t know,” Lily said. “Pasta?”

“Pasta sounds good,” Jack said nodding. “Try to keep her from running around for the rest of the day. She can run around tomorrow,” he said to the dad.

Jack went through the rest of the discharge, and the dad asked one or two questions. Jack was excellent at this. You knew that. You’d known that since the first time you’d met him as a nervous nurse, but this, this he was especially good at. 

You started cleaning up the tray. Your hands did the cleanup. You bagged the sharps. You wiped down the surface. You stacked the unused supplies. You did not look at Jack and Jack did not look at you. You moved around each other in the small room without contact, the way you would have moved around any colleague, the way you had moved around him in this hospital for years before you had ever moved around him in a kitchen, in a bedroom, in the small space between his side of the bed and the wall where you'd had to turn sideways to get past.

“Can I come back?” Lily asked Jack.

“We see you again, it means something bad’s happened. You can bring a drawing or anything you want, though. We put them on the wall.” He pointed to the wall by one of the desks where kids’ drawings were taped up in a gradually growing collage that nobody had ever taken down. “If you want to draw a picture, I’ll put it up.”

“Okay. I’ll draw Strawberry.”

“Send it in!” Jack said, smiling.

As the dad helped Lily down, the dad turned to you and said, “Thank you,” and said your name. 

“You’re welcome, take care.” 

Lily hugged you around the waist, briefly and fiercely, the way kids hugged near-strangers when they had decided in the last twenty minutes that the person was safe. You put your hand on the back of her head. You let her hug you. From the other side of the room, you heard Jack inhale, just once, audibly, like something had landed wrong in him. 

She let go. She took her dad's hand. They left.

You and Jack were alone in the room. You went back to cleaning the tray. There was almost nothing left to clean. You cleaned it anyway. You picked up the empty lidocaine vial and you put it in the sharps box. You picked up the suture wrappers and you put them in the trash. You folded the sterile drape and you put it in the linens bin. Your hands were moving very fast and very precisely. Your hands were doing a week's worth of cleaning in the next forty seconds because if your hands stopped, you didn't know what would happen.

Jack said your name, and your hands paused for a minute. 

You gathered yourself in a millisecond and picked up the cart’s handle to wheel it around. You moved past him to the door.

“Hey—” he said, voice so terribly soft. “Can I—”

You heard Jack stop himself, as he realized it was a question he didn’t have the right to ask. You knew that he realized asking was the cruelest thing he could have done in a room where he had just performed forty minutes of being the father he was choosing not to be, and you heard him try to take it back by going quiet.

You opened the door with your hip and you wheeled the cart out into the hallway and you let the door swing shut behind you and you walked.

You did not run. You walked. You walked at the pace of a nurse who had somewhere to be. You wheeled the cart back to the equipment alcove and you parked it and you did not, this time, restock it. You left it. You walked past the central desk and Dana looked up and Dana looked at you and Dana did not say anything, and you turned the corner past the central desk and you walked down the back hallway to the staff bathroom and you went in and you locked the door behind you.

You stood with your back against the door.

You walked into the far stall and closed the door. You sat down on the lid of the toilet with your scrubs on you and you put your hands flat on your knees and you bent forward at the waist and you put your forehead almost on your knees. It was what they taught you to do in school to do if you thought you were going to faint, the way you had done exactly once before, on your first day, after you’d witnessed your first death.

The sound that came out of you was close to a sob; it was small, it was wet, it was almost a laugh. It came out of you and you put your hand over your mouth and you pressed hard. Then the sob came, and then another.

You cried for the dad in the chair with his phone face-up and the look he had given Jack. You cried for the way Jack had stood at the foot of the bed on his left leg, managing the load. You cried for the muscle in his jaw when Lily said your name. You cried because his hands had been the same hands. You cried because he had said your name behind you, in the empty room, and you had not turned around, and the not-turning-around was the kindest thing you had ever done for him and also the cruelest, and you didn't know yet which one it was going to turn out to be.

You texted Jack before you opened the door to the apartment. The apartment, not yours. Just a thing your sister’s friend had graciously offered while she was out of town. 

You wrote, hey - i need to come by for my passport. You sent the message before you could think twice about it and stood very still before your door as you watched the three dots appear, disappear, then reappear again. You did need your passport, but you also had to have this conversation with Jack. You wished you could live in this limbo state forever, the one where you can still be a tad unsure about what the two of you are, before you get a clean break and there’s no question that it was, truly and completely, over. 

You were going to have to see him on Mondays, or Wednesdays, or whatever other days you were put in the same rotation as him because that was out of your control unless night shift had found a new nurse that was available every night, every day of the week. 

His reply came in eleven seconds. Eleven seconds was, by your count, exactly Jack-fast. It was the speed of a man who had been waiting for the phone to do something and had decided, the moment it did, that he was not going to make you wait the social interval of pretending he hadn't been.

Of course. When works?

You wrote back, 2 PM today?

His response was quicker, the lag almost imperceptible. Yeah. I’ll be home. It seemed he had decided the same thing as you, and that was he was going to stop trying to make it small, because making it small was a thing the two of you had spent three years doing to bigger things, and he was—apparently—done. 

You put your phone down on the kitchen counter that didn’t belong to you. The counter was a butcher block, scarred where your sister’s friend had cut tomatoes directly on it for years. You’d been resenting the butcher’s block since Tuesday. The marble in your apartment with Jack had been wrong in its own ways, but at least it hadn’t been absorbent. You wiped a smear of something off the butcher block with your sleeve, because there was nothing else to do with your hand. You had not eaten since the day before. You had not eaten breakfast or lunch or the kind of in-between snack that would have made not eating breakfast or lunch a manageable thing, and you understood, looking at the butcher block, that the not-eating was going to become a thing you had to address before it became a thing somebody else had to address, but you were not going to address it today.

Jack was in the entryway. He’d been waiting in the entryway near the closet, and his hand was on the closet door, and he had—you understood, taking in the staging—positioned himself so he was doing something when you walked in. You guessed that he landed on which was the same flavor of stagecraft as him being at the sink eleven days ago when he had imagined, that time, you coming in. He had needed a thing to be doing. The closet was the version of the dishcloth.

“Hey,” he said.

“Hey.”

“You can—come in,” he said. The pause before come in was the size of him deciding whether to say come in or come home or come here. He had said come in. It was the most correct of the three available options and it was also, you understood, a thing he had picked from a menu.

You came in and closed the door behind you. You hadn’t let yourself lock it, because that would’ve meant something different. 

“I kept your passport on the counter,” Jack said, and you almost paused in your footsteps as you stepped through the entryway. Like he’d noticed, he added, “Not to—you know. Just, if you prefer not to—” 

He looked down at his hands, which were still on the closet door, and he took the hands off the closet door and let them fall, and the falling was the thing that told you he had given up on the staging. He had nothing to do with his hands and he had decided, in the half-second of looking down, that he was going to let them be empty.

You walked. You walked past him into the apartment because the walking was easier than the answering, because the answering would have required you to pick which of his unfinished sentences you were responding to, and you could not, in this entryway, pick. You walked. You felt him behind you not following.

You set your bag down on the bench. You set it down without thinking and it was only after the bag had left your hand that you registered the bench, that you understood your body had walked you to there because that was where bags went in this apartment, and three years of muscle memory had walked you to the bench and your brain had not been consulted. 

The bag was on the bench. Your bag. Where his bag had always gone when he came home and put his hands on your hips. You looked at your bag on the bench and you understood, with a small clinical clarity, that this was the last time anything of yours was going to be on this bench, and that the bench was going to keep existing after today, and that he was going to walk past it every morning for some number of years, and that the bench was not going to know.

You took your hand off the bag slowly. You took it off the way you took your hand off a patient's wrist after a pulse check, the careful release of a thing you were not going to be holding anymore.

You’d never let yourself imagine it all too deeply, but the imagining had happened anyway, in the soft margins of your brain where you didn’t keep accounts. Standing in this entryway you were aware of it the way you became aware of a bruise four days after it settled. You had imagined, you understood now, a girl. You had imagined a girl with his hairline and your hands and you imagined her on the bench by the door putting on shoes. You had imagined Jack sitting on one knee to do the laces, because you knew he would crouch even though it hurt him. He was a man who made himself smaller to help at the child’s height; he’d done it for Lily and you knew the small grunt his left knee would make and the way he would brace one hand on her shoulder to stand. 

You had imagined a second one, too, smaller, a boy or girl you hadn’t decided about, somewhere. You had imagined a kitchen—not this kitchen, a different one, somewhere with more light and up the river, a kitchen Jack had said yes to, with a backdoor that opened to something green. You’d imagined him older in that kitchen standing at a counter in that kitchen explaining something patient and slightly too complicated to a kid who was half-listening, and you had imagined yourself watching him do it from a doorway. The watching had been the feeling, and you had thought—when you let yourself think it, which had been rare, late at night, in a warm muzzy place between his arm and pillow—that you would be lucky. 

You had built a future in the warm muzzy place that you had never once dragged out into the kitchen and put on the counter and asked him to look at it. And you had now understood that he, in the same three years, had built a different one, and neither of you had shown the other the blueprint, and the blueprints had been incompatible the whole time, and the incompatibility had been sitting between you on every couch and in every bed and at every table for three years like a third person nobody was introducing.

You weren’t sure when you’d grabbed the passport, but it was in your hand.

“My sister’s going to come down to help me move the stuff next week, if that’s okay?” 

Because it was decided—you’d decided—that you’d be the one to move out. 

“Yeah.” He cleared his throat. “Whatever works for her.”

It came out lower than he’d meant to. You could tell because he heard it come out, and his jaw moved once, a small adjustment, the kind of micro-correction he did when a sentence didn't come out the size he had wanted it to. He cleared his throat again.

“I can be gone, if you—she wants. The whole day. I’ll take a shift, I’ll—yeah. I can not be here.” Then, he added, “Or I can help. If it’s heavy stuff. Some of the boxes from the closet are—”

“I’ll let you know.”

He was nodding too much. He had been holding the nodding to the metered pace of the rest of the conversation and the pace had broken, somewhere in the last three sentences, and the nodding was running ahead of him. He noticed. He stopped. His hand came up to the back of his neck and stayed there.

“Sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry.” 

“It’s okay.” 

Don’t do this, you were thinking to yourself. Don’t make this any harder than it already is.

“And I’m sorry about the case—Lily. I wasn’t going to take it because you were on it, and it was peds, but Robby was busy—”

You were shaking your head because your eyes had started burning now, at the memory of it. “It’s fine, Jack.”

“I should’ve found someone else. I shouldn’t have walked in there. I knew you were on it and I walked in anyway and I—I am sorry.”

“It’s fine.”

You said it louder the second time than you’d meant to. The loudness almost echoed in the apartment as his lips pressed together to keep himself from saying more, and you stood there with your eyes threatening to spill over and you understood he was apologizing for a case because a case was the only thing he would apologize for. That was the only way he could apologize for any of it, and that letting him do that was a kindness you did not have inside you to give.

You couldn’t let him use a five-year-old with a forehead lac as the vehicle for the thing he actually wanted to say because the thing he actually wanted to say was too large and the vehicle was too small and the gap between them was going to break you if you stood in it any longer.

He kept his hand on the back of his neck. 

“You were good with her,” you said, voice softening an inch. You hadn’t meant to say it. “You were really good with her. That’s not—I’m not saying that because. I’m just saying.”

You weren’t sure if you’d said any words that resembled anything close to a sentence.

“Thank you,” he said, and closed his eyes for a second and held them that way. “I’m sorry I can’t be—that. For us.”

You closed your eyes, too at that, and the pressure caused a small, single stream to ripple down your cheek. Looking at him with his eyes closed without sleeping was a thing you were unequipped for, closing your eyes was the only available form of leaving the room without leaving the room. You stood with your eyes closed and the passport warm in your hand and you let yourself, for two seconds, not be in the entryway.

When you opened them he had opened his.

“Don’t—that’s not—you don’t have to be sorry for that. It’s a thing that—it’s just a thing. Don’t apologize for it.”

He pulled the corners of his cheeks between his lips as he nodded.

“But you should have told me. A long time ago.” Because I don’t know where I’m going now, without you. 

“I’m sorry. I’m—I am sorry,” he said, and his hand had come off his neck and he was fidgeting with the belt loops of his jeans, tugging on them harshly as though that was the place he was redirecting his words to. 

“I should go,” you said.

“Yeah.”

You stepped into him before you could decide to. Your body did it, the way his body had done the half-step at the closet, and you were halfway across the foot of air between you before your brain caught up and registered that you were doing it, and by then it was already done, your forehead was against his collarbone and your hand had found the front of his shirt and the passport was somewhere, you didn't know where, you had stopped holding it.

He stood still for half-a-second. He stood with his arms at his sides and you understood he was not going to assume he was allowed, that even now, even with you in his chest, he was waiting for the permission to be explicit, and so you pressed your forehead harder into his collarbone and that was the permission, and his arms came up.

He held you so carefully, the way you held a thing you had been told you couldn't have but had been given anyway, briefly, for a reason that wasn't going to last. One of his hands found the back of your head. The other one was at your shoulder blade, flat, and you could feel his thumb against you not moving, holding very still, the discipline of a man not allowing the thumb to stroke because stroking would have been taking.

His body shook. It was small. It was one tremor that moved through him from somewhere low in his ribs up through his shoulders, and you felt it because you were against him, and you would not have felt it from a foot away, and you understood that the thing about being held by him right now was that you were the only person in the world who could feel what his body was doing, and that you were never going to feel what his body was doing again after today.

“This is the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do.”

He whispered it into your hair very quietly. He said it at the same decibel of when he said things in the dark when he thought you were asleep, the small unguarded register he had thought, in those moments, was private, and that you had heard every time, and that you had never told him you had heard.

There was no answer that was the size of what he had just said and so you stayed against him and you let him have the silence.

He held you for a few more seconds.

He pulled back first and gently, with the carefulness of a man undoing a knot he had tied himself, and his hands moved down your back and around to your sides and stopped there, briefly, before one of them—his right— came up to your face, his own twisting slightly as he warred with himself over whether or not he was allowed to touch you this way. He put his palm against your cheek and cupped it. His thumb went under your eye where the tear had been earlier and was now dry, and he brushed the dryness with a shaky thumb, and it stayed there for a second longer than it needed to.

“I know you’ll find the right person.”

His voice had come back to almost level. He had spent the moment on the shake and the whisper and now he was using the last of the discipline he had to deliver this line, and you watched him deliver it, and you understood that he had been saving it. He had decided some time in the twelve days that this was the line he was going to give you on the way out, and he had practiced the steadiness of it, and the steadiness was working, and the steadiness was the gift.

You couldn't imagine loving anyone but him.

You were going to be thirty-one in three months and you were going to live in apartments that were not this apartment and you were going to walk past men on the street and on the train and at work and none of them were going to be him, and the not-being-him was going to be the central fact about every man you met for some long time you could not yet measure. You knew this with a clinical clarity that you kept to yourself. Voicing it would do nothing.

“You too, Jack.”

He smiled softly, like he knew you were offering him a kindness you couldn’t promise, a kindness he himself believed not to be true. His jaw set, the half-second readjustment that told you he had heard the lie and was not going to correct it. He was going to receive the lie the same way he was receiving the hug, carefully, gratefully, knowing he was not supposed to have it.

“Okay.”

His hand came down from your face and you stepped away, because being there any longer, in his arms, you knew, was not right for you. You grabbed your bag and cleared your throat before you said, “I’ll text you about the move.”

“Okay.”

“Probably Tuesday.”

You had walked into the apartment in your shoes and you were going to walk out in them and the not-taking-off-of-shoes was, you understood, a thing the version of you who had come through this door at 2 PM had decided about, the small protective instinct of a woman who had known she was not going to be staying.

You put your hand on the doorknob.

You turned around.

He was where you had left him. He had not moved. His hands were at his sides again, the kitchen-position, the position they had remembered. He was looking at you with his face mostly held but not entirely held. 

You let yourself look at him for a half-second longer than you had meant to, because the half-second was the last one you were going to have with him being someone you could love before he became your attending and just that; you wanted to know what he looked like at the end of it so you would remember the right face later.

Jack had decided that he wanted to let you leave clean, not prolong it any further. He’d given himself that opportunity for three years, and he’d let you leave cleanly now, with the small consistent excellence of a man who had decided what the standard was and was going to meet it. 

You were going to spend the rest of the afternoon, and the evening, and the night, and possibly the rest of your life, hating him for being good at it even now.

“Bye, Jack,” you said as you opened the door.

You couldn’t bear to turn around, but you heard a hitch in his breath as he said, “Bye.”

Jack had been the love of your twenties. He was never going to be able to tell you you were the last love he would have.

This fucking sucks, you think.

A pit yawns into existence in the depths of your stomach, and you kiss your teeth. The night managed to be ruined before it even began. Truly a new record in a string of shitty luck. The only thing left is to decide how to respond.

While in the past, you used a plethora of options (each more inventive than the last), this time you're stumped. Bereft. Left standing on a foundation of shifting sand.

How do you correlate the sting of this offensive to the nature of your not-relationship — could you?

In the end, he owes you nothing.

You scrub a hand over your chest with a frown. This should be a non-issue, and yet... And yet.

What the hell's wrong with me?

Beside you, the bartender averts his gaze. Pretends the task of polishing smudged pint glasses is of the utmost importance while you suffer through an existential crisis.

You appreciate the curtesy, clumsy as it is.

Not like there's much else for him to do.

It's a slow night, the locals more interested in the newest blockbuster than sticky floors and cheap drinks with a heavy pour. The music's decent and the strobe lights they kick on after 10 PM aren't offensive enough to induce a migraine.

Moreover, it's quiet as far as bars go - one of the many reasons why it's a favorite meeting place of yours.

Because while its changed hands several times over the years, some things forever remain the same. Like the trashy, half-naked mermaids hanging from the rafters or the bright splashes of graffiti painting the walls in swaths of color... or the low booth crammed into the back corner; a hidden, tell-tale heart hosting an aged carving of yours and Jack's initials on the underside.

The lone vigil of a bygone life filled with coursework and exams, laughter shared over watered down lagers and the pressing clasp of warm palms.

Will we ever be like that again?

Nostalgia's a dangerous thing as you glance at your secret keeper. Makes it harder to avoid the lurch of your heart and the churn of your stomach; the tangled mess of strangleweed emotions threatening to steal the breath from your lungs.

You've been stood up.

Again.

Abandoned in a monument of your youth and surrounded by bittersweet reminders of a time when Jack cared. When he was tender and kind. When the distance between you didn't throb like an open wound.

This isn't the first time. It won't be the last.

Humiliation burns white-hot, sinks its fingers into the apples of your cheeks. It used to be so easy not to take his flakiness personally. He was a busy man with important things to do, even back in college.

When did that change? When did he stop saying sorry? When did he stop caring?

The desolation is much harder to shake off this time. You used to be so understanding but now it feels as if Jack's plunged a hand into your chest, scooped out any tender, soft thing he could find.

Goddamn it. What did you expect?

Jack Abbot is a screaming red flag.

He likes getting shot at for fun, plays cop by listening to a police scanner in his free time, flirts with death to a concerning degree, and bends the rules when it suits his needs.

A loose cannon, wild and untamed since his youth.

He reminds you of Icarus, constantly soaring to new heights. And like the boy with hope in his heart and wings made of wax, you live in fear of the day he'd get burned for flying too close to the sun.

However, you didn't expect to be plummiting towards the earth in his stead. And you don't share his knack for compartmentalization, instead thrown off-kilter by this recent disappointment in a long line of tragedy.

What’s going on with me, you think, regret bitter on your tongue. This is nothing new. Jack's doing what he's always done.

Hell, even after you fuck he never acts differently - as casual with you between the sheets as he is lounging on your couch with a carton of greasy Chinese food and beer.

It's been great.

It's been enough.

Why is now different?

Just the thought of going back to your empty apartment makes your skin crawl, knowing he'll swing by after his next shift with a half-assed apology and your favorite drink since you were a sleep deprived undergrad in hand.

Then he'll coax you into bed where you'll get lost in each other's bodies for hours.

He'll continue to take-take-take.

You'll continue to give-give-give.

On and on, a distant star orbiting a black hole - losing little bits of itself until there's nothing left but dust.

Then he'll leave your life.

First in inches, then in miles; a blurry after-image there and gone in the blink of an eye. You might be lucky if you get a check-up call once every three months.

After all, your lives went in separate directions before - what's stopping that from happening again?

Fuck, I - I can’t do this anymore, you realize, a shiver rattling down your spine, Because I —

An errant thought gains teeth.

Sinks deep and refuses to budge as an awful truth, one buried so well you forgot it was there - ever lurking in the shadows - rises to the forefront of your mind. Hysteria swells. A cold chill rakes gnarled fingers down the nobs of your spine.

Oh.

It’s because I love him. Because I’m in love with him. I always have been.

Suddenly it hurts to breathe, your lungs burning as you drown on the air itself. A steel band cinches around your ribs, threatens to crack you open. Your heart lurches. Despair follows on swift wings, and you have no one to blame except yourself.

Fuck, you scrub a hand over your face with a wane smile. How could I…

It'll never work.

Loving Jack is the same as loving the ghost of a long-forgotten memory, and you are not content to warm yourself on hollow bones and cinders of affection. Besides, there are too many hurts to soothe, and too many disappointments to name.

Should’ve known better — should’ve done a lot of things, I guess.

Now, you're in too deep.

Waiting without ever realizing you began to do so in the first place; a life on pause, surviving off of half-measures and maybe's, what-ifs, if-only's.

No more.

It's time to muster up some semblance of self, untangle the threads of connection so you can rediscover the pieces of your heart you left with him all those years ago. Relearn how to live without the taste of his kiss, the clench of his muscles, the thrust of his cock. Content yourself with his friendship and nothing more.

And it starts with a simple reply in the face of everything else you really want to say: Ok.

After, you grab the bartender's attention (not that it was ever on anyone else but you).

He pretends not to notice the tears brimming along your lash line."Ready to order?" he asks. "What'll ya have?"

"Uh, yeah - sorry, I was…"

The screen of your phone lights up with a notification. His mouth twitches. You waver, refuse to look. Everything is still too fresh, emotions scraped raw and tender.

A simple flick of your finger turns on DND, then you place the device face down where it'll remain until you call it a night. You're far too fragile - and sober - to think about reading Jack's reply.

“Vodka cranberry, double shot. Please.”

Maybe if you get drunk enough, you'll forget about the home he carved in your bones.

Bottoms up, bitch.

In hindsight, having this conversation with Jack face to face the day after you realized you've spent a significant chunk of your life in love with a man who'll never love you back isn’t the brightest idea.

But if last night showed you anything, it's that every choice you’ve made lately is a disaster waiting to happen. What’s another mistake to add to your long string of misfortune?

It doesn't matter if there's a tremor to your hands when you unlock the door to let him in. It doesn't matter if your stomach churns when he leans in for a kiss only for you to duck aside, his lips catching on the slope of your cheek. It doesn't matter even when he pauses and gives you a long, searching look before pro-offering the drink he picked up on the way.

It can't get any worse.

Right?

(It can. It does.)

When he heads towards your bedroom with a slanted quirk of his lips and a playful wink, his crow's feet crinkling, the hungry, molten mixture of rage and rebellion fueling you sputters before fizzling down to embers.

Your heart stutters.

In that moment, he reminds you so, so much of the fresh faced older boy you knew.

The one who dragged you out for pancakes at 3 AM after you crammed for an exam, soft eyes and tender hands. The one you explored your sexuality with, curled against his chest as you kissed and groped each other, lips clumsy and palms sweaty. The one who stole your heart before you realized how empty he'd leave you.

Anguish and despair nip at your heels when you follow him.

You step into the room. This is all you’ll ever be to him, you remind yourself. A fun time. Nothing serious. You have to break it off for the sake of your friendship.

“Did you have a good night?”

Any attempt at smiling falls flat; ill-fitting, the corners stretched too wide, teeth bared like a dog.

Jack shrugs and shifts his weight onto his good leg, glancing around at the decorations littering your dresser. “Nah, not really.” His gaze slides to you, traveling from your head to your bare toes in a slow once over. “I definitely would’ve had a better time with you.” He flashes you a smile. "Always do."

Swallowing roughly, you rub your hands over your arms and feel far too exposed in the light summer dress you haphazardly threw on, skin too sensitive for anything heavier.

“Hah,” you intone without humor, awkward and stilted. “Probably not. I was out by 11:30.”

Jack hums. “Mm, that’s not like you.” He steps forward, only stopping once he's in front of you. "You're acting weird."

Hands reach for your wrists, broad palms a heated brand as fingers encircle the bone like they're cradling precious china. A rough thumb strokes over your pulse point. Shivery sensation whispers at the touch, awareness dripping down your nerves.

"Is there anything you want to talk about, sweetheart?"

When you stitch together a chuckle, its mirthless.

Of course he'd notice.

“Nothing gets past you, huh?”

Jack grins, his eyes crinkling. "Nothing," he agrees.

With every inhale, your chests brush. The scant few inches between your bodies heats, electric. His torso is a tempting line of hardness begging to mold itself against you just like it has time and time again. It’s torture. It’s too intimate.

The glow of your overhead lamp highlights the glints of spun silver in his hair, the curling sweep of his lashes as he blinks slow and happy, his eyes the shade of kerosene and broken amber beer bottles. He's blinding - like looking at the sun.

Clearing your throat, you shrink back.

“Don’t do that. Where are you going?” He pleads with you to stay, his body curved towards you. A palm settles over your shoulder. “Stop hiding. You can talk to me about anything. Come on, I want to know what’s going on in that pretty head of yours.”

Oh, his expression is so open, so soft.

What a terrible thing to destroy.

If only this moment, this memory could last forever suspended on a string.

Maybe once you beat your feelings back into submission…

Better to be quick otherwise you fear the words will get stuck around the bend of your throat like a noose. Resolved, you inhale and muster your courage. Steel your heart and do your best to ignore the ginger stokes of his fingertips.

You exhale, "We need to stop."

The world grinds to a startling halt.

Silence descends but for the rigid exhale through his nose, and all you can do is watch as Jack's eyes darken, scalpal sharp in the dim overhead light. Even still, his half-smile never wanes. Of course, it wouldn't be that easy. He's always been a greedy man. Wants what he can't have, and destroys what he does.

"What do you mean?" Jack asks (but he knows, there's no way he doesn't). "You're gonna have to be a bit more specific than that, sweetie."

You sigh and rub the bridge of your nose. "Jack, you know what I mean."

"Do I?"

"I just - I can't do," your voice cracks, your free hand motioning helplessly at him, "this anymore."

A vein throbs on the side of his neck, his stubbled jaw working side to side. Muscles bunch and release with every grind of his teeth. Tension impregnates the air, crackling between you like bottled lightening. The calm before the storm.

"You gonna tell me why? Or are you just going to ditch me - act like we," he catches himself, and re-phrases his sentence, "like it didn't fuckin' mean anything?"

“Jack…”

There’s a certain grief that can’t be spoken, gnarled roots burrowing deep in your chest. You wish this wasn’t happening. You wish you could take it back but this pantomime of a relationship isn’t fair. Not to you. Not anymore.

Though while you knew this conversation wouldn’t be fun, Jack's staunch denial still manages to surprise you.

“It didn’t mean anything though,” you say.

At least, not to you, you think. To me, it meant the world.

— And that’s the problem.

You need to stop whatever this is between you from building. He’s already shown he doesn’t share your desire for more in a multitude of ways. He’s been avoiding you for a reason, whether he was consciously aware of your feelings or not.

Undoubtedly, you trust him with your life but not your heart.

As sweet as he is - has been - he won’t treat it gently. He can’t contain his own commitment issues let alone make room for yours.

No, it’s better this way.

Let's what you have - had - stay a memory unmarred by the ugliness of your hurt feelings and bitter disappointments. At least, that's what you thought.

Except Jack's shoulders draw up towards his ears and his hands fall away from you. His gaze is glacial as it pins you in place. There's a shadow that lurks in the depths of his eyes, his lips curled into a cruel smirk.

Everything about him looks weighted down, adding years to his face.

If you didn't know better, you'd think it was heartbreak.

"Well, is there? I mean, shit, I think I deserve a fuckin' answer after all the years we've known each other." He scoffs. "At the very least."

“I’m not done with you,” you say. “I would never do that, Jack. I just - I can’t be with you like that anymore. I need space but I’ll still be around, I promise.”

He glares, a snarl rumbling from the depths of his chest. “Cut the bullshit. Tell me the reason.”

"Why does that - I -"

Words fail you when you need them most. Left scrambling for a reason to give while Jack looks so… God, you want to reach out and comfort him (the urge so strong you have to shove your hands under your arms to stop yourself). And then it comes to you, unbidden.

At the beginning of this mess, you only had one rule.

If there's someone you're serious about, you stop fucking. While made for your benefit more than his - barring the few flings after the passing of his wife - it comes as a handy lie. A believable excuse that'll stop any further questioning and save you from incriminating yourself. The last thing you want to do in this moment is be honest, and if he doesn't relent soon, you fear you'll crack under the weight of your grief and the fury in his eyes.

“I think I - I think I want to start looking for a boyfriend again.”

An expression flashes across his face, there and gone in the blink of an eye. But there’s no doubt he recognizes this for the goodbye it’s supposed to be.

This is it, you think.

You can put what you had to rest and move on, a memory on a shelf you’ll dust off years down the line when the hurt isn’t so prevalent. And hopefully, with time, you can relearn how to be his friend. Though the strange gleam to his eyes sends a prickle of apprehension down your spine, and then you find yourself being manhandled as he snaps forward, a snake coiled to strike.

Air flees your lungs as Jack shoves you with a firm palm, your feet stumbling over themselves as you trip backwards into your bed frame. Wood knocks into the backs of your knees, and you fold like a stack of cards. The sheets puff out around you, the scent of your laundry detergent tickling your nose.

You blink at the textured ceiling, mouth agape as you try to process what happened. This was supposed to be an amenable end to a dubious affair. It's quickly turning into anything but.

How? Why?

The empty space above you doesn’t stay vacant.

Jack quickly crowds you into the mattress with his weight as he settles over top of your body. The softness of your body knows the hardness of his, every curve has a matching divot. He molds himself to your front, his firm hips slotting themselves between your thighs as broad palms skim your sides. Warm and calloused, they ruck up the skirt of your dress.

"So that's it, huh?

"What—"

Reaching beneath you to grasp at the soft globes of your ass, Jack yanks you into him. Your pelvises slot together in a harsh clash of friction. Before you can stop yourself, a whine breaks free. The heat of his body sinks into you, and your lashes flutter. A bolt of awareness slices through you as your body responds to his proximity, liquid desire a slow kindling fire behind your navel.

He feels like home - like you're right where you belong beneath him.

Senses overwhelmed as he surrounds you, the heady, pleasent scent of his cologne flooding your lungs with every stuttered inhale. When teeth scrape along the delicate skin of your throat, sharp pinpricks of pleasure-pain lighting sparking sudden and bright, you squirm.

Then he's speaking, low and husky, "My girl's going to leave me for someone else? Think again, sweetheart."

“I’m not your girl. Never was.”

He doesn't need to know how your heart aches at your reply, every beat thrumming in your ears, screaming: it's you, it's always been you, only you.

A cruel mouth latches onto the corner of your jaw, teeth worrying at the flesh as blunt nails dig into the soft fat of your ass. "That right?" Jack asks. His voice rumbles through your torso, your nipples pebbling as they drag over the plains of his chest. "You think you're not my girl?"

The line of his cock ruts into you, dragging wickedly over your swollen clit. It's almost enough to make you swallow your tongue, retract every hasty word and beg for his forgiveness. "I know I'm not your girl," you bite out.

"Ah, so if you're not my girl," he grinds into the cradle of your hips taunting - teasing, "tell me what's got your pretty little pussy so fucking wet, sweetie. C'mon, let's hear it - I'm curious."

"Jack!"

Keening, you rock up into the firm pressure of his shaft. The angle's just right, spreads your folds beneath the thin cotton of your panties to expose your soaked core to the chill of your room. Mortification hooks behind your navel, a warm flush creeping from your crown down to the tips of your toes.

"Don't you know it's rude not to respond when someone asks a question." Jack presses a sloppy kiss to the side of your neck, following up with a stinging nip. His stubble drags over your skin, a path of raw tenderness left in the wake of his attention. "Should I take a guess?"

"I can't — ffuck!"

Blood thrums through your veins, rabbit fast. You're steadily losing all sense of control and rationality, the aborted rolls of your hips increasing in frequency the longer Jack keeps himself pressed against your pussy.

"Do you think some nobody can fuck you better than me?" A hand slaps the outside of your thigh. "Answer me."

A sharp burst of copper floods your mouth, your skin splitting open with how hard you’re chewing on it. Blood clings to the swell of your bottom lip, a ruby red bead you lick away with a nervous tongue.

Sweat dapples your brow, and it’s getting harder and harder to ignore the molten desire curdling your stomach.

“Shit, Jack, please,” you beg, hands tangling in the sheets by your head. “I don’t know what you want from me.”

You’re not sure what you’re asking for but at the same time, you’re not sure how you ended up here.

Again.

“I want you to tell me who your pussy belongs to.”

Fingers inch down to tease along the soft flesh of your inner thighs and play with the elastic of your panties. You tremble, gooseflesh dimpling the exposed skin of your arms as knuckles brush over the length of your soaked pussy. Your clit pulses, the pressure enough to tease.

“Come on, sweetheart,” Jack coaxes, working his way beneath the fabric clinging to your dripping folds, “tell me you’re my girl - always have been ever since college.”

His cock nestles into the crook of your hip, hot and heavy through his jeans as a darkened patch blooms across the denim crotch. The sticky wetness of his pre-cum smearing into your skin as arousal swells. A brief flicker of worry for his leg snakes through you before being knocked loose by the harsh rut of his hips.

“You just have to say it - say you’re my girl and I’ll be so, so good to you.” His breath warms the shell of your ear. “All you have to do is say it, and I’ll make you cum so hard you see stars."

Jack doesn’t give you a chance to cobble together a response, sliding a thick finger through your sticky folds and into your needy pussy just as your lips part to reply. All words leave you, your mind wiped clean as a low, broken cry echoes out into the room. Swallowed up by the sounds of city life outside your apartment as he works to stretch silken flesh open.

You clamp down at the sudden fullness, walls tight and puffy as they flutter around his finger. You can't help but wish it was his cock fucking in so deep the tip kissed your cervix with every thrust, hitting that spot just right to make you cum so hard you soak the bed.

“Fuck,” he groans. “Always so soft n wet n pretty for me.”

Whining in agreement, you give up any pretense of resistance, letting primal desire chase away the despair, the guilt that threatens to choke you. Wiping your mind clean of any thoughts until the only thing that remains is the stretch of his fingers and the ache in your cunt.

Your hands slip, scrambling for purchase with sweaty palms. “J-Jack!”

Your knees tremble where they dig into his sides, air rushing from you in heavy pants as the space between your bodies heats up. You know you won’t last long, already hanging on the edge.

Never in a million years did you expect to be so turned on by Jack's rough behavior. He usually treats you like something delicate.

Though he holds no such compunction now, raw in his desperate desire to make you cum.

Jack peppers kisses onto whatever skin he can reach, spreading your thighs wider with his torso. His knuckles strain against the fabric of your panties, stretching out the cotton and ruining them forevermore as he slips another finger into you.

Then his head bows, catching your gaze, and he says, “Hold on.”

Barely seconds after you anchor yourself to his shoulders, he starts finger fucking you to within an inch of your life. His forearm ripples with strength, the movements of his fingers pressing and rubbing against all the right spots. Curling up to massage at your g-spot until you’re shaking beneath him with hitched breaths.

“Shit, shit,” you gasp, eyes rolling back as your toes flex against his side, “Jack, baby, please don’t stop.”

He huffs a laugh, dark and amused. “Wouldn’t ever do that to you, sweetie.”

“S’good - I - I’m close.”

You sob, tears brimming along your lash line. The sloppy, squelching sounds of him fucking your pussy ring in your ears, as embarrassing as it is arousing. He’s making you gush, slick wetting your inner thighs, dribbling down your ass to stain the sheets.

“So close, gonna - hnnng - gonna cum.”

“Yeah, that’s it. Just like that, baby. Give me that squirt.”

You shake your head. “I can’t - I can’t!”

If you could, you’d suspend time so this moment never ends. The finality of your arrangement hovering just on the other side of pleasure. In the back of your mind, you know Jack's only behaving this way because he’s jealous. Angry.

He doesn’t mean it, and this is a mistake.

It’ll only hurt you in the long run but you’ll take what you can get.

After all, this is the last time you’ll be together like this.

“No,” he shushes, dropping a kiss to your sweaty brow, “No, don’t lie. I know you can. I’ll make you.”

There’s no escape.

He refuses to let you escape, using his weight to keep you pinned as he spreads his fingers open inside you, twisting and fucking so deep you feel a twinge behind your navel. And then you’re right there, crashing over the edge as the bubble of pleasure bursts, crackling through your limbs.

You cum harder than you ever have before. Nails sinking into his shoulders with a hiss as a wounded, broken wail scrapes its way out of your throat. Your pussy throbs, gummy walls sucking him deeper as a rush of cum gushes from you in spurts. Your ears ring with white noise, and you’re vaguely aware of the fact your hands have gone numb.

For several long moments, you float with a head full of cotton, only rejoining the atmosphere when warmth dribbles down your ass in sticky rivulets of squirt.

Jack's arm is curled around your waist, holding you close as his nose nuzzles into the side of your head. Tender lips dust kisses over your crown. His cock is still a heavy weight digging into your hip but he doesn’t seem to be in any rush to relieve himself.

“Jack,” you sigh, a wave of fatigue crashing over you. Your eyes sting when you close them, a lump building in your throat. You ache all over pleasantly, satisfaction settling deep into your bones. In spite of that, a rift opens in your heart. “Jack, I--”

He kisses your shoulder, shushing you. “Don’t ruin it. Just let me hold you for a little while longer… please.”

The tears are almost impossible to stop. “It’s already hard enough, don’t make me -- I can’t just…”

Jack squeezes you gently. “I love you,” he says, “but I swear to god you can be so fucking stupid sometimes.”

You jolt, eyes swinging up to meet his, wide and disbelieving. “What did you just  - I - I  don’t. ..Jack?”

“How could I not feel the same?” he asks rhetorically, tone resigned and wary. “Have since... since college - it just took me a little longer to realize it, that's all. Honestly scared the shit out of me.”

Me too, you think softly as something unfurls in your chest. Lighter than air; ridiculously buoyant with happiness - with hope.

Oh, how stupid.

He averts his gaze. “I almost fucked everything up too, but Robby helped me get my head on straight.”

“We're idiots, huh?”

Jack hums noncommittally, a boyish gleam to his eyes and a sheepish smile on his lips. “You said it, sweetheart.”

feedback is always appreciated

Silence. Then - a sound. A soft, groaning noise, almost a whimper. "I need you to come over. Right now. It's - it's an emergency. A medical emergency."

Your heart skipped a beat. "Steve, are you hurt? Did something happen? Is it the Upside Down?"

"No! Nothing like that! Just - " he lowered his voice to a frantic whisper that vibrated with strain, " - just please come over. And maybe bring ice? Lots of ice? Cold things. Frozen things."

He hung up.

You stared at the phone, equal parts worried and annoyed, then grabbed your bag and headed for your car.

Steve's house was dark when you arrived, which was strange for 4 PM on a Saturday. You let yourself in with the key he'd given you two years ago with a cute, very you keychain attached - "for emergencies," he'd claimed, though mostly you'd used it to feed his mom's cat when they were away cause you loved that little furball.

"Steve?" you called, dropping your bag in the entryway. "Where are you?"

"Upstairs," came the muffled reply, thin and strained. "My room. Please hurry."

You took the stairs two at a time, concern overriding everything else. You pushed open his bedroom door and froze.

Steve was on his bed, fully clothed in jeans and a t-shirt, but his face was flushed a deep crimson that spread across his cheeks and ears. His hair was damp with sweat, plastered to his forehead in dark strands, and he was - oh God - he was holding a bag of frozen peas against his crotch with both hands, his knees drawn up, his whole body curled in on itself like he was in pain.

"Steve?"

"Don't look at me," he groaned, his voice cracking, throwing an arm over his face. His chest heaved with every breath, his t-shirt clinging to his skin. "I'm a monster. I'm broken. I'm - oh god - " he broke off with a whine, high and desperate, his hips bucking upward involuntarily, his hands pressing the frozen bag harder against himself.

"Why are you holding frozen vegetables to your - " you gestured vaguely, " - your area?"

He peeked at you from under his arm, his eyes glassy and slightly wild, pupils blown wide and black. "Remember Cheryl Matthews?"

"Vaguely. Cheerleader? Dated Tommy Hagan?"

"She gave me chocolates." He pointed with one trembling hand to a heart-shaped box on his desk, already empty, his movements jerky and uncoordinated like muscle spasms. "For Valentine's Day. Said she wanted to 'give me something special.'" He made air quotes, then winced, a full-body shudder running through him as he adjusted the peas. "I ate them. All of them. Because I'm an idiot who can't pace himself."

"Okay..." you said slowly, still not understanding. "So you have a stomachache?"

"I wish!" He laughed, slightly hysterical, the sound breaking into another whine as he shifted restlessly against the mattress. "No, Y/N, I - " he dropped his voice to a whisper that shook to your core, " - I can't make it go down. It's been two hours. I've tried everything. Cold showers. Thinking about my grandma. Math equations. Sad puppies - and nothing works! It just - " he broke off with a gasp, his head falling back against the headboard, his throat exposed and vulnerable, lined with sweat, " - it won't stop! It's aching, Y/N. It hurts."

Realization dawned. Slowly, horribly, hilariously.

"Steve," you said carefully, fighting a small smile, "are you telling me those chocolates were - "

"Laced with something!" he wailed, his voice cracking on the last word. "I don't know what! But I feel like I'm going to die, and I can't go to the hospital because they'll think I'm some kind of pervert, and I can't tell my mom because she'll kill me, and you're the only person I could think of who wouldn't - " he broke off, groaning, the sound low and wounded and needy, his hips rolling upward in a slow, helpless grind against the frozen bag, " - who wouldn't think I'm completely disgusting."

"Who wouldn't laugh at you?" you supplied.

He peeked at you again, his eyes desperate and pleading, wet at the corners with frustration or pain or both. "Okay, you're clearly laughing now, but I thought maybe - maybe you'd know how to help. Before I have to start thinking about amputation. Or jumping in the quarry. Or - oh god - " he gasped, his whole body going rigid, his knuckles white where they gripped the peas, " - please think of something to help me. Please. I can't - I can't stand it anymore. It won't stop throbbing."

You did laugh then - you couldn't help it, a sharp burst of sound that made him groan and cover his face again, his shoulders hunching with embarrassment. "Steve, I - this is - this is the most ridiculous thing that's ever happened to you. And that's saying something."

"I know," he moaned, the sound muffled by his arm. "I'm cursed. I'm actually cursed. Probably by a witch. Or a demon. Or - "

"Or Cheryl Matthews just wanted to mess with you," you suggested, crossing to his desk to examine the chocolate box. There, tucked under the velvet lining, was a small handwritten note: "Hope you enjoy these as much as I'll enjoy watching you eat them. Happy Valentine's Day! ;)"

You showed him. He turned an even darker shade of red, if that was even possible.

"She poisoned me," he said, outraged and breathless. "This is assault. This is - this is chemical warfare!"

"It's Viagra, Steve," you said, trying to be practical despite the absurdity of the situation. "Or something similar. You're not going to die. You're just... enhanced. For a while."

"How long is 'a while'?" he asked, slightly panicked, his voice rising.

"I don't know? A few hours?"

"Hours?" The word came out as a wail, high and broken. He dropped the bag of peas - finally - and you couldn't help it. Your eyes dropped down.

He was hard. Impossibly, almost painfully hard, the outline straining against his zipper, thick, obvious and there. You could see the shape of him clearly through the denim, the way it curved up toward his hip, the way it twitched slightly with his pulse. He noticed you looking and made a wounded noise, his hands flying to cover himself, his face buried in his pillow.

"Don't - don't look at it," he begged, his voice muffled and miserable. "It's obscene. I've been like this since my lunch break. I had to stand behind the counter at Family Video trying no to crumble. I had to keep pressing my hips into the counter between customers, Y/N. I couldn't walk properly. I had to wait until everyone left, closed up shop and then I ran home and I've been here ever since, trying to make it stop - "

He broke off with a gasp, his hips jerking upward into his own hands, a shudder running through his whole body. "It hurts," he whispered, and you realized he was actually trembling - not just embarrassed, but in real, physical distress. "It's too much. I can't - I can't think. I keep having these - " he broke off, his face screwing up with shame, " - these thoughts. About you. About people. About anything. And I can't make it go away."

You sat on the edge of his bed, careful not to jostle him, and tried to think. You were his best friend. You'd been his best friend since you were toddlers, since he'd chased you around the yard yelling cooties. You'd seen him cry over Nancy, seen him covered in Demogorgon guts, seen him do everything.

But you'd never seen him like this. Desperate, flushed and aroused, his body betraying him in the most intimate way, his usual confidence stripped away to reveal something vulnerable underneath. His hands were still pressed between his legs, but you could see the way his hips kept shifting, rolling, seeking friction he wouldn't let himself have.

And you definitely shouldn't be noticing how good he looked with his hair messy and his pupils blown wide, his chest heaving under that thin t-shirt, his mouth red and bitten where he'd been chewing his lip.

"Okay," you said, forcing your voice steady. "Okay. We need to get you comfortable. Those jeans are probably not helping."

"Can't take them off," he mumbled into his pillow. "Then it's just - there. Out. And I can't - I won't - I'll - " he broke off with a whine, high and desperate, his hips bucking upward again, " - I can't control it, Y/N. I touch it and it just gets worse. I tried, earlier, I thought maybe if I just - but it wouldn't stop, it wouldn't finish, and I was so sensitive it hurt, and I - "

"Steve." You reached out, touching his arm, feeling the heat radiating off his skin, the fine tremor running through his muscles. "It's me. We've been friends for years. I've seen you in swim trunks. I've seen you throw up at a party. I've seen you cry during E.T." He made a small sound of protest. "This is just... biology. Unfortunate, chemically-induced biology. Let me help."

He rolled onto his back, slowly, his movements careful and pained. He looked at you - really looked at you - and something shifted in his expression. Something dark and hungry that he'd never aimed at you before, not in all your years of friendship. His eyes dropped to your mouth, your throat, your chest, and he made that sound again - that low, wounded noise.

"Y/N," he said, his voice dropping an octave, rough and slightly dangerous, strained with effort. "You should probably go."

"What? No, I - "

"I mean it." He shifted, and you saw it - the full shape of him now, thick and hard against his hip, straining the denim. He was bigger than you'd thought, or maybe just harder, more desperate, the outline clear and obscene. "Whatever this is - it's making me think things. Want things." His hand moved, almost involuntarily, pressing against himself, and he gasped, his head falling back, his throat working. "And I can't - " he swallowed hard, his jaw tight, his whole body trembling with effort, " - I can't control it. And I don't want to - " he broke off, his hips rolling upward into his palm, a groan tearing from his throat, " - I don't want to scare you. Or hurt you. Or do something we'll both regret."

"Want what?" you asked, your voice barely above a whisper.

He laughed, harsh and humorless, his hand still pressed against himself, kneading slightly, his face twisted with pleasure and pain. "You. I've always wanted you. Since sophomore year. Since you laughed at my terrible joke in the cafeteria and I thought - shit." His eyes met yours, dark and desperate and honest. "But we're friends. Good friends. And I didn't want to ruin that, so I never - " he gestured helplessly with his free hand, the other still working against himself, " - I never said anything. And now I'm drugged and desperate and I can't stop thinking about what you'd taste like, what you'd feel like, and you need to leave before I do something - fuck - " he broke off with a gasp, his hips jerking upward, his hand moving faster, " - before I can't stop myself."

The room went silent. Your heart hammered against your ribs, loud enough that you were sure he could hear it.

"Steve," you said carefully. "Look at me."

He did. His eyes were dark, glazed with arousal and something else - fear, maybe, or hope. His hand was still moving against himself, slow, desperate strokes through his jeans, and he didn't seem to realize he was doing it.

"I've wanted you too," you admitted. "Since you helped me with with my scrapped knees and you were so patient, so kind, even though I was frustrating and stupid and - "

"You're not stupid," he interrupted, his voice rough, his hand stilling. "You're perfect. You're - fuck - " he broke off, his hips jerking upward, his hand flying back to press against himself, " - you need to go. Now. I'm not - I can't be gentle right now. I can't be careful." He looked at you, his eyes wet, his face flushed and desperate. "I want to pin you down. I want to fuck you until you can't walk. I want to - " he broke off with a whine, high and broken, his head falling back, " - I want you so bad it hurts, Y/N. Literally hurts. And I don't want to hurt you."

"Then don't be gentle," you said.

You reached for him.

The kiss was desperate from the start - teeth and tongue, need, his hands tangling in your hair, pulling you closer, deeper, his mouth hot and hungry and starving. He tasted like chocolate and mint, familiar and new all at once, and you moaned into his mouth, feeling the vibration of his answering groan.

His hands were everywhere - rough and trembling, tearing at your shirt, your jeans, stripping you efficiently despite his shaking. He was whining into your mouth, small desperate sounds that vibrated against your lips, his hips grinding against your thigh where he was still trapped in his jeans.

"Off," he gasped, pulling back just enough to fumble with his zipper, his fingers clumsy and uncoordinated as you fumbled with your own clothes. "Please, I need - oh god - " he broke off with a gasp as he finally freed himself, his cock springing up against his stomach, thick and flushed a deep ruby red, the tip wet and achingly hard.

He was beautiful. Bigger than you'd imagined, curved slightly upward, a vein running along the underside that pulsed with his rapid heartbeat. He wrapped his hand around himself immediately, stroking once, twice, his head falling back with a groan that sounded like agony.

"Can't - " he panted, his hand moving faster, his hips bucking into his fist, " - can't stop touching it. Feels so good but it's not enough - need more - need you - "

"Steve," you breathed, reaching for him, wrapping your hand around his where he was stroking himself. He was hot - burning - the skin like silk over steel, pulsing and throbbing against your palm. He made a sound - high and broken, desperate - and his hand fell away, letting you take over.

"Yes," he whimpered, his hips jerking upward into your grip, his whole body trembling. "Yes, please, please - "

You stroked him slowly, experimentally, watching his face. He was wrecked already - mouth open, eyes squeezed shut, his chest heaving with every breath. A bead of wetness gathered at the tip and you swiped your thumb over it, spreading it down his shaft, making him slick and slippery in your grip.

"Fuck - fuck - " he choked out, his hips snapping upward, fucking into your hand with uncoordinated thrusts. "Too good - it's too much - but I can't - I won't - " he broke off with a whine, his hand flying to grip your wrist, stilling your movements. "If you keep doing that I'll - I'll finish - and I want - I need - " he looked at you, his eyes dark and pleading, " - I need to be inside you. Please. Please."

You nodded, breathless, and he was on you immediately - pushing you back against the mattress, looming over you with dark, hungry eyes. He was shaking - actually shaking - his whole body trembling with the effort to go slow, to be careful.

"Tell me," he demanded, even as he was already positioning himself, the tip of him nudging against your entrance, hot and wet, right there where you needed him. "Tell me to stop and I will. I swear - "

"Don't stop," you breathed, reaching for him, pulling him down into another kiss. "Please, Steve. I want you inside me. Now."

He pushed inside in one long, hard thrust - no teasing, no hesitation - filling you until you were breathless with it, until your back arched off the mattress with a cry that he swallowed with his mouth. He was thick, big - perfectly, impossibly thick - and he stretched you just right, the burn fading quickly into pleasure so intense it made your eyes water.

"Oh my god - " he groaned, his voice breaking, his forehead dropping to yours. "You're so tight - so wet - so perfect - " He pulled back slightly, just an inch, and thrust back in hard, making you cry out. "Can't - " he panted, his hips already snapping forward, seeking friction, seeking more, " - can't go slow. Can't be gentle. I'm sorry - I'm sorry - "

"Don't be," you gasped, nails digging into his shoulders, your legs wrapping around his waist to pull him deeper. "Don't be gentle. Move, Steve. Please - "

He moved. Started a rhythm that was hard and fast, each thrust snapping his hips against yours with enough force to move the bed. He was whining with every stroke - high, broken sounds that vibrated against your neck where he'd buried his face, his breath hot and damp against your skin.

"So good," he panted, his voice wrecked, his hands gripping your hips hard enough to bruise. "You're so good - so perfect - fuck - " He shifted his angle, grinding against your clit with every thrust, and you moaned, your head falling back. "Love you - love you so much - can't believe you're letting me - oh god - "

He pulled back to look at you, his eyes dark and wet, his face flushed and desperate. "Touch yourself," he begged, his voice cracking. "Please - I want to feel you come around me - I want to - " he broke off with a groan, his hips stuttering, his cock throbbing inside you, " - I'm close - I'm so close - but I want you to - "

You reached between you, your fingers finding your clit, circling in time with his thrusts. The pleasure built sharp and hot, coiling tight in your belly, and you were gasping, moaning, your free hand gripping his hair, pulling his mouth down to yours.

"Steve," you gasped against his lips. "I'm gonna - I'm gonna - "

"Yes," he whimpered, his thrusts becoming erratic, harder, needier. "Yes, please, come for me - now - "

You shattered. Came apart with his name breaking across your lips, your body tightening around him until he shouted and followed you over the edge, spilling inside you in hot, pulsing waves that seemed to go on forever. He kept thrusting through it, milking his own orgasm, whining high in his throat as he overstimulated himself, until finally he collapsed, careful to roll to the side, pulling you with him.

For a long moment, there was only breathing. The sound of his heartbeat under your ear, still racing but slowing. The smell of sex and sweat mixing with chocolate.

"Still hard," he mumbled eventually, his voice dazed and slightly horrified.

You laughed, breathless, reaching down to confirm. He was - impossibly - still thick and hot against your thigh, still pulsing with arousal, though slightly less rigid than before. "The drugs," you reminded him. "They last a while, remember?"

"Right," he said. Then, slowly, a smile spread across his face - wicked,delighted and ever so Steve like, even as his cheeks flushed with embarrassment. "So... we have time for round two?"

You laughed, pressing closer, feeling him twitch against you. "You're insatiable."

"Only for you," he said, and kissed you - sweet and slow, full of promise. "Only ever for you."

You'd made it to round three before the effects finally started to fade, leaving Steve exhausted and covered in marks that you'd have to explain to Robin later. You lay tangled in his sheets, your head on his chest, listening to his heartbeat slow to normal, his fingers tracing lazy patterns on your back.

"So," he said eventually, his voice rumbling under your ear. "Best friends?"

"Best friends who have sex," you corrected. "Best friends who are probably dating now? If you want?"

He tilted your chin up, his eyes soft and serious, all the desperation gone now, replaced by something warm and certain. "I've wanted to date you for three years, Y/N. Of course I want it."

"Good," you said, and kissed him. "Then you should probably know - this was the best Valentine's Day I've ever had."

He laughed, loud and delighted and yours. "Even with the drugged chocolates?"

"Especially with the drugged chocolates."

Outside, February wind rattled the windows. Inside, two best friends who were definitely something more now made plans for pizza, movies and maybe, eventually, sleep.

But for now, this. Sticky skin and soft words and the lingering taste of chocolate on your tongue.

A word you never thought you’d use for the face and hair of Hawkins High’s sports programs circa 1981 to 1985.  A jock who used to push kids in lockers, break their camera’s, the kind to stand girls up who would just turn around and beg him to do it again. The popular guy who always seemed to get what he wanted, someone you thought would have his future laid out for him on a road paved of gold. So when you had your first day at The Squawk almost three months ago, and found him not only working the sound board for WSQK’s very own ‘Rockin Robin’ aka your favorite trumpet player to skip band practice with, but that they were also best friends. Like inseparable best friends, finishing each other's sentences kind of best friends, you weren’t sure how many chapters you missed after leaving for college four years ago. 

Steve Harrington was an anomaly, and he was wearing that damn brown bomber jacket again.

It was your favorite of what seemed to be his early winter collection that had started to appear in the form of thick sweaters and fitted jackets once the sun began disappearing after four pm. Another thing you hated almost as much as not being able to put your chipped polished finger on him anymore, was that now, the word favorite is in your vocabulary when it comes to the guy who never even looked your way despite sharing the same homeroom all four years of high school. 

This particular jacket though? It was your kryptonite. The soft suede wraps around his broad shoulders like butter, tapering just enough at the bottom to give the illusion of a loose fit, like it’s tailored special just for him. Its rich earthy brown color brings out the gold flecks in his hazel eyes that you swear changed colors with the season, or maybe it was because Nancy Wheeler finally stopped coming around. 

You’d overheard a conversation between him and Robin a few weeks ago after noticing an extra broody-ness about his presence that she had finally left Hawkins to attend Emerson in Massachusetts. It was all you were able to catch without being caught eavesdropping on your way to map out the next few weeks DJ schedules in Jimmy’s abandoned office. An office you were only supposed to be an assistant too, but now somehow managed to end up being the one to do the job it was made for. It was becoming a full time one too, keeping the station running since its operating hours are no longer the allotted time slots given by the military. Which still seemed like a fresh nightmare for most of the people that decided to stay when the fences finally disappeared.

“Morning!” You greet them, stretching your neck enough to peek out of the open office door, making your presence known since your ever changing schedule keeps you at the station at random times.

Today you’d gotten here at 3am to fill the late night dead air with your own curated mix, something you do whenever Steve or Keith couldn’t. It was easy money, you didn’t even have to talk, just make sure to queue the ads you’ve been having to fight tooth and nail to get in order to keep the lights on. 

“Good Morning!” Robin waves stretching her neck to meet your gaze with her signature toothy grin that lights up the whole room. Her blonde hair is extra frizzy from the snow starting to fall outside, the cold kissing her cheeks with roses. 

All you get is Steve’s back as he continues his path to the studio, giving you a quick flick of his wrist in acknowledgment. It was 50/50 depending on the day, or even his shift if he’d stay mute or give you a short ‘Morning’. Either way, it didn’t matter because he still cared enough to pretend that he likes his coffee black in front of you. A secret that you’ve always kept close after catching him put cream and an absurd amount of sugar in his whenever he thought you weren’t looking– on multiple occasions.

”I put your coffees in there already, three creams and two sugars for Robin, and don’t worry Steve, I left yours black just how you like it.”

Your lips twist at the slight tense of his shoulders.

”Thanks boss!” Robin sings, skipping to catch up with her best friend’s long strides.

”I’m not your boss!” You call back, brows furrowing ñ at the nickname she’s been determined to make stick. They weren’t paying you a radio manager’s wage. 

“Could’ve fooled me!” Her raspy voice carries across the room, before both her and Steve’s go muffled behind the soundproof door.

5 minutes till showtime.

You can see them through the glass that encases them from the cracked window in your office. Steve looks like he’s rambling about something to her, big hands gesturing wildly before they push back his thick mane of chestnut hair, the blonde tips it used to have, long forgotten. It is his personal tell that he’s stressed, besides a thumb flick to the nose which follows shortly after. Robin’s face softens, not meeting his chaotic energy as he takes off his jacket, revealing the cream mock turtle neck sweater underneath it. You can’t hear what she’s saying, but whatever it is makes his shoulders slump, nodding in response with another card of his hair. Relaxing.

It’s unexpected when his eyes shoot across the room, meeting your gaze for the first time in a few days. Averting your stare as quickly as you can, your cheeks feel like they're being raked over coals, they burn hot as you try and refocus on the spread sheet laying on the desk. Quietly vowing to leave the station before they break for lunch as your escape plan. This way you can lock yourself in your dark apartment and sleep off the exhausting seven hours before suffering the kind of embarrassment that radiates from your fingertips and all ten of your toes.

—-

Thursday Early Morning

5:13am. The bright green numbers on your dash feel like an assault as the tires of your Oldsmobile crunch against the snow and gravel leading up the path to The Squawk. From inside, the constant vigil of the studio lights fades into a soft glow, filtering through the glass front entrance doors to cut through the last bit of night and bounce off the shimmering snowflakes that somehow continue to fall.  It’s been four days of this now, the sky alternating between flurries and heavy snowfall. It’s starting to feel like it might never stop, like the universe seems determined to deliver a white Christmas during the one year you and the rest of this town can’t seem to find the spirit. 

Your jaw stretches with a yawn as you try to will the caffeine to hit your bloodstream faster. You pull up beside what should be Keith’s Thunderbird and rub the remainder of sleep from your eyes blinking at Steve’s BMW parked next to the WSQK van.  A newfound anxiety flutters beneath your ribcage, at the memory of how his eyes caught you– like you were intruding on something personal, a secret only meant for his best friend’s ears. Everything with Steve Harrington has felt like a secret lately. An unsolvable puzzle with a missing piece always just out of reach. There’s a determination to find it. With slightly shaking hands, you arm yourself with a travel mug of homemade coffee and a deep breath to collect your courage before heading inside.

He probably won’t even say hi anyway, if you’re lucky he’ll just wave from the studio, maybe, and then you’ll both ignore each other until he leaves without saying goodbye.

Frank Sinatra’s ‘I’ve Got You Under My Skin’ spills from the speakers in the studio, the door propped open allowing the soft trumpets and piano to fill the normally quiet space. He plays a lot of Sinatra on his overnights, a taste you’ve assumed he acquired from Robin, but part of you can’t be too sure anymore. 

Christmas lights that weren’t there the night before are draped around the DJ booth, with even more hanging half hazardly above the soundboard. They twinkle in red, green, and gold, warming the room in a comforting glow. It’s not until you round the corner that you see Steve on a step stool stringing more around the common area, a small pile of multi-colored shimmering garland on the table beside him with tiny Santas and snowmen hanging off the tinsel.

Steve Harrington is decorating for Christmas. 

“You’re not Keith.” You say, finding your voice, trying to break the usual awkwardness between the two of you with some kind of joke. Butterflies waking up in the pit of your gut when you hear it. 

A laugh.

It’s so quiet that if you didn’t see the slight shake of his shoulders, you’d probably miss it. An unfamiliar desperate need to make him do it again tugs at your heart.

”Defintely not Keith.” He huffs, but you can hear the slight smile in his voice. You’d almost forgotten what he really sounds like.

His Nike covered feet step down from the stool, leaving the string of lights to dangle half way on their journey across the room. Turning around, he runs one of his big hands through his messier than usual hair, those familiar hazel eyes catching yours for the second time in one week. A record breaking streak.

He’s wearing dark washed jeans, they fit him snug like all of them do. A navy WSQK sweater stretches over his chest, the letters faded and peeling because Jimmy cheaped out on the printing company.You’re willing to bet Steve’s got three more washes till they're all completely gone. The sleeves are pushed up revealing his permanently sunkissed skin despite the warm weather hiding on the other side of the earth, and they’re dotted with more freckles than you can count. 

“He asked me to cover his shift last minute, something about a pet ferret?” His face twists in the kind of judgment that has an uncontrollable giggle slip past your lips.

The gold in his eyes seems to sparkle at the sound, the corners of his mouth twitching, fighting a smile that he doesn’t let win. 

“That explains the smell of his jacket sometimes.” Scrunching up your nose at the memory of the last time you saw Keith, Steve can’t seem to fight his grin off this time, pearly whites gleaming behind plush pink lips.

It threatens to steal the breath from your lungs, teeth digging into your bottom lip with cheeks that start to feel like the surface of the missing sun, warming your skin with something that has you looking away. Suddenly, you have a new understanding for all those girls in high school. 

“I hope you don’t mind, me uh - decorating and stuff.” He scratches the back of his neck, like talking this long to someone that’s not his best friend is hard for him, or maybe it’s just because it’s you. “Robin was complaining about how she’s not feeling very festive this year, and it’s her and vi- it’s her first Christmas dating someone so I was thinking maybe this might help.”

It almost makes you mad at how sweet of a gesture it is, and how it feels like you’ll never quite figure him out. Every time you think you’re close, he sheds another layer. Throwing off your scent.

”Not at all, honestly, I haven’t been feeling very ‘jolly’ myself.” You laugh weakly, finally meeting his softened gaze, making his shoulders relax as if there were a world where you’d actually be mad. “This job has been…a lot.”

You don’t go into anymore detail about how none of this was what you signed up for, or how your home doesn’t feel very much like one anymore, like your childhood was some figment of your imagination the military erased. You’re not sure he’d even want to hear any of it anyway. No need to test the boundaries of this new progression between you and the former king of Hawkins, anyway. 

“Well, if it means anything coming from me, I think you’re doing a great job, all things considered.” He answers with a casual shrug, like he didn’t just shatter all the assumptions you thought he had of you in one sentence.

”It- It does mean something, thanks, Steve.” It feels weird saying his name out loud, despite how many times it’s crossed your mind over the past few months. 

Pink powders the apples of his cheeks, and now it’s his turn to look away.

”Decorate all you want. I’ve got this, like, 4 foot tall Christmas tree I had in my dorm in college that I can dig out and bring into the station tomorrow.” You add, returning to the safety of the original conversation, and you can tell he’s thankful for it.

”Cool.” He grins, shoving his hands in his pockets, rocking back on his heels a little bit.

”Cool.” 

The two of you stand there, not really sure where to go from here until the music cuts off and Steve remembers the job he’s actually supposed to be doing.

”Oh shit!” He gasps, eyes looking like a deer caught in headlights. “I gotta flip the record, I’m sorry, I swear I don’t let it go silent like this normally.”

You want to tell him that you know, because his overnights are some of your favorites to listen to. But you decide it's another secret best kept to yourself instead.

”It’s fine, I’m sure the four people listening will forgive you.” Rolling your eyes playfully, you catch the small grin you get in return as he jogs to the studio room. “I’m gonna go do my job too.”

Grabbing the stack of ad proposals next to his garland, you wave them in your hand, before making your way to Jimmy’s office, the kind of smile that makes your cheeks hurt tugging up the corners of your lips when you’re sure he can’t see it.

—-

Saturday

“Secret Santa!” Robin exclaims from the doorway of Jimmy’s office, bright blue eyes staring at you with the kind of excitement that threatens to be contagious. “We need to do a Secret Santa!”

”There’s like six of us who work here.” Steve speaks up from behind her, a half eaten sandwich dwarfed in his big hand, leaning against the studio room looking far too cool in a maroon sweater and dark washed jeans.

”Okay and? That’s an even number. You couldn’t ask for a more perfect scenario actually.” She gives him a tight lipped sarcastic smirk, before bringing her attention back to you,rolling up the sleeves on her white turtle neck she’s layered with a black The Smith’s shirt on top of. “Here me out -“

”We can do it.” You say simply, closing the radio tower instruction manual that was starting to give you a headache. 

“Wait, really?” She gasps with a smile so big it shows all her teeth, practically vibrating when you nod your head yes. “Oh my god this is so exciting, I’ll get everything together, you don’t have to lift a finger. Let's say a ten dollar budget, nothing too crazy.” 

“Ten dollars?! I don’t like anyone around here enough to spend ten dollars on.” Steve scoffs, shoving the rest of his sandwich in his mouth before crossing his arms.

”Are you kidding me? You don’t like me enough to spend ten dollars on? Her?” Robin points at you, and the urge to hide is the most tempting idea you’ve ever had, especially when Steve’s eyes meet yours from across the room with something you can’t decipher. ”Dustin, Mike? Literally you just hate Keith.”

”Dustin and Mike hardly count. They are here like two hours a week but fine! You win.” He surrenders, throwing his arms up before running an annoyed hand through his hair. His plan to help her feel more festive worked a little too well. 

“I always do!” She sings, throwing a wink at you before sauntering back to the chair and mic that feel like they are made for her to deliver Hawkin’s favorite segment of the day, nudging Steve playfully on her way. ”Hurry up dingus, we’re back on in three minutes.”

”You had to walk around me, I’m already here.” He huffs, kicking off the corner and back into the studio room closing the sound proof door behind them.

You can’t seem to fight the smile that twists at the corners of your mouth as you grab your weekly planner from under the pile of work orders that you’ve been deluding yourself into thinking you can find the fixes in the manual. 

The faint sounds of Billie Holiday’s ‘I Thought About You’ catches in your ears, something shifting in the air as the heat from an unfamiliar stare warms against your skin, sending goosebumps pebbling, begging for your attention. You haven’t risked even a glance through the window of your office since the day that Steve caught you, but something was daring you to do it again.

You aren’t sure what you’re expecting when you look up but it isn’t his eyes already locked on you, holding your gaze after they meet letting you know it’s not a mistake. Butterflies stretch their wings wide as you work up the courage not to look away first. The grip on your pen tightening, teeth digging into your bottom lip watching the slight shimmer of gold around the darkness of his pupils. He studies your face like he’s looking for the answer to something hidden inside of the contours of it, and you think this must be the way you look when he catches you staring.

It’s Robin that unknowingly interrupts whatever was going on, tearing his attention away with a bob of his Adam’s apple and a shake of his head. Saying something that looks a lot like the word ‘sorry’ before switching out the sound effect 8-track for the one she clearly wanted. In the hour it takes for you to wrap up and reach the end of your day, neither of you dare to look up again, and it’s you who leaves with a quick flick of your wrist, not saying a word this time. 

What was that? 

—-

Two weeks before Christmas 

You stare at the name on the small piece of paper you’d grabbed from Robin’s Santa hat on your way out the door. The white wisps of your breath filling the freezing space of your car, too stunned to even be bothered to turn it on. You read it a few more times just to be sure that too many overnights weren’t making you delirious, but there it was, clear as day in Robin’s signature bubble writing. 

Steve

His name plays on a loop as you finally kick on the engine to your car, it finds its way in every thought, sneaking past your efforts to shut it out. ‘Steve’ lingers in the cold breaths you take on your way to the front door of the small apartment you’d rented while your parents house gets rebuilt. It warms against your skin like the hot water from the shower that rinses off yet another long day at the station, following you to bed and curling around you under your covers, meeting you again in your dreams.

—-

 Tuesday

You climb up the short ladder that leads you to the hatch door, pushing up, you give it a good shove, the rusted hinges squeaking as it flings open. The clearest night sky you’ve seen in what feels like weeks shimmers brightly above you. Suddenly it didn’t matter that it was twenty degrees, not when it looked like this. Tightening your scarf and zipping up your coat as far as it will go, you finish your climb up onto the roof.

The cold greets you with a sharp sting, sending a shiver straight to your bones.Too focused on closing the door to keep the heat trapped inside the station you don't notice you aren’t the only one admiring the view. It shuts with a loud thud at the same time someone clears their throat behind you. Jumping at the sound, you turn around with a startled scream just begging to escape and echo through the darkness until your wide eyes meet Steve’s panicked ones.

”Hey! It’s just me! It’s cool, you’re cool, we’re cool.” His hushed words come out with urgency to stop it from happening, a nervous hand running through his already wind swept hair after it seems to work.

Cool seems to be Steve’s favorite word when it comes to you. You weren’t entirely sure how you felt about that. 

”Jesus Christ, Harrington.” You gasp with a hand on your chest, your quick huffs of breath embarrassingly visible in the cold air. 

”Sorry! How was I supposed to know anyone else would come up here?” He exclaims, a slight agitation to his voice that doesn’t last long before asking “Are you okay?”

Your gaze lands on his Nike’s first, wandering up the light wash denim that covers his legs, accentuating parts of him that you’ve been trying not to think about. Tonight he wears a dark brown leather jacket that tapers at the waist just like your favorite one does. While his lack of scarf seems like a choice, it has the moles that cluster around his neck in their own constellations battling for your attention with the ones above him. 

“Yeah, I’m good. No scarf?! Aren’t you col -“ You lose your train of thought when your eyes catch the glowing ember at the end of a half smoked cigarette tucked between two long fingers. “Wait, are you up here smoking?”

His eyebrows furrow together like he’s confused, until realization dawns on him smoothing the wrinkles on his forehead.

”Yeah,” He shrugs, flicking the ash before taking another drag. “I used to in high school, well, mostly at parties when I was drunk trying to look cool. But I don’t know, I picked it back up recently, I don’t smoke all the time, mostly over nights when I’m stressed or bored.” 

“What are you now?” The question comes out before you can even filter and mark it as inappropriate, the look on his face burning your cheeks only adding to your immediate regret.

But then he does the last thing you expect, he answers it — honestly.

“Stressed.” Wind whips his hair around some more before he shrugs in a squeak of leather adding, “and a little bored.”

There’s storm clouds in his stare as he looks at you with an intensity you can feel tingling at your fingertips. Underneath it lives a nervousness that tries to hide in the dark pools of his eyes from letting you perceive him, gauging your reaction by taking another drag.

”I come up here when I’m stressed too.” You say with ease despite the wild thumping of your heart in your ears, taking a few steps closer, your boots crunch against the frozen brick.

“To my spot?” His words come out around white clouds of smoke, a small smile twisting up the corners of his lips.

”Excuse me? Your spot? I’ve never even seen you up here.” Scoffing, you dig your hands deep in your pockets, shuffling closer with chattering teeth you desperately try to hide.

As if on instinct, Steve positions his body to block you from the wind, cinnamon and amber from his cologne tickling at your nose. He was closer than you’ve ever been to him, close enough to have your palms sweat, for your softened gaze to trace the purple bags under his eyes. The pale pink of a healed scar you don’t remember from high school shows its imperfect end from the edge of his beige sweater’s collar, only to hide from you again when he lifts his cigarette towards you in an offering. 

“I’m pretty sneaky. Stealthy, if you will.”  He winks, cold bitten cheeks pushing up at the snort you give him in response.

Your fingers brush with his accepting the nicotine with a spark you blame on the emanating voltage from the tower. 

“What about you?” He asks quietly, his eyes wandering over the details of your face like he was really looking at you for the first time. Maybe he was. 

Despite yourself, you can’t help but wonder if he likes what he’s found.

”Stressed, maybe a dash of depression, maybe.” If you admit to it out loud, that might make it true, but it’s his honesty that pulls out your own.

He nods his head in response, mimicking your previous stance, shoving his cold hands in his pockets. He kicks at the small patch of ice, brows furrowing as he thinks about what he wants to say. The pad of your thumb brushes against the butt of his cigarette still a little wet from his lips, there’s an intimacy there when yours wraps around it, cheeks hollowing as you take a drag. Inhaling him. 

“Honestly, this time of year. It’s never been my favorite.” His gaze is piercing when they meet your eyes again.“The only time I really liked it was when I had a girlfriend and that was like once.”

”Nancy Wheeler.” You hum, biting at your bottom lip wondering if it was a mistake to say her name out loud.

”Yeah,” he sighs, watching you take another drag, eyes lingering just a little on your mouth when you hand it back to him. “But honestly, I’m starting to realize a big part of that was because I didn’t have to spend it alone.” 

“What do you mean?” You ask confused because he’s Steve Harrington, the boy who’s always had it all. “What about your parents?”

”They’re never home — hell, they were gone when the quarantine happened.” There’s a bitterness in his dry laugh, taking one last hit before tossing the cigarette to the ground, snuffing it out with the toe of his sneaker. “They couldn’t get back in, but I think they preferred it that way, part of me thinks I did too.”

“I’m sorry, Steve.” You don’t know what else to say, but it also doesn’t feel like he's looking for much more than that either, giving you just a peek into the closed blinds of his soul. 

The bare trees rustle and snap in the silence between you. It’s not an uncomfortable one, but one that lets you sit with the weight inside of it. Steve Harrington, the king of Hawkins, the boy who everyone adored school but always returned to a shell of a home. You can feel the wall rebuild itself around him after revealing more of his hand despite the way both you subconsciously shuffle closer to chase each other's body heat. Steve looks up at the sky, but your eyes stay trained on him. Maybe you were seeing him for the first time too. 

The moon shines bright above, casting shadows on his sharp features, revealing the slight dusting of a five o’clock shadow that covers his jaw you didn’t notice before. Steve Harrington had grown up into a man. You aren’t sure how you missed it until tonight, under a blanket of stars no one’s seen in weeks. What else haven’t you seen?

His gaze finds yours again, the wind making his hair go wild. He holds it like he did in the studio room the other day, and you swear he moves even closer, the toe of his shoe tapping against yours. You can smell the leather of his coat, the tobacco clinging to the fabrics of his sweater mixing with the spice of his cologne in a way that shouldn’t smell as good as it does. A playful smirk teases at the corners of his mouth.

”You’re always looking at me like you’re trying to figure me out.” There’s something delicate about the way he stares at you, tugging at the bundle of nerves twisting in the pit of your stomach. Loosening the knots.                                                                                                                                                                                    

“Is there something wrong with that?” You hum quietly.

”N-no.” He smiles with something timid behind it, weary even. “Just no one’s ever reall-“ He’s cut off by the crackle of the walkie talkie you didn’t know he had clipped to his back pocket 

“Radio silence again dingus!” Robin’s voice comes through the small speaker, “Trying to make moves here and you aren’t helping.”

You don’t think you’ve ever seen Steve roll his eyes any harder, a loud irritated breath escaping through his nose like a bull. He mouths sorry before bringing the walkie talkies to his lips, pressing harsh on the red button.

”I’m doing you a favor tonight if you remember, watch the tone.” He turns it off after, leaving her no room to respond, determined to get the last word.

”Another day of catching you not doing your job.” You tease with a wink, getting your own eye roll but this one comes with a smile.

”I keep getting distracted by my boss.” He wiggles his eyebrows, starting to back away towards the hatch door. 

Was Steve Harrington flirting with you?

 ”Ugh! Not you too.” You groan, crossing your arms watching him open the rusted metal with ease.

”If the shoe fits.” He shrugs, “Don’t stay out here too long, can’t have you getting sick, the station would probably burn down or something like that.”

”You and Robin ran it just fine.” You argue, with a grin that refuses to go away.

“Yeah, sure.” Steve snorts, climbing down the first few steps of the ladder stopping when all you can see is his shoulders up, “but seriously, it’s cold. I mean it.”

”Okay, Dad.” 

He visibly grimaces at the nickname.

”Yeah, pretty awful isn’t it?” You arch a brow, laughing at his glare for falling into your trap. “I’ll come back in a few minutes, promise.”

He lingers for a few seconds more looking torn, like he wasn’t ready to leave yet, and you’d be lying if you said you didn’t wish he could stay too. But he does the selfless thing you’ve noticed he always does, closing the hatch behind him with one last look catching your small wave goodbye.

—-

Friday

Robin is a ball of energy at seven in the morning, completely consumed by whatever she’s ranting to Steve about when they burst in through the front door together. You watch with an amused smirk from your spot on the lime green couch in the common area, a cup of fresh coffee you brewed for the three of you warm in your hand. She’s so distracted that she doesn’t notice you, but Steve does, almost as if he was searching for you first. The blue hidden in the gold and moss of his eyes are like sunbursts when they find your gaze. His smile is small, but it’s just for you and it’s enough for the butterflies you’ve managed to snuff out all morning with distractions to wake back up. Hiding your smile in your mug, you watch as he nods his head giving Robin a ‘yeah,’ like he’s listening, but something tells you he had stopped a while ago.

Once they get inside the soundproof room Steve peels off the same leather jacket he wore on the roof. Robin follows suit tossing her long navy blue tench coat to the side, lips still moving a mile a minute. He runs two big hands through his hair, the little bit of flurries that had stuck to the ends melting on his fingertips before pushing up the sleeves of his WSQK sweater. And just as you suspected the K at the end of it had already peeled off since last week.

Robin’s lime green polished hands fly all over the place making the people on her ‘Beam me up, this place sucks’ sweater look like they’re actually running. Crossing his arms as he leans against the door frame, Steve seems distracted, but you can tell he’s still actively trying to focus. He’s shaved since the last time you saw him, and the bags that had kissed lavender under his eyes on the rooftop were gone. Maybe that meant he’d finally gotten some sleep. 

His best friend grabs her coffee mid sentence, holding out a finger to give her a minute as she drinks what has to be at least half the cup. Your teeth dig into your bottom lip watching Steve grab his own. Suddenly you wish you’d have gone into Jimmy’s office for this moment as a new fear that maybe something that seemed like a cute idea in the middle of night actually makes you look like a weird stalker. The intrusive thought eats away at your confidence as he takes the first gulp and looks confused peering down in his cup before taking another just to be sure. 

Steve’s eyes lock on yours through the glass, something inside them shifting just like the air between you on the rooftop. A secret revealed that paints his cheeks red, a small gesture that you don’t know has never made him feel more seen as he takes another sip of his coffee made the way he actually likes it today.

—-

“Hey boss, I’m running out for lunch, but Dustin’s got the news report covered while I’m gone.” Robin pokes her head in Jimmy’s office where you’d been for the past hour lost in balancing the books.

”Not your booosssss,” You sing with an annoyed smirk, giving your eyes a break to look up at her. “Isn’t he in school?”

”Winter break!” She grins, shoving her arms into her coat like she’s in a rush, “I’ll be back in like thirty, maybe forty minutes tops!”

She’s gone in a blur of blue and blond before you have a chance to respond, and as if on cue Dustin comes strolling in not even two minutes after her departure. He waves at you with a wide grin, green braces gleaming against the low light. The ends of his long tan trench coat are stained wet, dripping on the checkered floor. Duck boots squeaking against the linoleum. He must’ve rode his bike here like a lunatic.

”Hiya boss!” He greets, turning around to face you walking backwards to the studio room completely oblivious to the angry Steve yelling behind the soundproof glass watching him drip water and salt everywhere.

”Henderson!” You groan, burying your face in your hands before resting it on your desk.

”It’s a compliment!” He argues, getting you to look back up only to see that Steve is now standing behind him with his hands firmly planted on his hips.

”Are you kidding me asshole? Look at the floors.” He huffs, with the kind of outrage a parent would have with their kid. 

“It’s just water, it’ll dry.” Dustin rolls his eyes, pushing past Steve to start setting up but not before adding. “Or you can make yourself useful and mop it up.”

”How about I kick your teeth in, instead?”

“Not the first time you’ve threatened that.” The teenager raises his eyebrows at him, looking unimpressed, letting you know they’re always empty. Of course Harrington is all bark and no bite.

Another endearing quality, unfortunately.

“Yeah, and one day it just might happen if you don’t watch your sass dickhead.” 

It takes every ounce of will power not to snort at the sight in front of you, smiling like the Cheshire Cat at all the ways you’re going to schedule them together this summer. 

If it ever comes. 

“I’ll let you know if I need, I don’t know — like, a car crash sound, or maybe a police siren, but otherwise quiet on set. I have a job to do.” Dustin closes the door to the studio before Steve even has a chance to get the last word in, something you’ve come to find as the clear indicator of who the winner is in these little spats between all of them.

Steve still flips him off through the glass, grumbling to himself about getting the mop so someone doesn’t slip and break their necks. Dustin gives you a thumbs up from behind the sound board switching the ON AIR sign ‘Red’. He taps the sheets of paper you assume is the ‘news’ loudly on the desk to add his own effects as he kicks it off with the weather. Which is snow… always more damn snow. 

You groan, rubbing your temples at the thought of having to clean off your car every day for another week and all the shoveling, so much damn shoveling.

”God, I miss summer.” You mumble, exhaling a defeated breath through your nose grabbing the calculator to finish where you’d left off.

You don’t get very far though, the familiar sound of someone clearing their throat in the doorway breaking your concentration. Heat warms your cheeks instantly, teeth digging into your bottom lip daring to look up and meet the hazel eyes you swear have changed colors again. Something new — brighter, something that feels more like Steve.

”H-hey.” He waves awkwardly, giving you a closed lip smile riddled with the kind of nerves that tighten in your chest too. 

”H-hi.” It comes out quieter than you intend, your voice cracking making you try to clear the nerves out of your throat too. 

Steve digs his hands into his pockets, leaning on the door frame with a shyness you’d never expect from him. It’s got a stubbornness about it like he’s worked himself up to do this and is vowing to see it through.

“How’s your uh, how’s your day going?” A hand that can’t help itself comes out of his pocket running through his hair. 

“It’s going,” you sigh, a little defeated tossing your calculator to the side. Suddenly the weight of the last few months makes itself known in the muscles of your shoulders, while your bed starts to sound a little too welcoming for it to only be half way through your shift. “What about y-you? How’s your day going?”

“Not too bad, I passed out on the couch and slept for like 12 hours yesterday. So I’d say feeling pretty good all things considered.” Another card of his hair.

Your eyes catch Dustin watching you both with an amused curiosity. 

“On the couch?! Rest in peace to your back.” You smile trying to crack a joke that somehow works, earning you the twitch of his lips that you were looking for.

”It’s been through worse.” He laughs softly, looking down at his feet before meeting your gaze from under his thick lashes with a shy teasing grin. “Did you switch up the coffee this morning or something? It was better than usual.”

The giggle that bubbles out of you makes Steve’s full pink lips stretch wide over his teeth that look even more brilliant in the daytime. It cracks at the awkwardness that's tried to settle between you.

”I guess you’re not as stealthy as you think you are huh?” You wink, giddy feet bouncing under the desk.

”Apparently not.” He narrows his eyes playfully, “it needed maybe one more packet of sugar though, but hey, who’s counting.”

”Steve, I put in three already.” You scoff with a smile so wide it hurts, heart skipping a beat when his grows like it can’t contain itself either. “Why did you even pretend to like your coffee black in the first place? Such a weird thing to lie about.”

“I don’t know!” He whines, embarrassment flushing his cheeks as he runs his hands down his face, “It’s like I did it once, because you know, you’re pret — “ 

Steve clears his throat catching the words that almost slipped from his mouth, but you catch them, heart thumping wildly at the idea of how that sentence almost ended. 

”I hadn’t seen you since high school, so I wanted to come off more like an adult? I don’t know, it was dumb and honestly, I don’t know what’s worse, the fact that you caught me lying or that you let me keep up with it for so long.” He groans, huffing out a laugh scratching the back of his neck.

”Don’t worry, it was pretty amusing, dare I say my favorite part of the morning. You always looked so nervous, like you were about to be caught robbing a bank or something.” You try to hide your laugh behind the back of your hand, when you earn another one of his glares.

”Ha, ha, ha.” He rolls his eyes, but the twitch at the corner of his lips gives him away.

”Steve!” Dustin’s voice interrupts you, making his shoulders tense, jaw clicking with instant annoyance.

”What Henderson? Can’t you see I’m in the middle of a conversation?” He snaps turning around to face the high schooler, broad shoulders blocking him from your view.

”I’m sorry to interrupt your flirting to ask you to do your job.” Dustin responds with a taunting smile that you don’t need to see to know is there.

“You’re really pushing me today, you little shit. I’ll be there in a minute, just give me a second.” This time Steve runs both hands though his hair before turning around to face you again, the thumb flick you were expecting hitting his nose.

”What is this, the third time now in the past few weeks?” You can’t help yourself, or the teasing smirk that spreads across your face, lashes fluttering a little too much, but the greens in his eyes sparkle because of it.

”Like I said the last time, I keep getting distracted by my boss.” He laughs at your scowl about the nickname, walking backwards towards a very impatient Dustin, like he doesn’t want to stop looking at you until he absolutely has to. 

This time you didn’t have to wonder, Steve Harrington was flirting with you.

————-

Five days before Christmas

Monday

When Dustin said to expect snow this week you didn’t realize that he meant a blizzard. Of course it’s a fucking blizzard.

Your tires spin in the foot of snow that’s already fallen since it started this morning. The smoke from your exhaust comes out in huge plumes, over working your engine until you finally give up and take your foot off the gas. You curse the day you decided to go with the cheaper car that lacked the four wheel drive needed to leave the station tonight. And god, you really wanted to crawl into your bed.

“You’re gonna flood your engine!” 

It’s muffled, but the sound of Steve’s voice is unmistakeable, the timbre of it etching into the corners of your mind lately. Cutting off your engine, you look through the fogged up passenger window to see him and Robin standing at the front entrance of the station, the low yellow light almost turning them into shadows. Robin waves excitedly with mitten covered hands like she didn’t just see you less than ten minutes ago, an oversized crocheted beanie threatening to swallow her eyes. Steve on the other hand, he looks almost as stressed as you feel with only that damn leather coat protecting him from the winter storm quite literally raging around him, Nike’s still on his feet.

Leaning over your console, you start to crank open the window, the glass sticking from the frost, groaning like it might shatter before it gives way to snow fluttering into your car. Maybe this wasn’t your best idea.

”I’m stuck!” You yell over the howling wind jutting your bottom lip out for dramatic effect despite stating the obvious. 

”Steve can drive you home!” Robin volunteers without hesitating to ask him if that's okay, but he doesn’t even flinch at the idea.

”Oh — oh no that’s okay, I live on the other side of town, maybe you guys can just help dig me out?” You suggest instead, heart rate kicking up at the thought of being inside Steve’s car.

You’ve heard a lot of stories about that BMW, most against your will.

”You’re just going to get stuck again trying to get out of here, I’ve got four wheel drive. It’s fine, I can drive you.” He waves you off, taking his first steps towards you and into the storm. He walks past his BMW parked on the other side of the WSQK van that blocked some of the snowdrifts, protecting his car from suffering the same fate. 

”How will I get to work in the morning if I don’t try and get my car out of here now?” You counter, with the kind of nerves that only seem to get worse every time he’s around. 

His steps crunch softly in the snow stopping at your half opened window bending down with a hand on the roof to meet your eyes. Robin follows close behind, tilting her head to the side to listen, a smirk twisting up the corners of her lips.

“I’ll pick you up, you’ll need help digging out your car anyway.” He shrugs like he wasn’t offering to completely inconvenience himself for the next 24 hours for solely your benefit. 

“Steve - I can’t, I- “

”Seriously it’s fine! Steve loooves doing stuff like this, it’s like a hobbie, a kink if you will.” Robin interjects, a little too pushy for you not to narrow your eyes at her. “He’s got like a white knight complex or something.”

“Okay, Robin.” Steve snaps, glaring at her from over his shoulder. ”Also, how is enjoying being helpful to my friends a kink? What the hell is wrong with you?” scoffing incrediously, he turns his back almost completely to you.

“I’m just saying!” She shrugs winking at you like you’re in on the joke, but all you can focus on is Steve insinuating that you’re his friend and why that word has a sting to it. 

Running an irritated hand through his hair, he mouths something to her you can’t hear before turning to meet your gaze again with a softness inside his eyes that doesn’t match the tone he just had. It’s the same way he looked at you under the stars that night. 

“We’ve got two options here, and they are either accept my help now, or after you make me throw out my back attempting to dig out your car in a blizzard that will inevitably still get stuck half way down the hill.” The teasing grin on his pink lips disarms you with the kind of charm only he knows how to have, the kind you remember from high school. “I’ll do whichever one you want, honey, so you tell me.” 

Honey.

The word wraps around you gooey and sweet, covering your insides in sugar, warming your bones, leaving you no choice.

”Fine!” It comes out in a playful huff, the edges of your mouth threatening to curl as you pull your keys out of the ignition. You meet his eyes from under your lashes, giving him one last chance to change his mind. “If you’re really okay with this.”

He nods, those perfect teeth of his tugging his full bottom lip between them, cheeks dusting a pretty shade of pink that’s not just from the cold.

”Oh, trust me, he is!” Robin interrupts, and you watch in real time the way the gold sparkling inside his eyes turn black before they roll in the back of his head.

“Keep running that mouth Buckley, and you’re going to get real familiar with the walk home.” He groans with another hand through his hair, the constant snow fall making the ends wet.

”Empty threats.” She scoffs, completely unphased just like Dustin. “Now let's go before we all get stuck too. No offense to you guys but I don’t want to have a sleep over at The Squawk with Keith.” 

She says his name like it leaves a bad taste in her mouth, and Steve’s face twists in disgust like he can taste it too.

“Couldn’t agree more’.” You add, amused by another display of the two of them sharing the same brain.

Leaning over to crank your window back up, you meet Steve’s gaze from up close, something swirling inside it that you can’t figure out making your heart thump a few beats quicker. He holds you there till you’re sealed inside, leaving the storm muffled just like his voice.

“I‘ll go warm up the car.” 

———-

You never thought you’d be sitting shotgun in Steve’s BMW, or that it would relax every bone in your aching body, loosening the stress knots that have made a permanent home in your shoulder blades. It’s the way the cinnamon and amber fill the small space with the musk of his cologne, and how they mix with the deep tanned leather of the seat underneath you. The heat that blows from the vents only seems to intensify it along with the man next to you. It feels like you’re surrounded by him, encased by him. 

He drives slowly down the winding road that leads into town, the tires crunch as it compacts the thick snow underneath them. It falls from the sky like it’s angry, wind sweeping the wet flakes against his headlights. His wipers squeak working overtime to keep visibility. The full moon hidden behind the deep purple clouds fights to shine its way through the storm, casting a deep lavender glow along the banks. Illuminating the snow that hangs heavy on the edges of the trees that line the bare woods surrounding you. Frank Sinatra’s ‘You Go To My Head’ plays softly from his speakers with a light crackle from years of playing his music way too loud joy riding with Tommy and Carol. 

Steve readjusts slightly in his seat to shift gears, and you catch a whiff of tobacco still clinging to the fabric of his sweater underneath his coat. Tugging your bottom lip between your teeth, you have to fight the urge to lean forward and inhale.  

“Okay, so — secret Santa. We were thinking of having it at the Wheeler’s, since their basement is practically like our second apartment anyway, on top of the fact that it’s way easier to get to than The Squawk.” Robin breaks the silence, leaning forward resting her elbows on the backs of either of your headrests. 

You don’t miss the way Steve’s grip on the steering wheel tightens enough to show the white’s of his knuckles at the name, or the anxious pit that forms in your gut at the idea of being the new face in a group of friends that are tied together by something you can’t even begin to comprehend. 

“Hey! Sit down, are you kidding me?” He scolds, glaring at her from the rearview mirror.

”Sorry, Dad.” She huffs, raising her hands in defense, flopping herself back into her seat. Your lips twitch at the familiar nickname.

”And put your seat belt on too. Jesus, I’m driving in a freaking blizzard Robin.” He only takes his hand off the steering wheel just long enough to run it through his hair.  Robin sticks her tongue out at his reflection, but you still hear the click of her seatbelt before she continues.

“Anyway, I’m thinking around 8 o'clock Christmas Eve. You can make Keith work the overnight shift since you’re the boss and all.” She grins wide when you toss her your own glare from over your shoulder.

”What if Keith wants it off?” You counter with teasing revenge.

It’s Steve that snorts next to you, bringing your attention to the curve of his lips, doing good to keep his eyes on the road.

”Keith was banned from secret Santa, per our agreement, so therefore he has to work and you have to go.” He argues siding with his best friend daring to meet your gaze before adding a little quieter. “Besides, I want you to go.”

Your stomach flips at his admission, cheeks warming enough they could fog the window next to you if you were just a few inches closer. Biting down on your bottom lip, you try to fight off the shy smile that wants to take over your face. Nervous hands pulling at the sleeves of your coat.

”I guess I’ll see what I can do.” You try to play along with a roll of your eyes and a bad attempt at an even voice, but you can tell Robin sees right through it. The heat of her stare threatens to burn a hole in the back of your head daring you to meet it.

”Perfect, then it’s decided.” She finally says, something mischievous dancing around in her tone. “Hey dingus, drop me off at our place first, I forgot I gotta wake up early to help my Mom with something.” 

It sounds casual, the way she lays the trap, but you know exactly what she’s doing and you’re almost positive Steve does too. Especially by the way he stares her down through the rear view mirror before clearing his throat.

“Sounds good.” He nods with a small smile that almost seems nervous, glancing at you from the corner of his eye to gauge a reaction you don’t give despite the wild thumping of your heart in your chest.

Robin Buckley was a menace.

Of course it doesn’t take much longer for Steve to pull into the small parking lot of what you assume is their apartment complex. It’s one of the two in Hawkins, and yours of course is on the exact opposite side of town. Guilt consumes you with the realization of how far out of his way he’s going to not only drive you home, but to also pick you up first thing in the morning as the never ending storm clouds continue to dump what seems like another foot of snow on top of you.

Robin jumps out of the car before it even fully comes to a stop.

”Drive safe, and I’ll see you on Christmas Eve!” She smiles, sticking her head in one last time, throwing Steve a wink that makes him scoff and wave her off.

”Bye. Close the damn door before the snow ruins the leather.” He scolds, trying to dismiss her very obvious ulterior motives, mouthing ‘go’ until she finally obliges. 

The wind outside isn’t loud enough to drown out her cackle after she shuts the door, and despite his annoyance he still doesn’t drive away till he sees her disappear safely into their apartment. Adding yet another quality to the long list of things Steve does that you unexpectedly find extremely endearing. 

“I’m sorry — I don’t know why she’s being so, so - she’s being weird.” He stammers nervously, slowly pulling out and back into the snow storm that’s only seemed to get worse.

”I think that’s just Robin’s general demeanor.” You say casually, like your palms weren’t sweating. 

“That is also true.” He laughs quietly, shifting gears when his tires slide, turning a corner.

“Are you seriously sure this is okay Steve? We're still not that far from the station. It’s getting bad, I can just stay there.”  

As if to prove your point, the wind kicks up, smacking loudly on the side of his car.

”You’re not sleeping at the station.” He responds seriously, shifting again before slowly hitting the gas getting back on the main road. “I would not have offered it if I didn’t want to.”

”Technically Robin offered.”

”We’re basically the same person, so.” He shrugs, a toothy grin spreading across his face that only seems to be more handsome draped in shadows and moonlight. 

Frank Sinatra’s ‘If I Had You’ fills the quiet space between you, the strings and his deep melodic voice turning the snow outside into something magical instead of treacherous. 

“You really like Sinatra don’t you?” The question makes him do a double take, a reveal that warms both your cheeks and sends butterflies soaring deep in your gut giving your cards away about listening to his overnights.

‘I could show the world how to smile. I could be glad all the while. I could change the grey skies blue, if I had you.’ 

”Checking up on me I see.” He grins, shifting again only this time the side of his hand grazes your thigh, the slightest touch sending your body buzzing.

”I mean, I’ve got to keep tabs. I’ve caught you slipping, what? Four times now?” You tease, doing your best to hide your grin. 

”Three. And all of them were your fault.” He corrects, sly eyes finding yours over the console making you giggle.

”Sounds like a deflection to me, Steve.” You sigh, relaxing even more in your seat meeting him from under your lashes. “I just never pegged you for a Frank Sinatra kind of guy.”

He huffs out a laugh, running a big hand through his hair that almost looks like a messy kind of bed head after the amount of times he’s done it throughout the day. 

“I wasn’t until Robin started judging my love for Eddie Money like it was the worst thing she’s ever heard in her life. Which is crazy cause —”

”He makes hits!” You agree, with the kind of excitement that makes a smile stretch so big across his face that it splits in two. 

”Thank you! Yes, he makes hits. But, she disagrees and decided to dedicate the first two months we worked at the station ‘expanding’ my music taste. I tried hiding the fact that I liked Frank outta spite, but apparently you aren’t the only one who listens to my overnights.” He glances over holding your stare for just long enough to make your heart skip a beat.

“You really aren’t stealthy, Steve.” You giggle before adding, “I bet she knows you’re smoking again too.”

”You’re probably right.” He groans at the possibility.

”I hear that a lot.” 

Steve snorts, flipping his blinker on to turn down the road that leads to your side of town, shifting again his knuckles brush against you for the second time sending goosebumps pebbling across your skin. 

“I was so surprised the first time I heard you play ‘My Way’, but honestly Harrington, it kinda suits you. I like it.” Your cheeks warm at your own compliment, something about saying it in his moonlit car has it feeling bigger than intended.

He stays quiet for a moment, letting the song fill the space between you charged with the new feelings that sit on the edge of both of your tongues.

’And I could leave the old days behind. Leave all my pals, I’d never mind. And I could start my life anew, if I had you.’

”Yeah?” He asks quietly, with a kind of soft vulnerability wrapped around the word that’s unmistakable.

“Mmhmm.” You whisper matching his tone turning shy, heart thumping wildly in your chest. “It’s hard not too.”

You aren’t talking about Sinatra anymore, and you think you both know it.

His gaze feels heavy as it crawls over the details of your face in the silence that follows, trying to figure out what’s going on inside your head. You hope whatever he’s looking for is hidden, just like the feelings that are starting to bloom despite how much you’ve tried not to water them. 

“What was it like?” 

The question you’ve been too scared to ask since you’ve been home slips out without warning, nervous fingers fidgeting with the sleeves of your sweater that poke out from your coat. 

“Lockdown?” He clears his throat, straightening his posture holding the steering wheel with a harsh grip.

“If you don’t want to talk about it, I understand.” You try to take it back watching the way all the muscles in his body seem to tense at the memory. 

”No, no, it’s fine.” He responds with a small smile reading you like a book from the corner of his eye. “I don’t mind, just, uh, I wasn't expecting it.”

”Sorry, I have a bad habit of just blurting out whatever pops into my mind.” You laugh nervously, tugging your bottom lip between your teeth.

“Oh, I know, I remember your conversational skills on the roof.” He teases, the whites of his teeth shining against the dashboard lights.

“Now look at us because of my lack of conversational skills.” Smirking, you dare to look over at him again, your eyes tracing the moles that dot his profile. 

Steve was always handsome, but was he always this handsome?

“Fast friends.” He chuckles softly, meeting your gaze briefly before focusing back on the road. 

There’s that word again. You guess it’s better than ‘cool.’

The snow falls so heavily outside you aren’t entirely sure how he’s even able to see through it anymore.

”Lockdown was like being trapped in a never ending loop of the worst day of your life.” He says with a low voice, his handsome features going dark at the memory.

Shifting gears again, his Beamer slowly trudges up the kind of hill that you know would have been your car's demise if you had even made it out of the station's parking lot. He leaves his hand to rest on the stick shift this time, the tips of his fingers press softly into your thigh, he doesn’t move them. 

“But at least I had a real excuse for once as to why my life turned out the way it did.” There’s a layer of self hatred sewn into what he’s saying, it’s hard to miss in the way it diminishes the light in his eyes. 

”What do you mean by that?” You whisper, too nervous to talk at full volume, but you lean your thigh further into his touch, keeping him connected to you. The rev of his struggling engine bleeds through the conversation, and you wonder if his car will even make it back.

”I mean look at me.” He laughs, like it’s obvious. 

“I am looking at you Steve.” 

You almost tell him that it’s all you seem to be doing lately.

”My Dad’s a lawyer with his own firm, and I’m a sound guy at a radio station who peaked in high school that can’t seem to get it together enough to leave.” He scoffs like you must need a reminder, running that nervous hand through his hair again, knee starting to bounce. 

“That’s not what I see.” It comes out soft just like your gaze, fingers flexing in your lap fighting the urge to wrap around his.

”Yeah?” His voice cracks a little, but he keeps his focus on the disappearing road. “What do you see?”

’I could be a king, dear, uncrowned. Humble or poor, rich or renowned. There’s nothing I couldn’t do, if I had you.’

“Someone that loves his friends so deeply that he constantly puts his needs last. You’re selfless almost to a fault Steve, and sometimes I have to fight the urge to yell at you to take care of yourself when I see how bad the bags under your eyes get some days.” 

He chuckles dryly, his grip on the steering wheel tightening as he blinks back tears that threaten to spill like he’s never heard these things about himself before. A storm raging inside of him just like the one outside.

”I see a guy who’s so kind, he’d sacrifice his own happiness for anyone that he loves. And I think that’s exactly why you’re still here. I wouldn’t call that being a failure. Not by a long shot.” 

That’s when you do it, you wrap your fingers around his and squeeze, he does it back with zero hesitation, like he was waiting for you. Keeping you there.

”I think about it all the time you know?” He whispers, the pad of his thumb brushing against your knuckles, butterflies multiplying deep in your gut.

”What?”

”Leaving.”

Frank Sinatra’s deep baritone fills the quiet that falls between you when he turns on your road, letting the weight of his confession hold the space there. A deep longing inside of it to see what lies past where the twenty feet tall fences were. 

“Why haven’t you?” The question feels loaded when it leaves your mouth, and the way his thumb stutters tells you it is.

”I just need to know they’re safe — that they get out of here first. Especially Dustin, that little shit gets under my skin but I love him like he's my kid.” He answers the question with the most selfless kind of reason you should’ve expected. Something else lingering inside of it that he doesn’t want to unpack just yet. “After everything, I just can’t, I can’t. Not yet. Part of me feels like maybe I’ll always live here.”

He pulls into your complex like he’s done it a thousand times before, wheels spinning in the snow before his car propels forward into the first spot, only letting go of your fingers to put the car in park.

”That doesn’t mean you can’t explore what’s past Hawkins, Steve.” You whisper, turning in your seat to face him, already missing the warmth of his hand. “You’re not stuck, even if you stay, you can always see what else is out there, one place at a time, one trip at a time. Bit by bit. The world is big, and it’s not going anywhere.”

His eyes shine, glassy and shimmering under the street lamp above his car. They tell you everything he can’t bring his mouth to speak, your hands flexing in your lap fighting the urge to grab onto him again. Shadows make the moles and freckles that dot his skin look like the last flick of a paint brush, the final touches to a painting and you realize — yes, Steve has always been this handsome, you just didn’t see it before. 

You see it now though.

“Thanks for taking me home.” You smile a little shy, the heaviness of the conversation hanging in the air. 

“Any time, honey.” His full lips twist into something sweet, the new nickname making your body come alive. “Want me to walk you to your door?”

He glances around your well lit parking lot like something could be lurking in the shadows, it feels silly to you, but the expression that furrows deep in the V of his brows tells you that it’s anything but to him.

“I’m already scared you’re not gonna get out of here as it is. I’m just right there.” You point to the door of your apartment, the one conveniently closest to where he’s parked and his shoulders visibly relax. You knew he was going to watch you till you got inside anyway.

”I’ll pick you up around 8?” He asks, his eyes glancing down at your hands that fidget like he missed your touch too.

The bold red numbers on his dash read: 9:38PM. Suddenly tomorrow feels like a million years away. 

“That sounds good.” It comes out in a whisper, your mind frantically searching for anything to say to keep him here even if just for a few minutes more. But it’s all static.

”I’ll see you tomorrow morning then.” He smiles, leaning back into the headrest.

”I’ll make you coffee for your troubles — with four sugars, don’t worry.” You tease, trying to ignore the nervous crack in your voice, but your joke lands earning you a snort in response and it only pushes your cheeks up higher.

“Better make it five.” Steve winks, white teeth gleaming against the dashboard lights at the eye roll he gets.

”Whatever Harrington, it's your body, your diabetes." You shrug, not expecting the genuine full belly laugh you get, quickly doing your best to try and memorize the bass and timbre of it in case you don’t hear it again.

You take one last look at him, committing this moment to memory. His eyes do the same as they trace over every curve and dip of your face, it makes you squirm a little in your seat. Your fingers grab the door handle at the same time he clears his throat leaning back into the leather. He flicks his thumb across his nose, before that big hand of his wraps around the stick shift, signaling that it’s really time to go.

”Please drive safely.” You beg, stepping out of the car and into the snow, remembering all those times he peeled out of the station’s dirt road.

”I will, I will. Don’t worry.” He waves you off with a smirk, “I’ll be thinking about that coffee the whole way home.”

He’s not talking about the coffee. 

You tug your bottom lip between your teeth, the wet snow flakes that stick to your cheeks melting from the heat emanating off of them. Shutting the door, you wave at him one last time before trudging up to your apartment, feeling the warmth of his stare on you the whole way. He waits until your keys are in your door before you hear the squeal of his gear shifting, his tires spinning loudly just like yours did at the station. It makes you turn around, and you watch him try to back out again just to get himself even more stuck in the snow that just continues to pile around him. He tugs at his hair trying one more time, finally giving up when smoke starts to come up from the burning rubber of his tires. His eyes meet yours through his windshield, apologetic and nervous, the wind kicking up a notch to add salt to the wound.

”You’re gonna flood your engine!” You tease with a grin, getting the shine of his teeth you were looking for. Bright like the sunshine you missed so much, they break through the storm clouds that threaten to hide his face. 

Steve Harrington was snowed in at your apartment.

—- 

You never thought your place was that small for a studio until Steve was standing in the middle of it, broad shoulders and long legs taking up so much space. His eyes are curious as they absorb his new surroundings, mouth slightly agape unzipping his leather jacket looking around like he’s being let in on a big secret. Nerves twist tight in your gut at the general clutter scattered around your room that doubles as a common area, especially the pair of underwear hanging half hazardly from your laundry basket.

”Sorry for the - the um, mess. I wasn’t expecting anyone, obviously.” You stutter, peeling off your coat in a rush. 

Hanging up your puffer by the front door, you scurry past him to try and clean up what you can, starting with the black lace but the deepening red in his cheeks tells you that it's too late.

”You're fine, seriously. You’re cute — I mean.” He clears his throat like it's closing up, scratching the back of his neck, “It's a cute, cute apartment.”  

You can’t stop the twist of your lips no matter how hard you try, giggling a soft thank you as you speed clean around him. He stands there awkwardly, unsure of what to do with himself either, both of you lost in uncharted territory. 

“Here, I’ll take your coat.” You huff throwing away the last of the wrappers you’ve collected, taking a deep breath at the realization that you’re being a bad host. “You can sit on the couch, and get comfortable.” 

Steve looks like a deer in headlights when you walk over to him with an open hand.                     

”Is it okay if I use your bathroom real quick?” There’s a shyness in the way that he asks, slipping his wet leather coat into your grasp, that nervous hand pushing his hair back.

There’s a brief moment of panic as you try and remember the way you left it, but since you weren’t running late today, you’re nintey nine percent sure it’s safe.

”Yeah of course, it’s on the right around the corner, not the left, that's just a closet.” 

He nods, patting himself down like maybe he’s forgetting something before turning around and disappearing into the bathroom with a soft click of the door. A shaky breath you didn’t even know you were holding slips out from between your lips as you hang up his coat. The musk of his cologne hits your nose along with the relaxing hint of amber inside of it, and this time, you give in, inhaling a little more.

You take one last look around your apartment for anything else you might’ve missed before grabbing an extra blanket from the closet you warned him about. Your heart thumps a little quicker hearing the muffled sound of the water running in the sink as the reality of Steve Harrington having to sleep on your couch just a few feet from your bed settles in.

You grab the extra pillow you usually cuddle with from its hiding place under your comforter, laying everything out for him on one side of the loveseat.  Staring down at the short piece of furniture, there's a part of you that wonders if he’s even going to fit on it, at least comfortably. Another wave of guilt hits you like a tsunami as you start to think maybe you should be the one to sleep on the couch instead.

The sound of the bathroom door opening stops you from being able to fret about it too much as he emerges from around the corner. His hazel eyes find yours instantly, the gold in them looking warm like honey. A toothy grin cracks his handsome face in two calming the anxiety that had begun tightening uncomfortably in your chest. The sleeves of his brown sweater are pushed up, and the windswept mess on the top of his head had obviously been tamed in his absence. A mental image of him fixing his hair in your small bathroom mirror has the corners of your mouth curling up. It feels like something to check off a bucket list. 

“I like the pink rugs you have in there.” He points over his shoulder with his thumb taking two long strides to the middle of the room, his gaze wandering the posters on your wall like he's trying to piece you together.

“Thanks, I bought them when I first moved back to brighten it up a little.” You sigh with a shrug, looking down before adding “this one too.”

You point to the fuzzy burnt orange throw carpet under both your sock covered feet, a proud smile pulling up your cheeks meeting his eyes from under your lashes.

”I’ve got the last little bit of my favorite summer candle. I usually light it when it snows like this. If you wanna get really crazy, we can even pretend it’s June.” The wiggle of your eyebrows earns you the kind of laugh from him that threatens to become your favorite sound. 

“What does summer smell like to you?” He questions with a soft stare, teeth tugging at his full bottom lip. The warm light from your floor lamp casting shadows across his sharp features. 

”It smells like the beach on the sunniest day of the year — salt water, sunshine, with the smallest amount of sweetness and dare I say a dash of clean linen.” You sigh at the thought of it, side stepping him to light it from where it sits on your kitchen island. 

“Take me away to cocamo or whatever the song says.” Steve huffs, finally flopping down on your couch. A low groan rumbles from his chest as his body molds into the cushions. This time he runs both hands through his hair.

“I’m just gonna change into something more comfortable really quick.” It comes out in a rush, your nerves from before jumbling the words on the tip of your tongue.

”Take your time,” He waves you off with a yawn, “do you care if I use your phone to call Robin while you’re doing that? I don’t want her thinking I’m in a ditch somewhere.”

“Go for it.” You smile, grabbing your softest pajama pants and an oversized shirt doing your best not to over think it, or the fact that you have nothing for him to sleep in.

Disappearing around the corner, you have to ward off the mental image of what Steve sprawled out across your couch in his boxers would look like.

—-

His voice sounds faint on the other side of the door and even though he's speaking in a hushed tone you can still tell he’s annoyed by whatever his best friend is saying on the other end. Judging by the way she was acting in the car, you can only imagine in the privacy of a call.

You stare at yourself in the mirror, probably the same way he did, messing with your appearance. Your mind wanders, replaying the night and how pushy Robin was all of the sudden, and it makes you wonder if she knows something you don’t. Maybe you weren’t the only one figuring out what that flutter in your stomach actually means.

Clearing your throat loudly, you give him a subtle warning of your return, fingers wrapping around the doorknob for ten extra seconds longer before finally coming out.

”You are not basically Dave Hull, you don’t host a match making show, please shut up— I gotta go, seriously? Can it— bye!”

He hangs up, running an irritated hand down his face mumbling something to himself before turning around. His eyes go wide, crimson staining his cheeks clearly oblivious to all the warnings you tried to give him.   

“Sounds like she was super worried.” You tease trying your best to hide your smile and ignore the way his gaze wanders your softer edges, the hardened shell at work hung up with your coat. 

“Yeah, sorry about that.” He snorts with an annoyed groan, “she was just being —“

”Robin.” You finish with a giggle, dragging your feet lazily to your bed, as a guilty conscience has you sizing up the couch again.

”I forget that you understand.” He laughs dryly flopping back down where he was sitting before you changed, thighs spreading wide as he head lulls against the cushions.

”Steve, I really don’t think that couch is going to be big enough for you.” Crossing your arms, you try to think of any kind of comfortable position he could possibly sleep in without his legs hanging over the arm rest. Or worse, propped up in mid air. 

“I think you should take my bed, I’ll sleep on the couch.”

”No, nope, absolutely not.” He sits up, squaring his broad shoulders in stubborn finality. 

“Seriously, I re-“

“I mean it, I'm fine, I could sleep standing up if I’m tired enough.” Steve grabs the blanket you laid out for him, leaning back and stretching out with one leg on the arm rest and the other on the floor.   

“See? Comfy.” 

He drapes the quilted comforter over himself to really drive his point home. It doesn’t look comfortable at all, but it’s obvious he’s not going to back down. 

You narrow your eyes at him, staring just long enough to get a laugh before he shoos you away to a bed that’s been calling your name since the station. This time you don’t have it in you to argue, taking one last look at him letting him win after he whispers a final ‘I’m fine, go to bed.”

———

The wind howls loudly outside, noisy gusts blowing against your windows sending in a chill that bleeds through the cracks of the poorly sealed glass. Another harsh blast against your apartment building has the flimsy foundations shake, and despite the thickness of your comforter goosebumps pebble across your skin, teeth threatening to chatter. Glancing over at your alarm clock, bright red numbers flash a harsh 12:34AM at you.

It was the sound of Steve’s light snoring that lulled you to sleep about an hour ago, but now it’s his constant shuffling and re adjusting on the couch that pulls you out of it. A long huff escapes through his nose after turning for what feels like the hundredth time, and you don’t have to see him to know he’s running a hand through his hair.

The wind kicks up again, blowing out the dim flame of your dying candle on the kitchen island, the soft yellow glow disappearing turning the room a deep blue. A shiver runs up your spine at the same time the springs of the couch squeak as he tries to readjust again.

”Steve, just get in the bed.” 

The shuffling stops, both of you holding your breath.

”It doesn’t have to be weird, you’re clearly uncomfortable.” You sit up rubbing the sleep from your eyes finding him in the kind of position that was sure to give him back problems for the next week. 

The internal battle he’s having with himself is evident on his face, and it lasts long enough for the uncomfortable weight of regret to start settling in your chest. Nerves digging your canines into the skin on the side of your thumb. 

“Fuck it.” He huffs under his breath sitting up, grabbing the pillow you gave him that had been rolled up to help support his neck in the pretzel of a position he had put himself in. 

Your shoulders relax for a split second until the realization of what this means quickens the beating of your heart. Chewing your bottom lip, you lift the comforter in a silent invitation doing your best to keep up with the ruse that this wasn’t a big deal, even if it feels like the exact opposite.

Steve stops at the side of your full size bed, running those long fingers through the already messy main on the top of his head. Purple shadows kiss the bags under his weary eyes as he takes in the small space next to you before they meet your gaze.

”Are you sure? I- I don’t want to make you uncomfortable.” He asks with a sleepy rasp in his voice that makes your chest swell.

”I’ve actually never been more sure of anything in my life, if you can believe it.” You give him a lazy reassuring grin, “besides, I’m cold and I’m willing to bet you’re like a human furnace.”

He lets out a soft laugh at the reveal of your ulterior motive, the stress in his shoulders softening as he runs a hand over his face before nodding tossing his pillow down next to yours.

”As long as it’s mutually beneficial.” Steve smiles a little shy climbing under the covers, his weight making the mattress dip in the middle daring you to come closer. 

The bed squeaks underneath him as he adjusts, your metal bed frame smacking against the wall. He settles on his side facing you with a hand tucked under his pillow. You mimic the way he lays, nerves coming out in the form of fidgeting feet, your toes brushing against his under the covers. He’s so close that you can see the smattering of freckles at the corners of his eyes, and every mole that dots along his neck. Amber and tobacco hit your nose, warming you just like the heat that radiates off his body, eyes glowing a golden evergreen in the deep blue light of your apartment.

God he was close, so close.

His gaze traces the lines of your face and you swear they linger on your lips. Even if just for a fleeting moment, catching your breath in the back of your throat.

“Bet you regret offering to take me home now huh?” You tease in a whisper, the tip of your toe catching on his shin. 

“Nah,” he scoffs with a soft grin,“I do however regret not wearing my boots, I wasn't even thinking, rookie mistake.” 

Your giggle makes his full pink lips stretch wide over perfect white teeth. Butterflies flutter in a kaleidoscope of color when he catches your feet with his own.

“I’ll help you,” you hum, as your hand not tucked away finds a new home in the space between you. “Don’t worry.”

There’s a moment of silence while his fingers follow yours, resting close enough for the tips of them to brush. His thick eyebrows marry in the middle of his forehead, thinking hard about whatever he’s wanting to say next.

“Sorry if that was a little much in the car earlier, I didn’t mean to dump all of that on you.” He looks up at you from under his lashes, insecurities swirling in the depths of his irises.

“Don’t be,” your voice comes out quiet, swallowing your apprehension as your index finger hooks with his, “I like seeing that side of you.”

His finger flexes at your response, squeezing.

“Yeah?” He questions with the kind of disbelief that cracks open your heart.

“Mmhmm.” You murmur, holding his gaze, toes digging into the top of his foot, silently saying I like you.

You don’t know when it happened, but staring at him in the incandescent light of your room. You’re sure of it now. 

Steve scoots closer, the heat of his breath fanning against your lips. Drawn to him like a magnet, you do the same, the tip of your nose brushing with his. Cinnamon from the Big Red he always chews invades your senses like the left over cologne clinging to his clothes. Another gust of wind smacks against your windows, sending a chill up your spine. Steve’s lips quirk on one side.

“Want to test out your furnace theory?” He breathes, a nervous crack in his voice, as he takes the leap of no return, first. 

Tugging your bottom lip between your teeth, all you can muster is a shy nod, your legs wrapping tighter around his. Something greedy warms every inch of your skin like it’s a need to have him as close as possible, and here he is offering it to you like it’s all he wants too. 

His big hand finds your hip before sliding to the small of your back, his palm flattening along your spine tugging you to him. It doesn’t take much to close whatever space that was left between you, legs tangling together with bodies pressed so close that you can feel every ridge and dip of him. You look up from under your lashes just to find him already staring down at you, and even with the heavy weight of his mind evident under his eyes, he’s somehow more handsome than he was an hour ago. 

Your palms flatten along his chest, the unbuttoned collar of his sweater revealing the top of a thick patch of hair that hides underneath the cotton. It makes your thighs press into his, your cheeks burning but if he notices he doesn’t show it. The pad of his thumb presses softly running along the dip of your spine, soothing your stiff muscles while his eyes trace over the contours of your face. There’s something about the way he looks at you that makes you feel like he can see everything that you’re trying to hide, and when his gaze lingers on your lips you’re sure he can. 

The hand he kept tucked under his pillow outstretches with his arm, sliding under your head to pull the rest of you in. Tucking you under his chin, you bury your face into the side of his neck, thankful for the hiding place. His skin feels just as sunkissed as it looks, and it takes everything inside of you not to nuzzle deeper into him searching for more. 

“Is this okay?” He whispers against the crown of your head, soft fingers running up and down the length of your back. 

“Mmhmm.” You mumble against his throat instead of ‘can I live here?’ curling your fists into his sweater to pull yourself closer.

For the first time all winter, you’re thankful for the snow. 

“Are you okay?” Your question comes out in a murmur, lips ghosting against his skin as you attempt to look up at him failing miserably nosing the sensitive spot behind his ear. 

”Am I — am I okay?” He snorts incredulously, pulling you close enough to feel impossible, turning his head just enough for your cheeks to brush, the heat of his breath pebbling goosebumps along the side of your neck. “Never been better, honey.”

Honey. You want to change your name to honey. Get lost in the gold of it hidden in his eyes.

All you would have to do is lift your chin up slightly, and your lips could be pressed to his. The thought of them being so close quickens your heart beat, breath hitching as the tip of his nose nudges against the side of your cheek. Testing the boundaries like the realization dawned on him too. The sound of your heavy breathing mixes with the howling of the wind outside, filling the quiet space of your apartment, neither one of you daring to speak. His chest rises and falls under your palm, his own heart matching yours, skipping a beat at the tilt of your chin. 

His fingers slide down your spine, fiddling with the hem of your shirt until he feels the slight nod of your head giving him permission. Electricity sparks goosebumps along the soft skin of your lower back the moment the tips of them touch you, a low hum escaping the back of your throat. You swear you feel his lips curve up against your cheek at the sound. Your bodies move together, seeking friction you’re not ready to give into yet, heavy breathes hot against each other's necks. 

Your hands trail down his chest, a greedy need to touch more of him taking over all logical thought. They reach the bottom of his sweater at the same time your nose presses harder into his cheek when the blunt end of his nails drag softly down the dip of your spine. Your fingers slip under the hem, the pads of them meeting the rough hair of his happy trail. His body tenses, the movements of his hand coming to halt. You immediately feel the loss when he pulls it out, long fingers grabbing a hold of your wrist. 

“Hey.” He whispers against your ear, his voice laced with something soft and scared.

You work up the courage to push past the bitter taste of rejection sneaking up on you to pull your head back just enough to meet the heavy gaze of his eyes, eclipsed dark with want, fear sparkling in the depths of them. The tips of your noses brush, and your fingers itch to smooth the lines in the middle of his forehead from the furrow of his brows despite the way your heart drops to the pit of your gut. 

Maybe you read this all wrong. 

“There’s — There’s stuff you don’t know about me.” He starts, the hand on your wrist letting you go so he can thread his fingers with yours, easing some of the anxiety that had started to build. “Things happened to me — happened to a lot of us during that time.” 

You press your forehead to his, the pad of your thumb rubbing softly over his knuckles, silently encouraging him to continue. His face twists like he’s in pain, shame shadowing his handsome features, breaking your heart before he even has a chance to finish. 

”These things, they left their mark on me. It’s — it’s a lot to explain, not really pillow talk.” huffing out a nervous laugh, he swallows avoiding your gaze, he moves his focus to your tangled hands instead before continuing, “my stomach and umm parts of my chest — I’ve got a lot of scars is what I’m trying to tell you pretty fucking badly. A lot of them, and I haven’t really shown them to anyone before. Well anyone —“

”New?” You finish, squeezing your legs around his calf a little tighter remembering the one you saw wrapped around his neck. 

Tears that you don’t let fall sting the corners of your eyes. Seeing him vulnerable like this, leaving himself bare to trust you to help pick the pieces back up has a sharp pain tightening in your chest. A vengeful rage boiling under the surface at the idea of whatever it was that caused him so much pain. The urge to apologize to him eats at you but you keep it to yourself knowing that’s the last thing he would want. Steve Harrington hated pity.  

”Yeah,” He breathes a slight sigh of relief, his eyes finally meeting yours with a worry he can’t seem to shake swimming deep in the pools of them.

”Steve.” His name comes out gentle, a softness about it that has his nose nudging against yours. “You only have to share with me whatever you’re comfortable with.”

You run the tip of your nose along the length of his, breathing him in. 

“I don’t need to see them yet, or ever if that’s what you want, I just — I just really want to touch you.”

Your eyes close, hiding from his gaze that searches for you. 

“I want that too, honey. God more than anything.” He whispers against the corner of your mouth, the silk of his lips waking up every nerve ending in your body.

He lets go of your hand, fingers lazily crawling up your hip before returning to their home on the small of your back. A shiver runs up your spine at how good it feels to be touched by him again, only a few minutes passing but they felt like a lifetime. 

You meet Steve’s stare, an intensity burning in his eyes that wasn’t there before. The kind that gives you the courage to slip your hand back up the bottom of his sweater. Tentative nails raking through his rough happy trail. The feeling of your touch sends a shudder through his body, like it’s been denied this kind of intimacy for a long time. A low groan catching in the back of his throat pressing his forehead harder against yours.

Your touch grows bolder, more curious as your fingers dare to crawl further up. The pads of them are met with uneven skin, evidence of large almost teeth-like shaped gashes lining the sides of his ribs. Despite pinching his eyes closed, he leans further into your touch. Your teeth dig into the fat of your bottom lip, holding in the cry that wants to slip out.

What happened to you?

The blunt ends of your nails find the softer patch of hair on his chest, your hips meeting his on their own accord. Steve tilts his head up, his mouth hovering just above yours as his hands spread wide across the small of your back. He pulls you to him like there’s somehow more space between you even though there isn’t. Your top lip brushes just slightly against his full bottom one, while your fingers dance slowly down the other side of his ribcage. The bumps of identical scars kissing the pads of them again. 

His nose presses into your cheek, a shaky breath tickling against your skin. The blunt end of his nails digging crescent moons into the soft skin of your back when you go over a deeper indentation.

“So handsome.” You whisper, lips ticking just under the shell of his ear as you glide your fingers over the same spot again.

He breathes out a shy laugh, nuzzling deeper into you leaving a whisper of a kiss at the hinge of your jaw. His mouth is so close to where you want it most, a fluttering tickling deep in your gut at the feel of them dragging along your skin. 

“So beautiful.” His voice comes out low against the sensitive spot in the crook of your neck. Its baritone has your body curving soaking in the warmth of him through your palms because touching Steve feels like bathing in sunshine. 

The need for more is insatiable, and he lets you take as much as you want. Your hands wander the broad expanses of his chest, tracing the dips and curves of the pinched skin of his scars until your eyelids grow too heavy to keep open. The soft caresses of his fingers against the sore muscles of your back lulling you to the deepest sleep you’ve had in what feels like months but not before you hear a quiet whispered ‘sweet dreams, honey.’

——-

Part Two ✨

The bright warm light that bleeds through the cracks in your blinds flutters your eyes open with its ivory glow, waking you up first. Steve’s hand is still under your shirt, the long fingers that were once sprawled across your back are now balled up in a lazy fist keeping you pressed to his chest. It’s not like your position is any better though with your face pressed into the crook of his neck, cold hands buried under the warmth of his sweater, fingers curved around his rib cage, while the others are lost in the rough hair of his happy trail.

Last night comes back to you in fuzzy memories, the deep sleep you fell into still hanging heavy like a fog. Whispered secrets, wandering hands and lips that never quite give into what they want overwhelm you as it all starts to come into focus. It warms your cheeks, as the unknown starts to twist, tightening the coil in the pit of your stomach, uncertainty making your palms sweat. Your universe tilting off its access from your spot tucked away inside of Steve’s arms. 

“So beautiful.”

The words he whispered in the blue glow of midnight, come rushing back to the forefront of your mind, waking up the butterflies that flutter, stretching their wings in your chest. Glancing down at the end of your bed, the digital clock on your microwave flashes 7:06 AM in bold red numbers. You finally work up enough courage to look up at him. 

His eyes move behind closed lids, lost deep in whatever dream he’s having, long lashes kissing the tops of his cheeks. A lighter smattering of freckles reveal themselves from their camouflage in the brighter light under the faintest lines of crows feet, and it makes you wonder if you’ll ever find them all. 

The collar of his sweater is pulled down giving you a better look at the scar you noticed on the roof top, your heart thumping a few beats quicker. It looks fully healed but still fresh enough to know whatever happened wasn’t that distant of a memory. Its jagged edges are uneven with silver tips and a pale pink center that gets wider in the middle before tapering off at the ends. It’s hard to resist the urge to reach up and press your lips to it. 

He stirs slightly like he can feel the heat of your gaze, so you muster up enough will power to slowly start to untangle yourself from him as carefully as you can no matter how much your body yearns to stay.

There's a desperate need to make him coffee before he wakes up that has every anxious molecule in your body buzzing. It turns your brain into the kind of jittery mess that has you convinced that a perfectly made cup would be the security blanket you need in case he wakes up and regrets every decision that brought him here last night.

Cause coffee will do that, right?

The cold pads of your feet move quietly around the kitchen once you’re free from the warm restraints of his arms, carefully opening cabinets with both hands so they don’t slam shut. You set two travel mugs on the counter as softly as you can, just for the coffee maker to start whirring to life with a loud continuous drip hitting the bottom of the glass pot. Steam blows out from the sides in a low whistle as the water boils going through the filter. It’s loud. So loud.

You cringe, having a silent back and forth with yourself on whether or not you should turn it off, as the rich smell of the beans fills the small space of your apartment. The heat kicks on in a loud hum, and you watch Steve begin to stir in your bed. He grumbles something you can’t understand while still half asleep before turning over with a big hand that reaches across the mattress. He’s searching for you.

He pats around the empty spot where you were not that long ago with his face still buried in his pillow. His movements freeze when he’s met with nothing but the leftover warmth on the sheets, a heavy breath exhaling through his nose before he runs that same hand down his face in an attempt to rub the drowsiness off as he rolls onto his back. Stretching his long legs with a grunt, your heart rate quickens enough that you can feel it pulsing in your wrists because Steve Harrington is waking up in your bed and you almost kissed last night. 

Your stomach folds in on itself doing summersaults in preparation for the kind of unchartered territory that comes with a morning after a night like that. An unrelenting fear that after laying himself bare to you, he’d retreat back to his cave and seal it up tighter than before. Leaning against the counter trying to seem nonchalant, your canines bite into your thumb nail, the nervous anticipation of watching him slowly start to sit up bringing back a bad habit. 

He rubs the sleep from his eyes with his palms, grumbling like his bones hurt. Your fingers itch at your sides with the need to run through the kind of bed head that has his hair sticking out in almost all directions. The sheer messiness of it has the corners of your lips twisting. He blinks a few times before his eyes finally focus, finding you already staring at him from the kitchen. The blush that paints his cheeks is almost instant, a lazy smile stretching across his face. That’s a good sign.

“Good morning.” He croaks before clearing his throat, face going a deeper shade of crimson because of it. 

“Morning.” You squeak, unable to stop the rambling that follows “I’m making coffee —  you know, since I promised. I didn’t want you to wake up and not have it, I was just trying to be a good host, but I wasn’t expecting it be so loud I’m really sor —“

“Thank you,” he cuts you off, offering a life line. “You’ve been an amazing host given the circumstances. Feels like — what are those places called? A bed and, and-“

“Breakfast?”

“Yes!” he snaps, nodding with excitement pointing at you, “that!”

“I don’t have breakfast for you though, just coffee.” You pout, hearing the last few drops fill the rest of the pot. 

“Same thing.” Steve shrugs, throwing his sock covered feet over the side of your bed, finally running a hand through his hair before standing up. 

“Definitely not, but I appreciate your blind support.” You giggle, turning around to turn off the machine taking a deep breath through your nose. Why does it feel like your heart is trying to climb its way out of your throat?

You busy yourself with pouring coffee, secretly thankful to give your nervous hands something to do to distract yourself. The floor boards creak with each step he takes, slow and steady until the wood groans right behind you. Even if it wasn’t for your frozen foundations giving him away, his left over cologne would be enough to tell you that he’s close. The silence that falls between you is charged with the remnants of last night, a burning question dangling in front of you like an eye sore. 

What does this mean?

”Don’t mind me, just making sure you’re putting the right amount of sugar in there.” His voice comes out low right next to your ear.

Goosebumps pebble along your skin from the warmth of his breath that fans down the side of your neck. Gentle hands playfully grab at your hips just soft enough to feel his finger tips. It’s timid and unsure, but it's still enough for butterflies to break from the knotted cocoons of your nerves, your lips curving up in the kind of smile that you try to hide ducking your chin down. 

“Don’t worry, Steve. I’ll put in half the bag.” 

He snorts, the tip of his nose a whisper against the shell of your ear. You bite the inside of your cheek, fighting the growing urge to just turn around and do what you should have done last night. Kiss him. You don’t though, and by the time you’ve made up your mind he’s giving your hips a gentle squeeze before letting you go.

”I’m gonna go check out the damage and start digging my poor girl out.” Steve sighs, backing away with a card of his hair and you already miss the feeling of him being close. “Can’t have the boss late for work.”

”How about I pour your coffee down the sink?” You turn around with a sarcastic smile that quickly turns into a real one at the wide grin that splits his face in two. The gold in his eyes shimmering in the sunlight.

“Hmm, I think you like me too much for that.” He winks, making your face go gaze meeting the ground.

”There’s the confident guy I knew from high school.” You manage to tease through the nerves that tighten, constricting in your chest but you’re proud of the eyeroll you get in return despite it.

There’s a weird normalcy in the way he shuffles around the apartment in his wrinkled jeans searching for his shoes and coat. Like the secrets shared in the silver glow of the moon are kept hidden under the blankets of stars that disappear once the sun comes out. Everything feels different in the light of day, and the reminder of reality bounces off the blinding reflection of the snow outside.

Steve comes back in the kitchen once his coat is half way zipper up, white teeth gleaming when he sees you already holding out his tumbler for him. Nike covered feet close the distance between you in just two long strides, long fingers brushing with yours when they wrap around the warm metal of the cup. He crowds your space just enough for your back to hit the counter, the smell of leather and coffee invading your senses. 

“Thanks, honey.” He breaths, staring down the slope of his nose with a vulnerability in his eyes that feels an awful lot like testing the waters. 

Looking up at him from under your lashes, you reach up, pulling the zipper of his jacket all the way to the top.

“Anytime, handsome.” 

Maybe those secrets aren’t so hidden after all. 

———

Steve’s car creaks and groans with every turn, the plastic of the dash expanding in the heat flowing freely from his vents. The metal of his keys clink as his tires drive through the sloppily plowed roads. It all sounds so loud in the silence that’s settled between you, as words beg to come out from behind sealed lips that won’t let them. Fingers yearning to intertwine but settle for resting just close enough to feel the warmth emanating off of them. 

Your gaze wanders in his direction, nervous teeth digging into the fat of your bottom lip. His brows are furrowed, eyes staring out at the road like he’s concentrating but you know after these past few months that's not what’s happening. You wonder what kind of thoughts are racing through that complicated head of his as he runs long fingers through his hair, getting caught on a knot at the end that he works out. A deep breath pushing out through his nose. 

“I’m sorry you had to sleep in your jeans last night.” You half joke, willing your tongue to work, mouth relearning how to form sentences breaking the silence.

He looks over at you, confusion painting his features before realization dawns on him and he finally joins you back in reality with a soft laugh.

”It wasn’t so bad.” He shrugs with a lopsided grin, “I mean, am I ready to take them off and not wear pants for the next 24 hours? Yes.”

Your laugh bounces off the foggy windows, echoing in the small space of the car, the sound of it brightening his face, freckle covered cheeks pushing up high.

”Honestly, I don’t blame you.” Smirking, you try to ignore the way warmth spreads through your body at the mental image that tries to worm its way in.

”Yeah, Robin’s just gonna have to deal. I’ll let her take my turn at picking the movie tonight or something, she won’t care about anything after that.” He chuckles, shifting gears letting the tips of his fingers brush your knuckles. Electricity buzzes on every inch of your skin because of it.

”You guys have movie nights?” The idea of them having a weekly tradition swells in your chest, curling the edges of your lips. 

”Yeah, it was something we started when we worked at Family Video together a few years ago. It just kinda stuck, probably one of the only things that kept us sane during lockdown, honestly.” He explains with a pretty shade of light pink dusting the apples of his cheeks, removing another rock from his wall in the light of day. “For those two hours every night we could escape to anywhere we wanted.”

”What’s your favorite movie?” You question, trying not to make a big deal about it despite it feeling anything but. 

“Oh easy, Top Gun.” He snorts like it’s a no brainer, “Danger zone? Are you kidding? Another classic.”

”I’m going to assume that you two have very different tastes in movies as well.” You tease, giving anything to be a fly on the wall in their apartment during a fight about what to watch even though you already know he gives in every time.

“Oh god, it’s even worse with movies.” Running a hand down his face he sounds exasperated like he’s having war flash backs.

The gold in his eyes dances, shimmering with the emerald that surrounds it at the giggle he gets from you. He turns onto the main road that leads to the station, a brief moment of silence settling in the warm space of his car at the realization of the limited amount of time left with each other. It creates a desperate need that claws at the back of your throat to keep the conversation going because you aren’t sure what comes after this. 

The unmistakable intro to Take Me Home Tonight comes out muffled from his speakers, catching in your ears at the same time. Steve's head snaps in your direction, his mouth formed into an excited ‘O’.

”How can anyone hate this song?!” He argues turning it up, head bopping and fingers tapping on his steering wheel.

”They have no taste, clearly” You agree, breaking out into the kind of laughter that has your ribs sore as he starts to belt along with the song both passionately and off key.

”I see why you work the soundboard.” Narrowing your eyes playfully, you meet his gaze a little flirty from under the thickness of your lashes, baiting him.

”Pfft, this town wouldn’t be able to handle me on the mic. That’s why I work the soundboard, honey.” He winks, turning the music down, pink tongue poking out to wet his lips.

”Yep, I’m sure that’s it.” You agree sarcastically, doing your best to ignore the pang of sadness that hits your chest when his tires crunch along the winding entrance of The Squawk. “Maybe we can work in your own show this summer then.” 

His smile freezes, squinting his eyes, giving extra focus on the road.

”Well, no, don’t — don’t do that.”

“We could use the boost in listeners.” You press, getting sick pleasure out of watching him squirm biting back your laugh at the glare he sends your way. 

“Wow, that sounds like the kind of idea a station manager would have.” He counters, pulling up next to the WSQK van that blocks your practically buried car.

”Wow, are you always this annoying in the morning?” You sigh, fighting off the way the corners of your lips twitch but he sees it, letting his own curve up celebrating his win this round.

“That’s not a nice thing to say to the guy who’s about to spend the next hour digging your car out.” He chastises, turning off his engine reaching over to squeeze your thigh with a pout.

He looks at you from under his lashes, tying knots in your stomach, the warmth of his hand bleeding through the denim of your jeans. Unfortunately, just like the rest of them, you don’t know how to back down from a challenge. 

You lean forward on the arm rest, invading his space, catching the quiet hitch in his breath. He doesn’t move away, the hungry gaze returning from last night flicking down to your lips dilating his pupils. The hand on your thigh dares to move up just enough for your lashes to tickle at the tops of your cheeks.

”You’re right,” you breathe, trying to regain control. “That wasn’t very nice of me, can you forgive me, Steve?”

You swear the faint sound of a whine slip from the back of his throat, the tip of his nose nudging yours, the coffee on his breath fanning against your lips.

”I think I can, but I need something from you first.” He whispers, the hand on your thigh moving up to cup your cheek, the pad of his thumb resting at the corner of your mouth tilting your chin.

”Yeah? And what’s that?” The desperation in your voice is undeniable, every thought leaving your brain when his top lip gets dangerously close to brushing against your bottom. 

He was going to do it, he was going to kiss you.

A loud smack on the driver side window breaks you both apart so quickly that your back hits the hard plastic handle of the passenger door.

”Jesus Christ!” Steve yells whacking his knuckles on the stick shift, elbow bumping hard against the steering wheel.

He turns around to see who the culprit is, anger flaring his nostrils and the daggers in his eyes sharpening coming face to face with none other than Keith who scoffs at his glare waving him off. He signals for the boy you almost got to kiss for the second time in 24 hours to roll down his window. They stare each other down in a silent challenger before Steve begrudgingly obliges.

”What do you want, asshole? You could have broken my window just now.” The amount of venom in Steve’s question is enough to put an army down.

”Shut up, don’t be such a drama queen, Harrington.” Keith bites, and you really start to understand why he was banned from secret Santa.

”What’s up?” You cut in to relieve the tension as Steve’s lips curl in, muttering insults under his breath.

Keith scrunches his nose at the former king in a mixture of annoyance and disgust, mocking him before bringing his attention back to you.

”My cousin’s gonna be here soon, so if you don’t want any dead air, I suggest you come inside, like now. He’s the guy who plows the roads so he’s on a pretty tight schedule. ” He explains almost like it's something to brag about, and Steve’s face twists into a sarcastic sneer, butting in.

”Oh your cousin plows the roads? That checks out because I was just thinking about what a shit job it was on the drive here.” 

“I didn’t know you knew how to operate a snow plow, I’ll make sure to tell him, I know your opinion really matters to him.” Sarcasm drips from every word flipping Steve off.

”Okay! I’m going in now.” You interrupt loudly, unbuckling your seatbelt, putting an end to their bickering. The heat that was simmering just under your skin from the silk of his lips cooling down.

Steve huffs out a loud irritated breath through his nose, eyes finding yours with the kind of longing inside of them that threatens to swallow you whole because he knows the moments lost.

And it’s all Keith’s fault.

”You can go do your job now, she said she’s coming in.” Lashing out, he shoos him away with his hand like a dog.

Keith makes another face at him, flipping him off one more time for good measure before heading back up to the station. Steve watches till he disappears mumbling a sting of curse words after him.

”God, I really hate that guy.” He huffs rolling his window back up.

”Really? I couldn’t tell.” 

This gets Steve to laugh, the anger rolling off his shoulders as you zip up your coat, gearing up to venture outside. He glances at your lips one more time before finally accepting his fate, opening his car door. You want to grab his hand and drag him back and say that he can, that there’s still time, the moments not gone. It’s never going to be gone. Keith can wait. 

Instead, you follow him out into the cold.

”Thank you so much for doing this again, Steve.” You say with a small smile as you walk around to his side, trying to hide the nerves that come back like a tidal wave because outside of his car feels like a different world. “I probably would have ended up in a ditch.”

”That’s okay I would have gotten you out of it, even if you did.” He teases with a wink, rubbing his hands together to warm them up.

You finally look at your car, heart sinking when you see just how buried it really is.

”You really don’t have to dig it out if you want to go home. I mean look at it! That’s crazy. I can always do it when I get off later.” You start rambling, guilt eating you alive.

Steve grabs your hips pulling you to him with gentle strength as he leans his back against the door. Cedar and a little bit of sleep mix with his leftover cologne, calming the nerves that kick your heart rate up, as your hands slide up the cold leather of his coat hooking your arms around his neck. Steve bends down just enough to press his forehead to yours the heat of his breath fanning against your already cold bitten cheeks.

”Don’t worry about your car, I’m gonna take care of it.” He whispers, hazel eyes following the lines of your face, memorizing it for when he can’t stare at you anymore. “I want to talk about - we should talk about last night at some point.”

”Yeah, I agree.” The words are shy coming out, looking at him from under your lashes.

One of his hands leaves your waist to cup the side of your face again, pulling away just enough to tilt your head up, the pad of his thumb catching the pout of your bottom lip. He holds your gaze like he’s trying to communicate it to you without words. You know what he is trying to say because you want to say it out loud too, but you can’t. 

I like you.

Leaning forward he presses a kiss on your forehead that lingers just long enough to make you want more.

“You better go in before the village idiot throws a fit.” He rolls his eyes with a dry laugh, finally letting you go.

“He really is the worst.” You finally agree with the dread of having to see him again, inside. 

“We’ll talk soon.” He sticks his hands in his back pockets, the shyness from before coming back at the thought of confessing what you both already know is true. 

“S-sounds good.” Stuttering, the bubble the two of you have been lost in the last twenty four hours finally pops, the real world waiting for you inside the double doors. 

“Have a good shift, honey.” He smiles, giving you one last look that feels like he’s trying to take a mental image of you right here in this moment.

”I hope you throw those pants away when you get home.” You call out walking backwards, enjoying the red that paints his cheeks despite his laughter.

He waves at you one last time, watching you walk to the double doors and out of sight.

——

Christmas Eve Night

The wheels of the rolling chair squeak as you push yourself around the small space of the studio room. Billie Holiday’s album Solitude spins on the record player, the needle landing on Blue Moon. The first keys of the piano float through the speakers, soft brass mixing with her bittersweet timbre. You stare at the small Christmas tree in the corner of the common room, the colorful lights twinkling just like the ones strung up around you. The shimmering red gift bag that sits on Steve’s soundboard taunts you to over think what’s inside of it hidden under the fluffed green tissue paper.

Boredom has the feeling of self pity trying to burrow itself inside of your thoughts because this was how you were spending Christmas Eve. Alone at work. It was a joke made last week that was only meant to rile Robin up but it quickly became a reality, cause it turns out Keith really does have family out of town. Successfully giving both her and Steve another reason to hate him.

You twirl around in the chair fighting the way your mind wanders to The Wheeler’s and the fact that Nancy is most likely there sharing her grand adventures from Emerson. An even meaner part of your brain imagines Steve listening to them with that same enamored look in his eyes that swallowed you whole just a few nights ago. 

Questions you don’t dare to ask float through your brain faster than you can concentrate. Has she seen his scars? Does she have them too? Deep down you know the answers. Pushing the thought of them together out of your mind, you work hard not to dwell on the way you’re clearly trying to hurt your own feelings. She left and will leave again because she doesn’t want him, at least, not like that. 

It was Steve you weren’t too sure about. 

You hadn’t been alone with him since the car ride back to work that morning. The past few days around the station have been nothing but near misses and stolen looks with shy smiles after getting caught. Perfectly made coffee with fingers that brush handing Steve his mug. Hazel eyes holding yours like maybe if he stared hard enough the two of you could communicate telepathically. But you already know what he’s trying to say.  

We need to talk.

Yesterday he almost made it to your office with the kind of grin twisting up his full lips, like he was finally going to get what he wanted. In fact he made it so close to the doorway that your stomach flipped on itself, just for a frantic Robin to intercept him. Foiling yet another attempt to get to you.

The song reaches its last note, cutting the record off bringing you back to reality, and giving you something to do besides over-think. Gentle fingers slide Frank Sinatra’s Nice ‘N’ Easy from its cover, lifting the needle to start it from the top. That Old Feeling’s melody bursts from the speakers with deep baritone and powerful strings. A small smile playing at the edges of your mouth at the much nicer thought of Steve listening in, wondering if you’re playing it just for him. 

You were.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             A flash of brown catches in the corner of your eye as you put the Billie Holiday album back on the shelf. Freezing, your heart thumps wildly as all the worst episodes of America’s Most Wanted you’ve ever watched come rushing back. You try to mentally count how many seconds it would take to lock the door from where you’re standing before gathering enough courage to turn around. Dramatically preparing for death, you aren’t expecting to meet the hazel eyes you haven’t stopped thinking about on the other side of the glass. 

Steve smiles, snow flakes sticking to the ends of his hair that looks like it was styled with the utmost care tonight. That big swoop curling over his forehead just begging to be pushed back, your fingers itching to do it. He’s got your favorite sweater on, the thick woven cream one with his brown leather coat on top of it. It’s paired with light washed jeans that wrap tight around the legs that were tangled with yours a few nights ago. His usual white Nike’s covering his feet. 

You can’t stop the curve of your lips, no matter how nonchalant you wish you could be, butterflies erupting when his teeth gleam just the same. Finally pushing the wild strand back, he starts to make his way towards the door with a messily wrapped present in his other hand. The round shape of it not doing his skills or the red Santa printed paper any favors.

“What? Do you just appear anytime someone plays Frank?” You tease to try and hide just how happy you are to see him when he steps inside the sound proof room, the amber of his cologne immediately hitting your nose. 

“Yeah, you didn’t know? I thought that’s why you did it.” He plays along with a straight face, earning the kind of giggle from you that has his eyes sparkle with something that makes your thighs press.

“Not that I’m not happy to see you, but what are you doing here? Shouldn’t you be at Nan— The Wheeler’s?” You try to correct, the jealousy you thought was snuffed out sneaking into your words. Steve catches it, his gaze narrowing slightly.

”I went and said hi to everyone, hung out for a little bit,”  shrugging, he sets his gift down next to yours, looking at his name scribbled in your handwriting on the tag before leaning back on the desk, holding your eyes in his. “Then I came to where I really wanted to be.”

He says it with the kind of confidence you can’t mistake for anything else.

“Besides, what’s the point of going to a secret Santa gift exchange if mine is stuck at work.” He winks, revealing that the mess of a wrap job is indeed for you.

”Well, I guess it works out.” You say a little breathless, your eyes admiring how handsome he looks in the low light, not exhausted from holding everything together for once. “Since you were mine too.”

“I didn’t want to assume when I saw the bag, thought maybe you just liked me that much, cute handwriting by the way.” His left cheek pulls up in a lopsided grin, enjoying the eye roll and fake huff he gets from you in return.

”So nosy. Way to ruin the reveal.” Your tongue pokes the side of your mouth to try and stop the way your smile won’t stop growing. “And if I remember correctly, I’m not the one who said there’s no one who works here that’s worth ten bucks.”

“You and I both know I meant Keith.” He argues, running a hand through his hair, “god, I really hate that guy. Even more after tonight.”

”You hate Keith for having a family?” You snort, watching the way the corners of his lip twitch at the sound.

”Is there something wrong with that? It’s inconveniencing me, I’m trying to you know — do something here and because of him you have to be at work.” Scoffing, he crosses his arms like it’s a completely justified reason.

”What exactly are you trying to do here, Steve?” Looking at him from under your lashes, he squirms a little under your gaze before regaining his confident charm.

”Well, you’ll have to abandon your post and follow me to the van to find out.”

“I’m not surprised that it’s you of all people asking me not to do my job.” Sarcasm rolls off every syllable, and you wonder if he notices the way all the blood rushes despite it.

”Listen, I know the boss, she really won’t care.” Steve smirks, a full bellied laugh shaking his shoulders when you flip him off in response.

“You’re lucky I just started this record.” You point asternly, before finally giving in. “We’ve got like an hour. Tops.”

—-

The van is already running when the two of you step outside, the low hum of the engine cutting through the wind. Snow crunches under your converse, thick and heavy just like the flakes that fall steadily from the dark lavender sky. The serene scene of the woods that surround the station is breathtaking, making you realize that you can’t remember the last time you had a white Christmas.

“Wait, how long have you actually been here?”

The puzzle pieces slowly begin to slot together as you cross your arms in an attempt to protect yourself from the sharp wind that hits you like knives, cursing the split second decision to not grab your coat.

”Maybe like an hour —  hour and a half?” He says from a few steps ahead of you, throwing a look over his shoulder. “Hey, do you want my jacket?” 

”What? Steve! An hour and a half!” You gasp, swatting his arm, shock painting your features, ignoring his second question because he’s already shrugging it off before you can say no. 

”Hey! It’s fine, relax!” He laughs, making a dramatic show of rubbing the spot you smacked before turning around to drape the leather over your shoulders.

It takes every ounce of will power not to press your nose into the collar when the warmth of it envelopes you. He tugs the sides of the jacket for good measure, winking at you down the slope of his nose before continuing his path to the van. A soft glow shines through the small square windows of the back doors, the yellow light shimmering in the snow. His long strides stop once you get close enough to feel the heat emanating from the engine, turning to face you with rosy cold bitten cheeks meeting your gaze down the sharp slope of his nose. He traps you in the mossy green forest of his eyes, keeping you there as the tips of your shoes brush against with a soft squeak. The pads of his fingers search for yours, tugging you closer when he finds them.

“I did this because I wanted to.” He whispers, reassuring the nervous way you tug your bottom lip between your teeth taking it all in. 

Any response is lost on the tip of your tongue, the corners of your lips curling up into something shy. You meet his gaze from under the hood of your lashes, rocking back on your heels mustering a nod. It’s enough for him, flashing you the kind of smile that threatens to buckle your knees, before opening the large metal door. The rusted hinges creak so loudly it echoes into the darkness, the view inside nearly stealing the breath from your lungs.

The golden twinkle of string lights line the roof of the van, another set swooping underneath them in a curved zig zag. They paint the space in warm citrine, relaxing the dark edges the glow of them can’t reach. Everything’s cast in shadows, even softening the ugly colors of the shag rug that covers the floor. There’s a mini Christmas tree that you saw on the clearance shelf at Bradley’s Big Buy a few days ago sitting on the small table right next to a plate of leftovers from the party. The Squawk plays on the radio, Frank Sinatra’s smooth voice crackling through the bad nearly blown out speakers. 

“Steve this is — this is so cute.” It comes out quieter than intended, your brain trying to wrap around the fact that he did this for you trying to take in the details of it all with a heart that feels so full that it might burst. 

“Yeah?” He questions with an uncertainty that you can’t believe is there. It’s enough for you to tear your eyes away from the shimmering light, your fingers tightening around his. 

“This is the nicest thing anyone’s ever done for me.” You whisper, taking a step closer to look up at him. “Thank you so much, handsome.”

The endearment has his cheeks turning a pretty shade of red, perfect teeth tugging his full bottom lip into his mouth, a free hand running through his snow-covered hair.

“Let’s get inside before we lose all the heat.” He smiles, pulling your hand to his lips, placing a soft kiss on your knuckles, the warmth of his breath soothing cold skin. 

—-

You sit across from each other on the blankets he’d spread out over the rug, your legs bent slotted between his, knees knocking together every so often. Throw pillows you’re pretty sure are from his living room line the edges of the quilt on either side, while your snow covered shoes and his jacket sit discarded in the front seat to dry. 

Steve stares at you with the kind of smirk that makes you feel like your body is a livewire, the ends of his hair a little wet from the snow that melted once you got inside. The pad of his thumb swipes gently on the top of your socked foot, electricity seeping through the thick cotton, tingling against your skin. The heat pouring from the vents fogs up the windows, hiding you from the outside world. Safe again.

“So who goes first?” You question, nervous fingers fiddling with the string handle of the gift bag. 

There’s a brief moment where you swear panic flickers across his face, but he recovers quickly, clearing his throat. The notion that he’s just as nervous as you relaxes a little bit of tension in your shoulders, knocking your knee into his with flirty purpose.

“Ladies always first.” He says it like it shouldn’t even be a question, grabbing the messily wrapped present from his side handing it over to you. Electric currents running through touching finger tips.

Whatever it is feels heavy in your hand as you spin it around, examining the crazy amount of tape that’s plastered all over it. You make a show of shaking it next to your ear to stop him from hiding under the weight of his thoughts that has him staring at his hands, earning you the flash of teeth you were looking for.

“Don’t break it please.” He laughs, running that signature stressed hand through his hair, filling you with a sense of pride that you’re the cause of it this time.

“I would never!” You gasp dramatically, the pads of your fingers tugging on the edges of the paper. “Whatever is inside of this immaculate wrap job is about to be my favorite thing in the world.”

”Not all of us back down from a challenge and take the lazy way out with a gift bag.” He taunts catching your sarcasm with a grin that has you rolling your eyes, the corners of your lips curving up.

You fight to regain your focus on the task at hand and not the boy you haven’t stopped thinking about sitting across from you. The quick thumping of your heart pounds muffled in your ears as you slowly start to unwrap whatever it is, the heat of his stare making you squirm. Breaking the last little bit of tape holding it together with your index finger, the last thing you’re expecting is the candle that rolls into your palm. 

There’s no label on the glass jar holding the sea foam green wax with a long white wick that sits slightly off center sticking out of the top of it. Curiously, you lift it up to your nose and inhale only to be met with the kind of scent that takes you to a time you haven’t stopped day dreaming about all winter long. Not a specific memory but a collection of where all your favorite ones took place. It smells like 9pm sunsets and late night drives with the windows rolled down. It’s barbecues at the lake with way too much sunscreen yet somehow not enough at all. Ice cold lemonade in red solo cups with condensation from the heat dripping down the sides, sulfur stinging in your nose from Fourth of July sparklers. It smells like summer. Your perfect summer. 

”Oh my god.” You groan, taking another big huff trying to figure out how to live inside of it for the next few months. “Where did you get this?”

”You like it?” He asks wearily, cracking his knuckles, nervous eyes hyper aware of all of your reactions.

”Like it? Steve, I’m obsessed with it.” You sniff it again for good measure, and somehow it keeps being better than the last time. “Seriously, what brand is this?”

“You see — I - I uhh.“ He scratches the back of his neck, looking down at his lap like he’s struggling to find his words before meeting your gaze from under the thick hood of his lashes. “Dustin’s mom makes candles, as like, a hobby or whatever. So I forc - I mean I paid —  he helped me make you one.”

”Wait, you made this for me?” You question in whispered disbelief ignoring the subtle coercing of his younger friend. He nods, crimson deepening in his cheeks as he runs another hand through his hair.

Flowers that Steve’s started to water bloom deep in your chest threatening to crack it open. The unmistakable sting of tears wells up in the corners of your eyes, and you do your best to blink them back. Setting the candle down at your side, you sit up on your knees. He stretches his legs, laying them flat against the floor to accommodate whatever you’re doing without question as you crawl onto his lap wrapping your arms around his neck. It takes him a moment to realize what’s happening, but when he does, his arms snake around your waist tugging you even closer. Your knees land on either side of his hips as he buries his face in the crook of neck, inhaling deeply like he’s been waiting for this all his life. His hands spread wide across your back, warm palms sliding up the dip of your spine, nudging at the hinge of your jaw with the tip of his nose, a satisfied hum tickling against your skin.

“Thank you Steve, I love it.” You whisper, lips brushing against the shell of his ear as the greedy tips of your fingers curl into the soft wisps of chestnut at the nape of his neck. 

“I wish you knew how happy that makes me.” He murmurs, pulling back just enough to meet you with a heady gaze that threatens to swallow you whole with wandering hands finding a new home on the curve of your hips. 

Leaning forward, you press forehead to his tugging lightly at his baby hairs that curl around the bottoms of his ears. Your breath mingles in the little space that’s left between your begging lips, so close they could brush with the slightest tilt of your chin.

“Your turn.” You say, the corners of your mouth curving up softly, his grip on your sides tightening in response.

He runs the tip of his nose along the length of yours before pulling back enough to have you miss him, a hunger his stare that sets a fire a blaze on every inch of your skin.

“Let’s see it.” He readjusts beneath you with a grin, the hold on your hips staying iron clad, making sure there’s no misunderstanding that he’s keeping you there. 

Reaching behind to grab the gift bag, nerves make your palms sweat while the another part of you is excited to get rid of the thing that’s haunted your every waking thought since wrapping it. It crinkles loudly in your hands, the smile on his face growing wide enough to split it in two.

“Whatever it is, even if it’s just a pair of socks you got from the thrift store, I’m gonna love it.” Steve reassures with gentle palms sliding up on either side of your rib cage, tiny wings taking flight underneath his fingers.

“Well it’s definitely not that. And also that’s oddly specific. Has someone gotten you that before?" You snort a little confused, trying to distract from the slight shake of your hand as you bravely hand it over.

“Don’t worry about it.” He teases, lifting the bag up to his ear mimicking the way you shook his gift, earning the smack on his chest and roll of your eyes he was looking for.

”Steve! Stop it!”

“Okay, okay. I’m sorry!” He laughs, grabbing your wrist before you can fully pull your hand away. Holding you in the golden honey that drips warm in his eyes, he slowly brings your palm back up his mouth softly pressing a kiss to the soft skin there. “I’m gonna open it now, promise.”

The gesture sends your body buzzing, nervous teeth digging into your bottom lip as you try to remember how to breathe. Pulling the green tissue out first, he tosses it on the other side of the throw pillows in a messy ball as your heart tries to claw its way out of your throat watching him peer inside the bag. Steve’s body freezes between your thighs. The familiar itch of panic threatens to set in after a few moments of silence, with nothing but the howling wind outside and the crackle of Frank Sinatra’s voice through the speakers. 

It’s enough to have you start to squirm uncomfortably on his lap, the movement shaking him out of whatever daze he was lost in, meeting your gaze with glassy eyes from under his lashes.

“First of all, this is way more than ten dollars.” He laughs lightly, trying to break the unexpected tension, but there's no mistaking the shake inside of his voice as he pulls out a map, compass and a camera.

“For all the adventures waiting for you on the other side of Indiana state lines.” You whisper a little nervous that maybe you’ve over stepped, that what he shared with you in that car ride to your apartment wasn’t to be talked of again.

Disbelief floats around in his watery gaze like a life boat because you see him when he’s not sure he’s ever really seen himself. 

“I think I’m falling in love with you.” He breathes like he can’t hold it in anymore, searching for the answers in the lines of your face because the curves of it have become his favorite thing.

It wasn’t the response you were expecting and it sparks an avalanche of unspoken feelings that burst at the seams of your chest trying to get out. Words not dared uttered out loud but have done nothing but spin on a loop in your mind, worming their way into every thought both awake and lost in your dreams. The universe shifts at his confession, your world tilting off its axis because Steve Harrington snuck up on you in a life altering surprise. 

“I think I’m already there.” You admit, eyes casting down at your fidgeting hands because ‘falling’ is a lot different than ‘in’, but in the spirit of honesty, you lay your cards on the table too.

“Hey,”  His voice comes out soft just above a whisper, long fingers tilting your chin up to meet his gaze. “Me too, I was just saying that so I wouldn’t scare you off.”

You can’t stop the watery giggle that slips past your lips at his confession, the whites of his teeth shining at the sound.

”Wow, I didn’t even think about scaring you off until after I said it. But by then it was too late.” You grin, pressing your forehead to his again brushing the tip of his nose with your own. 

”Good thing it worked out, for you yet again huh?” He teases, bringing his hand back up to cup the side of your face.

”Mmhmm,” you hum, daring to hold his gaze as you slide your palm over the top of it leaning into the warmth of his touch. The sunbursts of color in his hazel eyes darken as he pulls you closer, making you brave enough to ask for the one thing you’ve wanted since that night under the stars. 

“Steve?” 

“Yeah, honey?” He whispers, eyebrows marrying together like he’s begging you to put him out of his misery. 

“Kiss me.”

He wastes no time closing the space that’s left, pouring all of his want into the first press of his lips, the pad of his thumb running along the heated skin of your cheek. Needy fingers find a new home, tangling themselves in the thick dampness of his hair, tugging him closer when his tongue swipes against your lower lip, begging you to let him in. It’s easy to say yes. You meet him in the middle, the muscles moving together languid and slow, savoring it. The grip he has on your hips tightens, his nose pressing into your cheek exploring your mouth with the kind of intensity that dares to get messy. A satisfied moan rumbling from his chest when your tongue starts to battle for dominance. 

You could do this for hours, you think, and never get tired of it. Never get tired of him.

“Baby.” He murmurs against your lips, the new endearment pulling you from your love drunk thoughts, sending the word ‘baby’ buzzing through your veins.

“Hmm?” You half answer, too distracted by the way he busies himself leaving open mouthed kisses down the length of your jaw, a big hand coming up so he can tilt your chin to get to your neck. 

”The music stopped.” Steve breathes against your skin, nudging the side of your face with the tip of his nose, pressing his lips to the sensitive spot behind your ear. “Dead air.”

He straightens up, pulling away from where he’d been focusing his attention and brings it to your flushed face. Pressing his forehead to yours, he squeezes his eyes shut like stopping this is the hardest thing he’s ever done. Chests rise and fall, lungs desperately trying to get the oxygen they crave, but you just want Steve. 

“Fuck the dead air.” 

You steal his lips without a second thought, and it’s your tongue that asks for permission this time. Steve smiles into the kiss granting it to you with ease, one hand coming up to the side of your face. The pad of his thumb tugs at the edge of your mouth, opening you up more for him, building a hunger that threatens to scrape teeth together, hips swiveling on their own accord. He shudders underneath you, a half choked moan escaping the back of his throat when you do it again, only this time with purpose.

Wrapping a strong arm around the small of your back, his fingers spread wide along the curve of your spine. He pulls you close to his chest before lifting you up, laying you both down on the blankets. Slotting himself between your legs that spread for him, big hands land on either side of your head, caging you in. He pulls away from your mouth like its torture, staring down at you like you’re the reason the sun rises and falls every morning. The intensity of it swells deep in your chest, fingers reaching up letting the pads of them trace the warm lines of his face. He’s always felt like sunshine to you. 

“You’re sure about this?” He whispers, the strain of maintaining self control evident in the shake of his voice.

“This is the first thing in my life that I've been absolutely certain of.” You admit with a grin, never wanting to leave whatever this little space he created tucked away from the outside world is. At least not yet. “What about you?”

Steve’s eyes flutter closed for a second, chasing your touch nuzzling his face into your palm as the pad of your thumb glides over the clutter of moles on his cheek. Your favorite constellation. Leaning further down, the tip of his nose runs along the length of yours, a slow smile spreading across his lips. 

“I don’t think I’ve ever wanted anything more.” Leaning down, the tip of his nose runs along the length of yours, a slow smile spreading across his lips. 

“Then what are we waiting for?” The question comes out quiet, wrapped in the kind of ache that's so palpable you can feel it in your bones.

He holds your gaze searching for any trace of apprehension that he’ll never find, the blacks of his irises taking over once he’s satisfied. His hand slides down the curve of your waist with more purpose as he drops his full weight onto you, the smell of cedar and bergamot all encompassing. Your spine bends, pressing your body into his yearning to get closer, the pine of his shampoo tickling your nose, driving you mad. 

“So damn pretty.” He murmurs into your mouth before collecting it with a roll of his hips, greedily swallowing the gasp that follows.

His tentative fingers fiddle with the hem of your sweater until it’s your hips that meet him this time, giving them all the permission they need. A deep groan rattles from deep in his chest when you do it again. Calloused fingers tickle the soft skin of your tummy, flitting up the contour of your ribs, the pad of his thumb sliding under the wire of your bra. Your determined hands travel down the broad expanse of his shoulders before they dip down the lean length of his chest lingering at the bottom of his thick woven turtle neck.

You pull away from his lips that chase you to come back, whispering “Can I?”

His body tenses at your question as panic starts to burrow deep in your gut, the butterflies retreating back to their cocoons at the thought of ruining this already. 

“Only if you’re comfortable,” you remind him trying to salvage it, kissing the edge of his mouth, adding softly, “I’ll want you no matter what you decide.”

The tight muscles in his shoulders relax at the soft affection in your voice, the pad of his thumb swiping under your bra again before squeezing at your side. Steve hides his face in the crook of your neck, leaving an open mouthed kiss behind your ear, doing it again relishing at the keening noise you give him.

”You first.” He murmurs quietly against your skin before lifting his head, drowning you in the rich amber of his eyes. 

”Do it for me?” You’re shy with the way you ask, meeting him under the hood of your lashes.

“Baby.” His breath fans hot against scorched skin, the tip of his nose running down the slope of yours with brows furrowed in the kind of want that steals the air from your lungs.

Steve greedily captures your lips one more time before sitting back on his haunches. He runs a hand through his now sweaty hair, a pretty shade of red creeping up his neck as he tries to regain some self control. Propping yourself up on your elbows, it's hard not to notice all the ways you affect him, especially in the tight jeans he always wears. Your cheeks burn remembering all the rumors about him in high school. A smirk tugs up one side of his mouth, making you realize that you’re staring, but you can’t bring yourself to look away.

“I swear this wasn’t some master plan to get in your pants or anything like that.” He huffs out a laugh shuffling back between your thighs, hands curving around the bend of your knees, thumbs brushing softly against the caps. 

“I know,” You try to hide your smile by biting into the fat of your bottom lip, sliding your hands up his thighs as you sit all the way up. Hooking your fingers into the belt loops of his jeans, the new position putting the center of his chest at eye level. 

“Jesus Christ.” He grumbles with a shaky breath, running his fingers through his hair again before letting them curl under your chin tilting your gaze up even more. “You’re trying to kill me.”

The giggle he earns in response makes him grin as you tug lightly on the denim. 

“Lift your arms for me, pretty girl.” His command drips with honey, the pearly whites of his teeth peeking out, sliding the pad of his thumb along your pouty bottom lip.

You do as you're told, heart racing so fast it pounds in your ears while his soft eyes follow your movements. Wetting his lips he slowly peels your sweater from over your head, tossing it to the side before really taking you in. If it wasn’t for the admiration that glimmered bright in his eyes, you would be self conscious with how he stares at you without saying a word for what feels like the longest time. 

“Come here, please.” He pleas in a whisper, urging you to your knees. 

His hands feel like they are everywhere when you meet him at eye level, greedy fingers squeezing at your soft curves before warm palms spread wide across your back pulling you in. He buries his face in the crook of your neck, littering your heated skin with the same open mouthed kisses that were your undoing just minutes ago. A needy whine slips from between your lips, your fingers finding themselves back in his hair, tugging him closer. Making his way down your neck, his eager mouth feels like it’s on the hunt, devouring all the new skin that's presented to him. He presses a kiss to your collar bone before perfect teeth nip at the swell of your breasts, expert fingers undoing the hooks of your bra with ease.

”Oh my god, Steve.” You say a little breathless, arching deeper into him searching for the kind of friction you’re not going to get like this.

He hums against your skin, before bringing his attention back to where you want him most. Cupping the side of your face with one hand, the pad of his thumb tugs at your chin, licking into your mouth. Meeting his tongue with feverish need, your teeth scrape together at the warm palm that squeezes your breast, nipples pebbling under his touch. You don’t think about it when your hands slide down to the hem of his sweater, too lost in your desperation for more until he grabs your wrists with a soft “Hey” in between kisses that finally you wake up.

”I’m - I’m sorry.” You break away trying to create some distance, embarrassed that you lost control.

”Hey, no — no, no, don’t be sorry honey.” He coos, pulling you back to him pressing his lips to the corner of your mouth for good measure, meeting your gaze with the same adoration as before. “Will you - will you just let me do it?”

“You don’t have to -“ 

“I want to.” He says it with such conviction that it leaves you little room to over think his answer, whispering ‘I want to’ one more time, nudging your nose. 

All you can do is nod shuffling back to give him space, arms wrapping around your chest out of instinct. Steve takes a deep breath, rolling his shoulders, staring intensely at the patterns on the quilt beneath you. His wrists flick at his sides with the kind of nerves that make you want to say you’ve changed your mind, that it’s okay, he doesn’t have to do this but it’s more than just that, you can tell, so you hold it in and trust him. 

He doesn’t look at you when his arms cross at his waist, fingers curling under the hem of his turtle neck slowly pulling it up.The dark hair of his happy trail reveals itself to you first, another cluster of moles dotting the side of it that you’re desperate to kiss. There's a slight shake to his hands when his sweater gets higher up his torso the same kind of jagged edges peeking out that are identical to the one wrapped around his neck. 

These ones though, are much bigger. 

They spread wide, taking up space along both sides of his rib cage like saw-toothed wings. Uneven skin pinches together pink in some parts, smooth and silver in others. The raised edges outline the mean looking bites that stop right under his chest that’s covered in an even thicker dark patch of hair. His scars unfurl like water colors that bleed into paper from too much water, beautiful and messy just like him. 

Tossing his sweater with yours, he runs both his hands through his hair before finally meeting your gaze with a vulnerability inside of them that threatens to break your heart. Dropping your arms you move slowly, coming closer holding his stare. You can feel the nerves that radiate off of him, chest rising and falling in quick succession.

“Can I touch you?” You ask quietly, like you’re trying not to spook him.

It takes him a second to answer, brows furrowing as he looks down, pink tongue poking out to lick his lips.

”Yeah - yeah.” He nods, bringing his gaze back to you, long fingers curling around your wrist, slowly guiding your hand to the one on his rib cage. 

Steve sucks a breath between his teeth feeling the warmth of your palm on skin that hasn’t been touched in months, his body shuddering when you press softly into the uneven markings. There’s a roughness to the middle of it, the raised skin on the ends more smooth and firm. The pad of your thumb brushes against it, encouraging him to bring your other hand to the one just under his chest on the other side, fully letting you in. He studies your reactions, desperately trying to read your mind, the amber of his eyes turning glassy with apprehension.

”You’re so handsome, Steve.” You say holding his stare, tentatively bending down before you lean forward slowly testing the waters. His breath comes out in nervous huff, but he doesn’t stop the press of your lips. 

Your kiss is tender against the biggest one that  almost spreads the entire expanse off his ribs, sending another shudder through his body, a whispered ‘honey’ slipping from his mouth. His palms slide over the tops of yours as you make your way down his chest, peppering more along the other side giving all of them your equal attention. You self indulgently kiss the cluster of moles next to his happy trail before working your way back up to include the one at the base of his neck. 

The warmth of your hands moves up his broad shoulders meeting his gaze with heavy eyes. His fingers glide down your arms before they tickle the dip of your spine. Hooking your wrists around his neck, you bring your soft kisses to his waiting lips, his hold tightening crushing you to him he can never be close enough. 

Your mouths move slowly against each other, finding the perfect rhythm, tongues meeting in the middle savoring the taste of each other, taking your time. It’s you who pulls him back down to the blankets, thighs spreading for him to lay between them. The rough feel of his scars against your skin sends goosebumps pebbling, your body curving up insatiable for more of him. He moans into the kiss, his hands working their way down, deft fingers unbuttoning your pants before pushing under the waist band of your soaked underwear. 

“Shit,” He breathes, breaking apart from your lips. Pressing his forehead to yours, his fingers finding the effects of his touch. ”So wet, baby.”

”Mmhm.” You whimper, hips meeting the slow circles he starts to rub on your bundle of nerves. “Want you, Steve.”

His lips curl up against the side of your warm cheek, hearing his name making him brave. The pads of his fingers slide further down letting a knuckle stretch you out. You gasp when he adds a second, pulling him back to your mouth, meeting the slow movements of his wrist with another roll of your hips. He pushes a third finger into the heat of your squeezing walls, prepping you for what’s  pressing hard against your thigh.

You find the will power to break free from the way he starts to tighten the coil deep in your gut, impatient fingers finding the button of his jeans, eager hands shoving them down his hips. He helps you, lifting them enough to kick off as the pad of his thumb threatens to become your undoing, putting just enough pressure against your clit for your jaw to go slack.

“Please,” You beg as his lips keep making their way up your jaw, your palm finding the hard length of him straining against the white material of his boxer briefs.

He moans hot against the shell of your ear, another shudder rippling through his body, hips bucking on their own accord, your touch sending him over the edge.

“Fuck, I need you. You have no idea how bad I need you.” His hushed words come out desperate, like he might go insane if he can’t have it.

His fingers curve, hitting that spot inside of you that threatens to make you see the stars that you’re convinced he hung in the sky. His name leaves your mouth like it's the only word you know, eye brows furrowing together when they pick up the pace. Their determined movements become your undoing as he sucks on the sensitive part of your neck, leaving a mark. Your world tilts off its axis at the unexpected intensity that washes over you, walls fluttering hard against his fingers, trying to push him out.  

“God, you’re so beautiful like this baby.” He groans, teeth nipping softly at the hinge of your jaw. “Always so damn pretty, wanna see it again.”

It takes you a moment to come back down, words getting lost on the tip of your tongue at his affection. His greedy lips waste no time traveling a path down your chest, his hot mouth enveloping your nipple into the wet heat of it. He sucks just hard enough to earn a gasp, fingers finding their way back to the damp softness of his hair, getting lost in the silk of it as he peppers messy kisses down your sternum stopping just at the top of your navel. 

You lift your hips, you help him push the rest of your pants down, taking your underwear with it. Laying yourself bare, his eyes that had turned into a dark shade of chestnut devour you. He sits back up on his haunches to really take it all in, pushing that infamous wild strand back.

“I’m sorry it took me so long.” He whispers, a sincerity in his gaze that shows a hint of misplaced guilt. ”I can’t believe I could’ve had you this whole time.”

”Steve,” his name comes out gentle, finding the strength to push yourself up meeting him in the middle. Your hands wrap around his hips, the pads of your thumbs brushing against the edges of his scars. “That doesn’t matter, we’re here now, and you weren’t the only one.”

His palm comes back up to envelope the side of your face in its big hold, staring down at you with the kind of affection that makes your heart skip two beats.

”Now, come here and don’t make me wait any longer.” You tease, looking up at him from under flirty lashes.

Steve’s smile stretches so wide, it splits his face in two, his white teeth shimmering in the twinkling lights. You tug at the waste band of the only piece of clothing keeping you apart, pulling him back down with hardly any effort at all. His briefs getting lost at your feet as he comes back to his favorite place between your thighs.

Hovering above you, the ends of your noses touch, lips curling into something sweet as you tangle your fingers back into the hair at the nape of his neck. The tip of him slides between your slick, his head catching on your bundle of nerves making your back arch, legs spreading wider. A deep groan escapes from the back of his throat, vibrating from his chest at the feel of you, his forehead resting against yours shuddering, doing it again. 

You kiss the sharp edge of his jaw, encouraging him to keep going with a roll of your hips, one hand leaving his damp roots to reach down to guide him to the place you need him most. His eyes pinch closed, your jaw going slack at the initial stretch that’s even bigger than you imagined. 

“Ohmygod, Steve.” It comes out in a desperate whine, your arms wrapping around his broad shoulders from under his. Tethering yourself to him, you need an anchor when he pushes the rest of the way in.

”Jesus, you’re so — god, you’re so tight.” He groans, panting against your open mouth.

Steve doesn’t move, letting you adjust to his size, his arms trembling at the fluttering of your walls. You feel so full letting him melt into your body like this, taking it over and all you want is more. You think you’ll always want more. The grind of your hips catches your sweet spot on the rough patch of hair at the end of his happy trail, blunt nails digging crescent moons into the galaxy on his back. 

He presses a kiss to the edge of your mouth before messily capturing it with a deep thrust, tongue licking into you, swallowing your moan. You meet him with eager hips, a sharp exhale leaving through his nose. Moving together slowly, you take all of him with an insatiable body that begs him to go deeper even though there's where else to go. 

“You feel so good.” You whimper against his cheek, breaking away from his hungry lips to catch your breath. “So fucking good.”

“Yeah?” He huffs, hot breath tickling your ear, his strokes becoming more pointed at the squeeze of your walls when he hits that spot. “You’re perfect, made for me. I swear.”

Resting his forehead to yours, he presses the full weight of himself on you, the dark pools of his eyes drowning you in their abyss. One of his hands travels down the soft curve of your waist, squeezing at your hip before hooking your knee over the crook of his elbow.

He opens you up more for him, driving deeper, a guttural moan escaping from the back of his throat at the feel of you. It’s loud enough to drown out the high pitch whine you give in return. The intense need to keep close has you clawing at his skin, your spine bending pressing your body further into him. 

“Never gonna get enough of you.” He pants, the heat of his breath fanning against your kiss bitten lips. “I need you to be mine.”

He sounds love drunk, his hips stuttering at the squeeze of your walls at his words. 

“I’m yours Steve, that was never a question.” Fingers weaving into his hair, you tug him close, stealing the kind of kiss that tries to convey just how much you mean it. 

He meets your mouth with the kind of intensity that sends butterflies fluttering in your chest, the familiar coil in your gut tightening again. His thrusts start to become more sporadic, like his self control is slipping, completely lost in the silk of you.

”I’m not - I’m not gonna last much longer.” He confesses pulling away, his fingers spreading across your chin tiling your face up to his so he can really see you. “Need you to cum for me again pretty girl, can you do that for me?”

All you do is nod, too intoxicated off of him to form full sentences anymore. Your jaw goes slack as he slows down to a grind, the rough thatch of hair at the base of him catching on your clit with just the right amount of pressure again. He nudges his nose with yours whispering a gentle ‘come on,’ that sends you falling over the edge for a second time, your vision going white behind eyes that close tight.

”So good, god, you’re so fucking good.” He moans, driving his hips into yours with the kind of intensity that tells you that he’s close, milking your release that becomes his demise. 

His body tenses on top of yours, the hold on your leg tightening as a shudder ripples through his body spilling into you. A loud moan rattles from his chest, burying his face in the crook of your neck. It’s almost enough for you to give in for a third time, rolling your hips, greedy walls taking him for all he’s worth. Tugging at his damp roots, you pull him close, relishing in the way he surrounds you, solid and warm. It takes him a moment for his muscles to fully relax after shocks rolling through his body until the hold on your leg finally comes loose. 

Steve’s fingers glide up your thigh, curving around your rib cage, while his other hand that was holding your chin cups the side of your face. The pad of his thumb traces the contour of your cheekbone, wet lips peppering lazy kisses where he still hides. Your fingers run through his hair, scratching at his scalp, the corners of your mouth curving up at the low hum that tickles against your skin. 

“Let’s never leave.” He grumbles, finally showing signs of life.

“Deal.” You giggle, pressing soft lips to the crown of his head, feeling the smile that spreads in against your skin. 

His nose nudges at your jaw, finally coming up to meet your eyes, rosy pink creeping across his cheeks. 

“Hey,” He greets shyly, studying the lines of your face before continuing. “I just want you to know I meant everything I said. I wasn’t just lost in the heat of the moment or something like that.”

Your hands untangle themselves from his hair, making a new home holding his face, whispering,

“Me too.”

He bends down, pressing his lips to yours with something delicate behind it. Pouring his adoration into every part of you. It’s overwhelming because you feel the same way, but you’re not sure a lifetime will be enough time to even scratch the surface.  

“Travel with me.” The words come out in a hot breath against your mouth, running the tip of his nose up the slope of yours.

”Steve -“

”No, I mean it.” He argues with a grin, a smoothness to the lines of his handsome features you haven’t seen before. “We can go where it’s summer all the time.”

”Yeah?” You whisper, a full garden blossoming in your chest.

“Absolutely, I’ve actually already planned the whole thing in my head.” He teases, earning the kind of giggle he wants to bottle up so he can listen to it whenever he wants.

”That does sound pretty nice.” 

“Who else am I going to take pictures of anyway?” The smile that spreads across his face is contagious as he bends down, stealing a kiss that you already missed.